Logika sensu

by Gilles Deleuze, Grzegorz Wilczyński (Translator), Michał Herer (Translator)

Znakomicie napisane, zaskakujące, słynne dzieło wczesnego Deleuze’a. Tematem jest proces powstawania sensu w różnych systemach dyskursu: w języku potocznym, w literaturze, w baśniach, a także w sferze bezsensu, w szaleństwie. Punktem wyjścia jest polemika z Lewisem Carrollem i Antoninem Artaudem, dalej z Husserlem, Russelem, Leibnizem i Gombrowiczem.

Książka jest propozycją całościowego projektu ontologicznego, ufundowanego na pojęciu sensu, a nie rzeczywistości. Zawiera też ciekawe analizy różnych konkretnych przypadków, np. alkoholizmu, neuroz i psychoz (na podstawie przypadków Fitzgeralda, Artauda oraz pacjentów Freuda i Lacana).

Cała druga część książki jest poświęcona badaniu procesu powstawania sensu w rozwoju osobniczym człowieka. Jak dochodzi do tego, że człowiek zaczyna wypowiadać sensowne zdania, jak dźwięki wyzwalają się z ciała i stają zdaniami wyposażonymi w sens?


Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) – francuski filozof, jeden z najważniejszych myślicieli XX wieku, którego idee wywarły olbrzymi wpływ na filozofię, nauki społeczne i humanistyczne. Kojarzony przede wszystkim z poststrukturalizmem, opracował oryginalną koncepcję ontologii, w której naczelnym pojęciem nie był byt czy bycie, lecz różnica, powtórzenie i ekspresja. Opublikował liczne książki poświęcone historii idei, literaturze i sztuce, a także traktaty metafizyczne „Różnica i powtórzenie” oraz „Logika sensu”. Wraz z Felixem Guattarim napisał dwa tomy „Kapitalizmu i schizofrenii”, stanowiące fundamentalną krytykę klasycznej psychoanalizy. Ważną część jego spuścizny stanowią krótkie książki poświęcone najważniejszym postaciom z historii filozofii, m.in. Nietzschemu, Spinozie tudzież Leibnizowi.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Psychoanalysis, France, Psychology, Logic

444 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Deleuze is a key figure in poststructuralist French philosophy. Considering himself an empiricist and a vitalist, his body of work, which rests upon concepts such as multiplicity, constructivism, difference and desire, stands at a substantial remove from the main traditions of 20th century Continental thought. His thought locates him as an influential figure in present-day considerations of society, creativity and subjectivity. Notably, within his metaphysics he favored a Spinozian concept of a plane of immanence with everything a mode of one substance, and thus on the same level of existence. He argued, then, that there is no good and evil, but rather only relationships which are beneficial or harmful to the particular individuals. This ethics influences his approach to society and politics, especially as he was so politically active in struggles for rights and freedoms. Later in his career he wrote some of the more infamous texts of the period, in particular, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. These texts are collaborative works with the radical psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, and they exhibit Deleuze’s social and political commitment.

Gilles Deleuze began his career with a number of idiosyncratic yet rigorous historical studies of figures outside of the Continental tradition in vogue at the time. His first book, Empirisism and Subjectivity, is a study of Hume, interpreted by Deleuze to be a radical subjectivist. Deleuze became known for writing about other philosophers with new insights and different readings, interested as he was in liberating philosophical history from the hegemony of one perspective. He wrote on Spinoza, Nietzche, Kant, Leibniz and others, including literary authors and works, cinema, and art. Deleuze claimed that he did not write “about” art, literature, or cinema, but, rather, undertook philosophical “encounters” that led him to new concepts. As a constructivist, he was adamant that philosophers are creators, and that each reading of philosophy, or each philosophical encounter, ought to inspire new concepts. Additionally, according to Deleuze and his concepts of difference, there is no identity, and in repetition, nothing is ever the same. Rather, there is only difference: copies are something new, everything is constantly changing, and reality is a becoming, not a being.

He often collaborated with philosophers and artists as Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Guy Hocquenghem, René Schérer, Carmelo Bene, François Châtelet, Olivier Revault d'Allonnes, Jean-François Lyotard, Georges Lapassade, Kateb Yacine and many others.

