There are actually a few different types of expression (or, at least, ways of considering expression) that Husserl identifies in the first logical investigation - the expression of propositional content is indeed part if Husserl's picture, but only part. However, at this stage in V&P we haven't yet reached the explicit discussion of expression, & it's impossible to understand precisely what the term means through reading the first two chapters alone. Chapter 3 is where the discussion of expression really begins.

It seems to me that when Derrida emphasizes Husserl's purported need for indication to be extrinsic to expression, he's trying to paint Husserl as someone trying to preserve expression from a kind of contamination. So, analogously, an idealistic artist might want to say that social differentiation is extrinsic to taste. Though the artist would certainly agree that social differentiation can be understood without reference to taste, what he'd really be concerned about is establishing the existence of a pure realm of aesthetic appreciation which is not interwoven with social concerns. This seems to be the portrait of Husserl Derrida is trying to paint, except with meaning instead of taste. The emphasis is on the purity of expression, not the independence of indication.

I don't get the sense that the independence of natural indication, in particular, is a big priority for Husserl. He seems far more interested in expression.

It also seems to me that Husserl's definition of indication is not actually as broad as Derrida makes it out to be (causing him to drill down to 'indication proper,' which excludes demonstration), because Husserl clarifies in his definition that he is speaking of non-evident motivation, which has a precise technical meaning that excludes demonstration, which requires evident motivation in the sense of having adequate evidence for its claims. But this is less important.

I agree with this (that bit in the relevant section of LI about applying a formula because its sanctified by authority, or out of habit versus understanding why the formula works)& I think it couldbe important. On one reading, Derrida's more or less saying the same thing as Husserl, just a little sloppily. On another, he's (intentionally or unintentionally) blurring some lines in a way that'll be useful for later claims. I haven't read past the first half of chapter 3, so I'm really not sure.

I'm inclined to agree with the rest of what you've said, as well, but I also want to get a better grip on expression (and try to finish volume 1 of LI) to help get all the pieces sorted out in my mind

I think I have a better sense now of why Derrida thinks indication's entanglement with expression could be a problem for Husserl. The project of Logical Investigations is very explicitly to provide a non-psychological base for logic. Yet the origin of indication, for Husserl, lies in the association of ideas (as the footnote on page 25 tells us.) If we view association as a process where contingent, empirical events lead to the conjunction, in our minds, of two separate ideas, then indication is thoroughly psychological.

Derrida (in the footnote on page 25, my bolding): "Here, what is excluded from pure expressivity is indication and thereby association in the sense of empirical psychology. We must bracket empirical psychical lived-experiences in order to recognize the ideality of the Bedeutung that orders expression. The distinction between indication and expression appears therefore first of all in the necessarily and provisionally 'objectivist' phase of phenomenology, when one has to neutralize empirical subjectivity. Does it keep its value when the transcendental thematic will found the analysis and when we return to constituting subjectivity?"

The idea seems to be that, at this stage of Husserl's thought, while he was still reacting against the psychologists (& I haven't read enough of the Logical Investigations to appraise this reading, though, based on what little I've read, it makes sense) Husserl still sees us as discovering ideal logical truths/relations/orders, rather than transcendentally constituting them. Thus, at this stage the processes whereby we discover these truths must be something entirely separate from the truths themselves (otherwise the psychologists are right.) In other words expression must be absolutely separable in principle from indication, otherwise expression (and so the order of ideal logical/mathematical truths) falls right back into the maw of psychologism.

ha, this'd be team Derrida (the end of it anyway)

(This summary is pretty rough and leaves a few things out, but just to at least get things started:)

Chapter 2 continues the close reading of Husserl’s first logical investigation. It covers sections 2-4 of the investigation, those sections in which Husserl concentrates on indication.

Before attending directly to the text, Derrida considers why indication is given such short shrift (having less than one third as many sections devoted to it as expression.) He surmises, as he will surmise often, that Husserl views indication as a phenomenon of secondary importance, as something extrinsic to expression. If indication is introduced first, it’s only to hastily, preemptively quarantine it, so that we can go on to explore expression unimpeded.

Derrida then turns to Husserl’s text.

First Husserl introduces another distinction, this time within indication. There is natural indication and there is artificial indication. Natural indication is something like: “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” Here, indicators are intrinsically linked to what they indicate. Artificial indications, on the other hand, rely on convention, as in the case of branding.

Both natural and artificial indication, though, share something essential. In both cases something we currently know (that which functions as an indicator) motivates our conviction in (or presumption of) something we don’t yet know (that which is indicated.)

