Dialetheism in Deleuze S Event

DOI: 10.1111/sjp.
12528
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Dialetheism in Deleuze's event
Corry Shores
Department of Philosophy, Middle East Abstract

Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
Deleuze never explicitly formulates his philosophy of logi-
Correspondence cal truth-values. It thus remains an open question as to the
Corry Shores, Department of Philosophy, number and types he held there to be. Despite his explicit
Middle East Technical University, Ankara,
Turkey.
comments on these matters, additional textual evidence
Email: corryshores@gmail.com suggests that in his thinking on the event, he favored a third
truth-value, holding either the analetheic view that some
truth-bearers can be truth-valueless or the dialetheic view
that some truth-bearers can be both true and false. I first
argue that taking a logical approach to Deleuze's think-
ing is feasible, despite his and others' claims that might
suggest otherwise. Next, I examine his explicit statements
to show that they cannot be taken at face value and that,
rather, we need to transpose his claims into contemporary
terminology in order to accurately assess them. I lastly
turn to his Leibniz-inspired philosophy of time to argue
that the affirmations involved in this conception strongly
suggest a dialetheic tendency in his thinking.
Gilles Deleuze, according to David Lapoujade, “is interested foremost in logic”; he is “above
all a logician,” in that he is concerned throughout all his works with how concepts are cre-
ated in conjunction with others; and, hence, all of his books are “Logics” of some kind
(Lapoujade, 2017, pp. 26–27). Yet, Deleuze stated about himself that “I feel I am a pure meta-
physician” (Deleuze & Villani, 2012, p. 42; emphasis added). Even though our task here is not
to characterize his philosophy on the whole in such a manner, we will still examine ways that
he coordinated these two basic dimensions of his thinking.
More specifically, the aim of the following is to determine whether Deleuze holds any non-
classical assumptions about logical truth-value. Conducting such an analysis requires that we
first address a potential obstacle to our efforts, namely, that they could be fundamentally
incompatible with Deleuze's broader philosophical project, which seems to prioritize so-called
“alogical” metaphysical matters over logical ones. Yet, by clarifying certain particulars of our
logical focus, our findings might nonetheless contribute to studies of Deleuze's philosophy of
truth.
We then will turn to Deleuze's more explicit claims regarding logical truth-value. On the
one hand, they indicate that he did not favor a nonclassical view called “analetheism,” which
allows for some truth-bearers to be neither true nor false. On the other hand, these passages
still leave open the possibility that he held another nonclassical position called “dialetheism,”
which claims that some truth-bearers can be both true and false. We then wonder, does Deleuze
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2 | SHORES
anywhere express his thinking in a way that implies he may have held such dialetheic assump-
tions about logical truth-value? We end by examining one strong candidate for this possibility,
namely, his Leibniz-inspired account of the event.
1 | L OGIC S
Because we seek to uncover Deleuze's assumptions pertaining to logical truth-values, we

should first specify what these are. As Beall (2018, p. 30) observes, there are “many conflicting
uses” of the term “logic,” but the one in question on this particular matter is formal, deductive
logic (Beall & Burgess, 2017). It can be understood as the study of validity or logical conse-
quence, that is, of “what follows from what,” which is often interpreted as how conclusions
properly follow from their premises (Beall, 2010, pp. 3–4; Gensler, 2010, p. xi; Priest, 2008, p.
3).1 The “received” kind that we may have learned—classical logic—is only one of many philo-
sophically defendable options; moreover, according to Graham Priest, we live in an era when
the alternatives are gaining advancement and acceptance (Priest, 1989, pp. 139–141); thus, “the
time is objectively ripe for logical revolution” (p. 138). Might Deleuze's philosophical project
be seen as partaking in a broader historical trend toward nonclassical reasoning, even if he did
not characterize it as such? To address this question, we should first lay out the relevant con-
cepts that we will employ in our analyses.
1.1 | Classical logic
In classical logic, there are only two truth-values, just true and just false, and inferences are said
to be valid when no value assignments for the truth-bearers can make the premises true and
the conclusion not true (Priest, 2008, pp. 120–122). Given these conditions, along with how the
connectives function, certain inferential forms will be valid; for instance, in classical logic, we
can derive any arbitrary truth-bearer we want from a contradiction, no matter how unrelated
(A ∧ ¬A ⊨ B), sometimes called the principle of explosion (p. 74). Because of it, merely one
contradiction can “trivialize” the full set of sentences it belongs to, in that it alone is enough
to make all of them—along with their negations—true (Beall et al., 2018, p. 10; Priest, 2007, p.
130). This is a main reason why contradiction is considered prohibited in classical reasoning
(Routley & Routley, 1985, pp. 206–208, 212).
The particular features of a logic can even make certain formulations valid just on their
own, without needing any “premises” (Priest, 2008, p. 5). For instance, the disjunction of a
truth-bearer with its own negation is always valid in classical logic (⊨ A ∨ ¬A), which is a
formulation for the Law of Excluded Middle (LEM) (p. 124). Another is the Law of Non-
Contradiction (LNC), (⊨ ¬(A ∧ ¬A)) (Brady, 2004, p. 41).
If a philosopher purposefully makes assertions or draws inferences that are invalid in clas-
sical logic, it could be because s/he is instead reasoning using a nonclassical logic in which they
are indeed valid. In fact, a number of studies have claimed such a thing for Derrida2 and for
Heidegger,3 who can be seen as thinking nonclassically rather than irrationally. I will present
such a case for Deleuze.4
1
As we are concerned with logical truth-values, we will deal only with semantic and not proof-theoretic validity. See Priest (2008,
pp. 3–4).
2
See, for instance, Priest (2002, pp. 214–224), Livingston (2012, pp. 123–124), Purcell (2012), Mácha (2022), Norris (2014).
3
See, for instance, Priest (2002, pp. 237–248; 2014, pp. 48–56; 2016), Casati (2022).
4
Here, I follow other studies of Deleuze's nonclassical reasoning; to name just a few: Bell (2011), Olkowski (2021), Shores (2021).
DIALETHEISM IN DELEUZE'S EVENT | 3
Despite the connotations of its name, “classical logic” does not here refer precisely to one
from “classical” times but rather more to certain developments during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries (Priest, 1989, p. 132). As Beall (2022) notes, it was crafted by mathema-
ticians like Bertrand Russell, Alfred Whitehead, and Gottlob Frege who were “trying to
describe logical vocabulary as it occurs in true mathematical theories” and not “in all true
theories no matter what part of reality you are talking about.” For mathematical purposes,
certain prohibitions, like that against contradiction, for example, are perfectly appropriate;
yet, they might not be for other domains of thinking where alternate logics could be pref-
erable (Beall, 2022).