Reviews

[Travis]

god help me

[Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe I finished this dense, infuriating, brilliant book. I had to read certain chapters four times, and if I only read a chapter once, I rarely understood it. Despite my careful reading, I'm not sure I fully get what Deleuze is going for. Worse, I don't totally care about the sections I rushed through.

I don't fully care because this book is seriously intertwined with classic philosophical problems, which I tend to find boring. I prefer political philosophy, science, and social psychology, all of which presuppose the world and care little for problems of metaphysics.

The beginning of Logic of Sense is primarily about semantics and semiotics, or the study of meaning and the study of sign process. Basically, he posits that the language is only understandable through sense. Shit... this is difficult to describe, but the "problem" of language is that none of the available explanations are sufficient. This is a little rough to explain, since I don't fully understand the problem nor the thousands of years of arguments attached to it. But basically, Deleuze argues that behind all language is "sense."

Sense is constructed. Sense is also not innate. Sense is constructed as we use language in the world, in real time. It is constructed in the middle realm between "the realm of ideas" and "the universe of things." A great deal of the book is devoted to how sense is constructed, but honestly, I'm not sure if I can explain any of it.

Sense is closely related to what Deleuze calls "events." Events, like sense, don't exist, but subsume. As I understand it, imagine a term like "my high school sweetheart." This makes sense but is it referring to me or to you? What if you or I didn't have a high school sweetheart? Well, the point is that the Event "my high school sweetheart" is the expression of what I said. It doesn't fully exist, but it can incorporate all of the things in the world that incorporate the term "my high school sweetheart" to you. That includes the blood and guts and cells and molecules and history that composes the person who is the sweetheart; that includes the time spent together; that includes everything that encompasses what you constitute "my high school sweetheart," which also can be your version of MY high school sweetheart.

An Event is the expressible, but not the definition. It encompasses the collection of stuff that is you which thinks of the high school sweetheart, the definition of the term (in this case "high school sweetheart"), and the structure of the language that allows terms to be used.

Roughly.

Then Deleuze goes into the paradoxes that establish Sense and the Event.

There's a cool thing about the Event. It brakes cause and effect. This is from the Stoics, who Deleuze claims prefigure Hume. Anyway, think of the world as a collection of stuff – atoms, histories, buildings, molecules, people, countries, etc. At one level, everything is just atoms. But there are things. And we recognize those things. I recognize myself, my friends, dogs, cats, authors, painters, elements, colors, countries on a map, etc. But those things aren't, on one level, the full story. Everything is composed of something else, so there is no Being. What is Being is the Event. That is, think of that high school sweetheart again. Let's say it is a she. Let's say her name is Indira (it's the first name that popped in my head, whatever). Indira is an Event. Indira exists, but really, she exists as a collection of atoms, histories, organs, her dog dying when she was five, Power Rangers, clothes, etc. On those granular scales, there is no Indira, just other stuff. All there is, on this level, is endless actions, ceaselessly intertwining. Think of all the atoms in the universe endlessly joining, branching, shifting, into new connotations: new stars, molecules, gases, creatures, rocks, etc. And all that next level stuff endlessly joins, branches, shifts into new connotations, and so on.

Well the Event is what allows us to differentiate. Think, on one hand is the depth of stuff. On the other hand are ideas. The stuff is real. The ideas are not. The Event allows us to organize the boundless abyss of stuff into concepts. Those concepts can be anything. "The Iraq war" is a concept, an Event. So is "Barrack Obama" and "the current president of France."

Back to cause and effect. The Event is the effect. The world of stuff is the cause. The two never really intertwine. That is, we give the world of stuff effects, rationales, meaning. The world of stuff is just churning away, an endlessly branching smashing of stuff. It is all cause. Effect only comes when we attribute a This-ness to some individuated Thing. So back to "my high school sweetheart." When you are going out; when you are really in-the-moment with your significant other, there is just Now. Just the world of stuff, which includes emotions of love, and images of your significant other, and smells of the pizza you're sharing and the grass you're sitting on, and the warmth of the sun and the feeling of your lover's fingers in yours. No effect. Just cause. Effect comes in when you give Sense to the whole thing, or turn what you are doing into an Event. As soon as you do that, the thing becomes a concept. You sort of think: Cause: with my high school sweetheart; Effect: I'm so happy. Or, years later: Cause: my high school sweetheart; Effect: ten years of therapy. See? No real cause and effect; effect comes from the Event and doesn't exist in the world. Sure, there is the you of now, ten years later, who has been going to ten years of therapy, but can you really say that one thing lead to another? Not really. Not when it comes down to it. But thinking about something turns it into an Event (because of the way Sense functions) and then you give the world of stuff meaning, effect, etc. Sort of.

