What Was Deconstruction?
"Now, 30 years down the road, it is surprisingly hard to remember why Derrida’s “deconstruction” — a theory of reading with the unlikely catchphrase “the metaphysics of presence” — swept all before it in English departments of the American heartland, prompted Newsweek to warn of its dramatic and destructive power, and moved prominent scholars like Ruth Marcus to denounce its “semi-intelligible attacks” on reason and truth."
https://www.chronicle.com/article/what-was-deconstruction
Another evaluation of deconstruction. Thought others might find it worth discussing. I liked reading Derrida, but after a while, it just seemed like skepticism.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/what-was-deconstruction
Another evaluation of deconstruction. Thought others might find it worth discussing. I liked reading Derrida, but after a while, it just seemed like skepticism.
Comments (399)
Quoting Jackson
I think the following sums it up.
“To this day, deconstruction remains a style of thought more complained about than understood.”
The author of the article would like to believe this ignorance is the fault of deconstructive writers like Derrida, but I would suggest it is the difficulty of his ideas that is the source of incomprehension rather than a matter of vacuity , inconsistency or vagueness in his thinking. I would also separate Derrida’s work from the host of authors who called themselves deconstructionists. I never found the work of these followers to have much in common with Derridean deconstruction.
Yes. I never got much out of Paul de Man.
I've read part of the article and will read the rest later. Here I'll show my ignorance - I thought deconstruction was a technique of Critical Theory. The article acts as if deconstruction has been widely abandoned, but Critical Theory, as in Critical Race Theory, is clearly going strong.
Deconstruction was not Critical Theory. It was a way to read and interpret texts.
This is true of the literary theorists who adopted practices of deconstruction, but the idea of deconstruction that Derrida produced was much
pre try a. a way of interpreting written texts. It was a way to understand the basis of all experience.
Text’ for Derrida referred to the way time structures experience.
Critical theory is a neo-marxist approach in philosophy, a form of structuralism and dialectic. . Derridean deconstruction places into question the dialectical and structuralist basis of marxism and neo-marxism.
Derrida was a critic of structuralism.
Text was also literal, a physical text.
Yes, it included written text, spoken word , thinking to oneself , perception, and any and all forms of what would be called the ‘real’ or the objective. He would, however , question distinctions like literal vs figurative and physical vs mental.
Quoting Joshs
Thanks for the education. I guess I always equate deconstruction, critical theory, and post-modernism as philosophical approaches that disparage traditional, conventional ways of seeing things.
It is. But a lot of philosophers want to be revolutionaries.
I meant to write he places into question structuralism
and dialectic.
Yes. Why some classify him as post structuralist.
I wonder if the matter of history was the bone of contention in the idea of 'structure.' For instance, one could be skeptical of the progressions Hegel described and not claim the result was a matter of pure chance.
As is obvious the stronger the contrast, the more visible the word becomes. Hence the emphasis on grasping meaning via negativa. This is because, a kataphatic definition is limited by the problem of infinite regress cum circularity (looking up a word in a dictonary would require you to look up the definition of the words contained therein, so on and so forth ad infinitum).
I felt like the guy kinda missed the point.
Now, I didn't have to live with anyone who looked down on me for my lack of knowledge -- I just like to read books. And when I read Derrida, this isn't what I see -- a body of propositions? Deconstruction claims? I gather there's a cadre of obnoxious individuals, from the writer's perspective, surrounding Deconstruction. But I'm not sure I gather why I should "reject" deconstruction... it just seems a bit silly.
What would it mean to reject a method of reading?
It's a gossip piece masquerading as a think piece.
I've read Aristotle and never saw him give such a definition. Can you refer to something in his texts to support that?
To use another method that is better.
He is very much concerned with the essence of things, the truth of propositions, argument, and nature. So it makes sense to place him within the tradition of philosophy which is more in the scientific mode -- interested in true propositions, their justification, nature, the nature of nature, and so forth. I refer to him more because analytic philosophy tends to follow this pattern of doing philosophy -- and the article posted is coming from that position.
Quoting Jackson
But only deconstruction is good at deconstruction! :D
That is, this is preference dependent.
Quoting Streetlight
Yeah. But alas, it's the state of things. I still like to think about Derrida so I stuck my head in the conversation :D
I did not say you were quoting.
This is not true.
No. Based on observing others and people who seem to be happy.
Let's take this interpretation you got here. Fine by me, I'm not here to argue interpretation of Aristotle as much as make a contrast case between what the original article seems to believe about the nature of philosophy. My understanding of Aristotle is false, yours is true.
Can you see, from your interpretation of Aristotle, how he might serve as a contrast case to Derrida's philosophy, which is not "based on observing others and people who seem to be happy", nor did he write a physics with a reflection on said physics in some ultimate sense?
Derrida wrote an article on Aristotle, called "White Mythology." Been a while since I studied it and do not remember what he said about Aristotle.
Two "ways" which philosophers do philosophy can be broadly construed as scientific or literary. I think if you read a literary philosophy scientifically -- say Keirkegaard's Fear and Trembling -- you'll miss the point, and if you read Critique of Pure Reason literarily you'll also miss the point.
It's in this manner that I mean the article author missed the point -- he wants to criticize Deconstruction not on its terms but in his own way of doing philosophy: where one sets out a thesis and defends it and interlocutors refute it or stay silent as they think on their refutations. Instead he mostly sticks to stories of the people involved, and a hasty generalization of deconstruction that he quickly refutes -- but it's the sort of paragraph one writes for people who are already convinced, no?
At least, I have a hard time connecting what he says to what I've read.
The author: "Timothy Brennan is a professor in the humanities at the University of Minnesota."
So, he is not a philosopher.
Or, more circumspectly, he could get more out of it if he wanted to.
Another way, which I'll term "soft", attempts to tease out what an author was getting at. It reads it more like someone who wants to believe, but also cares about what the believes say in a wider context -- so a reader looks for reasons to believe as the author writes.
It was in this way that I think I started to get more out of Derrida, and it was the thought I was having after our last exchange on how play is working in Derrida's thought -- like, he is literally playing with the text, it seems, in order to bring out its instability -- or simply to demonstrate the instability as a possibility.
I'll say the part that I've always had a hard time with is going from manuscript to secondary literature -- I could make sense of the secondary literature, and I can make sense of parts of the Derridean arguments, but oftentimes I'd feel a little lost in the gap between. (actually, one of the reasons for my interest still -- I'm not actively studying him right now, but I'm always collecting references and thoughts, just because I like to think about this stuff)
Are you suggesting that 'Kant's philosophy' is "scientific"? Which do you mean – pre-modern theoria or modern hypothetico-deduction? "Scientific" in a historical, natural or formal sense? I ask because I am not aware of any precise, unique predictions (via repeatable objective experiments) 'Kant's philosophy' entails. :chin:
Yes, he reads Derrida from the position of literary criticism.