Derrida quotes Husserl’s definition in full & I think it’s worth requoting here:

“In these cases we discover as a common characteristic the following situation: certain objects or states of affairs whatsoever whose subsistence of what someone has actual knowledge indicate to him the subsistence of certain other objects or states of affairs, in the sense that his conviction in the being of the one is experienced as motivating (though as a non-evident motivation) a conviction or a presumption in the being of the others. “

Unfortunately this definition casts a bit too wide of a net. While it does cover indication in the sense we’ve been discussing (Anweis) it would also include deductive, apodictic demonstrations or proofs (Hisweis.) These latter have for their content universal, necessarily valid truths. Instead of something merely ‘indicating’ something else, with 'Hinweis, it logically/mathematically entails it. For instance, if we know, of a square, that its sides are four feet long, we are, as with indication, ‘motivated’ to pass from this knowledge to the knowledge that the square has an area of 16 square feet. Yet the square’s area is, in a sense, already implicit in the length of its sides.

The difference is that, while 'hinweis' is apodictic, 'anweis' is always a matter of empirical probability. The existence of A strongly, perhaps even overwhelmingly, suggests the existence of B, yet this can never be more than an empirical near-certainty.

Yet even within Hinweis, Husserl draws a distinction between the factual experiential ‘acts’ of deducing one thing from another and the ideal/objective relations which are the contents of those deductions This, to Derrida, suggests an indicative component even within the heart of (factual) demonstration (of objective truths.)

Derrida seizes upon this distinction as on opportunity to change gear, shifting from commentary on the text to its implications for the phenomenological project in general. Derrida sees in this distinction yet another instance of a move Husserl will constantly repeat. In order to secure the integrity of one thing, something else is relegated as being essentially exterior to it. All of phenomenology, he claims, boils down to making distinctions between the essential and the inessential. But the ability to make these kinds of distinctions is, itself, a function of language.

But, says Derrida, Husserl clearly would not himself characterize phenomenology in this way. After all, Husserl holds that there is a pre-linguistic stratum of sense.

I'll take a stab at it

Yeah, I think you're right and that's why Derrida renders bedeutung as 'vouloir-dire.'

I think the big question is what is indicated in communicative speech (according to Husserl/Derrida). Is it the speaker's inner experience, the meaning of the sentence, or are they one in the same? To say that a speaker's 'inner experience' is always indicated in communicative speech is not necessarily to say that that 'inner experience' is what his sentence means. (cf the tripartite distinction referenced in §6, quoted above)

❤️

thats two weeks from now! What if i fall into a well before then?

the language-learning case is interesting. People use 'samples' all the time without trying to communicate what the sample itself is trying to communicate - yet they're still communicating. It's also interesting in that its a border case in linguistic competence. The sentence is there because we're assumed not to be fully competent

That's true, and maybe this points to a cleavage between Derrida & Husserl, but Husserl explicitly (itallically) specifies that this 'entanglement' occurs in all communicative speech. It's tricky though, even with Derrida, because I still don't understand signification vs. meaning vs. expression. Is anything expressed by the sentences constructred by that algorithm?

In the same vein, I think you would find yourself surprised if, upon requesting a whiskey, the flight attendant stared at you blankly or responded "that's just a mantra I repeat to stave off my fear of flight. We don't serve beverages on short connecting flights."

Just a thought: even with a road sign, we take heed because we know there is an intelligence behind the words arranged there. We may not know who in particular arranged those words, but we believe that they have been put there to communicate something to us. Or put another way, the feeling we would get finding and reading a story in the library of Babel would be one of deep uncanniness.

I think in that way the road sign really does indicate another mind and an intent.

There are scattered clues that Derrida (and possibly Husserl in turn) actually mean two separate things by language always having an intermixed indicative element:

1) The linguistic sign indicates the mental state of the speaker.

2) The linguistic sign is attached to some sensible sign-vehicle, like a written word, that indicates its expressive content? Or the expressive sign itself, which is separate from this sensible component? It's not clear what's meant here, and several allusions are used interchangeably without clarification.

As for 1), it's very unclear, I would even say outright dubious, that the purpose of linguistic expression is to relay some mental state of the speaker. Usually we are concerned with whatever the sentence is talking about, not what the speaker is thinking about at the time of uttering it – and certainly whatever the sentence is talking about is what its expressive content deals in, not the speaker's thoughts or experiences!

Alright, so Husserl almost definitely has (1) in mind. From §7 of the Logical Investigation:"...all expressions in communicative speech function as indications. They serve the hearer as the signs of the 'thoughts 'of the speaker, i.e. of his sense-giving inner experiences, as well as of the other inner experiences which are part of communicative intention."

