Between Consciousness and Sense: A Philosophical Journey Through Deleuze, Sartre, and Husserl

The relationship between consciousness and sense constitutes one of the central problems of Deleuze’s reflection on the transcendental. Drawing on The Logic of Sense, the notions of singularity, sense, and event are examined as the basis for an impersonal and pre-individual conception of the transcendental field. This perspective is then brought into dialogue with Husserlian phenomenology and Sartre’s account of consciousness in The Transcendence of the Ego. Through a rereading of Husserl’s Fifth Logical Investigation and Sartre’s early text, Deleuze’s interpretation of consciousness is questioned insofar as it assumes that every appeal to consciousness necessarily entails the presence of a transcendental Ego. By contrast, both Husserl and the young Sartre make it possible to conceive of consciousness as an impersonal and self-organizing field, devoid of any separate egoity. What emerges is an alternative conception of the transcendental field, one capable of accommodating consciousness without abandoning the principle of immanence.