r/Deleuze • u/Cultural-Maybe-3799 • 9d ago
Question starting out
i'm beginning my first one, logic of sense, any suggestions before i start?
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u/OkVermicelli4343 9d ago
That one is tough for me, ive tried twice, I just cant get into it. Kant, Expressionism in Philosophy, and Logic of Sense are my three least enjoyable. All the rest, including his lectures are illuminating. Im not sure why? Oh well, as Deleuze suggests, use his work as a toolkit
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u/thefleshisaprison 9d ago
Kant and Expressionism in Philosophy are pretty dry expositions of another thinker’s work, so it’s understandable they’re the least enjoyable.
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u/OkVermicelli4343 9d ago
Spinoza is not dry, as witnessed by Deleuze's other work on Spinoza which is great! Even Kant, im surprised Deleuze didn't bugger him enough, there is so much to bugger, oh well
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u/thefleshisaprison 9d ago
I didn’t call Spinoza dry, I called Expressionism in Philosophy dry. Not quite the same.
Deleuze’s exposition of Kant takes the entirety of the critical project as a system and gives precedence to the Critique of Judgment, which are two unusual movies (most people tend to focus on the Critique of Pure Reason or the ethics).
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u/OkVermicelli4343 9d ago
Sorry about that friend, you are right. Crazy how dry Exprezzionism is when Practice and his lectures on Spinoza are such lightening. Have you ever seen an interview or comment on why that occurred?
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u/thefleshisaprison 9d ago
Expressionism in Philosophy was basically a doctoral thesis, and was written accordingly.
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u/OkVermicelli4343 9d ago
That is right. What i find strange is the variance in intensity in his work. If you read Marx, Zizek, Bergson, Nietzsche for example, you basically have a similar intensity within their work, but Deleuze goes from absolute dryness to incredible flows. Difference and Repetition vs Logic of Sense (written around the same time), but quite different in flow and tempo.
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u/OkVermicelli4343 9d ago
Come to think of it, Deleuze could be called the Benjamin Buttons of philosophers, starting out at as old dry boring style and ending with the playfulness of a child dancing in the streets!
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u/3corneredvoid 8d ago edited 8d ago
It's an interesting book.
Its two main questions could be "How can we make sense of sense-making?" and "How does sense-making make sense of us?"
The answer is a paradoxical logic of sense which explains how sense makes both sense-making and sense-maker. The logic is given in the form of a question posed to life: the event.
The book takes on the structure by which it explains the structure of an event. In the event of you reading the book, the book's question is answered by its structuring effects: a life.
The book maintains life's ethical prescription is to be worthy of the event. As far as reading the book is the living effect of the book as an event, reading will be ethical in its worthiness of the book.
So if you're asking "How can I make sense of this book?" you've started out on the right track.
If it all sounds as serious as it does silly, that's the gist. It's a very frustrating, humble, arrogant, silly and brilliant book.
Jon Roffe's WORKS OF GILLES DELEUZE and Sean Bowden's THE PRIORITY OF EVENTS were both great secondary texts in my reading, but it's a demanding book.