by Corry Shores
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[Dumoncel, entry directory]
[Dumoncel, “Les modalités deleuziennes,” entry directory]
[The following is a paragraph by paragraph summary of Dumoncel’s text. Unless otherwise indicated, boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my mistakes. ]
Summary of
Jean-Claude Dumoncel
[Dumoncel’s academia.edu page and wikipedia page]
“Les modalités deleuziennes”
[link to the article]
Part 0
[introductory material]
Brief summary (collecting those below):
(0.1) Analytic philosophers and Deleuze share a common interest: Leibniz. (0.2) Deleuze’s fundamental intuition regarding Leibniz is that for him, monads are possible worlds, and possible worlds are monads. (0.3) First we will have a brief introduction to Leibniz, secondly an examination of mathematized modal logic, and finally we uncover Deleuzian modalities. (0.4) Dumoncel’s study also aims to explicate a page of Deleuze & Guattari’s What Is Philosophy?
Contents
0.1
[The Common Interest of Deleuze and Analytic Philosophers as Being Leibniz]
0.2
[Deleuze’s Claim That for Leibniz, Monads are Possible Worlds and Vice Versa]
0.3
[Preview]
0.4
[The Relevant Quote from What Is Philosophy?]
[Dumoncel’s study also aims to explicate a page of Deleuze & Guattari’s What Is Philosophy?]
Bibliography
Summary
0.1
[The Common Interest of Deleuze and Analytic Philosophers as Being Leibniz]
[Analytic philosophers and Deleuze share a common interest: Leibniz.]
[contents]
0.2
[Deleuze’s Claim That for Leibniz, Monads are Possible Worlds and Vice Versa]
[Deleuze’s fundamental intuition regarding Leibniz is that for him, monads are possible worlds, and possible worlds are monads.]
[contents]
0.3
[Preview]
[First we will have a brief introduction to Leibniz, secondly an examination of mathematized modal logic, and finally we uncover Deleuzian modalities.]
[contents]
0.4
[The Relevant Quote from What Is Philosophy?]
[Dumoncel’s study also aims to explicate a page of Deleuze & Guattari’s What Is Philosophy?]
[Here are the passages in What Is Philosophy?]
Let us proceed in a summary fashion: we will consider a field of experience taken as a real world no longer in relation to a self but to a simple “there is.” There is, at some moment, a calm and restful world. Suddenly a frightened face looms up that looks at something out of the field. The other person appears here as neither subject nor object but as something that is very different: a possible world, the possibility of a frightening world. This possible world is not real, or not yet, but it exists nonetheless: it is an expressed that exists only in its expression—the face, or an equivalent of the face. To begin with, the other person is this existence of a possible world. And this possible world also has a specific reality in itself, as possible: when the expressing speaks and says, “I am frightened,” even if its words are untruthful, this is enough for a reality to be given to the possible as such. This is the only meaning of the “I” as linguistic index. But it is not indispensable: China is a possible world, but it takes on a reality as soon as Chinese is spoken or China is spoken about within a given field of experience. This is very different from the situation in which China is realized by becoming the field of experience itself. Here, then, is a concept of the other that presupposes no more than the determination of a sensory world as condition. On this condition the other appears as the expression of a possible. The other is a possible world as it exists in a face that expresses it and takes shape in a language that gives it a reality. In this sense it is a concept with three inseparable components: possible world, existing face, and real language or speech.
Obviously, every concept has a history. This concept of the other person goes back to Leibniz, to his possible worlds and to the monad as expression of the world. But it is not the same problem, because in Leibniz possibles do not exist in the real world. It is also found in the modal logic of propositions. But these do not confer on possible worlds the reality that corresponds to their truth conditions (even when Wittgenstein envisages propositions of fear or pain, he does not see them as modalities that can be expressed in a position of the other person because he leaves the other person oscillating between another subject and a special object).
(Deleuze & Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 17-18)
Bibliography:
.
Dumoncel, Jean-Claude. “Les modalités deleuziennes.” Web. Accessed 2021.05.21.
https://www.academia.edu/23505679/LES_MODALITES_DELEUZIENNES
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. What Is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University, 1994.
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