And that is only one ramification of what he's saying.

Oh shit, this is getting long. And it will take forever to really explain everything I got out of this book...

Maybe I'll come back to it later.

But I will say that there is an endless amount of ramifications from these ideas. Ramifications that effect the idea of identity and ethics and knowledge.

And the later part of the book bored me to tears. Deleuze goes into psychoanalysis, which always bores me, and talks about how this idea of Sense and Event effects psychoanalysis and Freudian and Lacanian notions. Yawn. I just couldn't care and didn't spend much time with the end of the book.

[Woke · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s a really funny image of Nietzsche being sucked through a black hole that I can’t get out of my head. That alone should be reason enough to motor through this dense, but highly rewording labor of thought.

[Alex Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deleuze exceeds Difference and Repetition here, in the 2nd part of his doctorial thesis. Here Deleuze notices the way in which various discourses have their own sense. This sense he notes as a statist view of its own internal logic. This is of course what was developed with technocratic rationality as a deepening of agental materialism through increased systematization of capital intensive industry.

This book is the bridge book between Difference and Repetition and Anti-Oedipus as in this book Deleuze connects psychoanalysis, sense-logic and maintenance of a statist logic. The three find concurrence with stoicism -- the philosophy that pervaded Roman ideology (of course) as this line of thinking is about the execution of a depth of logic at the expense of emotion. Presented with a standard sense (a common sense, or even an ideological sense) one is compelled to execute decisions according to that sense. Stoicism is about rectifying the purity of action in concordance with reason. Only here, with Logic of Sense, Deleuze notes the multiplicity of reason itself, as he starts to notice the inner workings of postmodern rationalities.

He makes no mistaken ending with an exploration of psychoanalytic space. The rationality of subjectivity is itself capital-influenced rationality for the normalization of subjects. Here, he connects the final piece of subjectivity as a phantasm of consciousness for the maintenance of a subjective state, which Deleuze (with Guattari) would later rebel against in Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Oedipus.

Nonetheless sense is a great find. With it, Deleuze also notices the Event, as a quasi-event of sense. While Deleuze has some calculatory definitions as a difference noted also within mathematical difference, the Logic of Sense is the point at which Deleuze as a philosopher comes onto his own to begin to find his own voice. We can see traces of this genius in earlier works but the concepts are stilted, not yet quite refined although the trends are there.

I find this book to be insightful and full of the packed but explosive (and austere) language that Deleuze so often employs. His exploration of Lewis Carroll's work is both humorous and light, showing us the plain relations he illustrates with his characteristic gravity. While this work has been dated in the sense that Deleuze has exceeded this view through his work with Guattari, nonetheless, it remains close to my heart as it changed my life in countless ways when I first read about fifteen years ago.

[Katarina · Rating 4 out of 5]

HELP

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deleuze in this book says ‘writing is pig shit,’ and commences to demonstrate it. Our words are inverted from sense and Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” understands that and Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole points us in that direction.

Deleuze presupposes the absence of the presence is foundational to our intentions and the anal, oral and castrations stages with our shit laden psyches makes sense in his anti-oedipal world with schizoids understanding because of their paranoia. He combines Lacan and Freud and seems to believe what he is writing about, and for him the perverse is bad since it strays from the norms of the self-appointed privileged.

Robinson Crusoe is not best looked at through Deleuze’s psychological lens as presented in this book. It doesn’t have greater hidden reconcilable psychological truths since it is best thought of as “a religious, racist, white supremacy, sexist bigot driveling" that could only be appreciated by self-appointed privileged English Christian folk wallowing in their superiority. Deleuze doesn’t see how his world of Freudian/Lacanian being is collapsing and that his psychological drivel leads him astray, and the world just ignores that kind of babble till it enters irrelevancy.

Heidegger skirts around finding the thoughts between the thoughts while Deleuze searches for sense through accepting nonsense such that contras exist at the same time and in the same way. Henri Bergson demands time without presupposing relativity ultimately leading to elan vital and creative evolution with the intuitive be all but the instinctive and Deleuze gives stoics things and epicureans actions. The divide is only reconcilable through presupposing such that Kierkegaard’s ‘irony is jealous of authenticity’ makes sense.

