The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (128 page)

1
Though see also
Ch. 16
, §6(a), on the use of language to evoke inexpressible metaphysical insights.

2
See
Ch. 14
, n. 7, for the relation between linguistic sense and propositional sense. (Note that, on a very attenuated conception of linguistic sense, the sheer fact that he was using language in the way in which he was would be enough to make any sense he conveyed linguistic.)

3
I shall be focusing on Derrida’s early work in this chapter – that being what is most directly relevant to our enquiry. (See
Ch. 9
, n. 5.)

4
Throughout this chapter I use the following abbreviations for Derrida’s works: ‘Baldwin’ for Derrida (
2001b
); ‘Cogito’ for Derrida (
1978a
); ‘
Différance
’ for Derrida (
1982a
); ‘Following Theory’ for Derrida (
2004
); ‘Form and Meaning’ for Derrida (
1982c
);
Grammatology
for Derrida (
1976
); ‘Hospitality’ for Derrida (
1999
); ‘Implications’ for Derrida (
2002a
); ‘Interview’ for Derrida (
1984
); ‘Letter to a Friend’ for Derrida (
1988b
); ‘Limited Inc’ for Derrida (
1988a
);
Memoires
for Derrida (
1986
); ‘Moore’ for Derrida (
2001a
); ‘
Ousia
and
Gramm
’ for Derrida (
1982b
); ‘Phenomenology’ for Derrida (
1978c
); ‘Positions’ for Derrida (
2002c
); ‘Reason’ for Derrida (
1983
); ‘Semiology’ for Derrida (
2002b
); ‘
Sec
’ for Derrida (
1982e
), an abbreviation incidentally proposed by Derrida himself in ‘Limited Inc’, p. 37, and further explained in the accompanying n. 1 (pp. 108–109);
Speech and Phenomena
for Derrida (
1973
); ‘Structure’ for Derrida (
1978d
); ‘The Original Discussion’ for Derrida et al. (
1988
);
The Post Card
for Derrida (
1987
); ‘Violence and Metaphysics’ for Derrida (
1978b
); and ‘White Mythology’ for Derrida (
1982d
).

5
I have taken the liberty of dropping John Macquarrie’s and Edward Robinson’s capitalization of ‘Present’ in their translation. For their policy on this matter, see their n. 2 on p. 47 of ibid.

6
Note: we must not confuse absence with the ‘nothing’ whose connections with Being we saw Heidegger forge in
Ch. 18
, §6. The latter is something altogether more basic. The paradigmatic way in which
Dasein
confronts absence is by anticipating something and then failing to perceive that thing. (Cf. Sartre’s famous discussion of the absence of his friend Pierre from the café in Sartre (
2003
), pp. 9–11.) The paradigmatic way in which
Dasein
confronts the nothing is by acknowledging the possibility of its own non-existence.

7
The material that I have inserted in the first set of square brackets is not strictly faithful to Derrida’s text, where he uses his coinage ‘
différance
’. But introduction of that coinage must wait until later: see §5. For now I hope that this deviation from the original does no great harm. (There is some justification for it elsewhere in the same essay, e.g. p. 26. This too will receive attention in §5.)

8
The Greek words ‘
eidos
’, ‘
arch
’, ‘
telos
’, ‘
energeia
’, and ‘
al
theia
’ would standardly be translated as ‘form’, ‘origin’, ‘purpose’, ‘activity’, and ‘truth’, respectively. ‘
Ousia
’ has the meanings indicated in Derrida’s own parentheses.

9
For what is intended by the label ‘Platonism’ here, see Plato’s
Republic
, esp. Bks V – VII. (Cf.
Ch. 8
, n. 55, and accompanying text.)

10
Up to a point Heidegger can agree with this: see
Ch. 18
, §4, esp. the lengthy quotation from Heidegger (
1982b
), pp. 21–23. This is connected to issues that we shall address later concerning Derrida’s own relation to the tradition: see §4.

11
Cf. Norris (
1987
), pp. 160–161. Generally helpful for this sub-section is Spivak (
1976
), §II.

12
See
Ch. 17
, n. 30, for an explanation of the broad sense of ‘intuition’ intended here.

13
See also
Speech and Phenomena
, p. 40, and ‘Form and Meaning’, p. 172. As far as ‘in the present’ is concerned, cf. Husserl (
1962
), §111, which Derrida cites in
Speech and Phenomena
, p. 58. But see below for reservations about how fair Derrida’s portrayal of Husserl is.