1.2 | Many-valued logics
One problem that can motivate us to adopt a nonclassical logic is the challenge of accounting
for motion, especially in the context of Zeno's paradoxes. Under Russell's classical reasoning,
a proper truth-bearer can be just true or just false, and nothing else besides. Thus, for him, a
moving object cannot be said to be in two places in the same instant, because this involves a
contradiction, as it would mean saying that it is both in one place and also not in that place
(insofar as it is said to be in the second one, too) (Russell, 1937, p. 467, 469, 472).
In accordance with these assumptions, Russell accounts for motion by claiming that the
moving object is found at a certain place at a certain time; and then, at a later moment, it
is at a more distant place, having also occupied all the infinitely many locations at their
respective times in between. Yet, it never occupies two distinct places in the same instant,
no matter how near (Russell, 1912, p. 341; 1915, pp. 136–137; 1917, p. 84). While this account
is plausible given his mathematical understanding of infinity, it can be counterintuitive;
for, as a result of his classical assumptions, a moving object can only ever be stationary
at any point in time and can never be in a state of motion (Russell, 1917, pp. 80–81; see
Priest, 2006b, p. 162, 174).
One remedy for this problem, as Priest observes, is to adopt a nonclassical logic that allows
for contradictions, or, understood another way, for certain truth-bearers to be both true and
false (Priest, 1985; 2006b, pp. 175–181; 2006c). We could then account for motion by saying that
the moving object, at some instant in time, is in fact found in more than one location, because
it is in a state of transition by which it traverses those various points. That means it really
would both be and not be in any of those places it covers in that instant. Thus, this alternate
account accords with our intuition that motion is composed of physical changes of place, and
hence it invites us to abandon classical reasoning when we conceive of motion or of any other
change of state. Although our analysis of Deleuze's Leibniz-inspired philosophy of the event
does not touch upon becoming understood in this sense of change over time, we will still un-
cover a similar sort of reasoning.5
This view that some contradictions of the form A ∧ ¬A are true is called “dialetheism”
(Priest, 2007, pp. 129–131). In certain sematic systems that correspond to it, including Priest's
LP (“Logic of Paradox”), the A in this dialetheic formulation can be seen as both true and false
(Priest, 1979, pp. 226–227; 2008, p. 124).6 These are called “paraconsistent” logics, as they go
“beyond” classical consistency (Beall & Logan, 2017, p. 187; Carnielli & Rodrigues, 2015, p.
59), and they are said to have truth-value “gluts” (those cases of both values for one truth-
bearer) (Priest, 2008, pp. 127–133).
5
For such a logical study of Deleuze's philosophy of becoming, see Shores (2021).
6
In such a semantics, an inference would be valid when there is no way for all the premises to be assigned the value at least true and
the conclusion not at all true. Were instead a third value like i to be assigned to such cases of both values, then both the true and
the third value are designated (“truth-preserving”) values in valid inferences (Priest, 2008, p. 124, 147).
4 | SHORES
Another way to conceive this is to note that paraconsistent negation, unlike the classical
kind, is nonexclusive, as ¬A's being true does not exclude the possibility that A is true too
(Beall, 2004, pp. 1–2; Priest, 2014, pp. xviii–x x). Put another way, the paraconsistent negation
of A renders an other to A that does not necessarily exclude A logically (for example, to say that
the moving object, in an instant of its motion, is also at another location, is to present a nega-
tional other to the first description; yet, this negational other to the first does not exclude that
first one from also being true, even though the stated locations stand spatially apart from one
another) (see Routley & Routley, 1985, pp. 216–220). In accordance with these conditions of
paraconsistent negation, explosion does not hold, so we can admit certain contradictions with-
out them resulting in triviality (Priest, 1979, p. 228; 2008, p. 125).7 This issue will prove import-
ant when discerning the logical assumptions built into Deleuze's notion of negational
otherness.
We should note an additional problem that can motivate us to adopt a nonclassical logic,
namely, that of future contingent statements, as, for example, “The first pope in the twenty-
second century will be Chinese” (Priest, 2008, p. 132). Supposing that there are currently
no facts to make such a statement either true or false, we might think that it should not
be assigned either value. Analetheism is this view that some truth-b earers are indeed nei-
ther true nor false (Beall & Ripley, 2004, p. 30). Analetheism often corresponds with what
are called paracomplete logics, as they go “beyond” completeness and include truth-value
“gaps” (those cases lacking the values true or false) (Beall & Logan, 2017, p. 187; Carnielli
& Rodrigues, 2015, pp. 58–62; Priest, 2008, pp. 127–133, 143, 146–150). As such, there can be
instances where neither a truth-b earer nor its own negation has either the value true or false,
in which case their disjunction also has neither value. Since under paracomplete reasoning
there can be A ∨ ¬A formulations that are not at least true, the LEM is invalid for anale-
theists (Priest, 2008, p. 124). And paracomplete negation, unlike the classical kind, is “non-
exhaustive”: under classical reasoning, the truth-values for A and ¬A exhaust all available
options (one must be true; the other, false, with no other possible assignments); however,
this is not the case under paracomplete reasoning (when they are both truth-valueless, they
have not exhausted all options, as they otherwise could have been true or false) (Beall, 2017,
pp. 8–9; Routley & Routley, 1985, pp. 217–220). As we will later see, although certain pas-
sages by Deleuze may at first seem to express analetheic assumptions, under closer exam-
ination they will instead appear to be dialetheic.
With this in mind, we might think that dialetheists, who embrace certain contradictions, would
reject outright the LNC. However, those cases when dialetheists, using paraconsistent reasoning,
assert a contradiction of the form A ∧ ¬A as true are usually ones where they also take it to be false
as well. Yet, this would also mean that ¬(A ∧ ¬A) is always at least true (even though, in dialetheic
cases, it is false in addition to true). Thus, under these dialetheic assumptions, the LNC, techni-
cally speaking, can still be valid for dialetheists (Priest, 1979, p. 228; 2006a, pp. 78–79).8 This subtle
qualification will become relevant when we examine what seems to be Deleuze's disdain for
breaking the LNC. What is rather at issue here is not whether he affirms or rejects the LNC but if
he allows for certain contradictory formulations in his thinking without at the same time holding
that his whole body of philosophical claims is thereby made trivial.
There is one final issue that we need to address for analyzing Deleuze's logical assumptions.
