Abstract
This essay attempts to do two things. On the one hand, it aims to clarify Deleuze’s relation to phenomenology and, in particular, to Husserl’s Ideas I. In this regard, the essay attempts to clarify what Deleuze means by sense in The Logic of Sense. On the other hand, the essay attempts to clarify what Deleuze means by event in The Logic of Sense. The two tasks are connected since Deleuze defines sense by event, and this new definition of sense defines Deleuze’s most basic criticism of phenomenology.
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Notes
- 1.
Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens (Paris: Minuit, 1969); English translation by Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, edited by Constantin Boundas as Logic of Sense (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). Hereafter cited with the abbreviation LS, with reference first to the French, then to the English translation.
- 2.
Here we are focusing only on what Deleuze calls “static genesis,” that is, the operation by which the definition of the conditions of a problem generates a solution or solutions. See Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 238; English translation by Paul Patton as Difference and Repetition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 183.
- 3.
(LS 33/21) By calling phenomenology a “rigorous science,” Deleuze of course is referring to well known essay by Husserl: “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft” (1911).
- 4.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Husserliana Band III (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950); English translation by Fred Kersten as Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983); French translation by Paul Ricœur as Idées directrices pour une phénoménologie (Paris: Tel Gallimard, 1950). Kersten’s translation is made from the Husserliana volume, while Ricœur’s is made from the third edition (1928) of the original Max Niemeyer publication. The first English translation (by Boyce Gibson) was also made from the Niemeyer edition. See Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Collier Books, 1975 [1931]).
- 5.
(LS 117/96, also LS 45/32) The criticism that Deleuze presents here in Logique du sens should be compared to the one Derrida presents at basically the same time. In an early essay, “‘Genesis and Structure,’ and Phenomenology,” Derrida, like Deleuze, recognizes the innovation that the Husserlian idea of noema represents. Yet, Derrida, again like Deleuze, thinks that Husserl retreats from this innovation insofar as Husserl conceives history as teleological (the Idea in the Kantian sense). In La Voix et le phénomène, Derrida might appear at first to be at odds with Deleuze since in this book Derrida criticizes the Husserlian idea of expression. Yet, what Derrida criticizes is the restriction that the Husserlian concept of expression seems to impose on sense. In other words, like Deleuze, Derrida conceives sense as an infinite (unlimited becoming), not to be reined in by a telos of “the relation to an object” (the idea in the Kantian sense again). Derrida sees the unlimited nature of sense in what Husserl calls indication (Anzeichen), rather than in expression. Neither Derrida nor Deleuze are satisfied respectively with Husserl’s difference between and the conception of indication and expression. The lack of satisfaction implies a community of conception between Derrida and Deleuze. Notice in this formula of a “relation to the object,” we see the dative. Derrida’s criticism of “the relation to the object” implies that he does accept the dative relation. He cannot therefore be easily classified among the so-called “philosophers of transcendence.” The other (of any sort) is internal and not a transcendence that puts a break (not a stopping point) on becoming. Both Derrida and Deleuze are thinkers of infinite, continuous variation (multiplicity or dissemination). See Jacques Derrida, “‘Genèse et structure’ et la phénoménologie,” L’Ecriture et la différence (Paris: Seuil, 1967), 229–52, especially, 242–44; English translation by Alan Bass as Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1978), 154–68, especially, 162–63. Jacques Derrida, La Voix et le phénomène (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983 [1967]), Introduction and Chapter 7, especially, 100; English translation by Leonard Lawlor as Voice and Phenomenon (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2011), Introduction and Chapter 7, especially, 76.
- 6.
Ricœur renders Husserl’s “Kern” with French “noyau”; Kersten renders “Kern” in English as “core.” The English translators of Logique du sens render “noyau” as “nucleus.” The old Boyce Gibson translation of Ideen I uses “nucleus” to render “Kern.” We are using “nucleus” here, which allows one to see the image better.
- 7.
(LS 119/97) The definition of good sense given in Logique du sens is: “good sense affirms that in all things there is a determinable sense or direction” (LS 9/1). Deleuze frequently refers to good sense and common sense. The most thorough discussion occurs in Difference and Repetition, Chapter 3.
- 8.
Kersten renders Husserl’s “radikalen Scheidung” as “radical separation”; Ricœur renders it as “coupure radicale.” Deleuze then uses “coupure radicale,” which is rendered in the English translation of Logique du sens as “radical cleavage” (LS 124/102).
- 9.
Deleuze, Différence et répétition, 82; Difference and Repetition, 59.
- 10.
Gilles Deleuze, “Platon et le simulacre,” Logique du sens, 292–306; “Plato and the Simulacrum,” The Logic of Sense, 253–65.
- 11.
The discussion of epoché and the reduction is based on Edmund Husserl, “A. Abhandlungen. Der Encyclopaedia Britannica Artikel,” in Phänomenologische Psychologie (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), 277–301; English translation in Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger (1927–1931), translated and edited by Thomas Sheehan and Richard E. Palmer (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 159–79. It is also based on the presentation of the phenomenological method in Ideen I. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Husserliana Band III (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950); English translation by Fred Kersten as Ideen pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983). For a lucid and exhaustive treatment of the “Encyclopedia Britannica” essay, see Joseph J. Kockelmans, Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1994).
- 12.
I have appropriated the term “ultra-transcendental” from Derrida. See Derrida, La voix et le phénomène, 14; Voice and Phenomenon, 23.
- 13.
In the investigation that follows, I am engaged clearly in a traditional phenomenological study such as the one taken up by Dan Zahavi in his Self-Awareness and Alterity: A Phenomenological Investigation (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999). However, this investigation takes its inspiration from Derrida, in particular, from the sixth chapter of Voice and Phenomenon. Unlike Zahavi, I do not think that “Derrida’s formulations are too excessive” (133).
