Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense, Part 1
Sense as the becoming of language
We have been discussing Gille Deleuze’s metaphysics and epistemology, and I have argued that, via a concept of pure difference, Deleuze creates a seamless vision of reality and our experience of reality.
Difference-in-itself is an immanent force that is the genesis for all that exists, and an immanent concept that resonates with our experience of, and our thought in relation to, all that exists.
So far, nothing has been said of the medium in which experience and thought is communicated: language.
Language as Representational
Deleuze asserts that thinking in terms of re-presentations in the mind leads to thought based on identity, and blinds us to thought based on pure difference. But in addition to the thought itself, the understanding, we must also consider the possibility that the language conveying the thought might also mislead.
From one perspective, language itself might be representational and prevent us from grasping pure difference. If this is the case, then language cannot be considered transparent, but instead a potential hindrance preventing us from experiencing reality as pure difference.
Reality overflows thought.
Reality overflows thought based on identity. There is more to reality than a representational understanding can contemplate. We therefore must find a new form of thought that enables us to relate to the reality of pure difference.
Reality overflows language.
If language is also representational, then it follows that reality overflows language. This forces us to pose the question: how might we best think of language in order to see through any mystification or barrier it might put up to thinking in terms of pure difference?
For Deleuze, the challenge is to critique language in such a way that its representational quality is exposed, and to put forth a view of language that allows it to overflow with reality, a view he refers to as “the logic of sense.”
Philosophy of Language
In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze reviews the canon of views developed in the philosophy of language, and identifies three processes at work: denotation, manifestation and signification.
[Denotation] is the relation of the proposition to an external state of affairs. (The Logic of Sense)
By this, he means that denotation is the relation a linguistic proposition has with whatever it is in the world it is referring to. The correspondence view of truth referred to above is a matter of denotation.
[Manifestation] concerns the relation of the proposition to the person who speaks and expresses himself. (The Logic of Sense)
In this case, the proposition relates not to the object it refers, but to the beliefs, desires and intentions of the author of the proposition. Denotation and manifestation together create a three-way relationship in a representational view of language:
speaker — proposition — object (or state of affairs).
Signification is the relation of the proposition to other propositions. Signification is the logic of language, how propositions in language work together internally, within language.
Together detonation, manifestation and signification coordinate in a manner such that a representational image of thought is advanced.
Sense Overflows Language
Deleuze argues that there is a fourth aspect or element of language which he refers to as “sense”:
Sense is the fourth dimension of the proposition. The Stoics discovered it along with the event: sense, the expressed of the proposition, is an incorporeal, complex, and irreducible entity, at the surface of things, a pure event which inheres or subsists in the proposition. (The Logic of Sense)
Sense is in some ways elusive. In one respect, it does not exist outside the proposition that expresses it, but it cannot be confused with the proposition itself. It resides or inheres within the proposition.
In another respect, it is attributed to a state of affairs or object, but it is not that state of affairs or object.
Sense is both the expressible or the expressed of the proposition, and the attribute of the state of affairs. It turns one side toward things, and another side toward propositions. But it cannot be confused with the proposition which expressed it any more than with the state of affairs or the quality which the proposition denotes. It is exactly the boundary between propositions and things. (The Logic of Sense)
Sense is the Becoming of Language
Sense is the event or thing that happens in a proposition. It is what becomes with a proposition. As Claire Colebrook has expressed:
Sense, for Deleuze, is the virtual milieu through which we live and become. Sense is not reducible to the ‘meanings’ of a language; sense is what allows a language to be meaningful.
Sense is not the words used, it is the meaning that becomes through the words.
Sense is an event in time as duration.
The words, “nine eleven,” are more than two numbers. They refer to: an historical event recorded in time; the actual events that occurred on that day, terror, death and destruction; the personal and global societal changes in perspective, both socially and politically, that were a consequence of that event; the ongoing becoming of perspectives on that event that continue to evolve.
The words are a name for an event in time, but the meanings that flow from the words overflow both the words themselves and the historical event. Sense is more than what representational language brings to a state of affairs.
Sense is virtual: it is that which overflows the correspondence of a proposition to a state of affairs.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Thanks for reading!
Tomas
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Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming: A Life of Pure Difference (Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of the New) Copyright © 2021 by Tomas Byrne. Learn more here.
