A Reading of Gilles Deleuze’s Logic of Sense

June-July 2018 in Bonn were profoundly and decisively helpful for my research. I'm also thankful to Mia Burnett who read the manuscript and suggested useful grammatical revisions. Furthermore, I would like to thank the following friends and colleagues in Bonn and elsewhere who each in a way improved my work through discussions and conversations during the time of my project: Acknowledgments 5 Contents 7 Abbreviations of In-Text References 10 Chapter 1: Introduction 12 Repetition and Duration 17 Simulacrum and Production 22 Simulacrum and Naturalism 27 Towards an Ontology of Sense 35 References 41 Chapter 2: Sense from Frege to Deleuze 43 Frege’s Conception of Sense 45 From Frege to Deleuze: Sense or Signification? 51 Deference of Reference and the Univocity of Being 54 References 60 Chapter 3: Frege’s Paradox and the Serial Form 62 Determination of Signification 63 Structure and Series 70 Sense as the Condition of Truth 80 References 90 Chapter 4: The Stoic Logic of Events 91 The Existence of Causes 92 The Subsistence of Effects 95 The Sayable and the Stoic Logic 98 Events and Verbs 102 Quasi-Causality and the Logic of Fate 105 Ethics and Time 112 References 125 Chapter 5: Carroll and the Logic of Nonsense 127 Paradox and Nonsense 127 Carroll’s Paradox 131 Impossible Objects and the Neutrality of Sense 138 Ideal Game and the Time of Chance 140 The Broken Surface 145 References 149 Chapter 6: Sense as the Transcendental Field 150 What Is a Transcendental Field? 151 Deleuze’s Rationalism 156 Sense, Common Sense, Good Sense 160 The Speculative, the Beautiful, the Sublime 164 References 174 Chapter 7: The Ideational Materiality of Sense 176 Problematic Ideas 176 Albert Lautman and the Dialectical Ideas 182 The Materialization of the Transcendental 187 References 196 Chapter 8: Logic and Ontology 197 Logic and Existence 198 Fate and Knowledge 202 Synthetic Nomadology 206 The Genesis of Reason 212 References 216 Chapter 9: Logic of Exteriority 217 The Transcendental Versus the Speculative: A Battle on the Exterior 217 The Structure of Science and the Chaos of Philosophy 226 Transcendental Extinction 235 The Principle of the Insufficient Reason 239 References 245 Chapter 10: Dynamic Genesis and Psychoanalysis 247 From Logic to Psychoanalysis 247 Positions 251 Phantasm and Thought 263 The Metaphysics of Events 269 References 272 Chapter 11: Madness vs. Stupidity 273 Transcendental Stupidity 275 Transcendental Madness 280 Conclusion: Logic, Ontology, Ethics, Politics 289 References 294 Name Index 295 Subject Index 299 This is a reading of Gilles Deleuze's masterpiece Logic of Sense . It provides a thorough and systematic reading of Deleuze's book by focusing on the aspects that are neglected in the existing literature. Specifically, the claim that Deleuze's Logic of Sense provides a convincing answer for the most important question of the history of philosophy regarding the relation between thought and existence as well as the relation between logic and ontology is defended. The answer is that if thought is related to existence, logic is supposed to be, not the logic of essence, but rather the logic of sense. This analysis s pursued respectively through Deleuze's readings of Frege, the ancient Stoics, Lewis Carroll, Kant, Lautman, Leibniz, and Melanie Klein.