- 14.
Maurice Blanchot, “Mort du dernier écrivain,” Le livre à venir (Paris: Folio Essais Gallimard, 1959), 301–302; English translation by Charlotte Mandel as “Death of the Last Writer,” The Book to Come (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2003), 222–23. Merleau-Ponty cites this text in L’institution, la passivité. Notes de cours au Collège de France (1954–1955) (Paris: Éditions Belin, 2003), 200–201; English translation by Leonard Lawlor and Heath Massey as Institution and Passivity (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2010), 151–52.
- 15.
Fred Evans has developed an important conception of the voice in The Multivoiced Body: Society and Communication in the Age of Diversity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), see especially 144–68 and 280–82.
- 16.
The description of hearing-oneself-speak and its implications have evolved out of years of reflection upon Derrida’s Voice and Phenomenon, especially on its introduction and chapter 6.
- 17.
(147c–148c) I have used both the Fowler English translation and the Cornford English translation of the Parmenides. Plato, “Parmenides,” trans. F. M. Cornford, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, eds. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961). Plato, Cratylus, Parmenides, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias, trans. Harold North Fowler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939).
- 18.
These comments on Heidegger and the Ereignis are based on a reading of his 1950 “Die Sprache,” Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, Band 12, Unterwegs zur Sprache (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1976), 25. The essay “Die Sprache” has been translated into English by Albert Hofstader as “Language,” Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), 203. I have developed an in-depth reading of Heidegger’s “Language” essay in my Early Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011).
- 19.
For chaos, see Deleuze, Logique du sens, 129–31; Logic of Sense, 106–107. See also Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?(Paris: Minuit, 1991), 44–45; English translation by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell as What is Philosophy?(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 42. For fundamental violence, see Jacques Derrida, “Violence et métaphysique,” L’écriture et la différence, 117–227, especially, 171–72 and 191–92; English translation by Alan Bass as “Violence and Metaphysics,” Writing and Difference, 79–153, especially, 116–17 and 130–31.
- 20.
Although I am using a method from classical phenomenology, I am trying to make the method have an effect not just on the objective side of the variation but also on the subjective side of the variation. In other words, when I vary to determine a structure, I am also trying to make that variation change the one engaged in act of variation. I am here following a clue provided by Foucault in his course called L’Hermeneutique du sujet: “Meditating death (meditari, meletan), in the sense that the Greeks and Latins understand this … is placing oneself, in thought, in the situation of someone who is in the process of dying, or who is about to die, who is living his last days. The meditation is not therefore a game the subject plays on his own thought, with the object or possible objects of his thought. It is not something like eidetic variation, as we would say in phenomenology. A completely different kind of game is involved: not a game the subject plays with his own thought or thoughts, but a game that thought performs on the subject himself. It is becoming, through thought, the person who is dying or whose death is imminent.” Michel Foucault, L’Hermeneutique du sujet, Cours au Collège de France, 1981–1982 (Paris: Seuil Gallimard, 2001), 342; English translation by Graham Burchell as The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981–1982 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 359–60. In Husserl, an eidetic variation results in an eidetic intuition. What Foucault is implying here is that the phenomenological eidetic intuition does not transform the subject doing the variation and having the intuition. In contrast, the intuition I am trying to bring about, like meditation in this sense, is supposed to transform the subject.
- 21.
I have appropriated “origin-heterogeneous” from Derrida. Jacques Derrida, De l’esprit (Paris: Galilée, 1987), 176–78; English translation by Geoff Bennington and Rachel Bowlby as Of Spirit (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1989), 107–108.
- 22.
Edmund Husserl. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaft und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, Husserliana VI (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), §43; English translation by David Carr as The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970), §43. Ludwig Landgrebe’s “Husserls Abschied vom Cartesianismus,” Der Weg der Phänomenologie (Güntersloh: Gerd Mohr, 1967) helped me a great deal in the writing of this paragraph. See Ludwig Landgrebe, “Husserl’s Departure from Cartesianism,” The Phenomenology of Edmund Hussserl, ed. Donn Welton (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 66–121, especially 98–99.
- 23.
Husserl. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaft, §43; The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental, §43.
- 24.
Husserl. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaft, §35; The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental, §35.
- 25.
See “Acts of the Apostles,” Chapter 9.
- 26.
I have used the Shorey English translation and the Bloom English translation of the Republic. Plato, Republic II, trans. Paul Shorey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987). Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans., Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968).
- 27.
Deleuze, Proust et les signes (Paris: Quadrige Presses Universitaires de France, 1996 [1964]), 122–23; English translation by Richard Howard as Proust and Signs. The Complete Text (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 100–01.
- 28.
- 29.
John Sallis, Being and Logos: The Way of Platonic Dialogue (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1986), 430.
- 30.
Sorites paradoxes are at the heart of Deleuze’s Logique du sens.
- 31.
Deleuze capitalizes the word “event” in the phrase “Event in its essence.”
- 32.
Deleuze cites Maurice Blanchot, L’Espace littéraire (Paris: Folio Essais Gallimard, 1955), 160; English translation by Ann Smock as The Space of Literature (Lincoln, Neb: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 123.
- 33.
(LS 188/161) I have argued for the importance of writing (either a story or a philosophical concept) in Deleuze’s thought, and in particular to his concept of becoming in my “Following the Rats: An Essay on the Concept of Becoming-Animal in Deleuze and Guattari,” Sub-Stance, The Political Animal 117/37/3 (2008): 169–187.
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Lawlor, L. (2013). Gilles Deleuze and Hearing-Oneself-Speak. In: Embree, L., Nenon, T. (eds) Husserl’s Ideen. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 66. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5213-9_27
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