And pedantry is fine by me, too. It is philosophy after all!
And naturally the distinction isn't so neat. They rarely are if you try to pin them down -- let's try to treat this as a rough-shod, for-this-conversation type distinction. It's enough for me to admit that there are different styles of reading and writing, because that'd be enough for me to suggest that Derrida could be read differently.
Architectonic is a good contrast word, too. Especially with respect to Derrida! Architecture being one of the common operating metaphors in philosophy.
I don't think it is a live topic anymore.
I do not think Derrida or deconstruction is much a topic in US philosophy departments. I mean, it never really was--mostly in comparative literature departments.
Who are these "some?"
Yes, here in Australia too I suspect and in film theory.
Quoting Jackson
Well Joshs says D is a continuing reference point and he's an academic out of Chicago.
I read some Derrida in grad school. There was a Heidegger professor who occasionally gave a Derrida class.
What I could gather from it though: Heidegger's distinction between the present-at-hand/ready-to-hand is the main distinction that makes sense of Derrida for me. Whereas Heidegger does this phenomenological analysis of language and draws out that the history of metaphysics has, up to him, focused on the present-at-hand at the neglect of the phenomenologically accessible ready-to-hand. -- Derrida instead seems to believe that all philosophy, up to Husserl at least, has been structured by a super-transcendental binary: one that cannot even be named, but which receives many names depending on the philosophy. So you get, in philosophy, these oppositions between presence/absence, material/ideal, good/bad, man/woman, and so forth. (To be fair to Derrida, such oppositions really are quite common)
Deconstruction is supposed to be the method by which we discover this super-transcendental, and perhaps, get to something real and lived, what is between the binary -- the binary is needed, of course, because it makes sense, but upon deconstructing the binary one comes to see what might be "left over". (granted, this is a metaphorical expression of deconstruction -- whether the method works in a particular text is up to the reader/writer, if I'm following correctly)
But also -- the habit, tendency, or solution of the philosophers to make a binary -- that is also in question I believe. However, being the "serious minded" type myself, I think I missed how he did it. Which is why I've talked about play thus far -- it was something that really just occurred to me as I was thinking about these posts.
Fair assessment. In the end, I see Derrida as a skeptic.
Probably his most accessible essay is, "Differance."
I think skeptic is a good epithet; with respect to scientific knowledge and such I think he really is a skeptic. But, one, I don't see that as a bad thing. And two, I think his skepticism is confined to a tradition. I don't think he's a universal skeptic.
Skeptics posit a totality which cannot be had. Platonism. The real object cannot be conceived.
I am not a skepic.
Now I have been loosy goosy in my thinking, so please forgive me for this specificity. I only focus on it because this is what I'd agree to, and agree that Derrida is a skeptic in this vein. I'm not sure, though, about "the real object cannot be conceived" only because "the real object" does not seem to be a totality to me, unless "the real object" is understood in a general sense of descriptions for all objects.
I know that's a little dumb sounding, so I'll stop there to see if we're even close to communicating yet :)
Derrida is a Kantian.
I think he's trying to actually move outside of Kant's categories, but knows that in so speaking he would already set up an opposition which would create a Hegelian sort of dialectic...
The concept of otherness ( "differance") came from Hegel which influenced Levi-Strauss and Saussure. Kojeve's works on Hegel were very influential.
Would you disagree with Derrida's desire to try to move outside of a Hegelian dialectic? Now that I'm thinking about that expression, maybe it'd be better to say outside of a Kantian antinomy... I do get the sense that Derrida feels trapped, and is trying to escape that trap. Do you think that's unfair?
See, Hegel is a concrete thinker. Many do not get that. So I get the idea criticizing dialectic, but in the end, Hegel means nothingness, or an irreducible otherness. I am saying Derrida idealizes otherness.
As the artist Frank Stella said, "All I want anyone to get out of my paintings is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any conclusion . . . What you see is what you see."
I'll admit that this critique is a bit beyond me. I just think your critique is of a higher level than the original article -- the original article felt like the normal sorts of things I hear when people say Derrida is bad. And maybe that works for some, but for me it didn't.
That being said -- if you feel you can say more on the topic, I'm all ears. Or if not, no worries. I'm only stating what I'm interested in, not assigning homework assignments :)
Many read the section "Absolute Knowing" in the Phenomenology as saying dialectical history comes to an end. Hegel is criticizing subjectivity and saying we are in the stage of objective knowing. Like you said, a concrete thinker. Thus Hegel is not a skeptic.
I tend to take the view @Joshs has already hinted at. Derrida is poorly understood and therefore derided. A cartoon Derrida is readily available. Ditto postmodernism. I also think for the Derrida cognoscenti, the right reading may be elusive. This is super complex, nuanced writing accessible to only the dedicated and bright, with time on their hands. Ideally academics. None of those things describe my situation, so I have opted out of Derrida and have not noticed the gap. :razz:
In that sense I'd say that I agree with you -- Derrida is a skeptic.
I suppose I feel more empathy with his skepticism than Hegel's optimism? But that shouldn't be a surprise given how I prefer Kant to Hegel :)
Indeed.
Quoting Moliere
Derrida insisted that he is not a skeptic:
“…it is impossible here to single out and to analyze in detail all of the distorting and malicious presentations of my work (or similar work, because were it merely a question of myself alone, none of this would have unfolded in such spectacular fashion), presentations by colleagues whose every sentence proves clearly that they either haven't read or haven't understood one line of the texts they wish to denounce. Likewise it is impossible to refute in a few words their accusations of nihilism, skepticism, or relativism.”( Points)
“This way of thinking context does not, as such, amount to a relativism, with everything that is sometimes associated with it (skepticism, empiricism, even nihilism). First of all because, as Husserl has shown better than anyone else, relativism, like all its derivatives, remains a philosophical position in contradiction with itself. Second, because this "deconstructive" way of thinking context is neither a philosophical position nor a critique of finite contexts, which it analyzes without claiming any absolute overview. Nevertheless, to the extent to which it-by virtue of its discourse, its socio-institutional situation, its language, the historical inscription of its gestures, etc.-is itself rooted in a given context (but, as always, in one that is differentiated and mobile), it does not renounce (it neither can nor ought do so) the "values" that are dominant in this context (for example, that of truth, etc.).”
“For of course there is a "right track", a better way, and let it be said in passing how surprised I have often been, how amused or discouraged, depending on my humor, by the use or abuse of the following argument: Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say," how can he demand of us that we read him with pertinence, precision, rigor? How can he demand that his own text be interpreted correctly? How can he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood, simplified, deformed it, etc.? In other words, how can he discuss, and discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple enough: this definition of the deconstructionist is false (that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it supposes a bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mine, which therefore must finally be read or reread. Then perhaps it will be understood that the value of truth (and all those values associated with it) is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive contexts (that is, within relations of force that are always differential-for example, socio-political-institutional-but even beyond these determinations) that are relatively stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy.”