If I pretend that Deleuze doesn’t believe the things he is saying I find him one of the most edifying of writers. It is his irrelevancy that helps in making sense of our paradox of existence. Nietzsche warns against making truth depended on assuming a false contradiction as Socrates does and Deleuze makes nonsense sensible through his own inversions. Leibniz' monad, Bergson’s spirituality, Husserl’s phenomenology, Hegel’s other, and Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence of the same all cleverly get presented in this book and cohere when non-coherence is assumed.

[G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Abbasso il voto di una stella come mi si sono abbassate le diottrie a leggerlo con il font delle edizioni economiche Feltrinelli, maledetti

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was more to the Logic of Sense than I expected, and I had expected an explanation for how language works.

[Abol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deleuze doesn't cease to surprise with the next turn he takes, here onto the impossible subject of Lewis Carol's logic of sense. His analysis of the four dimensions of reading: denotation, manifestation, signification and sense is canonic. His note on surfaces and sense versus depths and sorrow (my note) is enlightening. It goes on an on in a series which one has faith in its convergence. Whereas for Badiou multiple being is set theoretic in his paradigm on multiplicity, Deleuze is the master of differential geometry and topology - my favourite subject at PhD. It is differential geometry not geometry as such (with its surfaces) which stands behind Deleuze's category of sense - not the straight values but the variations of multiples. I even found him solving an impossible problem of visualisation of a set of intrinsic coordinates. (see footnote 3 on p144.) But the most astounding part of it is when he references Albert Lautman's 'Le Probleme du temps' where he talks about topological accidents which may suddenly crop up in a field of directions. Here he refers to the possibility of a plane of singular points to which no direction has been attached, where streamlines will come to halt. This topology of accidents is where Badiou's event is situated. In fact Deleuze's sense is more synonymous with the concept of event in Badiou's Being and Event.
Highly recommend it if your preoccupation is wide and varied.

[Bookfreak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Κάθε βιβλίο φιλοσοφίας είναι μια πρόκληση για μας τους ερασιτέχνες. Όποτε ξεκινώντρας την ΛτΝ είχα χαμηλά τις προσδοκίες από τον εαυτό μου και εμπιστοσύνη στον Ντελεζ για το ταξίδι.

Προφανώς κάποια κομμάτια της σκέψης του παρέμειναν ερμητικά κλειστά με αυτή τη πρώτη ανάγνωση αλλά η αίσθηση που επικράτησε τελειώντας αυτό το βιβλίο είναι ότι είναι γεμάτο από ιδεές, δημιουργική σκέψη, κατασκευές και αποκαθηλώσεις. Θέλει κουράγιο πολλές φορές να συνεχίσεις αλλά αποζημιώνει με τη ζωντάνια του. Σε κάνει να θες να το ξαναδιάβασεις, να ασχοληθείς τα λογοτεχνικά/φιλοσοφικά/ψυχαναλυτικά κειμένα στα οποία αναφέρεται ο Ντελέζ, γενικά δημιούργει νέους κόσμους και σύμπαντα.

Ευγνωμοσύνη βέβαια οφείλουμε στον μεταφραστή/μελετητή του έργου του Ντ. κ. Μπουντά και για το φοβερό επίμετρο του με προτάσεις για περαιτέρω ανάγνωση.

[Hagar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was assigned an extract of this during my first year of uni, and I was so sucked in by the new ideas that I read the whole book. Re-reading it felt like a thrill again, as dense as it is to parse through. I'm not a Deleuzian, but this is pretty brilliant. His best work imo.

[Milo Galiano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitivamente el mejor libro que he leído nunca (de momento). Pasa desaparecido inmerecidamente, pero es cierto que es duro de masticar.

[Octavio Aragao · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difícil? Sim. Dispensável? De jeito nenhum. Deleuze filosofa como um romancista e desvenda trilhas insuspeitas em obras que nos acostumamos a considerar como senso comum e viradas do avesso à exaustão, tais como Alice no País das Maravilhas e Alice no Pais do Espelho (analisados em detalhes), de Carrol, ou A Besta Humana, de Zola, dentre outros. A ideia de contrapor e inverter nossos conceitos de superfície e profundidade é de um arrojo ímpar. Eis um livro que cumpre a função primordial de questionar com base verdades tidas como absolutas e que, além disso, ajuda no amadurecimento de quem se propõe a contar histórias.

