Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Sense: The Role and Development of the Concept of Sense in Deleuze's Early Thought

Landmark study providing a systematic book-by-book and thinker-by-thinker account of the development Deleuze's philosophy up to and including The Logic of Sense. Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Sense is a landmark study that offers a detailed and systematic exposition of Deleuze's early philosophy that frames it as a project of constructing a philosophy of sense. Through a detailed book-by-book and thinker-by-thinker analysis, Nathan Widder demonstrates how the development of this philosophy of sense underpins the concepts and theses that define Deleuze's thought in this period, along with his approach to questions of philosophical method and system, to the history of philosophy, and to the structuralism and psychoanalysis of his day. This transformative work also challenges the dominant interpretations of Deleuze by showing how The Logic of Sense, rather than Difference and Repetition, is really the early Deleuze's magnum opus. But this study not only breaks with dominant orthodoxies; it also revolutionizes the scholarship by tracing concretely the threads that give Deleuze's wide-ranging thought its coherence and clarity. For readers of all levels who are looking to unlock Deleuze's philosophy in this way, this book provides the keys.