As Priest explains, denial is a speech act by which one rejects a proposition on account of it
7
In other words, A ∧ ¬A ⊨ B is not valid in a paraconsistent logic like LP. For, in the case when A is both true and false while B is
just false, the premises are at least true but the conclusion not at all true (Priest, 2008, p. 125).
8
For, under a paraconsistent semantics like LP, in these dialetheic cases, A is thought to be both true and false, meaning that ¬A is
both true and false, and hence that A ∧ ¬A is both true and false, and furthermore that ¬(A ∧ ¬A) is both true and false
(Priest, 2008, p. 122).
being just false. However, when dialetheists assert a contradiction, they do not both affirm
and deny the same thing. Rather, they simply affirm both it and also its nonexclusive negation
(Priest, 2007, p. 194; Priest & Aroutiounian, 2011). In the case of the motion example, the diale-
theic conception affirms both that the moving object is in one location, and it affirms that it is
in a nearby one (which presents a nonexclusive negation to the first description); yet, this does
not mean that by asserting this negation, we deny it being in that first place. We still hold that it
is there, too. Thus, there are only affirmations in such dialetheic conceptions, which, as we will
later see, is a key point of emphasis for Deleuze's notion of affirmative synthetic disjunction.
2 | DE L EUZ E A N D “A L OGICA L” T H I N K I NG
Before applying these concepts to analyze Deleuze's assumptions about logical truth-value, we
need to first be sure this will not prove fruitless or even impossible. For, a number of Deleuze's
claims about thinking and logic seemly suggest that a logic-oriented study like ours is largely
irrelevant to his philosophical project on the whole, as he is concerned instead with extralogi-
cal, metaphysical matters that undercut any logical ones.
One prominent and reliable source for Deleuze's “alogical” philosophy is Henry Somers-
Hall. He notes that Deleuze, especially in his early period, portrayed the act of thinking in a
way that is unrelated to logic as understood in terms of valid inference; rather, thought moves
from “a surface structure, that does indeed operate in terms of propositions” to “a deeper
structure, which Deleuze calls the idea, or problem, which cannot be specified in terms of
subjects and predicates” (Somers-Hall, 2022b, p. 407). It is for this reason, Somers-Hall ob-
serves, that Deleuze, when discussing difference and problems, prefers to speak of calculus
differentials, as they may stand for a kind of difference that is inexpressible using logical ne-
gation (Somers-Hall, 2013, p. 142). As Deleuze writes: “Just as we oppose difference in itself
to negativity, so we oppose dx to not-A, the symbol of difference . . . to that of contradiction”
(Deleuze, 1994, p. 170; see Somers-Hall, 2022a, p. 212); moreover, Deleuze claims: “what is still
missing is the extra-propositional or sub-representative element expressed in the Idea by the
differential, precisely in the form of a problem” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 178; see Somers-Hall, 2012,
p. 177). According to Somers-Hall, logic for Deleuze is not a matter of “‘what follows’ from a
set of propositions,” but, rather, it “relates instead to determining, in a given situation, ‘which
one’ of the implications will be brought to mind” (Somers-Hall, 2022b, p. 407); in other words,
logic for Deleuze, it would seem, has more to do with how the two levels interact in the thinking
process, the dynamic of which presumably operating free from the limitations of any formal-
izable logic.
Mary Beth Mader provides further reason to think that Deleuze's philosophical project
avoids logical matters regarding truth-value. Mader notes how Deleuze was less interested in
truth-bearing propositions and much more with his and Felix Guattari's notion of concepts,
which are nondiscursive and cannot be assigned truth-values (Mader, 2011, p. 8, 21, 37). As
Deleuze and Guattari write: “the concept is not discursive, and philosophy is not a discursive
formation, because it does not link propositions together” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 22).
Overall, Deleuze and Guattari are critical of classical logicians like Russell and Frege for re-
ducing the concept to a proposition or function (pp. 135–143). Given that Deleuze defines phi-
losophy itself as the discipline that “consists in creating or inventing concepts” (Deleuze, 2006,
p. 313), he seems thereby to deprioritize propositional thinking and perhaps logic along with
it. Mader also notes how, for Deleuze and Guattari, concepts have their own sort of “con-
sistency” that can be lost when they are converted into propositions; for, this can result in
logical inconsistency or undecidability, as seen, for instance, with the liar paradox or Gödel's
incompleteness theorem (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, pp. 137–138; Mader, 2011, pp. 10–12, 41).
Furthermore, propositions, for Deleuze and Guattari, are “defined by their reference, which
6 | SHORES
concerns not the Event but rather a relationship with a state of affairs or body” (Deleuze &
Guattari, 1994, p. 22). For this reason, our logical analyses of Deleuze's notion of the event
appear highly problematic, because this concept purportedly has little to do with propositions.
Furthermore, Jeffrey Bell's examination of the issue of “truth makers” in Deleuze's philos-
ophy gives us yet more compelling reasons to think that Deleuze's philosophical project might
be directed more toward metaphysical matters that cut deeper than any logical ones. In Bell's
terms, Deleuze is interested with “difference-making”; it is more primary than both truth-
making and truth-bearing because it is what “guarantees . . . the emergence of new truthmak-
ers and truths” along with the transformations of the identities involved in them (Bell, 2016,
p. 146). Similarly, Daniela Voss examines the notion of sense in Deleuze, which also seems
to serve this difference-making role: it is a subrepresentational and extrapropositional event
outside of both language and the corporeal world. It generates truth (Voss, 2013, p. 11), as it
“produces the proposition and its dimension” in the first place, along with “the individuation
of bodies and consciousness” that may correspond to it (p. 22). As such, sense “is independent
of both affirmation and negation” for Deleuze “and is also unaffected by the modes of the
proposition” (p. 18). This gives us further reason to think that the fundamentals of Deleuze's
philosophical project cannot be analyzed through a logical lens.
Additionally, as we will see, Deleuze is careful to characterize the logic-related notions that
we examine below, such as incompossibility and vice-diction, as being “alogical,” perhaps for
similar reasons regarding his intended prioritization of metaphysical over logical matters.
Moreover, although he uses the term “logic” in the subtitle of his Francis Bacon book (Logic
of Sensation), its contents strongly suggest it is not about formal, deductive logic; rather, he
seemingly uses the term “logic” with another sense altogether.