[B.D.N. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure genius– just when I thought I couldn't fall in love with Deleuze more. This is a tough one to get the sense of (lol), but once you do it all comes together beautifully.

[Quiver · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's Roland Barthes's The Pleasure of the Text and then there's this book.

If you have never met (post)structuralist thought, read both books in the given order. Your outlook on life may alter significantly.

[Phil · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book has the following ideas:

1) Conscious sense of time as the derivative of time (Kronos).
2) Time (Aion), as a single infinite thread and he butchers this.
3) Manifestation of a quasi Platonic idea (Event)
4) Platonic idea (surface), which he then tries to tie 3 and 4 together as 1 and 2 respectively, it's a neat concept but not interesting nor terribly novel. Anyone who has read has tried to make this turn.
5) Signifying chains (x, the word for x, the word for having a word of x, the condition of being able to have a word for x).
6) Something with the phallic that was morosely useless.
7) Schizoid experience and manic depressive as lusting after 1 and 2 or 3 and 4 respectively.
8) Alcohol as both the thing that makes the event, the idea of the event, and the relationship of the two.
9) As above in 8, Deleuze tries to connect the surface and the dot with a line, I think it misses entirely but he tries to.

I'm very glad other posters here found the book more enjoyable, but I struggled to see it as useful or interesting. Deleuze circles a concept needlessly for dozens of pages at a time, not because there isn't anything there, but because he is a classically trained over-domesticated academic that doesn't regularly have his ideas tested for usefulness. I think readers that enjoy beautiful puzzles would like this book, but it's not useful enough to bend my mind.

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deleuze's concept of semantically generative events, and of semantic enhancement through intersections of paradoxical events (the disjunctive synthesis) was very helpful in the writing I did about art, and about intersecting exhibitions in the 1990s.

As an exercise in sheer conceptual exoticism and stimulating playfulness, Logique du sens is hard to beat. On the other hand, it could probably do with a "use at your own risk" sticker. I'm aware that entering as I did, and taking seriously Deleuze's kaleidoscopic conceptualizations, probably did nothing for my assimilability into either normal society, or normative kinds of book-writing in Canada. Even as its companionship ship likely helped underwrite my taking certain risks with form and language that I consider integral to my own work's development.

In my opinion, Deleuze's best and most important book. And that's saying something, given the quality of about ten others that come to mind.

I've never read Costas Boundas's translation. But having talked to Costas about Deleuze, I'm sure it's conscientious, sensitive, and highly knowledgeable.

[Billy Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll probably come back and write a more complete review later. Until then, a really approximate comparison: this books offers plenty of insight, but isn't quite as hard-hitting as _Difference and Repetition_ or either volume of _Capitalism and Schizophrenia_ (despite the immense frustration I have with the latter in terms of the authors' style). And since we're being vague, let me add that much of _Logic_ overlaps with _D&R_ and _C&S_, so it's not clear what this work would offer the serious Deleuze student. Well, maybe that's going a little too far. In any case, this work is redundant in view of _D&R_, is made redundant by _C&S_ (which often takes things further), and makes itself redundant (the last half of the book is pretty painful to read, as Deleuze reaches his conclusion early and then spends a couple hundred pages re-iterating it).

Anyway, I'll do this justice later (maybe). Four stars; recommended.

[Oliver Banks · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic, impactful, delirious book I have seen cited so many times and cited myself, perhaps too much, with good reason. Deleuze attempts to dismantle notions of essence and appearance which have appeared in Western philosophy in a manner he traces back to Plato. The discussions of truth as appearance of appearance are particularly titillating and I only wish I had the time to plough further through this before I put it down. If I was crafting a philosophy course I would put this on the reading list.

[Cary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Case for the ontological priority of the event. Also a great book of mourning, but deleuze doesn't want us to know that.

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read Lenin’s critique to empiricism instead.

[Archimboldi · Rating 5 out of 5]

No entendí nada, pero me dio ganas de leer Alicia en el país de las maravillas. Un 10

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off interesting and I dare say bits of it will be useful to me but gee I had to wade through some messed up crap to get through this book. It really is phallocentric in the most literal sense (there's an obsession with penises). There's also an obsession with anuses but the penis thing irritated me because he claims to be coming up with a new way of conceptualising "difference" which is positive and not about lack and then he spends a couple of chapters obsessing about who has a penis and who doesn't. He randomly throws in "little girl penises" but not in a way that made sense to me. It seems like he is grudgingly saying "even though penis is the centre of everything this doesn't exclude women" which needs a lot more work to be coherent.

