Félix Guattari: Thought, Friendship, and Visionary Cartography

The problem of interpretation is posed starting from the viewpoint

of the will, according to Nietzschean language, from the viewpoint of

temporality, according to Bergson. The two visions converge, they per-

meate each other: in Deleuze, Nietzsche and Bergson are viewed

together.

According to Nietzsche the question ‘which one?’ [qui] means this:

what are the forces which take hold of a given thing, what is the

will that possesses it? Which one is expressed, manifested and even

hidden in it? We are led to essence only by the question: which

one? For essence is merely the sense and value of the thing; essence is

determined by the forces with affinity for the thing and by the will

with affinity for these forces ... The question ‘what is it?’ is a way of

establishing a sense seen from another point of view. Essence, being,

is a perspectival reality and presupposes a plurality. Fundamentally

it is always the question ‘What is it for me?’ (for us, for every-

one that sees, etc.). (Nietzsche and Philosophy, 76–7, emphasis in the

original)

On the question of sense, both the problematic of intention and of

the will to power (in the Nietzschean sense) dominate. Here is what

Lewis Carroll had Humpty Dumpty say, in a passage that Deleuze cites

in The Logic of Sense:

Sense resides in the beliefs (or desires) of the person who expresses

herself. ‘When Iuse a word,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘it means

just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less ... The ques-

tion is ... which is to be master – that’s all.’ We have, however, seen

that the order of beliefs and desires was founded on the order of the

conceptual implications of signification, and that even the identity

of the self which speaks, or says ‘I’, was guaranteed only by the per-

manence of certain signifieds (the concepts of God, the world ...).

The I is primary and sufficient in the order of speech only insofar as

it envelops significations which must be developed for themselves

in the order of language (langue). (The Logic of Sense, 17–18, empha-

sis in the original)

With the reference to Humpty Dumpty, we enter into the world of

the attribution of sense. The attribution of sense is invested in the will

to power or even, if we wish, the projection of desire. Pragmatics is this

dimension of signification, without which we will never be able to

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