Is not, then, the whole purpose of our logical analyses here completely missing the point of
Deleuze's philosophy, which by design is strongly directed away from logic understood as a
study of validity? To answer this question carefully, let us briefly consider a useful conceptual
distinction crafted by Beall and Michael Glanzberg, which will allow us to better characterize
how Deleuze's logical assumptions and metaphysical claims may or may not correspond with
one another.
3 | PAT H S TO DE L EUZ E
According to Beall and Glanzberg, there are two main “paths” that studies of truth often fol-
low: “the nature path and the logic path” (Beall & Glanzberg, 2008, p. 169). The nature path is
concerned with “metaphysical questions about the ‘nature,’ if any, of truth” (p. 169). It pursues
such traditional questions about truth as: “What sort of property is truth, and what is it that
makes something true?” (p. 171). The nature path can thus be concerned, for instance, with
what truth really is and under what conditions a truth-bearer can be said to have it. Theories
of truth, like correspondence, coherence, pragmatist, and deflationist, follow this route of
inquiry (pp. 170–171). The logic path, however, deals “largely with logic, particularly logical is-
sues arising from the truth-theoretical paradoxes,” and it can be concerned, for example, with
the questions of whether a logic is classical or nonclassical and what is the range of possible
truth-values it may assign to truth-bearers (p. 169, 171, 176–77, 181).
Deleuze's various treatments of truth do not map very cleanly upon this distinction, but we
could take these paths as general guides to better clarify our logical focus here. For instance,
Deleuze seems to be thinking more along the nature (metaphysics) path when he speaks of:
the true as the distinction between the real and the imaginary and the false as the confu-
sion of the two (with the power of the false being their indiscernibility or undecidability); the
true as what has a form (i.e., being universal and necessary) and the false as what lacks this
(Deleuze, 1983c; see Smith, 2012, pp. 138–140); and, the potential roles of sense, non-sense,
reference, or problems in the determination of a proposition's truth-value or in the genesis of

the conditions for truth and falsity (Deleuze, 1994, pp. 107–108, 153–154, 159, 161–162; 2004,
pp. 17–18, 20–22, 110, 138–139; Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 136). One important thing to note
about Beall and Glanzberg's distinction is that, even in many cases when we are discussing
truth in relation to propositions, that does not necessarily mean we are on the logic path.
Despite Deleuze's other philosophical priorities, we do at times find him thinking along the
logic path. For instance, we find him considering the possibility of alternate truth-values when
discussing non-sense (Deleuze, 1994, p. 153; 2004, p. 18, 22, 110), future contingent statements
(Deleuze, 1983d), and sorites paradoxes (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 228, ft.5); he examines
at length the three traditional laws of logic (including the LNC and LEM) (Deleuze, 1983a,
1983b; see Smith, 2012, pp. 72–80); he expresses dissatisfaction with how exclusive disjunctive
syllogism operates under classical assumptions (Deleuze, 2004, pp. 334–341); and, he shows
how we are apparently unable to explicitly state among our premises an additional one that
can ground the appropriate inference (p. 20). In these cases, Deleuze is in fact concerned with
matters regarding what truth-bearers follow from what, with classical and nonclassical logics,
and with the possibility of additional truth-values, all of which are issues found along Beall
and Glanzberg's logic path.
Nonetheless, such cases are sparse in Deleuze's writings. Moreover, he explicitly claims that
the “rules” of convergence and divergence involved in his Leibniz-inspired conception of the
event “belong to a logic of sense and the event, and not to a logic of predication and truth”
(Deleuze, 2004, p. 128). So, we still are faced with the question: Are we not on the wrong track
when we seek the logical assumptions involved in his thinking of the event?
To answer this, we should first note that Beall and Glanzberg show how these two paths can
intersect and constrain one another. For instance, they demonstrate how, when dealing with
the liar paradox, if we are following the nature path and take a deflationary view of the truth,
then we may feel strongly constrained along the logic path to adopt a paraconsistent or para-
complete logic involving additional truth-values (see Beall & Glanzberg, 2008, p. 181).
We will take inspiration, very loosely, from Beall and Glanzberg's two paths distinction,
but we seek a different sort of confluence between the logic and nature (metaphysics) paths of
Deleuze's thinking on the event. I claim that we can find an intersection between (a) the logical
assumptions implied in the way he formulates his reasoning on this notion with (b) the relevant
metaphysical features he ascribes to the event, by appealing to (c) the logically thematized
concepts he employs to elaborate his metaphysical thinking, especially “affirmative synthetic
disjunction.”
Thus, Deleuze's favoring of metaphysical issues does not necessarily make the logical ones
entirely irrelevant, and, in fact, they may fruitfully shed light on the metaphysical ones when-
ever important intersections or divergences can be discerned. Moreover, although philosoph-
ical thinking for Deleuze is nonpropositional, our only access to his own philosophizing is
his writings and recorded talks, in which he expresses his thinking in large part by making
claims in the form of statements and inferences that he presumably holds to have some kind of
validity. In fact, not only does Deleuze make such propositional formulations, he also at times
seemingly affirms that these claims have truth-values, as, for instance, when he writes, “It is
true that the phantasm reintegrates and retrieves everything . . . but . . . It is not that nourish-
ment has become spiritual . . .” (Deleuze, 2004, p. 253; emphasis added).
Nonetheless, this does not rule out the possibility that we could try to look beyond Deleuze's
propositional claims and home in on some deeper, ineffable, nonpropositional dimension of
his thinking where logic might not apply. Yet, even then, we could still potentially do so with-
out entirely losing our logical lens. Logic, we said, is the study of what truth-bearers validly
follow from which others. Although propositions are commonly held to be truth-bearers, there
are other potential candidates as well, including beliefs, claims, assumptions, hypotheses, sen-
tences, utterances, thoughts, ideas, and pictures (in Wittgenstein's sense) (Mosteller, 2014,
8 | SHORES
p. 8, 33, 119–120; Soames, 1999, p. 13). As such, perhaps we might treat certain nonproposi-
tional entities in Deleuze's conceptions as being in some sense truth-bearable, if only for the
sake of analysis to discern which assumptions about truth-value he might regard as appropri-
ate for reasoning about these entities and their relations to one another. For example, perhaps
a concept's “endo-” and “exo-consistent” components can be construed as something like non-
exclusively negational others that can be dually affirmed in our reasoning about them without
that somehow entailing a minimization to their heterogeneity and tensions (see Deleuze &
Guattari, 1994, pp. 19–22; Shores, 2021, pp. 75–77).