I suspect I will still disagree with this no matter how much more work gets put into arguing it. Maybe this is because I don't have a penis and I don't particularly want one (in either sense). I can't expect Deleuze to completely understand my view on this but he doesn't even entertain the notion of not being penis-obsessed.

The Alice in Wonderland (and other Carrol stuff) stuff was fascinating though slow complex reading. I think it's probably improved my fiction writing to think about that (either that or made me write horrible pretentious, obscure stuff- time will tell which). The surfaces stuff was what I was looking for and was disappointing because it seems to come back to...not only sex but a very narrow conception of heterosex which is sadistic and seperates the subject (males of any number) and the object (woman). A good bit of the appendices was devoted to going through various novels I haven't and won't read in this way also looking at Robinson Crusoe in a problematic way (where Friday is the object). Women (and other others) in this way of thinking are celebrated as a "necessary other" but limited to responding/motivating the real subject. I suppose I can thank this book for at least helping me understand more clearly why so many feminists say the liberal democratic subject is inherently problematic.

I did expect Deleuze to cut through some of that BS a bit better. I think I have now committed to doing "Deleuzian analysis" so I will persist but this was disappointing compared to what I was expecting and that's compounded by the fact I am reading a commentary on Deleuze which is also falling flat with me.

[Joseph M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Logic of Sense" is kind of an ironic title for this book, since Deleuze isn't really interested in setting up a monument of sense against the onslaught of nonsense, or even an island of meaning against the sea of meaninglessness. He brings his own approach to meaning to the table, one that is more engaged with affects, processes, and bodily sensations then the kind of all-or-nothing of existentialism. Deleuze is rather more interested in the process of sense-making, rather than a giant, one-size-fits-all meaning to everything that happens. He is interested in how sense comes to be, it's genesis.
So in a couple dozen "series" he analyzes the books of Lewis Carroll, for how they seem to playfully disrupt things such as temporality and grammar, that results in a kind of "surface" fracturing, a kind of gaiety of the multiple perspectives any situation can take. He contrasts this to Artaud, who experiences the fragmentation of the world as an inner and deep wound within which the world seems endlessly threatening and constantly seeping in. Deleuze is sympathetic to both perspectives, and sees both Carroll's and Artaud's operations giving us clues to how we "put together the pieces" of the world.

Another fascinating part of the book is his thoughts on Fitzgerald (and his characters) and how he feels the lost past intensely, and the imperfect future coming to him. This is why Deleuze theorizes alcohol has such a pull on him because it changes his experience of time, if even for a little bit. I think this is the experience I've had with addictions as well, the wish to turn the crush of time into an embrace.

Deleuze's treatment of people who would be considered mentally ill today (and were considered mentally ill) is both refreshing and kind of suspicious to me, a little bit. A philosophical engagement with peoples thoughts, without just passing them off as the ramblings of madmen, is extremely welcome, even and especially in todays discourse. Yet I sensed there was sometimes a little too much of Deleuze's poetic interpretations interpolating into the actual experiences of Artaud, for example. I loved these passages, but I felt Deleuze had just a little bit of a blind spot.

[Paulo · Rating 5 out of 5]

