Derrida falls squarely within the movement which regards the role of utterances in actual discourse as the essence of language and meaning, and which therefore regards logic as derivative from rhetorical considerations. His penetrating consideration and ultimate rejection of the basic principles of Husserl's philosophy of language is the historical analogue of Wittgenstein's later consideration and rejection of his own earlier work... In both cases a work belonging to the first historical movement in the philosophy of language of the twentieth century is examined and found unintelligible, at least partly on its own terms; and the alternative to the rejected theory is one that belongs to the second movement, according to which rhetoric and the context of actual communication are an essential and ineradicable feature of all linguistic meaning. — intro
Derrida falls squarely within the movement which regards the role of utterances in actual discourse as the essence of language and meaning, — intro
How is meaning distributed between the words and in time? What is the 'resolution' of language? Is meaning ever trapped in perfect definiteness at an instant? Is an act of meaning ever perfectly repeated? If meaning is distributed, there is no master-word but only substitutions that may finally point at the distribution of meaning and structure of substitution itself as final, as the impossibility of some other finality, fulfilling the metaphysical quest as it snips its root. But this 'fulfillment' is subject to its own law. It's never perfectly repeated or stable. — sign
...the sign is that ill-named thing, the only one, that escapes the instituting question of philosophy: ' what is ....?' — Derrida
Why does the sign escape this question? I have my thoughts, but I wonder if others like this line and have something to say. — sign
So if I understand the latter question properly, signs elude the question of "what is …” because they are in one sense arbitrary and inherently meaningless while simultaneously also serving as anchors by which our communal, value-constructed meanings are tethered and stabilized, this across a given cohort of beings, on account of communal consent. — javra
I haven’t read Derrida, btw. — javra
Calling the sign 'matter' or 'mind' forgets that these distinctions are themselves instituted by signification. Calling the sign mind in matter or matter in mind might do the situation more justice. But does this get it right? Are we ever done saying what saying is? If we can say the origin of saying, then this origin is itself another sign that has saying as an origin. — sign
The event in which their is a shared focus of attention seems to exceed the signs themselves - in the same way the experience of a play exceeds the contingent collection of [actors, costumes, stage, etc]. — csalisbury
Derrida turns 'the principle of all principles' against any lapse of phenomenological vigilance.
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It seems to me that it is impossible to dissociate deconstruction, Derrida's thought itself as a whole, from the experience or test of language. As we shall we, this test of language is an aporia.
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At the very moment in which I undergo the aporia, I cannot ask what language is (the phenomenological question) or why language is (the ontological question), since these questions ask for an essence, for presence, for being, all of which, according to Derrida, are themselves made possible by language.
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The experience that Derrida is trying to bring forth is an experience --the 'making appear' or the presence -- of the irreducible void, of the difference or lack, which is original and yet not a foundation. So the experience of deconstruction must be conceived as the presence of the non-foundation. — Lawlor's Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology
IMV, he wants to be understood. He intends something. But what he intends troubles every attempt formulate it, this same troubling, exactly and stably[..]From this perspective, I think it's even fair to think of Derrida as a negative theologian (and one too negative to embrace that as a final description.) The metaphysics of presence would then be framed then as a kind of idolatry or covering-over.
He's still a 'Hegelian' in terms of determinate negation. He exists on top of Husserl, for instance, and he is only intelligible in terms of something like Husserl's project, as the revelation of what eludes it. — sign
That seems like a fair, perhaps fairer, reading. Maybe its something of both? — csalisbury
I'm thinking of something I quoted in my thread about trauma, where a therapist talks about situations in which there is an intent to communicate which is thwarted by - or at least at war with - a parallel intent to remain incommunicative. — csalisbury
This is a good point. Speaking of Hegel - I think, if you read Husserl in terms of Phenomenology of Spirit, Husserl would be doing something like - trying to show how one can remain at the level of 'sense-certainty' where meaning is present to itself. If I read POS correctly, its the story of how one negotiates the impossibility of saying what one means - very Derridean. I've been thinking recently that Sense Certainty is something like the beginning of the Duino Elegies - "Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic Orders?" The simple impossiblity of communicating launches the whole complex machinery of thought — csalisbury
Have you looked at Spurs? I may type up a quote, but perhaps you've looked at the part about the forgotten umbrella. I think that Derrida finds the openness he points at beautiful behind its possible terror. In some sense he seems like an evangelist carrying the good news of eternal rebirth in eternal death. So far I just keep findings modulations of Christian thought from Hegel onward. The thought of the sign is the though of the incarnation, of the enfleshing and making-mortal of 'god.' 'God' like meaning is distributed across mortals and time. Certain peak emotions remain more or less constantly present as possibility, even though conceptualization is historical. Religion's pictorial thinking might therefore have an edge in some ways on conceptual 'theology' (philosophy that aspires to saying 'it.') — sign
That is a fascinating theme. In this case I think Derrida really wants to say it, but he's had or rather repeats an 'experience of language' that shows the non-quite-it-ness of every sign. I think the first poem is pretty close to this. Fail again. Fail better. And enjoy this 'failure' as our basic human opportunity. 'Man' as a not-quite futile passion to name himself. Man 'is' metaphysics. Or what separates us from the other mammals who indeed feel is a kind of infinite metaphorical-conceptual project of saying what is, including this same project that evolves as its articulates itself.