Or consider another view, namely, that Deleuze was not really against logic per se; rather,
perhaps it was just classical reasoning specifically that constrained his thinking in problem-
atic ways. Yet, because he was unfamiliar to a certain extent with many of the concepts,
terms, techniques, and debates of nonclassical logic studies (especially regarding paracon-
sistency), he was unable to straightforwardly articulate and defend his nonclassical assump-
tions. In fact, Priest concludes such a thing about Heidegger (Priest, 2002, p. 248; 2016, p.
256), and Lynn Sebastian Purcell, regarding Derrida (Purcell, 2012, pp. 171–172). In other
words, when Deleuze expresses interest in a nonpropositional mode of thinking that is un-
restricted by logical forms, maybe what he has in mind could otherwise be portrayed as a
nonclassical mode of reasoning (perhaps using nonpropositional but still potentially truth-
bearable entities) that allows for certain liberties in our thinking. And thus, maybe our logical
analyses here could give voice to those logical assumptions that he was unable to articulate
sufficiently using just his (mostly) classical vocabulary. Although I cannot prove this conclu-
sively, it remains a possibility.
Regardless, let us sum up what matters the most for our present studies, which is not
whether, for Deleuze, we can conduct philosophical thinking by means of propositions, but,
rather: What sorts of allowances or restrictions does he believe philosophical reasoning should
have, especially for the specific task of thinking the event? This should be a legitimate question
to ask, if in fact he invites us to follow his thoughts and conceptions—be they propositional
or otherwise—that he has linked together in this endeavor. Could it be, we ask, that Deleuze's
thinking of the event calls for certain allowances that might be characterized as nonclassical?
To answer this, we will first examine his explicit claims on additional truth-values and then
further probe his reasoning.
4 | DE L EUZ E ON A DDI T IONA L T RU T H -VA LU E S
Deleuze's statements on the number of truth-values are quite limited and are found especially
in his course teachings rather than in his published writings. As such, we cannot be sure that
in these cases he is articulating philosophical positions that he is willing to stand firmly by.
Nonetheless, there is little else we can turn to for his direct statements on these matters.
In one such lecture comment, coming in the context of a discussion on Aristotelian logic,
Deleuze mentions “trivalent” and “polyvalent” logics. Yet, he quickly drops the topic because
it would require too much time to cover (Deleuze, 1985). Here, he is neither advocating for, nor
criticizing, many-valued logics; however, he is not very enthusiastic about them either. In some
other class sessions, he briefly notes that C. S. Peirce proposed a “trivalent” logic, but he says
nothing about it that would indicate his own views on such a third value (Deleuze, 1982).9 It is
only in another course lecture that we find stronger hints of Deleuze's views on additional
truth-values. In this case, he is discussing future contingents, with the classic Aristotelian
example of the sea battle: whether or not it will take place cannot be decided now, so the
9
For more extensive studies of Peirce's triadic logic, see Fisch and Turquette (1966), Lane (1999).
proposition “the battle will take place” can be considered neither true nor false (Deleuze, 1983d).10
Deleuze does not like this solution, but the only reasons he gives are brief and somewhat vague.
He says that he finds it too annoying and bothersome, and he even thinks it is a “catastrophe”
when we resort to these exceptions to the normal rules of logic (Deleuze, 1983d). Again, it ap-
pears that either he is not strongly in favor of a third truth-value, especially an analetheic one,
or that he even may be against one entirely.
5 | DE L EUZ E CON T R A CON T R A DIC T ION
While Deleuze almost never elsewhere discusses additional truth-values with respect to spe-
cific nonclassical logics,11 certain statements of his regarding the LNC may offer some clues as
to where he stands on the matter. However, one difficulty here is that although he sometimes
affirms the LNC (Deleuze, 1983b, 1983d), that does not necessarily mean he is expressing anti-
dialetheic views, as we noted above. Yet, in these cases, Deleuze does not also explicitly say that
some contradictions may be both true and false, so his distaste for breaking the LNC may
nonetheless indicate that he believes all contradictions are invalid.
Yet, there is also reason to doubt this. Upon closer inspection, we find that the way Deleuze
conceives the LNC in those cases is not exactly how it is understood in contemporary debates
on philosophies of truth-value. For instance, when discussing the third value for future contin-
gent statements, neither true nor false, he claims that this solution breaks the LNC, which, ac-
cording to Deleuze, says that of a proposition and its negation, one must be true (Deleuze, 1983d).
However, this is normally what we think the LEM calls for instead (we might say, rather, that
the LNC requires that one must be false) (Priest, 2006a, p. 81).12 In other words, we might infer
from this statement about the LNC that, instead, he thinks the LEM should hold (as it also
happens to do under dialetheic assumptions). Thus, he would seem to be against analetheism
while still leaving open the possibility that he would favor a dialetheic view.
There is yet another case where Deleuze expresses a negative view about making excep-
tions to the LNC, which comes in the context of Hegel's rethinking this law anew for his
dialectic. Deleuze claims that you would have to be a humorist trying for comic absurdity
in order to insist on asserting bare contradictions (Deleuze, 1983b). However, we should
note that he formulates the LNC here as: “A is not non-A” (Deleuze, 1983b). Yet again, this
is not exactly how we are construing the LNC in our present discussion. In Deleuze's sort of
formulation, the A terms are subject and predicate rather than being variables for full prop-
ositions;13 were they so, then this would read more like the Law of Double Negation (LDN)
than the LNC.14 Nonetheless, Deleuze still conceives the LNC in this Hegelian context
largely in terms of a double negation; for, he writes that “Hegelian contradiction does not
deny identity or noncontradiction: on the contrary, it consists in inscribing the double nega-
tion of noncontradiction within the existent” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 49; emphasis added).
Deleuze's claim here is that Hegel, rather than advocating for contradiction, instead sees it
10
See Aristotle (1963, p. 53 [De interpretatione, 19a27–21]).
11
As we noted above, one exception is Deleuze and Guattari's discussions of fuzzy sets (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, chap. 6; Deleuze
& Guattari, 2004, chaps. 11–14), and in one footnote, they address fuzzy truth-values (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 228, ft.5). Yet,
they do not favor such values, as they regard them as ultimately being understood too determinately. For more on the possibility of
Deleuze holding fuzzy logic assumptions about truth-value, see Olkowski (2021, pp. 32–33), Shores (2021, pp. 56–60).
12
Under the bivalent assumptions of classical logic, the LNC would also involve the requirement that one of two contradictories be
true, as the required falsity of the one indicates the truth of the other. If this is what Deleuze had in mind, then it could serve as
further evidence that he may not have been aware of a dialetheic conception of contradiction.