14
For current purposes we can understand ‘difference within auto-affection’ as a reference to the way in which the subject is given what is not temporally present.

15
For current purposes we can ignore any difference between this term and ‘phenomenological reduction’: cf.
Ch. 17
, n. 13.

16
For a very helpful and nuanced discussion of Derrida’s relation to phenomenology, see Glendinning (
2007
),
Ch. 7
.

17
See esp.
Speech and Phenomena
, §5. For counters, see Wood (
2001
), pp. 122–126, and Turetzky (
1998
), pp. 172–173.

18
Perhaps wilfully? One possibility, highlighted by what we shall be exploring later in this chapter, is that Derrida is doing deliberate violence to some of Husserl’s texts as a way of reworking the concepts operative in them so as to create something new (cf. ‘Semiology’, p. 22, a passage to which we shall return in §4).

19
See
Speech and Phenomena
, passim.

20
See Whorf (
1956
). Cf. Collingwood’s views, discussed in §2 of the previous chapter.

21
Despite my comment in parentheses at the end of the previous paragraph, this is a distinction to which analytic philosophers have paid surprisingly little attention (though for one interesting if cursory reference to the distinction in the analytic tradition, see Davidson (
2005d
), p. 249). For reasons that should soon be clear, however, even if analytic philosophers had paid the distinction more attention, this might well have had less relevance to what Derrida does with it than their actual preoccupations have had.

22
Cf.
Grammatology
, p. 9, and Wood (
2001
), p. 260. (Sometimes Derrida talks of ‘arche-writing’ instead of ‘writing’ to emphasize that he does not have in mind ‘the vulgar concept of writing’ (
Grammatology
, p. 56).) But note: some of what follows will itself cast doubt on the very idea of a term’s ‘customary meaning’.

23
See e.g. respectively: ‘
Sec
’, pp. 316–317;
Grammatology
, pp. 11 and 141ff.; ‘
Sec
’, pp. 311ff.; and
Grammatology
, pp. 30ff. For samples of what Derrida has in mind, see respectively: Plato’s
Phaedrus
, 274bff.; Aristotle’s
De Interpretatione
,
Ch. 1
; Rousseau (
1959
), Vol. 2, pp. 1249–1252; Condillac (
2001
), Pt II, §1,
Ch. 13
; and Saussure (
1983
), Introduction,
Ch. VI
, §2.

Note: there are grounds for saying that Heidegger too prioritizes speech over writing (see e.g. Heidegger (
1962a
), §34). It is here, if anywhere, that Derrida is at his most innovative.

24
This terminology is mine, not Derrida’s. (Likewise in the case of the term ‘non-direct mark’ which I shall introduce shortly.) We shall see at the end of the section how Derrida himself refers to direct marks.

25
‘Arguably’, because in each case there are some delicate exegetical issues. For instance, Derrida himself would count Husserl’s noemata as clear examples, but only because of his radically subjectivist interpretation of Husserl on which I have already cast doubt. As far as the other three cases are concerned, cf., respectively: Descartes (
1985c
), Pt One, §§45 and 46; Kant (
2000
), 5:351–352; and Dummett (
1978d
), p. 131, and (
1981b
), pp. 50–51, in each of which Dummett adverts to what he calls the ‘transparency’ of Fregean senses (though he means something rather different by this in each of the two cases).

26
‘Arguably’, this time, because something qualifies as an indirect mark only if it has been associated with a direct mark, and, as we shall see, precisely what is at issue is whether the words and expressions of any natural language, or any other things for that matter, satisfy this condition. For the same reason we should resist the temptation to include Humean ideas as examples of indirect marks, despite the fact that the representational power of any given Humean idea depends on its association with something else (
Ch. 4
, §2).

27
His assault on this idea is highly reminiscent of the later Wittgenstein: see e.g. Wittgenstein (
1967a
), Pt I, §§73 and 74, 139–141, 205, and 452–461. For discussion of the relations between Derrida and the later Wittgenstein, see Sonderreger (
1997
). See also Baldwin (
2001
), §2, to which Derrida responds briefly in ‘Baldwin’, pp. 105–106.

28
Actually, we might just as well ask what could breathe semantic life into a sign even if it
could
be associated with a direct mark. Any such association would still need to be established. (Cf. my reference earlier to artifice and convention.) This is one of the many reasons for being suspicious of the very idea of a direct mark: cf. again Wittgenstein (
1967a
), Pt I, §§139–141.