(Limited, Inc)
"Derrida insisted that he is not a skeptic."
Yes, and I do not agree.
You said skeptics posit a totality that cannot be had. What totality does Derrida posit? He defines idealism as the identical repetition of the same ( what he calls an idea in the Kantian sense) , and argues that deconstruction shows that when we intend the repetition of meaning , this repetition must incorporate the contaminating and altering effect of context, so we end up saying something other than what we meant to say. I suppose this transforming repetition of an ideality could be considered a ‘totality that cannot be had’.
How do you think Derrida is defining the concept of skepticism?
The text.
Derrida's aesthetics are the sublime, like Kant. A vast unknowable which we know is there.
Quoting Joshs
Quoting Jackson
When Derrida uses the word ‘text’, he means context. Context for him is not a totality, it is an articulated hinge , a movement, a repetition which alters what it repeats.
For him what we know we always know differently. This is not the same as ‘unknowable’. There is nothing for Derrida which is simply vast or unknowable. I dont know where its ‘vastness’ would come from when it is always this context right now, which has no depth , vast or otherwise, and is known to us precisely as the structure of context.
Ditto. :up:
Okay.
I really think we could come together on our reading of Derrida. There's enough between us that we could find agreement here.
No?
Lets give it a try. Here’s Husserl’s take on Humean skepticism:
“Unremittingly, skepticism insists on the validity of the factually experienced world, that of actual experience,
and finds in it nothing of reason or its ideas.”( Crisis of European Sciences)
Derrida is not a skeptic in this sense, because he doesn’t locate truth in correctness or adequation with what is represented.
http://mforbes.sites.gettysburg.edu/cims226/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Week-5a-Jacques-Derrida.pdf
Here's a nice quote from a mic drop moment that introduced him to the world at large. (I come not to prays structuralism but to berry it.)
I'm interested in 'the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations' that seemingly cannot be evaded. What is it that's already there, wherever we have gathered to philosophize? What are the unwritten rules of the game that, among other moves, allow for making these rules explicit?
Or, as he might [s]say[/s] write, Derrided.
The problem I have with Derrida is going from his writing to scholar's writing -- where Derrida's texts read as extremely specific readings of a particular document, the secondary literature reads like an interpretation of his entire oeuvre. And I certainly haven't read Derrida oeuvre! I'm in a half-way house between absolute ignorance and confidence in my assertions -- a place of impression and memory, more than anything, but one I enjoy talking through if others are willing to talk with. While I normally like to bring quotes and such, I have a hard time doing so with Derrida because I feel like the philosophy is in the demonstration more than the words written.
///////////////////////////////////////
If, for Aristotle, for example, "spoken words are the symbols of mental experience, and written words are the symbols of spoken words," it is because the voice, producer of the first symbols, has a relationship of essential and immediate proximity with the mind...
The feelings of the mind, expressing things naturally, constitute a sort of universal language which can then efface itself. It is the stage of transparence. ... In every case, the voice is closest to the signified, whether it is determined strictly as sense ( thought or lived ) or more loosely as thing. All signifiers, and first and foremost the written signifier, are derivative with regard to what would wed the voice indissolubly to the mind or to the thought of the signified sense, indeed to the thing itself ( whether it is done in the Aristotelian manner that we have just indicated or in the manner of medieval theology, determining the res as a thing created from its eidos, from its sense thought in the logos or in the infinite understanding of God) . The written signifier is always technical and representative. It has no constitutive meaning. This derivation is the very origin of the notion of the "signifier."...
...
But to these metaphysico-theological roots many other hidden sediments cling. The semiological or, more specifically, linguistic "science" cannot therefore hold on to the difference between signifier and signified-the very idea of the sign-without the difference between sensible and intelligible, certainly, but also not without retaining, more profoundly and more implicitly, and by the same token the reference to a signified able to "take place" in its intelligibility, before its "fall," before any expulsion into the exteriority of the sensible here below. As the face of pure intelligibility, it refers to an absolute logos to which it is immediately united. This absolute logos was an infinite creative subjectivity in medieval theology : the intelligible face of the sign remains turned toward the word and the face of God. Of course, it is not a question of "rejecting" these notions; they are necessary and, at least at present, nothing is conceivable for us without them. It is a question at first of demonstrating the systematic and historical solidarity of the concepts and gestures of thought that one often believes can be innocently separated. The sign and divinity have the same place and time of birth. The age of the sign is essentially theological. Perhaps it will never end. Its historical closure is, however, outlined. Since these concepts are indispensable for unsettling the heritage to which they belong, we should be even less prone to renounce them. Within the closure, by an oblique and always perilous movement, constantly risking falling back within what is being deconstructed, it is necessary to surround the critical concepts with a careful and thorough discourse-to mark the conditions, the medium, and the limits of their effectiveness and to designate rigorously their intimate relationship to the machine whose deconstruction they permit; and, in the same process, designate the crevice through which the yet unnameable glimmer beyond the closure can be glimpsed.
....
There has to be a transcendental signified for the difference between signifier and signified to be somewhere absolute and irreducible. It is not by chance that the thought of being, as the thought of this transcendental signified, is manifested above all in the voice: in a language of words [mots] . The voice is heard ( understood ) that undoubtedly is what is called conscience-closest to the self as the absolute effacement of the signifier: pure auto-affection that necessarily has the form of time and which does not borrow from outside of itself, in the world or in "reality," any accessory signifier, any substance of expression foreign to its own spontaneity. It is the unique experience of the signified producing itself spontaneously, from within the self, and nevertheless, as signified concept, in the element of ideality or universality. The unworldly character of this substance of expression is constitutive of this ideality. This experience of the effacement of the signifier in the voice is not merely one illusion among many-since it is the condition of the very idea of truthbut I shall elsewhere show in what it does delude itself. This illusion is the history of truth and it cannot be dissipated so quickly. \Vithin the closure of this experience, the word [mot] is lived as the elementary and undecomposable unity of the signified and the voice, of the concept and a transparent substance of expression. This experience is considered in its greatest purity-and at the same time in the condition of its possibility as the experience of "being."
https://monoskop.org/images/8/8e/Derrida_Jacques_Of_Grammatology_1998.pdf
His deconstruction theory alone is a poster child for this. So don't ask for a passage -- ask someone to explain the deconstruction theory and you get your answers. Skepticism should be the conclusion. I don't think Derrida himself would claim himself as a skeptic (if anyone knows, post it here). But you or Moliere or Joshs should certainly arrive at that conclusion. Or declare it is not skepticism.
See this post talking about logocentrism. Ask yourself if deconstruction theory's findings are warranted.
Just a general thought on deconstruction theory -- it is designed to question the truth we attached to what we say (in text) as being externally substantiated. So it is a tool to put doubt in our assumptions.