Beautiful. This makes sense to me. As I've been reading Derrida and Heidegger's 'breakthrough' lecture about 'pre-science,' I keep returning to Hegel, especially Kaufmann's translation of the preface. We go only on the surface when we take our fundamental signs for granted, as fixed entities. The instability of signs seems central for Hegel. Finite concepts point outward and exist fully only in an evolving relationship. Any account of what is has to finally take itself into account. Whatever it is that is can and even must try to figure out what it is. Reality is 'made of' questioning (among other things.) To think the real apart from the questioning of the real has practical advantages in some contexts but seems to pretty much avoid philosophy in any kind of higher sense of the word.
More on the impossibility issue, I relate to a kind of repeating experience of solitude. No one will hear your finest words exactly as you intend them. In our best social moments this problem just vanishes for a while. Souls are transparent to one another. Everyone is really 'there,' in the same-enough beautiful place. Things are rarely this good, and for me music has tended to be involved. Drugs help too! The language of feeling is more universal perhaps. The 'absolute' is pointed at by a rock'n'roll lyric, a mix of image and sound (the birth of tragedy in the spirit of music.)
It's interesting that you reference christian thought - the idea of the sign as incarnation makes a lot of sense to me. But I've also heard the sign discussed in judaic terms, as the endless deferral of the messiah's arrival. Though---that deferral is often discussed as the deferral of parousia which is itself a christian term (I think?) denoting the second coming. So maybe: the space of language as a space of remembrance/forgetfulness which tends toward some future event (which is also a past event)? — csalisbury
Very much in agreement that pictorial thinking (I might say 'scenic' thinking) has an edge on conceptual thought which.. — csalisbury
Yeah! again. I wonder if these moments are something like sustaining 'foreshadowings' of where things are heading. Part of my trouble, in the past, has been to cling too strongly to these moments, and to become devastated when they disappear. Maybe part of the progression also involves figuring out how to relate to them when they're absent. — csalisbury
"The reshimu is the consciousness of knowing that one has “forgotten.” It is the consciousness which arouses one to search for that which he has lost, the awareness that God is “playing” with His creation, as it were, a Divine game of “hide and seek.” A forgotten melody lingers in the back of one’s mind, and although he is unable to remember it he continuously searches for it, and whenever he hears a new melody (that might be it) it is the reshimu which tells him that it is not."
Thats the thing that would be lost in Husserl's project? — csalisbury
The question 'what is....?' asks for signs. — sign
There are just so many thinkers to read and only so much time. Let me know if you want me to send you a link to a pdf of S&P. It's about 80 pages and is thought to contain essential Derrida. — sign
I differ here in believing that it asks for meaning ... which is however only conveyable—be it to other or to self—through signs. But to me there is a distinct ontological differentiation between the two. — javra
, I should confess that I don’t have an aesthetic for Derrida-like philosophy; at least as I so far know. I instead prefer systematic approaches. For instance, regardless of what one makes of it as a body of understanding, I greatly admire Spinoza for attempting to make all his premises explicit for each and every conclusion in his Ethics. — javra
It’s a personal aesthetic preference and, as is always the case, when we each honestly follow our own individual aesthetic calling—regardless of how much we deviate from the norm in so doing—we each remain aligned to the truth that is us as well as to the truths with which we have yet to be fully acquainted. The aesthetic, after all, being as much an experience of pleasure as it is a calling toward that which is at once familiar and unknown—toward a heart’s home that awaits on the horizon, so to speak. My way of saying: to each of us our own aesthetic preferences and paths. — javra
I agree that it asks for a meaning. I guess one of the things I'm getting from Derrida so far is the impossibility of a perfect separation of sign from signified. As I understand it, this perfect separation is something like the heart of metaphysics. — sign
What do you make of words that are at the tip of one’s tongue? — javra
a meaning for which we momentarily do not know the sign for; a meaning which we momentarily cannot re-present. — javra
In the pre-Kantian sense of the word, this to me exemplifies our direct apprehension of the noumenal—itself a hidden aspect of all our apprehensions of the phenomenal which hold any type of significance for us. What I'm here aiming to illustrate is the logical possibility that the two are in some way separate and distinct in the here and now—this rather than as a hypothetical potential to be actualized only in some form of absolute state. In other words, though they are almost always intimately entwined, to me the word at the tip of one's tongue illustrates the complete separation between meaning and sign in the form of an experience available to all of us less than ideal subjects. — javra
Is this a defense of pure meaning? — sign
Can we possess it without the signs? — sign
And do we ever quite possess it even with the signs? — sign
I follow that. I'd only add that many of a more literal mindset have problems with the term "nothingness"; rather than interpreting it as "no-thing-ness" they can only comprehend it as unbeing, or an absolute lack of presence. Using this figure of speech led me to a whole bunch of problems a long time ago. But whatever works in getting the meaning conveyed. — javra
I believe in certain, if not most all, cases we very much do so. I'd say that when we name an abstraction (e.g., world, or animal) we possess the meaning via the name. This, naturally, after we've associated the required meaning with what the name logically necessitates (e.g., neither rocks nor plants can be animals). — javra
I agree with this. What I had in mind is the nature of this possession. What is it to think the idea of a tree? Of course we 'know.' We can have the experience right now. I vaguely picture a tree. I imagine typical uses of the word 'tree' in sentences. How does it sit in my mind when plucked from the flow of using it unselfconsciously? — sign
What I have in mind is something like a stream of experience with a certain elusiveness for itself. — sign
Among the most basic are those of positive valency (attraction toward) and negative valency (repulsion from). It's the relevancy something holds to the individual. But buried somewhere in all this is a parallel belief in some forms of universality as it applies to experience, regardless of the individual. This being what makes meaning communicable via signs. — javra
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