O que fica pra mim muito claro após a leitura desse livro e de sua consideração do Acontecimento como coextensivo é a diferença clara entre *problematização e julgamento*. Enquanto este está abalizado sobre disjunções excludentes, sobre valores da altura e da profundidade que incidem na forma de um regime de signos sobreposto ao objeto de julgamento, a problematização parte do princípio da diferença afirmativa, da apreciação do elemento da diferença como referencial sintético disjuntivo em relação às séries de acontecimentos problematizadas, princípio este capaz, inclusive, de apreciar o próprio julgamento enquanto diferente de si mesmo. Este recurso aparece como instância de superfície (representada pelo paradoxo - daí o uso das obras de Lewis Carroll como tema) capaz de identificar a oposição entre as séries, no entanto afirmando essa oposição e assinalando em que momento ou sob qual sentido essa oposição aparente surge. É sobre esse modo de pensar, singular e múltiplo, que considero existir um potencial de análise psicossocial que supera infinitamente o modo balizado nos universais: o rizoma que distribui, paradoxo inclusivo (e por isso portador de força real de apreciação) no lugar da árvore que centraliza, que tende ao universal em detrimento da singularidade e da multiplicidade, que ele sempre tende a recalcar e marginalizar, dando encejo a todo um discurso da patologização, a todo um paradigma da normalidade. Paradigma que destina a diferença à exclusão, e que só se propõe a incluí-la nos termos de uma tolerância piedosa - diferença que é necessário suportar, mas sempre admitindo que ela se coloca em um lugar de irredutível oposição: tolerar, mas nunca *amar* a diferença. Em último caso, a tolerância que se movimenta para capturar a diferença: torná-la um mesmo de exceção, sempre remetendo à Regra da Lei Universal (Divina, Moral, etc.). Ao contrário, a diferença afirmativa quebra o platonismo e funda a plenitude do Sim de Zaratustra, que traz, num mesmo golpe de martelo, a profundidade e a altura à superfície, fazendo surgir uma linha abstrata e um ponto de articulação que a traça: Alice cresce e diminui no mesmo movimento - eterno retorno do múltiplo.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the place where Deleuze and Baudrillard differ. One being a metaphysician attempting to carry the entire world of philosophy forward. The other a sociologist using socioeconomic starting points. I get that Deleuze being the metaphysician gets to generalize the concept but Baudrillards usage should not have to be thrown out. Sure it convolutes things in that all simulacra must be thought of as half of an essential whole, within the eternal return. But baudrillard knew his Nietszche as well as Deleuze. We also live in a practical world where simulacra evolve in real time from marketing ploy to propaganda. We need both interpretations and it’s a shame they couldn’t somehow find a mutual usage of this term. It’s as sad as Schopenhauer and Hegel. Just get over it for the bigger picture people!

“It is the paradoxical element or object = x missing always its own equilirium, at once excess and deficiency, never equal, missing its own resemblance, its own identity, its own origin, its own place, and always displaced in relation to itself. It is floating signifier and floated signified, place without occupant and occupant without place, the empty square (which can also create an excess through this void) and a supernumerary object (which can also create a lack by being this excess number).“

“If we say of the simulacrum that it is a copy of a copy, an infinitely degraded icon, an infinitely loose resemblance, we then miss the essential, that is, the difference in nature between simulacrum and copy, or the aspect by which they form the two halves of a single division. The copy is an image endowed with resemblance, the simulacrum is an image without resemblance.”

“All objects = x are "persons" and are defined by predicates. But these predicates are no longer the analytic predicates of individuals determined within a world which carry out the description of these individuals. On the contrary, they are predicates which define persons synthetically, and open different worlds and individualities to them as so many variables or possibilities”

“the relation between sense and object is the natural result of the relation between noematic predicates—a something = x which is capable of functioning as their support or principle of unification. This thing = x is not at all therefore like a nonsense internal and co-present to sense, or a point zero presupposing nothing of what it necessarily engenders. It is rather the Kantian object = x, where "x" means “in general.’ It has in relation to sense an extrinsic, rational relation of transcendence, and gives itself, ready-made, the form of denotation, just as sense, as a predicable generality, was giving itself, ready-made, the form of signification.“

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are two parts to this text - the structuralist account and genetic account of sense. In addition, there are two series of sense - a global and individual. Though the second account coincides with the genetic account of sense, its treatment is relegated to the final 8 chapters in which Deleuze engages with psychoanalysis. The structuralist account is the most important aspect of Deleuzian metaphysics since it develops the static genesis of Ideas chapter in Difference and Repetition. Crucially there are two parts to the static genesis - one logical, the other metaphysical. The metaphysical part is different from the genetic account in that it takes the individual who is capable of grasping Ideas as the starting point. The logical aspect describes how all sense is inter-expressive and coexist on the virtual plane. We know, from DnR, that this plane consists of differential relations and singularities. Now, they translate into a pre-linguistic form of "infinitives", or pure verbs, that continue to subsist after particular occurrences/instantiations. For example, "to cut", "to scream", "to heal", "to decay", "to sleep" are all infinitives that are drawn together in the event of cutting oneself with a knife. These traverse individual bodies and are attributed as effects which exceed their material causes. They have and will continue to play out by traversing other bodies. That's why they belong to the past and future (Aionic time). With this in mind, Deleuze develops a metaphysics of the surface. No longer do we subordinate reality to higher transcendent principles (philosophy of the heights) or reduce it to fundamental indivisible parts residing within the body (philosophy of the depths). The study of surface effects is concomitant with non-linear dynamics of natural science. It's philosophical nature consists in the production of new effects through creating Ideas and developing the intensive relations between these Ideas.