Critical theory is itself a form of skepticism.
For myself, I think I'm looking for some amount of agreement between us here -- I'm not as interested in defending deconstruction as understanding it. Or at least understanding perspectives on deconstruction to help round out my own understanding a little better than where it was. So to start here:
Quoting Joshs
In that sense Derrida is not a skeptic because I don't think he believes in the validity of the factually experienced world -- Or, at least, that it's not a Humean construct of the mind where one can separate the experienced world from the concepts. If Derrida's philosophy is to apply to all text, and everything is text, then it follows that the experienced world is not so easily separable from concept -- hence, not a skeptic in this sense.
I certainly agree with that. I think of the modern Kantian and neo-Kantian forms of skepticism as arising from a presumed gap between our representations of the world and the world as it is in itself ( the veil of perception). As Zahavi puts it, phenomenology and deconstruction “dismiss the kind of skepticism that would argue that the way the world appears to us is compatible with the world really being completely different.”
I find your conclusion startling. :yikes:
To put it in formatted form:
Joshs: skepticism insists on the validity of the factually experienced world, and finds in it nothing of reason or its ideas.
You: In that sense Derrida is not a skeptic because I don't think he believes in the validity of the factually experienced world
Hume says the opposite.
What made sense to me was Hume's arguments regarding causation -- on the conceptual side you have the necessary connection between events, and on the experiential side you have habituation and the belief that what we experience is necessary, but only because of human habit. So necessity, at least, must be conceptually distinguishable from the world we experience.
The preconditions of skepticism are that there has to be an objective or 'true' world to be skeptical of?
I think that's a good approximation on general skepticism -- the radical skeptic claiming the world could be radically otherwise, Humean skeptic denying causation as knowledge (instead its animal habit), Kantian skepticism of things-in-themselves (which could be otherwise, but we wouldn't know, tho it seems like Kant believes we should believe it's otherwise for moral reasons)
Hume refers to causation as "constant correspondence." He denies the concept of necessary connection.
I do not know why you're asking me about Husserl, nor do I know what quote you're referring to. But, okay, I'm game.
Quoting Joshs
No worries. Cross-posting between different posters is all. This is where it's from.
This needs to be explained. I do not know what this means.
Okay. I never experienced the world as a fact. Not even sure what it means.
Reminds me of the 'myth of the given,' by Sellars.
Okay, I experience the world. Good so far.
"skepticism insists on the validity of the factually experienced world, that of actual experience,
and finds in it nothing of reason or its ideas."
So, moving over to "and finds in it nothing of reason or its ideas" -- for me, necessity -- in Hume -- is the concept that makes the most sense of the quote, because necessity is the concept that definitely isn't part of our experience: our experience is the constant correspondence of events, and through habit we assign said necessity, but it is nowhere to be found in experience, ala Hume's argument.
I think for Hume there really is not that necessity. It is not just about human experience.
But I'm willing to hear another interpretation, or perhaps Husserl's sentence is so off that it really should be dismissed out of hand? However, given that this is at least something we've shared together, I'd rather not do that. I'm hoping to come up with some kind of shared understanding.
The irony is that Hume calls himself a skeptic but I think he is providing a solution to skepticism. Hume is critical of the later Kantian "thing in itself."
I read philosophy to maximize the meaning of the text, and to see how it helps my own understanding.
To me--and it is in the Treatise--Hume solves the problem of the inner world, outer world dichotomy. What does that have to do with skepticism? There is no world other than the one we think about and experience; there is no true world. This is why I think Kant ends up with a problem Hume already showed how to solve.
I don't think there's a correct reading of a text, there are just correct readings. There are erroneous readings of various degrees or kinds, and then there's some good readings -- some more creative than others, but mostly good and within bounds of the texts I read.
'Here is what I think. Here are the reasons.'
Basically what philosophy is.
Okay, then.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4705/4705-h/4705-h.htm#link2H_4_0041
Judged by imagination, not reason.
Derrida would agree with you that there are better and worse readings of texts.
Makes sense to me.
What is it we are seeking when we seek knowledge? A true correspondence between our maps and the actual territory? Or ways of seeing the world in more and more harmoniously ordered ways that we can anticipate more and more intimately? Popper advanced the former goal and. relived we could asymptotically approach absolute scientific truth. Others believe matching our representations to an independently existing world is not the goal of knowledge,but instead we ‘ produce’ worlds with knowledge, and we can progressively produce more and more intricately orderly worlds through repeated trial and error.
Does having knowledge mean having a truth that is forever unchanging? What if the knowledge we attain is an improvement over the knowledge we seek?
That is what I think, yes.
Correct.
I don't need anyone to explain it to me because I know it very well. I just find it interesting that many who like to talk about deconstruction can't substantiate much of what they say. Very often it seems to me they simply make things up. Pretty cynical if you ask me. Skeptical, even.
I have seen many informed discussions about Derrida on this thread.
Yes.
Can you explain in your own words what deconstruction theory is?
Skepticism is skepticism towards knowledge. This is actually what we throw doubt at whenever we are skeptical about a claim.
I have no quote on his skepticism. One of the reasons I've said he's the opposite of his cartoon is it always seemed like he cared a great deal about the philosophical project -- just in his own particular way that seemed hard to enunciate.
Indeed, but it is not just knowledge; we are skeptical in relation to certain knowledge. But I guess a precondition of skepticism is a notion of practice or certainty which needs examination.
Now, I'm still waiting on my textual evidence for the claim about skepticism.
Kant is a sceptic. The thing in itself is the structure of scepticism.
Fake news.
Don't be rude.
I'm sorry, I can try again.
Your claim is false and a lie.
You are the only one making personal attacks on this thread. I will not reply to another ad hominem attack.
— Jackson
I'm sorry, I can try again.
Your claim is false and a lie.[/quote]
:snicker:
Tzara wrote some brilliant poetry. Playful at times but not so playful in Approximate Man:
the bells ring for no reason and we too
we walk to escape the multiplying ways
with a flask of scenery one illness only one
one single illness that we nurture death
I know I carry the tune in me and am not afraid
I carry death and if I die it is death
who will carry me in its imperceptible arms
subtle and light as the smell of thin grass
subtle and light as the parting for no reason
without bitterness without commitments without regret without
the bells ring for no reason and we too
...
the bells ring for no reason and we too
we will rejoice in the clank of chains
that we will sound within us with the bells
I never read Derrida. May I ask, what's the difference between "deconstruction" and "analysis"?
"Deconstruction" doesn't actually analyze.
You've just got to see an example, if you really want to know. One my favorites is Derrida's reading of Saussure (in Of Grammatology). Saussure is himself quite a fascinating thinker, and, as I understand it, Derrida's version of the crucial concept of difference is an extension of Saussure's. And grasping Saussure tunes you into the structuralism that Derrida is building-on-and-attacking. Saussure is an easy read, while Derrida is not. Christopher Norris wrote two books that provide acceptable shortcuts (and it's nice to get a summarizing overview of such a prolific writer.) The second, Deconstruction : Theory and Practice, echoes my previous point.