But, at the same time, Husserl seems quite aware of the point you make above, saying in §6 : "We distinguish, in the case of each name, between what it 'shows forth' (i.e. mental states) and what it means. And again between what it means (the sense or 'content' of its naming presentation) and what it names (the object of the presentation."

I like all these questions but it's tough to discuss them without borrowing from the coming chapters.
Whether the distinction is plausible seems to be answerable only after seeing how that distinction plays out (in the treatment, first, of indication; then of expression). Ot to put it another way: While these questions aren't answerable now, they're good guidelines for approaching and appraising the chapters to come. (I've been reading the corresponding logical investigation in parallel & Husserl seems to take this distinction as obvious, so it's hard to determine, at the outset, where he's coming from. I think it becomes a bit clearer as he explains what he means by the two terms.)

My approach has been to treat Derrida, in these early chapters, as a neutral exegete* who - & this may be a little too cute - is performing his own sort of epoche. I think, at least at this stage, he's bracketing the validity of these distinctions, and is simply trying to suss out the immanent logic of Husserl's project. (& prob choosing to frame it in terms of signs because signs were super hot in France back then. Though to be fair, it is the very first 'investigation', after Husserl spends n pages attacking the psychologists and introducing/defending his method)

(Regarding indication, I think, besides the explicit definition in Ch. 2, the most interesting hint is the footnote where Husserl describes indication as a mere species of 'the association of ideas.' This idea takes up a full section in Logical Investigations)

Does any of that seem legit or does it feel like bullshit? Be honest <3

*When he's analyzing the text, I mean, not when he's waxing ecstatic about hiatuses.

There are lots of questions with this, but that will do for now.

I can't find a good angle to get a conversation rolling. What were some of the questions/concerns you had?

Do you mean Derrida wants to argue this?

Nope, Husserl. It will become clearer as the book progresses, but this 'solitary life of the soul' is central to Husserl's discussion of expression.

Here's a super-condensed summary of the chapter, leaving out all of Derrida's asides, anticipations and allusions:

(1) Husserl distinguishes between two types of signs - indications & expressions.
(2) Husserl notes that, while it is clear that there are non-expressive indicative signs, it appears that all expressive signs are also at least partly indicative.
(3) This would seem to suggest that expressive signs are only a subset of indicative signs. But Husserl does not believe this is the case. He identifies the 'solitary life of the soul' as the province of non-indicative expression.

On page 19, Derrida quotes Husserl saying: "Expressions unfold their function of meaning even in the solitary life of the soul, where they no longer function as indications."

That really is a thorough summary. I'm struggling to find anything to add.

Here is a question to keep in mind. Is it really true that all expressions contain indication, and not all indications are expressions? Or is this an assumption of convenience made by Husserl, to support an argued position?

Importantly, Husserl wants to argue the opposite. He says there are expressions free from indication. These are found in the 'solitary life of the soul' (this idea is only mentioned briefly in this chapter because it will be greatly expanded upon in later chapters)

One of the most interesting gossipy tidbits about Kojeve is that he had an intimate friendship with Leo Strauss (the godfather of American neoconservatism.) I've read almost nothing by Kojeve (except a short, insightful piece about the master/slave relationship in Hegel) & I'm definitely not trying to poison the Kojeve-well by association - it's just a surreal, fascinating historical intersection.

There was a little discussion of this on the ur-thread. Basically: The introduction is ultra-ultra-dense, assumes a lot of background knowledge, and basically condenses the entirety of the main text's argument (which is itself rather dense). In a lot of ways, it feels more like a conclusion than an introduction.

I think Derrida had a single genuine insight and then made a career of playing with that insight in the silliest ways. Difference and Repetition, I think, has many profound things to say about individuation. Deleuze was a great synthesizier of other's ideas. But he got trapped in the parisian bullshit. I wish wish wish he had come of age in a different milieu.

For me it's the finality of death. As long as our coming-into-being is mysterious (and it really is) it's hard to understand what death is and how truly final it is. I'm sure "I" die at death, for good, but I'm not so sure something deeper doesn't. Not a serious, adult way of looking at things but I think it's thoroughly reasonable.

THOUGH, I will say his "Kant's critical philosophy' is the best, most lucid introduction to Kant out there. No bullshit, super readable, incredibly insightful.

I have a real soft spot for Deleuze. I will admit that I got into Deleuze when I used to smoke a lot of weed. I can't defend his prose - which is as dense, allusive, and elliptical as the best of the french thinkers - but he's so much more fun! He's also got some geuinely interesting ideas buried under the unfortunate style. He seems like he just doesn't give a shit though (he doesnt take the philosopher thing too seriously I mean) which endears him to me way more than Hegel or Derrida

I was at a high school party and the almost archetypally beautiful daughter of the most prominent protestant family was there and she said "ok hot people get the good beer." and then decided who was hot. It was v moving.