13
Deleuze here is working for the most part with Hegel's own mode of formulating the laws (see Hegel, 2002, p. 438).
14
On these matters, see Sigwart (1895, pp. 139–149), Łukasiewicz (1971, pp. 493–494).
10 | SHORES
as a means whereby something posits itself and affirms its identity through a two-step pro-
cess: first, it passes through what it is not (the first negation), and then, second, it denies
what it is not in order to return to and posit itself (the second negation). Since the contra-
diction in this dialectical movement tends toward resolution, Deleuze thinks that Hegel is
actually affirming the LNC rather than making exceptions to it (Deleuze, 1983a, 1983b).15
Regardless, we still need to contend with the fact that Deleuze is conceiving this logical law
as involving double negation rather than the conjunction of a proposition with its own ne-
gation. This is an issue for our analyses because, under dialetheic assumptions, the LDN
holds even though contradictions are admissible (Priest, 2006a, p. 81; 2008, p. 145). What
we need to know is whether Deleuze thinks that every contradiction can only be just false,
or if he instead would allow for certain cases being true as well as false. All we know so far
is that he seems to be against making exceptions to the LEM and LDN.
6 | DE L EUZ E' S CON T R A DIC T ION S
In fact, despite Deleuze's stated aversion to contradiction, he explicitly formulates contra-

dictory propositions when discussing his notion of the “event” in the Leibnizian context of
possible worlds. However, he claims that these cases should not be understood as involving
contradiction but rather what he calls “vice-d iction” (Deleuze, 1994, pp. 46–50, 189–192,
263–264; 1993, pp. 59–60), which is a terminological distinction that we will evaluate in light
of dialetheism. In the statements in question, Deleuze speaks of incompossibilities irrupt-
ing “on the same stage,” where, for instance, “Caesar crosses and does not cross the
Rubicon,” or where the character Fang in one of Jorge Borges's stories “kills, is killed, and
neither kills nor is killed” (Deleuze, 1993, p. 82).16 Might this be a case where Deleuze
b elieves it appropriate to employ some sort of nonclassical reasoning, perhaps even a
dialetheic kind?
To better assess Deleuze's underlying assumptions about truth-value here, we should ex-
amine the Leibnizian framework he is working with, as this will enable us to explicate his
reasoning for attributing contradictory predicates to these entities. Briefly, for Leibniz, the
world is composed of individual substances (or monads), each being fully determined by all
its many predicates. God calculates all possible combinations of predicates for all individual
substances, with each set of completely compatible combinations of substances forming its
own possible world. Of all these possible worlds, God chooses the best one (ours), which has
the richest variety and diversity (Leibniz, 1973, p. 146; 1989, pp. 268–269; 1908, pp. 78–80, 120–
128; 1998b, p. 275; 1999, p. 306; 2001, p. 128).
Although God picks just one world, the others remain as unselected possibilities. Many
of them can be understood as being ways that our world could have been, had God cho-
sen them instead. In one illustration, Leibniz characterizes our chosen world as the top
chamber in a pyramid structure, with the less and less perfect possible worlds successively
forming layers of rooms lying below it (Leibniz, 2001, pp. 370–373). Hence, for Leibniz, all
possible worlds can be conceptually juxtaposed such that they may be compared with one
another through their similarities and differences; yet, they do not actually “coexist,” as
15
It should be noted that a number of commentators on Hegel's logic in fact see him as instead holding dialetheic views on
contradiction. See, for instance, Priest and Routley (1989), Priest (1990, 2006b, chap. 12), Ficara (2013, 2015). These cited Ficara
texts also argue that, despite other interpretations to the contrary, Hegel's notions of contradiction and negation should be
regarded in formal logic terms. Also, for an extensive, detailed study of contradiction in Hegel, in the context of Deleuze's
philosophy, see Somers-Hall (2012).
16
The italics are in the English but not the French edition (Deleuze, 1988, p. 112). The “and” case clearly suggests a dialetheic
tendency in his thinking, while the “neither” case might be construed either analetheically or dialetheically. We return to this
ambiguity in the conclusion.
only one has actual existence (see Deleuze, 2004, p. 134). For example, in our world, the
Biblical Adam has a number of predicates, including that he is the first man, he lives in the
garden of Eden, from his rib God fashioned Eve, and he sins (Leibniz, 1908, p. 129). God
also considered other variations, for instance, an Adam who does not sin (Deleuze, 1993, p.
61). However, such a nonsinning Adam cannot have lived in our world, which saw a whole
series of particular events, including Christ's redemption of humankind, that could not
have happened if Adam never sinned (Deleuze, 1980). However, this nonsinning Adam's
series of predicates does “converge” more or less with those in some other world where he
and Eve remain in the garden forever, and this could be a compatible world where he might
reside (Leibniz, 1908, p. 127).
These two worlds may have been convergent up to the point of Adam's temptation, but they
diverge when our Adam eats the forbidden fruit while the other one resists (Deleuze, 2004, p.
126; Leibniz, 1908, pp. 125–128). In fact, given that each world is so thoroughly composed of a
perfectly woven network of reciprocal predicates, even the smallest change to any one means
that the entity cannot co-exist with the others in that world and must instead live in a different
one altogether (Leibniz, 1908, p. 112, 127). Although any self-consistent world is possible with
respect to itself, it can be regarded as “incompossible” to the others whose events and beings
diverge from it (Deleuze, 1993, p. 60; see Brown & Chiek, 2016, pp. 2–14).
As such, for Leibniz there can be no “vague” Adams who are missing any predicate determi-
nations, as this would leave it uncertain as to which world they belong. So, it was never the case
that the Adam in our world was lacking either the predicates of sinning or of not sinning, even
before his temptation (Leibniz, 1908, p. 104, 111). He always had “sins” among them, and this
unfortunate event was going to happen anyway (p. 84, 120). Yet, Leibniz also acknowledges
that we use the same name “Adam” for all the different instances of him in various incompos-
sible worlds, including ones where he does not sin. Now, this shared application of one name
may seem odd when we suppose, like Leibniz does, that these beings cannot be identified with
each other. The way we group them together under a common name, he explains, is by forming
a generalized or vague concept such that the name may apply to all of them indiscriminately
(Deleuze, 1993, pp. 63–64; Leibniz, 1908, pp. 110–111, 128–129). In other words, we take, for
instance, the Adam in our world, and we conceive him as having certain predicates (like first
man), but we also exclude from our conception certain other ones (like sins or resists temp-
tation). Thereby, we may apply the name “Adam” to all the many similar (but not identical)
instances in different possible worlds. Yet still, Leibniz is quite clear that this is just a manner
of thinking. No such vague Adam can be found in any world, as he is completely determined
in each one.