[quote=Norris]
If there is a single theme which draws together the otherwise disparate field of structuralist thought , it is the principle --first announced by Saussure-- that language is a differential network meaning. There is no self-evident or one-to-one link between 'signifier' and 'signified', the word as (spoken or written) vehicle and the concept it serves to evoke. Both are caught up in a play of distinctive features where differences in sound and sense are the only markers of meaning.
[/quote]
This might be helpful as well.
https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~sflores/saussure.html
A big theme/question here is how/whether language refers to the world. It's a tangent, but Brandom writes of a representer's/representing's responsibility to the represented. Referral involves a norm that governs claims and acting on such claims (still grokking this, but it feels like a lead.)
"Deconstruction" irrationalizes (i.e. fideistically accuses 'all discursive reasoning' of (transcendentally) being fideistic). :zip:
– and what do "preferences" have to do with either 'what is the case' or 'what can be said/written intelligibly (about what is the case)'?
My pleasure, and thanks for the positive feedback. You make an excellent point about the two layers in Derrida's deconstructions. One has to try and keep the distinction clear. In the case of Saussure, it's as if Derrida is siding with Saussure's radical tendency against his obliviously still-phonocentric tendency. He uses a crowbar provided by Saussure in the first place to set his work ajar.
This point really can't be emphasized enough. Along with "don't trust others, credentialed or not, to do your reading for you." I understand that an outsider might be deciding whether further investigation is warranted, since life and short and there are lots of books out there.
I'm familiar with Saussure so that'd be a good introduction i guess
[quote=Derrida]
By definition, there is therefore no properly philosophical category to qualify a certain number of tropes which have conditioned the structuring of those philosophical oppositions which are called "fundamental," "structuring," "originating": being just so many "metaphors" which would be the basis of such a "tropology," the terms "twist" or "trope" or "metaphor" are themselves governed by this rule. We could only allow ourselves to ignore this sleep of philosophy by supposing that the meaning aimed at through these figures is an essence rigorously independent of that which carries it over, which is already a philosophical thesis, one might even say the sole thesis of philosophy, the thesis which constitutes the concept of metaphor, the opposition between what is proper and what is not, between essence and accident, between intuition and discourse, between thought and language, between the intelligible and the sensible, and so forth.
...
[/quote]
I understand this 'sleep' in terms of ignoring the pictorial source of concepts/metaphors that always function synchronically/systematically. The etymological fallacy is legit. Usage can change, become abstract or metaphorical. Meaning inhering in a system of differences seems especially important as this happens. What 'matter' is, it isn't mind. And maybe that's 'all' matter is. One bit of information, a system of two categories (imagine a device that returns one bit of information about its environment.)
This seems relevant to the cartoon version of Derrida. But perhaps what was most offensive about him was his laughter or inappropriate playfulness. He goofed off in a way that embarrassed his peers. He violated an essential norm. Philosophy is a serious business. Rigorous thinking is a solemn affair.
I connect the concern with metaphor to the critique of of phonocentrism. The 'superstition' or rhetorical target is that some mind thing is perfectly present to itself as a fount of crystal clear vehicle-independent meaning. Ololon, perhaps, virgin in a snow-white dress untainted by 'writing,' symbol of all pollution by history and its stink of ambiguity and irony. The metaphor is only acceptable as a completely separate packaging, that can be harmlessly peeled-off the divine nectar of eternal insight. All of this seems highly related to the notion of the body as the prison of the soul. The basic fantasy is of some kind of stuff that's unstained by time and chance. It's almost too easy to mock such a desire, often in terms that rely on something sufficiently timeless for the critique to have purchase. It's hard to get exciting about 'knowledge' with a questionable shelf-life. As others have mentioned, Derrida is a quasi-Kantian philosopher who can't help chasing the timeless and the pure himself. I suspect that he obsessed over presence because he fucking wanted it and yet couldn't lie to himself about having it.
Perhaps Jackson should have said that , despite the fact that Kant’s idealism was intended to avoid Humean skepticism , Kant’s split between our representations of the world and the thing in itself leads inevitably to its own form of skepticism. The veil that remains in place between subject and world is deconstructed by Derrida.
Already done by Hume, who I said, was not a skeptic in the contemporary sense.
[quote=Derrida]
If, for example, we tried to ascertain the diagram for the (supposedly) proper metaphorics of Descartes, even if we allow ourselves to suppose what is far from given, that we could rigorously delimit the metaphorical corpus belonging to his signature alone, we should have to bring to light, beneath the layer of metaphors which are apparently didactic (those reviewed in the psychological and empirical analysis of Spoerri: the ivy and the tree, the road, the house, the town, the machine, the foundation or chain), another less but equally systematic stratum which would not only beneath the first but also interwoven with it. There we should come upon the wax and the pen, dress and nakedness, the boat, the clock,t he seeds and the lodestone, the book, the stick, and so on. To reconstruct the grammar of these metaphors would be to relate its logic to what is taken to be nonmetaphorical writing, in this case to what is called the philosophical system, the meaning of concepts and the order of reasons; but also to relate it to longer sequences, to patterns of permanence and continuity, the "same" metaphor being able to function differently in one place and another. But if we put above all else our respect for the philosophical specificity of this syntax, we thereby also recognize its subordination to sense or meaning, to the truth of the philosophical concept, to what is signified in philosophy. And it is to that main item signified in onto-theology that the tenor of the dominant metaphor will always return: the circle of the heliotrope. Certainly, the metaphors of light and of the circle, so important in Descartes, are not organized as they are in Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, or Husserl. But if we turn to the most critical and most properly Cartesian point of the critical process, to the point of hyperbolic doubt, of the hypothesis of the Evil Genius, to the point at which doubt attacks not only ideas of sensible origin, but "clear and distinct" ideas, and the self-evident truths of mathematics, this point we know very well that what allows the work to start off again and to continue, its last resort, is designated as lumen naturale. The natural light, and all the axioms which it enables us to see, are never subjected to the most radical doubt. Indeed, that doubt is practised in that light. "For I cannot doubt that which the natural light causes me to believe to be true, as, for example, it has shown me that I am from the fact that I doubt"(Third Meditation). Among the axioms which the natural light causes me to believe to be true, there is, on each occasion, and with each step, what allows emergence from doubt, and progress in the order of reasons; in particular, what allows the proof of the existence of a God who is not a deceiver. ("Now it is manifest by the natural light that there must at least be as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in its effect . . . so that the light of nature shows us clearly that the distinction between creation and conservation is solely a distinction of reason. . . . From this it is manifest that He cannot be a deceiver, since the light of nature teaches us that fraud and deception necessarily proceed from some defect," etc.) Prior to any determinate presence or any representative idea, natural light constitutes