The Paradox of Sense, Or on the Event of Thought in Gilles Deleuze’S Philosophy
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The Paradox of Sense, or On the Event of Thought in Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy Sanja Dejanovic A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Political Science, York University, Toronto, Ontario December 2013 © Sanja Dejanovic, 2013 Abstract: Written under the double heading The Paradox of Sense, or on the Event of Thought, this dissertation is a study of the doubled pathway of articulation in Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy. With the repetition of the heading, we want to suggest that, in fact, these two pathways unfold with respect to the same Event. The question which way do we turn, away or towards the virtual, is equivalent to the question, what difference is there. The double pathway defines the central problematic of this dissertation: in the first place, the line of articulation leads to the expression of sense in the proposition, meanwhile with the repetition of difference, another pathway of articulation is retraced that revolves around speaking the event. With the event the question becomes: What does it mean to speak the event once beings are taken to be events? ii Acknowledgements: Many thanks to my committee for their precious time, careful reading of the text, and friendship. Thanks to Dr. Shannon Bell for her many years of encouragement and her confidence in my ability to carry out this project, to Dr. Jay Lampert for his suggestions, insights, nuanced engagements with the topic, and questions that pushed me to better formulate my thought on the matter, and to Dr. Asher Horowitz for his support. Thanks to Dr. Anna Agathangelou and Dr. Jim Vernon, members of the examining committee. Special thanks to my external reader Dr. Constantin Boundas whose work I admire, and whose teaching excellence is an example for us all. My appreciation goes to my friends, particularly Ian Buchanan, David Carvounas, Vladimir Dukic, and others for their supportive roles throughout the years of my doctoral work, and to my family, especially my parents Pavlina and Voislav Dejanovic and grandparents Danka and Borislav Josevi for instilling in me an interest in knowledge at a young age. Most of all, the thanking goes to those who know how to play. iii Table of Contents Introduction: The Question of Sense............................................................................................1 Chapter 1: The Problem of Sense Introduced ...........................................................................14 The Hegelian Proximity or Distance .........................................................................................16 Depth and Height ....................................................................................................................18 Language, Thought and Sense ................................................................................................28 On the Absolute: The Being of Sense and the Sense of Being ..............................................32 A Spinozist Expression: Towards a New Logic .........................................................................42 On the Univocal Nature of the Attributes ...............................................................................45 On Univocal Causality ...........................................................................................................53 On the Knowledge of Singular Things ...................................................................................64 The Nietzschean Sense of Affirmation ......................................................................................69 Eternal Return: Displacing the Verb “To Be” ........................................................................70 A Note on Learning Something New .....................................................................................80 Sense, Evaluation and Critique...............................................................................................83 Chapter 2: The Split in the Pathway of Articulation of Sense .................................................93 The Virtual and the Actual Object .............................................................................................93 A Stoic Inspired Drama: Sounds, States and Surface ..............................................................103 Two Planes of Being: Existence and Subsistence ................................................................104 The Event and Language ......................................................................................................108 The Fourth Dimension of the Proposition ............................................................................113 The Virtual Structure of Language: Sense and Nonsense ....................................................121 The Genesis of Sense: Transcendental and Formal Logic .......................................................129 Conclusion: Para/doxa ..............................................................................................................152 Chapter 3: The Theatre of Events and the Dividing Line of Time .......................................155 The Living Present: Contemplative Souls and Rhythms of Contraction .................................157 The Being of the Past, or the Time of Beings ..........................................................................171 Éclat or on the Bursting Forth of the Pure Event .....................................................................187 Conclusion: Becoming What One Is ........................................................................................203 Chapter 4: Deleuze’s New Meno: Learning, Time, and the Event of Thought .............................................................................205 Meno’s Paradox ........................................................................................................................208 A Lover of the Search: Learning is Future Oriented ................................................................213 The Idea of Learning: Sign, Question and Surface ..................................................................229 A Note on How to Play ............................................................................................................245 Event of Thought ......................................................................................................................247 Speaking the Event ...................................................................................................................261 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................268 iv Etherror by Viktor Timofeev v Introduction The Question of Sense What if there were no sense […] other than the sense that is lost, the pre-sense that is found always already before us? [...] It is always too late for the question of sense, too late or too soon, it comes down to the same.1 Written under the double heading The Paradox of Sense, or on the Event of Thought, this dissertation is a study of what we call the doubled pathway of articulation in Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy. With the repetition of the heading, we want to suggest that, in fact, these two pathways unfold with respect to the same Event. Being occasioned by one and the same Event, the two pathways are encompassed in the same problematic repeated in the heading. This problematic corresponds to a central question, which is: How does something new become expressed of beings? At its core, this question is essentially an ethical one: What does it mean to speak “for” another?2 Such a question is just as much about who speaks, as it is about what is spoken of. Deleuze’s attitude on the formulation of questions is clear in Dialogues (2007): Questions are invented, like anything else. If you aren’t allowed to invent your questions with elements from all over the place, from never mind where, if people ‘pose’ them to you, you haven’t much to say. [From questions grows] the art of constructing a problem, a problem position, before finding a solution.3 It is fitting then that we pose our question in a somewhat unfamiliar fashion than the way in which inquiries directed at Deleuze’s philosophy are usually formed. In this study, we do not promise to resolve this question. Instead, we intend to pursue the problem that lends its sense to it: the condition in light of which something new is said of beings.4 For Deleuze, questions are defined by a twofold reference that preserves their openness. They are “aimed at a future (or a past),” or both times simultaneously.5 The question seeks after the condition, and the condition in the mode of the problematic lends its sense to it. When asking how the new is said of another, we are inquiring after the genesis of the ground of beings, on the basis of which something meaningful can be said of them. Broadly speaking, there are two ways in which this meaning has been approached. The dividing line is between those who interpret sense6 as abiding with models of recognition, and those who determine sense as co-present to paradox. Deleuze’s paradoxical constitution of sense renders the new something untimely, the always new in being, which not only makes it impossible that we treat it as an instance of signification, but also that in relation to paradox, it is the instance that displaces identification. The power of paradox has been long affirmed.7 According to