Deleuze is not satisfied with Leibniz's metaphysical framework because it conceives of
time as following a predetermined course and also because it regards the individual as
likewise being completely determined from the beginning. In contrast, time for Deleuze
involves real, durational events that are composed of complex interactions of competing
forces and conflicting bodies that are in contest with each other, with their outcomes being
unpredeterminable because they will be decided, in part, by chance (Deleuze, 2004, p. 71,
74, 119, 130–131, 197). In some cases, he illustrates what he means by an event with the ex-
amples of a battle or combat. Insofar as they are events in action, they are not simply the
sum of all the bodies involved in them, but, more importantly, they are composed of all
their many conflictual forces and interactions (Deleuze, 1983d, 1997, pp. 132–133). All of
these are pulling the event toward different outcomes, each being conceivable as an alter-
nate world in the Leibnizian context. As it is not yet decided, the event is something that
spans over all these incompossible worlds without favoring one outcome over another, as
none have prevailed yet: “the battle hovers over its own field, being neutral in relation to all
of its temporal actualizations, neutral and impassive in relation to the victor and the van-
quished” (Deleuze, 2004, p. 116).
12 | SHORES
Likewise, under Deleuze's conception, the individuals that are bound up in events are
also not predetermined, and they too span many worlds and thus include many self-
variations as well. In the case of Adam's temptation, we might consider the pressures he
feels coming from different directions, for instance, from God's command, from the ser-
pent, from Eve, from his own curiosities and involuntary urges, and so on, with all of these
forces engaged in an undecided battle that will be determined in part by chance
(Deleuze, 2004, p. 130). So, in that moment of temptation, his predicate for either sinning or
not sinning is put into play (p. 71, 130). In other words, while under temptation, Adam feels
himself being pulled dually toward sinning and also toward not sinning, and as such, his
feet stand both in worlds where he does and in others where he does not. All of these diver-
gent worlds thereby enter into “communication” through the linking power of the event,
with each being a possible path of its development (Deleuze, 1993, pp. 81–82; 2004, p. 198).
Such an Adam is, then, truly “vague,” like how Leibniz's vague Adam occupies many
worlds, but Deleuze adds that he is “nomadic,” too, because he traverses them without yet
having made one his home (Deleuze, 2004, p. 131). For, the multiple, incompossible predi-
cates of nomadic individuals like Adam “open different worlds and individualities to them
as so many variables and possibilities,” and he is thus an “Adam = x common to several
worlds” (p. 131). Deleuze offers other examples, for instance, Sextus Tarquinius from
Leibniz's telling in his Theodicy, who can choose either to go to Corinth and become a good
and just man living a happy life, or otherwise (among many other options), he may go to
Rome, where he violates his cousin's wife Lucretia, is driven out of the city, and ends his
days in misery and regret, like he does in our world (Deleuze, 1993, pp. 61–62; Leibniz, 2001,
p. 372). Deleuze similarly mentions Leibniz's example of Caesar being faced with the deci-
sion either to cross the Rubicon or not to, with so much of history hinging upon the out-
come of that event (Deleuze, 1993, p. 60, 69; Leibniz, 1998a, pp. 64–65). Deleuze additionally
provides the example of the character Fang from the embedded novel story in Jorge Borges's
“Garden of Forking Paths,” who faces a problematic situation that can be resolved either by
killing an intruder or by not doing so, with all possible, alternate storylines resulting from
this decision being written and developed in their own chapters (Borges, 1964, p. 26;
Deleuze, 1993, p. 62).17
7 | T H E DI A L ET H E IC L OGIC OF DE L EUZ I A N I NCOM P O S

SI BI L I T Y
Deleuze says that the way the many worlds coincide in the event is by means of a disjunctive
synthesis, with the “alogical” relation between the worlds being one of “vice-diction” rather
than contradiction (Deleuze, 1993, pp. 59–60; 2004, pp. 196–200). To better analyze Deleuze's
assumptions about truth-value in these conceptions, we should look closely at how he imple-
ments logical terminology when elaborating them. One way he does this is by distinguishing
three logical operators that function in the different “syntheses” involved in his Leibnizian
schema. The first is the connective synthesis of the conditional operator (if . . . then . . .). He
says it is what connects the predicates in one individual (Deleuze, 2004, p. 199).18 The second is
the conjunctive synthesis of the “and” operator, which conjoins such individual series of predi-
cates to one another. It thus characterizes the cohering factor that joins them together into one
17
Beall (2012) discusses a similar paraconsistent sort of conception of glutty futures.
18
In this context, Deleuze speaks of singularities rather than predicates, but he elsewhere regards them as the same thing
(Deleuze, 2004, p. 131). Also, he does not explain why the predicates are connected by conditional relations, but perhaps he has in
mind the enchained sequence of related events that are implied in the substance's concept and that are arranged in their given
order in strict conformity with all other substances' predicates.
harmonious, possible world. And the third is the disjunctive synthesis of the “or” operator,
which is what brings divergent worlds into a differential relation. This happens when events
hover across many incompossible worlds that communicate their differences and thereby “res-
onate” through one another (p. 199).
Deleuze further subdivides disjunctive synthesis into two sorts, and he does so in a manner
that suggests he may implicitly hold nonclassical assumptions about truth-value. The first
kind, negative synthetic disjunction, involves a disjunction of mutually excluding sets of “an-
alytic” predicates. Deleuze sees this sort of disjunction operating in Leibniz's notion of God
choosing one possible world over all the others (Deleuze, 2004, p. 81, 126–136, 197–199). The
predicates are analytic, because for Leibniz, all individuals are completely and reciprocally
determined, such that we cannot fully and accurately think of the notion of Adam without
also thinking the other predicates that would have to belong to him, given his holistic and co-
herent integration into his particular world. In other words, all the events he will be involved
in, all the decisions he will make, and all the changes he will undergo are all there from the
beginning, built analytically into the concept of Adam (Leibniz, 1908, p. 84, 104, 113, 118–119,
128). In a similar discussion, Deleuze speaks of how these exclusive disjunctions are “nega-
tive and limitative,” in that the affirmation of the one entails the denial of the other, like how
God's choosing just our world precludes all the others from existing (Deleuze, 2004, p. 336).