a kind of ether of thought and of the discourse proper to it. As something natural, it has its source in God, in the God whose existence has been put in doubt and then demonstrated thanks to it. "I have certainly no cause to complain that God has not given me an intelligence which is more powerful, or a natural light which is stronger than that which I have received from Him . . ." (Fourth Meditation). Precisely in breaking out of the logical circle which has so much preoccupied him, Descartes inscribes the chain of reasons in the circle of natural light which proceeds from and returns to God.This metaphorics no doubt has its own specific syntax; but as a metaphorics it belongs to a more general syntax, a more extensive system whose constraints are equally operative in Platonism; and everything becomes clear in this sun, sun of absence and presence, blinding and luminous, dazzling. This is the end of the Third Meditation, where the existence of God has just been proved for the first time thanks to the natural light which he himself has bestowed on us, in the pretence of disappearing and allowing us to seek the blinding source of its clarity: "It seems to me right to pause for a while in order to contemplate God Himself, to ponder at leisure His marvellous attributes, to consider, and admire, and adore, the beauty of this light so resplendent, at least as far as the strength of my mind, which is in some measure dazzled by the sight, will allow me to do so." Of course, the adoration here is that of a philosopher, and since the natural light is natural, Descartes does not take what he says to belike what a theologian would say:- for a theologian would be content with metaphor. And metaphor must be left to the theologian: "The author could give a satisfactory explanation, according to his philosophy, of the creation of the world, as described in Genesis ....The account of creation there is perhaps metaphorical; it must therefore be left to the theologians. . . . Why is it said, in fact, that darkness preceded light? . . . And as for the fountains of the great deep, there too is a metaphor, but this metaphor escapes us" .A presence disappearing in its own radiance, a hidden source of light, of truth and of meaning, an obliteration of the face of being-such would be the insistent return of that which subjects metaphysics to metaphor. To metaphors, we should say: for the word can only be in the plural. If there were only one possible metaphor (a dream at the basis of philosophy), if the play of metaphors could be reduced to a family circle or group of metaphors, that is, to a "central," "fundamental," or "principal" metaphor, there would no longer be any true metaphor: there would only be the guarantee of reading the proper sense in a metaphor that was true. Now it is because the metaphorical comes into play in the plural that it does not escape syntax; and that it gives rise, in philosophy too, to a text which is not exhausted by an account of its sense (a concept signified, or a metaphorical tenor: a thesis), nor by the visible or invisible presence of its theme (the meaning and truth of being). But it is because the metaphorical does not reduce syntax, but sets out in syntax its deviations, that it carries itself away, can only be what it is by obliterating itself, endlessly constructs its own destruction.
[/quote]
He does indeed place desire for pure presence at the heart of all desire. But pure presence for Derrida is death, so desire must always be thwarted or interrupted in order to continue to be.
Of Grammatology also has a great introduction, and lots of copies were printed, so one can get used copies pretty cheap from Amazon, etc.
Like the face of God. There's maybe some German Romanticism in Derrida. And/or a certain slant of light, winter afternoons,...
Bennington turned me on the idea that Derrida was obsessed with what he criticized. To be rational about rationality is a complicated project. One criticizes the very condition of possibility of that criticism. But this is also just Nuerath's boat. We were always already doing it.
I might add that usage doesn’t only become metaphorical. For Derrida there is no non-metaphorical usage. Also, one would not be able to separate ‘mind’ from ‘matter’ , form from content , the transcendental from the empirical, presence from absence except as poles of a singular event.
Sounds right.
I hear you, but I don't think we think can or should just jettison that very distinctions that make such exciting claims possible in the first place.
Let's imagine a set of concepts such that, starting from any privileged subset, we can use that subset to rhetorically hobble all the rest.
Along these lines, see how your latest claim above depends on the concepts of singularity, polarity, and eventhood. Which, according to your own claim, must be metaphorical usages. As I grok the white mythology (and I expect you'll agree), it's no good to simply point out the metaphorical origin or residue of master concepts. The most obvious objection is that metaphor is itself a metaphor being applied metaphysically in such a context. This is a problem in general with centers of structures/systems, both inside and outside problematically.
Anatole France's criticism strikes me as important, but its limitations (Derrida's contribution) seem just as important. 'Philosophy' is just the white European man's disavowed myth system. That's the accusation. All his master concepts are spooks, figments, fairy tales with the images rubbed off. It's a basically anti-intellectual belief that philosophers just worship fairy tales like everyone else without admitting it to themselves...that genuine rationality is impossible, so go have fun with your preferred meta-narrative.
To me it's noteworthy that the move often used against cartoon versions of Derrida is basically the move that Derrida himself uses against Anatole France's fictional anti-metaphysician of the The Garden of Epicurus. Cartoon pomo is understood (correctly) to contradict itself. Or, at least, to reduce itself to a mere hunch or preference that has no binding force.
How is it similar to Brandom?
I'm new to Brandom, so buyer beware, but rationality is all about norms. Forget (or move to the background) all the ontological chatter about minds and matter. Think about practical human beings in the world holding one another accountable for propositions. There are proper ways to justify claims, proper ways to use a concept. Much of this propriety is tacit, down on the level of blind skill. But philosophers especially have made such skill explicit with their metacognitive vocabulary. We were always rational, but we could not always make claims about our claim making in general, etc.
Anyway, phonocentrism privileges speech over writing. Speech is (or was said to be) the proper example of a sign system, or the proper way to communicate sacred insights, just as reproductive sex has been understood as proper sex while homosexuality or just contraception in a heterosexual context was understood as secondary if not outright perverse.
I also mentioned tonal propriety in a post above. I think Derrida offends some with his playfulness. His 'Sarl' joke and many others in Limited Inc are not 'professional.' Is a seriousness of presentation essential to rationality? I don't think so. But the guy with the mohawk or face tattoo has more of a hill to climb. And so does the joker around solemn purveyors of science.
That is not true. One of the weaker claims by Derrida.
Well...I've read Saussure, and Saussure privileges speech.
But I am very open to the idea that Derrida whipped up a boogeyman or sniffed out a conspiracy, that he projected his private concerns on the tradition. Some great ideas, but he's not my guru, so hack away. If you've read his bios (maybe you have), you know he made some awkward moves (as do we all.)
Derrida's idea that "presence" is the prevailing idea in Western philosophy is false. It barely makes sense.
And, Socrates says speech is superior to the written word...but it is Plato the writer giving Socrates these words.
Personally I agree that presence in general is a tricky thing to gripe about. Hence the hint toward German Romanticism. Sartre also comes to mind...the desire of consciousness/nothingness to finally be something...
On the other hand, it makes excellent sense in the limited Saussurian context. A system of differences without positive elements. (Systematic) form not substance. This is why I try to speak only about the Derrida I've studied most and makes most sense to me.
