Gilles Deleuze's Logic of Sense: A Critical Introduction and Guide (Edinburgh Philosophical Guides)

233 Pages·2009·0.63 MB·English

by  James Williams

gilles deleuze’s
gilles deleuze’s
logic of sense
a critical introduction and guide logic of sense
James Williams a critical introduction and guide
‘James Williams has an amazing talent for extracting simple and important questions
out of an apparently abstruse argument. He does so at regular intervals, so that the
reader is able to grasp Deleuze's argument as it unfolds. This book will be essential
reading for whoever wants to master Deleuze's philosophical project.’
Jean-Jacques Lecercle
This is the first critical study of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze’s most important
work on language and ethics, as well as the main source of his vital philosophy of
the event.
James Williams explains the originality of Deleuze’s work with careful definitions
of all his innovative terms and a detailed description of the complex structure
he constructs.This reading makes connections to his ground-breaking work on
literature, to his critical but also progressive relation to the sciences, and to his
controversial denial of the priority of standard logics, human values and ‘meaning’
in thinking.
This book will open new debates and develop current ones around Deleuze’s work
in philosophy, politics, literature, linguistics, cultural studies and sociology.
James Williams is Professor of European Philosophy at the University of Dundee.
His recent books include The Lyotard Reader and Guide (edited with Keith Crome),
Understanding Poststructuralism, The Transversal Thought of Gilles Deleuze: Encounters and
Influences and Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction and
Guide.
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ISBN 978 0 7486 2611 3
James Williams gilles deleuze’s logic of sense Edinburgh
a critical introduction and guide
Gilles Deleuze’s
Logic of Sense
For the Russell cousin series
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Gilles Deleuze’s
Logic of Sense
A Critical Introduction
and Guide
JAMES WILLIAMS
Edinburgh University Press
© James Williams, 2008
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in 11/13pt Monotype Baskerville
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, WiltsAntony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 2610 6 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 2611 3 (paperback)
The right of James Williams
to be identified as author of this work
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the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix
Note on references xi
1 Introduction to the logic of sense 1
Event and structure 1
Life and morals 7
Reading Logic of Sense 13
Preliminary critical questions 21
2 Language and event 28
Events as effects 28
Unfolding the circle of the proposition: denotation,
manifestation, signification and sense 39
Sense and the circle 47
Series and paradox 51
Structure and esoteric words 58
Paradox and nonsense 68
3 Philosophy as event 77
Philosophy and diagrams 77
Height, depth and surface 80
Individuals 85
Singularities and sense 91
Transcendental deductions 97
Singularities and series 106
Problems 110
The connection of events 115
The ideal game 120
Contents
Static genesis 124
Deleuze and Husserl 129
4 Morals and events 135
Placing the human 135
Principles for moral problems 138
How moral problems are replayed 145
How to act morally (principles) 149
How to act morally (examples) 153
The crack-up 158
Individuals, solipsism and the communication of events 162
Time and univocity 168
5 Thought and the unconscious 175
The thinker deposed 175
Thought and problems 179
Seriation and the phantasm 184
Thought and sexuality 190
Dynamic genesis 194
6 Conclusion: on method and metaphysics 202
Bibliography 208
Index 216
vi
Preface
Deleuze’s Logic of Sense is, like most of his works, a notoriously
d ifficult book. It is also largely neglected by commentators, who
often argue that it is somewhat of an impasse in the Deleuze
corpus, the work of a structuralist Deleuze, still under the influ-
ence of Lacan and psychoanalysis, two unfortunate aspects which
his meeting with Guattari enabled him to get rid of – the real
Deleuze, before and after Logic of Sense, the vitalist Deleuze, herald
of the Bergsonian virtual, of difference, becomings and haec-
ceities, is not found in Logic of Sense, an accident in a distinguished
philosophical career.
James Williams’s book is a welcome answer to this unjust criti-
cal doxa. By engaging in a close reading of the intricacies of this
complex book, which he unravels with admirable lucidity and con-
siderable pedagogic flair, he reconstructs a fascinating, and still
urgently needed, philosophical project, and puts up a spirited
defence of the concepts that Deleuze develops in this book, and
almost nowhere else in his works: series, sense, events, etc.
James Williams has an amazing talent for extracting simple
and important questions out of an apparently abstruse argument:
he does so at regular intervals, so that the reader has the com-
forting conviction (which, thanks to Williams is not sheer illusion)
to grasp Deleuze’s argument as it unfolds and to share in his
i ntelligence.
Now that the quasi-totality of Deleuze’s work has been translated
and that we may understand the complexity in the development of
his thought, the time has come to do justice to the important step in
this development that Logic of Sense embodies. James Williams’s
vii
Preface
book, therefore, is not only welcome: it is necessary. It will be essen-
tial reading for whoever wants to master Deleuze’s philosophical
project.
Jean-Jacques Lecercle
viii
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the British Academy for a grant supporting my
research on Deleuze, Péguy and the event in Orléans in January to
June 2007. Dundee University supported this book through
research leave and support for my postgraduates, notably through
successive PhD scholarship schemes, alongside grants from the Arts
and Humanities Research Council and the Overseas Research
Students Award Scheme. The School of Humanities provided essen-
tial conference travel grants. This work benefited greatly from
research with my current PhD students working on Deleuze across
many fields (Yannis Chatzantonis, Tim Flanagan, Jenny Kermally,
Fabio Presutti, Brian Smith and Dominic Smith). Their research
took mine in unexpected directions and I hope to have helped their
theses as much as they did my book. I have run undergraduate proj-
ects and dissertations on Deleuze for many years now; each of these
projects has shown me new reaches for Deleuze’s thought and novel
problems and criticisms to be addressed. I am in debt to every
student for the risks taken and the successes achieved in those
p rojects. My work on Logic of Sense owes much to the research and
support of many colleagues working in fine art, politics, education,
design, nursing, medicine, languages, philosophy, literature, sociol-
ogy, geography, architecture and history (and many other areas). It
would be invidious to single out a subset of this group of friends, but
I thank them all for the challenges they have drawn up and the ideas
they have developed. If there are still academics out there working
under the delusion that creative critical thinking has not taken a new
and important turn, all they need to know is that somewhere near
them there is sure to be a novel series of Deleuzian events underway:
ix