representational thought, truth and identity are inseparable: If one does not presuppose identities, truth cannot exist. In representational thought, the proposition is the place where the truth, understood as a correspondence between a conceptual and a real identity, is expressed.
Beyond the expression or proposition and that which the proposition designates, namely, the referent, Deleuze identifies a third level, that of sense. Sense, then, is not a proposition, thing, body, or fact. Sense is the boundary between propositions and things (LS, 25).14 Deleuze (LS, 209) defines sense as that which is expressed by the proposition and as the incorporeal attribute of the thing. One cannot confuse the expressed with the signification, for the signification of a proposition can be expressed, whereas its sense cannot. But how is it that the expressed is not expressible? Just as in the case of the sentiendum, we have to distinguish between the empirical and the transcendental levels. Deleuze is referring to the empirical level when he says that “we can never say what is the sense of what we say” (DR, 193). We can say, for example, what the different sentences of Proust’s Search mean (signification), but it is impossible to pinpoint what Proust wanted to say with this book (sense). From a transcendental point of view, however, the sense or the expressed is what we must focus on. We must try to express the sense of Proust’s Search, for it is this sense that grounds the different propositions and their significations. But how do we do this when the sense is, empirically speaking, inexpressible? According to Deleuze (DR, 193; LS, 36), the only possibility is to take the sense of proposition A as the designated or referent of another proposition, B, of which in turn we cannot express the sense. This is what we do when we say, for example, that a theater play was very Proustian. This process can then be repeated endlessly: every name refers to another name, which in turn designates the sense of the preceding one, and so on. This process of reference has no beginning or end. Deleuze is, in this way, clearly distancing himself from Descartes; there is no proposition that is absolutely clear to itself and that can, therefore, serve as the first building block of indubitable thought. Like Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze argues that the cogito has “no sense and no object other than the power of reiteration in indefinite regress (I think that I think that I think . . . ). Every proposition of consciousness implies an unconscious of pure thought which constitutes the sphere of sense in which there is infinite regress” (DR, 194).
Because the sense of a proposition has nothing to do with what a proposition designates, the aforementioned correspondence theory of truth no longer holds. For Deleuze, the true is conditioned by something else, namely, sense. The reason for this is that a false proposition such as “mammals lay eggs” can have sense, whereas a nonsensical proposition, such as “mammals dream eggs around,” can be neither true nor false. Now, it must be said that representational thought also recognizes sense to be the condition of the true, but, contrary to Deleuze, its conception of the truth is indifferent to or unaffected by what founds it. The fact that sense grounds truth and falsity does not change anything in its conception of either. The conditioning is extrinsic and arbitrary. Deleuze, for his part, considers the relation between sense and truth to be intrinsic and necessary. He is not interested in what a condition can make possible, but in what turns a condition into a reality, in the elements of the condition that already point toward the conditioned. Hence, according to Deleuze, “the relation between a proposition and what it designates [truth] must be established within sense itself” (DR, 191–92). The incorporeal and aconceptual sense leads, by itself, to the concepts designating bodies. Truth is generated in sense itself. As such, it is a matter of production, not correspondence; of genitality, not innateness or reminiscence. Thus, Deleuzean truth, which has nothing to do with a correspondence between the conceptual and the corporeal, needs to be understood as that which makes sense, that which is relevant or appropriate. A true expression is first of all an expression that conveys a meaningful evaluation of what is important and what is not, of the singular and the regular, of distinctive and ordinary points (DR, 238). Truth loses its absolute character and becomes a relative and gradual notion.
Deleuze’s understanding of truth differs from that of representational thought not only because of the intrinsic relation between sense and truth but also because of the role he attributes to nonsense. In representational thought, nonsense plays no significant role: it figures simply as the absence of sense. Deleuze (LS, 93), however, argues that nonsense is the element that makes series resonate, thus creating sense. This point here is not so much that nonsense is the ultimate condition of truth, but that there is no clear distinction between sense and nonsense. At least not on the transcendental level, where sense and nonsense form a unity: “The Idea which runs throughout all the faculties nevertheless cannot be reduced to sense, since in turn it is also non-sense. [. . .] The Idea is constituted of structural elements which have no sense themselves, while it constitutes the sense of all that it produces” (DR, 193). Why is sense also nonsense? Because, empirically speaking, we cannot express it, and we cannot grasp it. However, it is that from which every proposition issues forth, such that “the mechanism of nonsense is the highest finality of sense” (DR, 193).
To sum up: because sense is the expressed of the expression and the incorporeal attribute of things, and because a proposition expresses a designated reality, the proposition can no longer be considered an appropriate way of expressing sense. How, then, is sense to be expressed?
Although Deleuze grants, in What Is Philosophy? (5), that the production or creation of sense is not a privilege of the arts, in Proust and Signs he argues the contrary: “The fact remains that the revelation of essence (beyond the object, beyond the subject himself) belongs only to the realm of art. If it is to occur, it will occur there. This is why art is the finality of the world” (33). This claim is softened somewhat by the fact that Deleuze describes this revealing character of art, and of Proust’s Search in particular, as its philosophical bearing (PS, 60), thereby diminishing the difference between art and philosophy. But we can escape this question of privileges by rephrasing it: Why is art capable of expressing sense? For one thing, because art resists the objectivist and subjectivist reductions to which perception, desire, and thought fall prey. The sense of a work of art cannot be situated in the substance the latter consists of, or in the opinions that it would represent. According to Deleuze, in an artwork, “substances (matières) are ductile, so kneaded and refined that they become entirely spiritual” (PS, 31). Substance is reduced to a minimum. By the same token, the artwork is not a riddle that is solved once the ideas and the opinions behind it are known. On the contrary, the sense of an artwork is situated in between the different ideas and opinions that intersect in the work. The artwork passes through its substance and subjective opinions rather than dwelling in them. The second reason why art is capable of expressing sense is that it recognizes the differential character of sence (PS, 27). This shows itself, among other things, in the fact that the sense of a work of art is always multiple: it can always be interpreted in several ways. Moreover, most of the time the interpretation changes as the reader changes: the Lewis Carroll one reads as a child is not the same Lewis Carroll one reads as an adult. However, the more fundamental point is that sense itself is constantly jumping during the interpretation process: when we notice certain details, our understanding of the personality of the main character, for example, can change, and that in its turn changes our interpretation of the whole book. Thus, sense is not only ambiguous but fundamentally ungraspable. And finally, art can be considered the expression of sense because it often happens in art that the unexplainable sense of one work is taken as the referent for another work, whose sense is again inexplicable but can be taken as the referent for a third artwork, and so on. In contemporary art, in particular, this referencing game is very present.
Thinking Thought as Learning How to Create Problems (Eighth and Seventh Postulates)
Let us recapitulate what we have found out about thinking thought so far. Thinking thought is instigated by the unforeseen confrontation with a sign whose sense it needs to unfold. During this process, thought is brought to confront its own limits: the sign causes problems because it forces us to reconsider our distinctions, ideas, and so forth. Eventually, thought even comes upon the unthinkable—which is, simultaneously, that which must be thought.