I don't think Saussure was referring only to spoken language.
Of course he wasn't. He didn't only write of speech. But speech was the ideal and the focus. Yet Saussure can't help relying on the written 'face' of language to make sense of the clearly 'official' or 'proper' voice (this also occurs with other critics of writing who nevertheless resort to metaphors of writing at the crucial moment.) As mentioned above, Derrida reads the radical aspect of Saussure against still-phonocentric biases that are also in the text. Because language is a system of differences and a form without substance, it makes no sense to privilege the voice. Why should the ear have better access to pure, differential form?
I won't go to too much trouble to make the case for Saussure's phonocentrism, because it's not exactly hidden away in footnotes, but I'll do this much.
[quote = Saussure ]
The subject matter of linguistics comprises all manifestations of human speech, whether that of savages or civilized nations, or of archaic, classical or decadent periods. In each period the linguist must consider not only correct speech and flowery language, but all other forms of expression as well. And that is not all: since he is often unable to observe speech directly, he must consider written texts, for only through them can he reach idioms that are remote in time or space.
[/quote]
Written language is different from spoken language. I don't see anything interesting about Derrida's observation.
Should I find a journalist or will you?
Point being that you don't care about Derrida and I do a little and pretty much no one cares about those first two situations, not even a little.
I have no idea what that meant.
You offered a mere report of your feelings. So I razzed you for it.
Goodbye.
A Derridean point, by the way. But Plato may feel that writing is a lesser evil than oblivion.
I am a philosopher and discussing ideas. I suggest you stop making personal attacks.
An obvious point, to anyone who read Plato.
Should I find the tiny violin player or will you?
I imagine you sounding like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Z2CklSxM0
I won't be reading your posts.
I don't think you can do philosophy without some risk of your claims or expressions being challenged, and I am not defending pointless hostility by saying so. But I'm sorry if I caused more discomfort than I intended.
It wouldnt be a question of jettisoning distinctions , but of making any singularity equivocal and indeterminable(which is not the same thing as indefinable). Singularity for Derrida , as the gramme, the mark, differance, is not a univocal concept, it is a bipolar hinge, a differentiation. an in-between. To be a singularity is to borrow from what it is not, and this is the essence of metaphor, or what Derrida calls the metaphoricity of metaphor.
This would not be Derrida’s view. For him there is no form without substance. Form and content are equivocal in every meaning. Saussure’s system of language is a structuralism, because it is oriented around a systematic center. For Derrida the ‘system’ of language remakes itself one singular to the next, without reference to a pre-existing totality.
That would also be my view of Derrida's view. Correctly or not, and speaking metaphorically, I understand him to insist on the total incarnation of the divine. Shit being mixed up is primary. Afterword we use signs to create purity and presence and eternity and the sign itself, etc.
Quoting Joshs
Jesus, brother, I hope so. It's a or even the prototypical example.
Quoting Joshs
Maybe he made that claim. It's grandiose enough. If so, maybe it can be justified. Still, I don't think a tamer version of that claim is anything Saussure would object to. Synchronic study is an abstraction. We take language, living evolving thing, at an ideal moment. Every tiny piece of parole will theoretically reverberate through the structure, changing it. But is this more than a footnote? The magnitude of that reverberation matters. Is it news?
I'm curious about the 'gramatology' label. Saussure called his topic 'linguistique générale".
Maybe you can tame what you are getting at. I like Derrida enough to have actually read a decent chunk of his work in my free time. And this is without having friends also into this difficult and now largely forgotten stuff. But I didn't like him because he could be annoyingly obscure. I tolerated it for the good stuff. I like continental depth, but I appreciate analytic clarity and directness.
As I understand it, it's a slicker version of Writingology. Basically there's a deep structure in sign systems that's more like writing than (an idealized vision of) speech, and 'writing' is repurposed to refer to this deeper structure. As you know, Saussure glimpsed a semiology broader than linguistics, and Derrida (sort of) takes it over.
I should have said the issue for Derrida was the undecidability vs the indetermination of the poles of distinctions.
“I do not believe I have ever spoken of "indeterminacy," whether in regard to "meaning" or anything else. Undecidability is something else again. While referring to what I have said above and elsewhere, I want to recall that undecidability is always a determinate oscillation between possibilities (for example, of meaning, but also of acts). These possibilities are themselves highly determined in strictly defined situations (for example, discursive-syntactical or rhetorical-but also political, ethical, etc. ). They are pragmatically determined.The analyses that I have devoted to undecidability concern just these determinations and these definitions, not at all some vague "indeterminacy. " I say "undecidability" rather than "indeterminacy" because I am interested more in relations of force, in differences of force, in everything that allows, precisely, determinations in given situations to be stabilized through a decision of writing (in the broad sense I give to this word, which also includes political action and experience in general). There would be no indecision or double bind were it not between determined (semantic, ethical, political) poles, which are upon occasion terribly necessary and always irreplaceably Singular. Which is to say that from the point of view of semantics, but also of ethics and politics, "deconstruction" should never lead either to relativism or to any sort of indeterminism.(Limited, Inc, p.148)
Amen man. :clap:
A tamer version of that claim which presupposes the dialectical transformation of centered structures(reverberation through a structure) is a form of structuralism.
What is problematic here is the justification of a center, an ‘all of these together’. Deleuze showed how one can conceptualization a system with no center , a rhizomatic assemblage of differential singularities whose sense changes from one singular element to the next.
The Saussurian model is widely seen these days in the form of a dynamical reciprocal causality within patterned
structures.
Writing was historically derived from counting stuff. Oil, grain, sheep, cattle were counted for trade, and there was a need for some records for inventories and transactions; specifically in Sumer, where writing derived from accounting, and only applied secondarily to speech. Another source, in Egypt, was painting. The Egyptians progressively widened the use of standardized paintings of gods, humans and animals to 'word painting', apparently as an afterthought.
And then it took 2000 years to move from ideograms to the first alphabet. (Chinese never made the move)
So on these historical grounds I would disagree with idealising writing as some sort of Ur-language.
Derrida is interested in this kind of thing. Our math these days depends on symbols that are only very awkwardly translated into English. We learn to think with these non-phonetic symbols. We are also cyborgs in the sense that higher mathematics would not be possible without the memory aids of books. Our minds are not hermetically sealed spirit chambers. They are continuous with our bodies and environments. Or that's an idea I read into Derrida.
Aka ideograms. Yes, modern math has rediscovered the power of ideograms. They are much more intuitive and shorter (essential almost) than alphabetic code can ever be.
Many alphabetic letters derive from ideograms originally. 'A' is an inverted cow head with horns.
That’s certainly quite compatible with embodied , enactive , embedded approaches in cognitive science. Gallagher’s primary corporeal intersubjectivity, which borrows from the phenomenological
work of Merleau-Ponty, is one example. The relation of embodied phenomenology to Derrida, however , is quite complex, and has to run through Heidegger’s and Derrida’s critiques of the subjectivist underpinnings of Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment model.
