The Stoics are famously committed to the thesis that only bodies are, and for this reason they are rightly called “corporealists.” They are also famously compared to Plato’s earthborn Giants in the Sophist, and rightly so given their steadfast commitment to body as being. But the Stoics also notoriously turn the tables on Plato and coopt his “dunamis proposal” that being is whatever can act or be acted upon to underwrite their commitment to body rather than shrink from it as (...) the Giants do. The substance of Stoic corporealism, however, has not been fully appreciated. This paper argues that Stoic corporealism goes beyond the dunamis proposal, which is simply an ontological criterion for being, to the metaphysics of body. This involves, first, an account of body as metaphysically simple and hence fundamental; second, an account of body as malleable and continuous, hence fit for blending (krasis di’ holou) and composition. In addition, the metaphysics of body involves a distinction between this composition relation seen in the cosmology, and the constitution relation by which the four-fold schema called the Stoic Categories proceeds, e.g. the relation between a statue and its clay, or a fist and its underlying hand. It has not been appreciated that the cosmology and the Categories are distinct — and complementary — explanatory enterprises, the one accounting for generation and unity, the other taking those individuals once generated, and giving a mereological analysis of their identity and persistence conditions, kinds, and qualities. The result is an elegant division of Plato’s labor from the Battle of Gods and Giants. On the one hand, the Stoics rehabilitate the crude cosmology of the Presocratics to deliver generation and unity in completely corporeal terms, and that work is found in their Physics. On the other hand, they reform the Giants and “dare to corporealize,” delivering all manner of predication (from identity to the virtues), and that work is found in Stoic Logic. Recognizing the distinctness of these explanatory enterprises helps dissolve scholarly puzzles, and harmonizes the Stoics with themselves. (shrink)

Void is at the heart of Stoic metaphysics. As the incorporeal par excellence, being defined purely in terms of lacking body, it brings into sharp focus the Stoic commitment to non-existent Somethings. This article argues that Stoic void, far from rendering the Stoic system incoherent or merely ad hoc, in fact reflects a principled and coherent physicalism that sets the Stoics apart from their materialist predecessors and atomist neighbors.

Several themes treated in chapter 3 of Difference and Repetition are addressed at greater length in The Logic of Sense, published one year later. In particular, Deleuze's critique of ‘the privilege of designation’ and ‘the modality of solutions’, along with his positive claims about the relation between sense and problems, arguably summarise a number of analyses found in The Logic of Sense. However, despite the convergence between Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense as regards the sense–problem relation, The (...) Logic of Sense does not explicitly address the other aspects of thought that Difference and Repetition considers inseparable from the sense–problem relation. In particular, the notion of ‘transcendental empiricism’ – that is, the idea that the conditions of experience themselves emerge from experience – is not explicitly mentioned in The Logic of Sense. There is no explicit discussion in The Logic of Sense of ‘encounters’ or ‘shocks’ and their role in the genesis of thought. And there is no explicit discussion in The Logic of Sense of the discordant relations between the different faculties of thought as they provoke and constrain one another in the elaboration of differential problems. This essay intends to argue that, despite the lack of explicit discussion, The Logic of Sense does advance an account of the differential genesis of thought, and along the same general lines as chapter 3 of Difference and Repetition. (shrink)

Une certaine conception censément traditionnelle du signe le présente comme une entité binaire comportant un aspect sensible et un aspect intelligible. Selon Derrida, cette conception serait tributaire du logocentrisme et solidaire de la métaphysique de la présence. L'article passe en revue certaines caractérisations clefs du signe pour déconstruire l'opposition simple et simpliste entre un signifiant censément sensible et matériel, et un signifié censément intelligible et immatériel. Distinguant la conception factorielle du signe et sa conception constitutive, il conclut que "le signe (...) est peut-être moins un indice de la métaphysique occidentale que la soi-disant métaphysique occidentale ne serait l'indice d'une conception relativement rétrécie du signe". (shrink)

In Robert Walser’s work any intention of meaning would seem to be revoked in doubt, in favour of blatant mannerism. This, in turn, would take the actual form of a proclaimed abstention from the pursuit of any purpose, so as to be similar to a simple graphic texture. The aim of this article is to show how this peculiar textual economy favours the invention of a subject capable of giving rise to a fictitious identity to the point of no longer (...) being able to distinguish any gap between reality and fiction. (shrink)