I was raised half-protestant, half-catholic (we switched churches once a year as part of a very strange marital compromise) The protestant families were more attractive but the catholics put on a better show.

That's an interesting angle -and would make total sense, but I don't have the background to verify it either.

Then where?? It's such a strange phenomenon.

Do you have any sense of where Hegel's style came from? It's baffling to me. I haven't read Fichte. Is it Fichte?

There was a moment for me (second and only full read-through) when the style 'clicked' and it was (relatively) smooth sailing from there. It's strange. He's often talking about things on a very basic level. The weird phrasing kind of jumbles up the default, sedimented, non-basic way of thinking about things and makes the basic ideas accesible again. That seems like a convenient apology but I certainly don't feel the same way about Hegel, or Husserl or Derrida or Lacan. Heidegger actually flows for me.

Yes, yes. If one's goal is a beautiful, joyful life, then everything is lit up by this goal. One can see various fundamental "poses" from the outside. Knowledge is secondary, unless one has committed to this narrowing down of the notion of beauty. I love the objective, if you'll call math objective, but as I writer I want to carve an image of the heroic, beautiful mind --just as I've pursued this image as a reader.

That's such a big goal though! I'm wary of beauty with a capital B. Or at least seeking it explicitly, keeping it in mind. When the vicissitudes of life are working in your favor then, I agree, everything is doubly lit up. But when things are going bad, that badness has one hell of a foil. "If beauty really did exist there, it meant that my own existence was a thing estranged from beauty." At least for the moment, I'm trying to be content with living by a modest set of malleable maxims (which are kinda meta-maxims, less about doing the right thing every time, but littles rules that let me recognize - and so bypass - certain habitual tendencies, in order to confront things I've been avoiding.) But it could just be that, for now, I need to focus on more mundane, life-structural things. (You've quoted Blake a few times. Problem might be that I've been too eager to soar without worrying about whether I actually wings.)

One last little tidbit. The New Yorker did a profile of Martha Nussbaum this summer. Two passages from the piece work perfectly together.

"The lecture was about the nature of mercy. As she often does, she argued that certain moral truths are best expressed in the form of a story. We become merciful, she wrote, when we behave as the “concerned reader of a novel,” understanding each person’s life as a “complex narrative of human effort in a world full of obstacles.”

"For our first meeting, she suggested that I watch her sing: “It’s the actual singing that would give you insight into my personality and my emotional life, though of course I am very imperfect in my ability to express what I want to express.” She wrote that music allowed her to access a part of her personality that is “less defended, more receptive.” Last summer, we drove to the house of her singing teacher, Tambra Black, who lives in a gentrifying neighborhood with a view of the churches of the University of Chicago. It was ninety degrees and sunny, and although we were ten minutes early, Nussbaum pounded on the door until Black, her hair wet from the shower, let us inside."

In other words Kant & Husserl were clearly driven by the need to organize and schematize, Kierkegaard & Schopenhauer by the need to be adored for genius, Heidegger and Derrida by the will-to-prophesy, Hegel and a million others by the will-to-tenure etc etc. If philosophy, as you say, is about becoming clear about the nature of things in order to live better, it's unclear to me that philosophy is adequate to its own task. Do philosophers tend to live best?

Ok, but I'm sure you'd agree that the point is not to approach life in way x, in order that one be serious. Rather, the fact that one approaches life in way x springs from one's seriousness. Where does speaking seriously about the tragedy of life spring from? And is this the sign of seriousness we should look for? It seems a bit like trying to weigh someone's capacity for empathy by seeing how much they give to charity. The most obvious indicators are often the most misleading.

The fact that Heidegger was, for at least a brief moment, a Nazi, cannot be relevant to the philosophy of Being and Time, as I see it.

I love Heidegger, don't get me wrong, but Division II has all the seeds, especially in this climactic paragraph: "Resoluteness implies handing oneself down by anticipation to the "there" of the moment of vision; and this handing down we call "fate".This is also the ground for destiny, by which we understand Dasein's historizing in Being-with Others. In repetition, fateful destiny can be dis-closed explicitly as bound up with the heritage which has come down to us."

But hamlet and king lear are probably his two funniest plays! Symmetrically, good comedy incorporates the tragic - it doesn't deny it.

Yes, I had a sense that I was moving against Heidegger, but that's almost to be expected. He was a Nazi. Where did he go wrong?

heh, well...

So we try to restore smooth operation, via assimilation or abandonment of the broken tool. My hunch is that homeostasis rules.......I think life is about getting back into smooth operation...perhaps for-the-sake-of an endless self-enlargement and pursuit of greater authenticity.....

;)