G. Shpet and G. Deleuze: Logics of Sense

Abstract

The article compares theories or logics of sense of Russian phenomenologist Gustav Shpet
(1879–1937) and French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995). Despite the temporal and
philosophical distance between these theories, they also have much in common. Both transcend
the borders of semantics or philosophy of language turning out to be something like ontologies
of sense. Both are critically related to the theory of sense of Edmund Husserl, and both are trying
to complement the phenomenological view of sense with their own specific element. In the case
of both Shpet and Deleuze the sense is considered as an ontologically specific instance, the key
feature of which is neutrality. According to Shpet, this is the non-objective in the very structure
of the object, the “entelechy”. According to Deleuze, this is the non-corporal effect, the event
as the irreal extra-being. In both cases the sense effectuates synthesis or convergence of series:
of empirical and eidetical intuitions according to Shpet, of bodies and propositions according to
Deleuze. In both cases the sense is understood as a condition of meaning of linguistic expressions.
In both theories there is a paradoxical intuitivism affirming the necessity of direct experience
of the sense. Shpet states that the sense has social character, so the hermeneutical intuition that
perceives it is analogous to the empathy as the immediate experience of the other. But Deleuze
relates the sense to the impersonal and pre-individual transcendental field. We also can find this
figure of the impersonal field of consciousness in the writings of Shpet, as well as for Deleuze the
question of the other keeps staying important – nonetheless, that’s this difference in accentuation
that puts their theories at variance.