The second kind is affirmative synthetic disjunction. Here the predicates are “synthetic,”
as they are not built into the individual's concept and are only acquired by means of events
whose outcomes have yet to be determined (Deleuze, 2004, p. 81, 131–136, 197–199). This
kind of disjunction affirms the incompatible predicates, but it does not thereby function
as a simple conjunction because it also affirms the divergence between them (p. 199). He
writes: “Instead of a certain number of predicates being excluded from a thing in virtue of
the identity of its concept, each ‘thing’ opens itself up to the infinity of predicates through
which it passes” (p. 199).
At first, it may seem that Deleuze's notion of affirmative synthetic disjunction is compati-
ble with the bivalent assumptions of classical logic. For, we might think that it can be under-
stood simply as a classical inclusive disjunction, where both disjuncts can be true while the
whole disjunctive formulation is too. The problem with this interpretation, however, is that
classical logic's inclusive disjunction alone does not capture all the logical or metaphysical
properties that Deleuze is evoking here. For him, the incompossible worlds or predicates
maintain a great distance from each other and do not converge, and thus they are certainly
never identical. So, what cannot be omitted from this conception is that, for Deleuze, there is
an irreducible otherness between the disjuncts. Under classical assumptions, an exclusive dis-
junction cannot be true when the disjuncts are identical, although an inclusive disjunction
can be.19 So, it is not enough to simply conceive of affirmative synthetic disjunction as classi-
cal inclusive disjunction because this does not guarantee the necessary otherness of the terms
that Deleuze's notion of incompossible divergence requires. While exclusive disjunction does
ensure this otherness, it has the problem of excluding the truth of one disjunct by affirming
the other.20 It would seem, then, that Deleuze is not using classical reasoning here.
In all, Deleuze wants affirmative synthetic disjunction to have the following logical prop-
erties: (1) a mutual affirmability of the terms; (2) their being combined in some way that is
not a simple conjunction; and also (3) an otherness and difference between them. A dialetheic
contradiction of the form A ∧ ¬A, in fact, gives us all three logical properties: (a) both terms
are at least true (even though they are also false), and thus they are mutually affirmed; (b) the
conjunction does the combining; while (c) the dialetheic negation of the second term renders
19
If the identical disjuncts are true, then the inclusive disjunction is true; the exclusive disjunction, however, would be false in that
case, because one, and only one, of the two disjuncts must be true for the disjunction to hold.
20
Deleuze specifically criticizes this sort of an exclusive disjunctive syllogism (Deleuze, 2004, pp. 334–336).
14 | SHORES
an other to the first, even though the affirmation of one does not exclude the truth of the
other. Deleuze tried to characterize affirmative synthetic disjunction by using a variety of
conventional logical terms that, under their classical senses at least, did not straightforwardly
articulate what he had in mind. Yet, had he the notion of a dialetheia at his disposal, he per-
haps could have done so more effectively. Thus, when he says that incompossible worlds do not
contradict but rather “vice-dict” in the event, what he has in mind might be something that we
can otherwise regard as dialetheic contradiction. So, in other words, when he claims that “the
affirmation of a disjunctive synthesis” lies “beyond logical contradictions” (Deleuze, 2004, p.
203), perhaps we may read him to be referring just to the classical kind.
8 | CONC LUSION
Let us return finally to the passages in question but quoted now in full:
With the neo-Baroque, with its unfurling of divergent series in the same world,
comes the irruption of incompossibilities on the same stage, where Sextus will rape
and not rape Lucretia, where Caesar crosses and does not cross the Rubicon, where
Fang kills, is killed, and neither kills nor is killed.
(Deleuze, 1993, p. 82)
As we noted, Deleuze considers the relations between incompossible worlds as being “alogical”
rather than logical (Deleuze, 2004, p. 196, 203–204). He seems, then, to believe that there are
metaphysical conditions (namely, the communication of divergent worlds) that somehow fall out-
side the domain of logic. Even so, Deleuze still chooses a certain mode of reasoning for thinking
about and explaining these conceptions, and so we may ask how his logical assumptions in those
accounts intersect with or diverge from his metaphysical claims. What our investigations here
suggest is that Deleuze's apparent aversion to logic is, perhaps more precisely, a distaste for certain
assumptions in classical logic, in combination with his preference for nonclassical ones instead.
Had he been familiar with studies on dialetheism and paraconsistent reasoning, he could poten-
tially have appealed to them when characterizing vice-diction and affirmative synthetic disjunc-
tion. Or otherwise, he may have at least explained why they do not apply to his thinking, in order
to eliminate any confusion about where he stands on the issue of truth-value.
There is still one final matter we should address. We might wonder if the part of the quotation
reading “Fang kills, is killed, and neither kills nor is killed” expresses the analetheias: “Fang nei-
ther kills, nor does he not kill,” and “Fang is neither killed, nor is he not killed.” The wording in
Deleuze's formulation is not especially straightforward in that regard. So, let us take a look at the
source text from Borges:
Here, then, is the explanation of the novel's contradictions. Fang, let us say, has a
secret; a stranger calls at his door; Fang resolves to kill him. Naturally, there are
several possible outcomes: Fang can kill the intruder, the intruder can kill Fang,
they both can escape, they both can die, and so forth. In the work of Ts'ui Pên, all
possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings.
(Borges, 1964, p. 26; emphasis added)
As we can see from these passages, the many chapters of this purported novel cover all the
possibilities for how things might unfold. As such, it is not leaving out affirmative informa-
tion about these killings. Thus, for each storyline, we can know whether Fang kills or does
not kill, for instance. Deleuze, then, is not likely stating analetheias in this sentence but rather
seems to intend these pairings: “Fang both kills, and he does not kill,” and “Fang is both
killed, and he is not killed,” all within that one novel. As such, we can say that an apparent
assumption about truth-value in Deleuze's Leibnizian conception of the event is that there
may be a third one beyond just true and just false, and there is good reason to think that it is a
dialetheic both true and false value rather than an analetheic neither true nor false one.
Nonetheless, this being so does not preclude him also, in other ways or domains of his thinking,
from exhibiting analetheic or other assumptions about truth-value. He may, for instance, be seen as a
logical pluralist or as favoring a four-valued logic. Such determinations require additional analyses.
ORC I D
Corry Shores https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2183-7286
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AU T HOR B IO GR A PH Y
Corry Shores is a lecturer in philosophy at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara,
Turkey. He works primarily on Gilles Deleuze, phenomenology, and the philosophy of art.
He recently authored the book The Logic of Gilles Deleuze: Basic Principles (Bloomsbury,
2021), along with several articles and book chapters on contemporary philosophy.

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DOI: 10.1111/sjp.