This paper will articulate an underappreciated side of the psychoanalytical Deleuze: his relation to Melanie Klein, particularly as it appears in The Logic of Sense. Deleuze's engagement with Klein largely follows his familiar strategy of re-reading a thinker off of a twist in one or two of that thinker's key concepts. With Klein, this twist involves re-reading her story of psychic development on the basis of disjunction rather than negation, so that the psychic surface that emerges generates a persistent non-correspondence (...) between self and other and between concept and thing. Deleuze thereby makes Klein a central figure in his ontology of sense and his analysis of how the physical surface of bodies generates a metaphysical surface of thought. However, Deleuze's ultimate turn is a Nietzschean one towards overcoming, the thought of eternal return, and the demolition of the Oedipal Law. As this final turn makes clear, even in his early writings that engaged more directly and affirmatively with psychoanalytical thought, Deleuze was already on an anti-Oedipal path. (shrink)

Drawing on Deleuze's early works of the 1960s, this article investigates the ways in which Deleuze challenges our traditional linguistic notion of sense and notion of truth. Using Frege's account of sense and truth, this article presents our common understanding of sense and truth as two separate dimensions of the proposition where sense subsists only in a formal relation to the other. It then goes on to examine the Kantian account, which makes sense the superior transcendental condition of possibility of (...) truth. Although both accounts define sense as merely the form of possibility of truth, a huge divide cuts across a simple formal logic of sense and a transcendental logic: transcendental logic discovered a certain genetic productivity of sense, such that a proposition always has the kind of truth that it merits according to its sense. In pursuit of this genetic productivity of sense, Deleuze applies different models of explanation: a Nietzschean genealogical model of the genetic power of sense, and in The Logic of Sense a structural model combined with elements of Stoic philosophy. This article follows Deleuze in setting up a new and very complex notion of sense, which he radically distinguishes from what he terms ‘signification’, that is, an extrinsic, linguistic or logical, condition of possibility. Rather, sense has to be conceived as both the effect and the intrinsic genetic element of an extra-propositional sense-producing machine. (shrink)

This paper examines the Leibnizian influence in Deleuze's theory of the spatium. Leibniz's critique of Cartesian extension and Newtonian space leads him to a conception of space in terms of internal determination and internal difference. Space is thus understood as a structure of individual relations internal to substances. Making some Nietzschean corrections to Leibniz, Deleuze understands the spatium in terms of individuating differences instead of individual relations. Leibnizian space is thus transformed into a genetic space producing both extension (quantity) and (...) quality. (shrink)

The Stoics offer us a very puzzling conception of causation and an equally puzzling ontology. The aim of the present paper is to show that these two elements of their system elucidate each other. The Stoic conception of causation, I contend, holds the key to understanding the ontological category of incorporeals and thus Stoic ontology as a whole, and it can in turn only be understood in the light of this connection to ontology. The thesis I defend is that the (...) Stoic incorporeals are to be understood as effects, as effects of the causality of bodies. What is gained by this thesis? First, it explains how the seemingly heterogeneous item of ‘sayables’ (lekta) fits into the category of incorporeals. Second, it allows for a new interpretation of the two verbs with which the Stoics characterize the way of being of incorporeals, huphistanai and huparchein. And, third, it sheds light on the peculiar features of the Stoic conception of causation. (shrink)

Proust interrogates Gilles Deleuze's notion of resistance in relation to death as that which is “turned against death.” She questions a concept of resistance which is “no more than impassivity and indifference.” How, she asks, can we know if the force of resistance is on the side of death or life? Characterizing life as movement, she speaks for a concept of resistance as on the side of life.

: Proust interrogates Gilles Deleuze's notion of resistance in relation to death as that which is "turned against death." She questions a concept of resistance which is "no more than impassivity and indifference." How, she asks, can we know if the force of resistance is on the side of death or life? Characterizing life as movement, she speaks for a concept of resistance as on the side of life.

Proust interrogates Gilles Deleuze's notion of resistance in relation to death as that which is "turned against death." She questions a concept of resistance which is "no more than impassivity and indifference." How, she asks, can we know if the force of resistance is on the side of death or life? Characterizing life as movement, she speaks for a concept of resistance as on the side of life.

