The Sense of the Transcendental Field: Deleuze, Sartre, and Husserl

There are two ways in which sense has been approached in contemporary philosophy. The dividing line is between those who interpret sense as abiding with models of recognition and those who determine sense as arising with paradox. In The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze puts forth a paradoxical constitution of sense in order to render that which is new in being something untimely, the always new in being. In placing paradox at the center of the constitution of sense, Deleuze effectively works to displace the two aspects of doxa, good sense and common sense. Such a conception of sense comes into direct tension with Husserl’s theory of sense. By outlining the fundamentals of Husserl’s position, I intend to show on what points the two part ways. This distinction will create the context in which we can posit the relationship of transcendental and formal logic in Deleuze’s philosophy via Sartre’s essay “The Transcendence of the Ego.” My aim is to show that the doubling of sense does not reinforce the act of recognition, which Husserl realizes in the two-leveled predicative process.