[Tvrtko Balić · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was extremely disappointing. It's only going on the logic shelf because of the title, it's main pupose is to demonstrate a sort of scepticism in sense formation where it is only possible to be thought when in motion, when it is a process rather than viewing sense as a static thing.
It talks about examples from literature and Deleuze is especially a fan of Lewis Carroll. The book is pure nonsense so it's kind of like reading a character from the book ramble on about Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which is kind of cool, I suppose, but it gets old really fast. I am only giving it two stars because I've seen explanations of the book on youtube that make me think that there is actually something here. It's just that it's buried in so much bs, it's unreal. All the ideas worth anything are better expressed elsewhere, either in other authors or in Deleuze's other works. I can't believe this book of all things was what made Foucault say that the 20th century is going to be called Deleuzian. This obnoxious style seems like a product of a mistaken idea that you could demonstrate limitations of sense by writing pure nonsense, it's no wonder there was a negative reaction from people like Sokal, it's like Deleuze was begging for it together with his colleagues. The use of terminology is also deliberately confusing. Like, come on Deleuze, simulacrum has one meaning today (which Baudrillard made extensive use of) and a different one in the Roman Empire when it was sometimes used to translade form in Plato, bringing the two in contact is fun and good, but don't then go pretending this makes the word meaningless and use it with no idea what you're referring to.
OK, enough rambling, what you need to know is that the book is terrible and I am being generous by giving it two stars, listen to someone explaining it instead and just read something else.

[Amelia and John · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Logic of Sense is sort of like Benjamin Hoff’s Tao of Pooh and Te of Piglet.

Gilles Deleuze here uses Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland to illustrate structuralism. What I found most interesting here is Deleuze’s elaboration (or theory) of sense, or meaning. Rather than supposing that the sense of words come simply from their definitions, sense arises out of difference. We know what certain words mean because they are not other words, whose meanings also arise out of the difference they hold towards each other. Of course, readers of Lacan would rightfully find resonances here.

It is through the “eternal return” (Deleuze’s reinterpretation of a Nietzschean concept), the constant reiteration and re-insistence of difference, that meaning is produced. Deleuze finds this politically relevant, that meaning can be produced. For Deleuze, meaning is not to be found anchored in God, nor found in the Ideas of the heavens. Nor is meaning located in the depths of the cave in which the Pre-Socratic philosophers dwelt and sought the nature of Fire and Water. Rather, meaning is on the surface of things. It emanates from our speech just as it conditions which words we say. When we speak, we already presuppose that which we mean, even if we never say it exactly in our words.

Meaning’s surface-level constructedness makes even systems changeable. The world is not anchored in concrete, immutable laws of nature given to us by God. Nor is it completely constructed by human speech, as the bastardization of social constructivism would have us believe. Sense is itself an entity—what the Stoics referred to as incorporeal. Sense is real. And by participating in constructing and changing sense, we have the power to change the world around us.

[Volbet · Rating 5 out of 5]

As is the case with all of Gilles Deleuze's works, The Logic of Sense is completely fucking incomprehensible and once you're done with the book, you'll know way less than when you began.

But if I was to attempt to make heads or tails of Logic of Sense I would say that Deleuze's project with the book is basically Wittgensteinian, even though Ludwig Wittgenstein is only mentioned once in the entire book. Both Deleuze, at least in this book, and Wittgenstein have a preoccupation with stuff (in the most esoteric meaning possible) making sense. Why is it that the invented words and linguistics of Lewis Carroll doesn't make sense to us? And why can utter nonsens often speak profound truth?

At the base of Deleuze's argument is that sense, as in a both ontological and epistemological comprehensible concept, precedes language. And that it's sense that forms the basis of both inter- and intra personal communication. Further more, it's through language communication that we can begin to analyse sense, making the abstract more concrete. Or at least a little less abstract.
Once this meaning of sense has been conceptualized that we can go deeper than the material language and beginning analyzing the meaning of sense.