This essay discusses the role of being and ontology in the work of Gilles Deleuze. Starting from an examination of Alain Badiou's ontology and theory of the event, I discuss the possible opposition of being and the event in Deleuze's work. Though famous for his discussions of the univocity of being, Deleuze does discuss the event as that which is not being. Deleuze's theory of the event is similar to that of Badiou in that he considers the event to be (...) extra‐ontological. The essay closes by considering the differences between Deleuze and Badiou on the subject of the event. (shrink)

Eu inicio por introduzir algumas citações que Peirce faz sobre Espinosa. Poucos, mas importantes comentários, sugerem que uma nova consideração da “essência” filosófica pode emergir dessa análise. Conforme lemos na Ética de Espinosa, essência não deve ser considerado como forma pura; tampouco é uma qualificação definida com designações rígidas. Significado é potência: em termos pragmáticos, como buscarei demonstrar, o poder de estar pronto para agir, expandindo a própria disposição para responder, encarnando dado hábito de modo eficaz. Assim, não procede que (...) o significado é, de modo acabado e de uma vez por todas. Antes, este se faz na medida em que é capaz de produzir novos efeitos. Como disse Espinosa, é uma potentia agendium conatusinexaurível que sempre produz uma prontidão para perseverar na ação. Conceitos são mensuráveis à luz de seus resultados: expandem seus efeitos como uma floresta, ou onda, sem uma fronteira ou limite claros. Nossa concepção desses efeitos é o todo de nossa concepção do objeto, diz a máxima pragmática. Significado implica um vasto oceano de consequências inesperadas, Peirce escreve. Em termos espinosistas: ninguém sabe até onde chega o poder da mente – ou do corpo. Lançarei mão de algumas sugestões de Giorgio Agamben e Gilles Deleuze a este respeito, construindo sobre eles para abordar a ética de Espinosa em termos pragmáticos e o pragmatismo numa forma espinosista. (shrink)

In many ways, the 20th Century can be regarded as art’s attempts to escape the “tyranny of meter”. Is there a way to think about the rhythm otherwise? Maybe the answer to this all-too-human tyranny of the repetition of the same is something inhuman – in|human rhythms. With the examples of works by John Luther Adams, David Dunn, and Richard Reed Parry, this essay tries to show how with the idea of the human becoming a geological force itself, art has (...) the responsibility to create an awareness of how we live not only in the world, but also are part of that world. A music that ‘performs’ these ‘cosmic dimensions’ of the interdependence of human and nonhuman, by focusing on the in|human of the concept ‘human’ might also teach us something in regard to artistic form – these rhythmic ‘relations of velocity’ ultimately reveal rhythm as the in|human nonlinear pulsation of ‘a life.’. (shrink)

Resumo: Este trabalho, inspirado numa leitura ontológica do Pragmatismo em que a totalidade do ser se perfaz na totalidade de seu aparecer, aborda temática similar no âmbito da filosofia antiga. Os estóicos antigos expuseram um pensamento sobre a physis que nós, modernos, nomearíamos metafísico. Afirmando a Natureza como o verdadeiro e divino Ser, assumiram as dificuldades e possíveis paradoxos provenientes da relação do homem com a natureza sendo ele próprio, também, natureza e, ao mesmo tempo, aquele que a interpreta e (...) modifica por meio de seus pensamentos, palavras e ações. Seguir alguns fragmentos dessa filosofia helenística para esclarecer ângulos desta problemática do Ser e do que aparece é o que se pretende nesta exposição.: This paper taking its inspiration from an ontologic reading of Pragmatism, where the totality of being finds all its development in the totality of its appearing, seeks for a similar subject into the realm of the Ancient Philosophy. The ancient Stoics exposed a notion about a phýsis that we, moderns, would call metaphysic. Asserting Nature as the true and divine Being, they assumed the difficulties and the possible paradoxes that result from the Man-Nature relationship, with man himself dually nature and its interpreter and modifier trough thoughts, words and deeds. This exposition intends to follow some fragments of that Hellenistic Philosophy in order to explain some angles of the problematic issue of Being and Appearance. (shrink)