Gilles Deleuze's Logic of Sense

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, University of Nanterre, Paris 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 Honorary Professor of Philosophy and member of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University. He has published widely on contemporary French philosophy and is currently working on a critique of the idea of extended mind from the point of view of process philosophy.

ContentsChapter 1. Introduction to the logic of sense* Event and structure* Life and morals* Reading Logic of Sense* Preliminary critical questionsChapter 2. Language and event* Events as effects* Unfolding the circle of the proposition: denotation, manifestation, signification and sense* Sense and the circle* Series and paradox* Structure and esoteric words* Paradox and nonsenseChapter 3. Philosophy as event* Philosophy and diagrams* Height, depth and surface* Individuals* Singularities and sense* Transcendental deductions* Singularities and series* Problems* The connection of events* The ideal game* Static genesis* Deleuze and HusserlChapter 4. Morals and events* Placing the human* Principles for moral problems* How moral problems are replayed* How to act morally (principles)* How to act morally (examples)* The crack-up* Individuals, solipsism and the communication of events* Time and univocityChapter 5. Thought and the unconscious* The thinker deposed* Thought and problems* Seriation and the phantasm* Thought and sexuality* Dynamic genesisChapter 6. Conclusion: on method and metaphysicsBibliography