Deleuze, Gilles. 1990. The Logic of Sense. European Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press.

First Series of Paradoxes of Pure Becoming

The simultaneity of a becoming whose characteristic is to elude the present. Insofar as it eludes the present, becoming does not tolerate the separation or the distinction of before and after, or of past and future. It pertains to the essence of becoming to move and to pull in both directions at once. (Deleuze 1990, 1)

Good sense affirms that in all things there is a determinable sense or direction (sens); but paradox is the affirmation of both senses or directions at the same time. Becoming is exterior to reason.

Two dimensions in Plato. The first is fixed qualities that are fixed on presents and subjects (having a particular largeness or smallness at a given moment). The second is a pure becoming without measure, a becoming-mad. It is never rests and moves in both directions at once, causing past and future to collide.

This is a dualism in Plato of that which receives the action of the Idea and that which eludes this action. It is a distinction between copies and simulacra respectively. Rejects other binaries, including model and copy as simulacra challenges both of these terms. (Deleuze 1990, 2)

Relation of this becoming to language in Plato. Possibility of two languages.

Paradox of infinite identity in pure becoming. Infinitely moves in both directions. Language both fixes the limits and transcends the limits, restoring them to the infinite equivalence of an unlimited becoming.

Proper name and identity tied to savoir. Savoir slips away in pure becoming, and thus so do these. It fragments the subject. (Deleuze 1990, 3)

Second Series of Paradoxes of Surface Effects

Stoics make distinction between two kinds of things.

First are bodies with tensions, pjysical qualities, actions and passions, and the corresponding states of afairs. These are determined by the mixtures of bodies. (Composition in Spinozan sense, and affects and speeds in A Thousand Plateaus). These bodies are differentiated according to tensions. They are rooted in a temporal expression of the present. In this measure, only bodies exist in space and only the present exists in time. (Deleuze 1990, 4)

Second, all bodies are causes in relation to each other, and causes for each other. These relations are effects, and incorporeal entities that are logical or dialectical attributes. These are events, and they do not exist but rather subsist or inhere (ontology of a nonexistent entity). They are verbs (and thus actions). They are however, impassive. They are infinitives and not living presents, a becoming that expands into the infinite and evades the present. (Deleuze 1990, 5)

Bodies must be taken both ways: as acted upon in the living present, and as an entity infinitely divisible into the past and the future as incorporeal effects which result from bodies.

Only the present exists in time. Only past and future inhere in time.

Bodies penetrate on another in all of their parts. It is like a drop of wine in the ocean. Mixtures determine the qualitative and quantitative states of affairs. Becoming is not a state of affairs but incorporeal events at the surface which are results of these mixtures. (Deleuze 1990, 6)

Philosophy must first be measured by the new distribution which it imposes on beings and concepts.

Incorporeal causes are never themselves causes in relation to each other but instead are quasi-causes following laws which express the unity or mixture of bodies on which they depend for real causes.

Freedom is preserved in the interiority of destiny as a connection between causes, and in the exteriority of events as a bond of effects. This allows the Stoics to oppose destiny and necessity.

In Aristotle, all categories are said of Being. Difference is present in Being between substance as the primary sense and the other categories with are related to it as accidents. For the Stoics, state of affairs, quantities and qualities are no less beings than substance is. They are part of a substance, and are contrasted with an extra-Being. Therefore, in Stoic thought the highest term is not Being, but something that includes and absorbs being and non-being, existence and inherence. They invert Platonism. (Deleuze 1990, 7)

Copy versus simulacra in Plato.

In Plato, nothing eludes the Idea. Therefore, everything comes to the surface, including the becoming-mad (again, becoming defies logic in its temporality). It ceases to be a simulacra, which elude the ground (Deleuze constitutes Plato as a ground, and becoming-mad is a ground that rumbles prior to comnng to the surface) and insinuate everywhere. Instead, they are effects that manifest and act in the place of the simulacra. In this sense, what eludes the Idea reaches the limit and represents all possible ideality.

Becoming unlimited challenges a number of binaries, including temporality. It is always both at once. It has always just happened and about to happen, but is never happening. This allows the active and the passive to be exchanged more readily. They are not interchangeable, nor one or the other, but instead their common result. (Deleuze 1990, 8)

Dialectics is the science of incorporeal events as they are epxressed in propositions, and connections between events as they are expressed between propositions. It is the art of conjugation. Language establishes the limit.

The event is coexistent with becoming, and becoming is coexistent with language.

Lewis Carroll. Events are like crystals, they they become and grow out of the edges or on the edge. Slide and pass to other side. (Deleuze 1990, 9)

Following the border and skirting the surface allows one to pass from bodies to the incorporeal. (Deleuze 1990, 10)

The more events cover entire surface, the more they affect bodies. [Scope]

Event, capital e, holds all events. It brings becoming and paradoxes to language. (Deleuze 1990, 11)