Since you know some math, perhaps you know of structuralism in the philosophy of math? I think that's adjacent to Derrida too. The meaning or content of '1' (for instance) is 'only' its place in a system. Each number 'is' its relationship to the others. No Platonic realm needed, though one can argue that the norms for using numbers 'properly' have a kind of social existence (a pattern in our doings, which is somewhat accountable to patterns in extra-human nature, given the origin and application of math.)
I feel compelled to emphasize here that Derrida does not take writing (as commonly understood) to be the ur-language but rather sketches/develops the concept of this ur-language (or deep structure) and gives it, for complicated rhetorical reasons, the confusing name 'writing' (and lots of other names.) It's a bit like a fairy tale, where the anti-hero is given a name that emphasizes questionable origins, to grow to be the origin of origins.
Deleuze is useful here. There is a lot of Derrida in his position on mathematics. He argues that quantification is inherently qualitative. That is , every repetition of a numeric counting (a counting of degree) is simultaneously a qualitative change. Every difference in degree is a difference in kind.
“ “ A multiplicity has neither subject nor object, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions
that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing in nature (the laws of combination therefore increase in number as the multiplicity grows). … An assemblage is precisely this increase in the dimensions of a multiplicity that necessarily changes in nature as it expands its connections. There are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root.
The number is no longer a universal concept measuring elements according to their emplacement in a given dimension, but has itself become a multiplicity that varies according to the dimensions considered (the primacy of the domain over a complex of numbers attached to that domain). We do not have units (unites) of measure, only multiplicities or varieties of measurement.”( A Thousand Plateaus)
That seems true to me, but we ignore such differences for practical reasons. As Nietzsche saw, cognition makes unequal things equal. Such 'lies' are life-preserving. Differences that make no (practical) difference are ignored. We are automatically and compulsively pragmatists in this sense. Note that we don't treat such things as lies. Instead Deleuze's claim would be suspect, an abuse of 'grammar' (proprieties of use), until it was made clear he was a philosopher.
Then we can consider that self which bears responsibility and suffers praise and blame as a piece of necessary 'fiction,' as a kind of successful meme or habit. 'Fiction' is not an ideal metaphor here, and 'convention' neglects that it's received like language, like the law. I use Shakespeare as an image out of respect for what Bloom, probably correctly, projects on the bard. All the world's a stage. A key aspect of the human situation is our awareness of ourselves as characters for others...and for ourselves, not one without the other. Hegel, who saw that Shakespeare invented self-overhearing characters, went on to emphasize the importance of mutual recognition in any epistemological context.
Curious too:
What did Derrida's approach say about nihilism?
What was Derrida's conceptualization of Platonic idealism?
Small point maybe, but what do you imagine to be the center of a system of differences without positive elements? I don't see a center for language itself, but only a central cluster perhaps in certain language games (such as in philosophy there are few master concepts entangled with all the others.)
Hmm. A system of differences without positive elements. The question is how that system comes into play in contextual word use. As a normative , grammatical or rule-forming criterion, is the relation between this system and actual word use referential( the rule is accessed and applied to the current situation) or does the system only actually exist as it is being redefined by the present context of word use? Witty thought of such systems in terms of family resemblance wherein the particular context establishes the rule, (from the particular to the general) , rather than the pre-existing structure determining the contextual sense of the world ( from general to particular)
To all,
I have copypasted here a passage from J. Hillis Miller as to what exactly the deconstruction is. Please read and if you have any doubts as to the strength of this explanation by Miller, please look him up. Also look up Julian Wolfreys.
(J. Hillis Miller, Theory Now and Then, 1991, 126.)
Credits to Julian Wolfreys, Deconstruction – Derrida, 1997
I'm not sure if this is meant as a compliment or a snipe.
Derrida, too, must acknowledge that the ground upon which his criticism is organized is on non-existent ground. Miller is pointing out the irony, or the parallel, if you will.
For context, I'm a person who become fascinated with Derrida and put a substantial but still non-expert amount of time into some of his texts, primarily the early ones, because I was most interested in the issue of meaning (as in to what degree do/can we know what we are talking about.)
While he has grandiose moments like Nietzsche, his are hopeful and without the shrill negativity, and vaguely envision new ways of thinking rather than new values. His actual thoughts are detailed critiques of thinkers like Saussure, Husserl, and Rousseau. Their thrust is largely anti-Romantic. The truth is not nakedly there in some brutal intuition. Nothing is as simple and pure as folks might want it to be. Not even mother. So I'd say no. The early relatively apolitical Derrida is 'guilty' primarily of not being a joiner or of a certain vanity that exaggerated the significance or extent or originality of his version of the revolution (same old Western rationality purifying itself of its dream of purity, etc.), not so uncommon perhaps in '67.
Speaking loosely, his 'freeplay' seems like some sunny cousin of nihilism. Derrida was well aware of Camus and Sartre (he continued to respect Nausea), and Nietzsche was one of his heroes. So certainly he thought about it. But I think his message was more about the opportunity in godlessness (not that he'd use such a phrase.) On the other hand, his bio ( the one by Peeters) reveals that he was subject to intense intermittent 'nihilistic' depressions. On the bright side, he experienced fits of intense inspiration too. This is worth watching, if you haven't seen it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoKnzsiR6Ss
But it's very cute that you know how to press search in Google.
Are you really a robot? Can't think for yourself. I say that's skepticism based on my thoughts of what skepticism is. I don't care whether he claims he's a skeptic. His criticism is a form of skepticism.
When I say I'm putting in my critique as skepticism, I don't need Derrida to agree with me. I'm not here to point out that Derrida is a self-proclaimed skeptic. I am here to point out that my conclusion about his ideas led to my criticism that his is a form of skepticism.
"Substantiate your points"
"You should be banned!"
I love it.
This is one of its virtues, and it's just good ol' Western rationality at work, looking for weakness in totalizing systems, looking for plot holes and confusions and the one loose brick that makes the whole thing vulnerable. Checking a totalizing system or theory of knowledge for weakness is no more absurd or irrational than checking every inch of a parachute you're planning to use.
Now, deal with your own self and learn how to read and come up with your own ideas.
Down to earth comment! There are better philosophical tools to critique ideas/written texts -- we don't need to use deconstruction.
I'm glad I could give my own little testimony.
On the Plato thing, which I didn't get to, I think his work suggests that Platonic forms are unrealistically 'pure' (impossibly uncontaminated by and independent of history.) A nice analogue is the contamination of 'literal' and 'serious' conceptuality by metaphor. While such conceptuality cannot be collapsed into metaphor (or metaphor would itself so collapse), it's also never pure. That kind of thing.
What proof can you provide of your knowledge?
The tricky issue is that the meaning of 'actually exist' is caught up in what we are discussing here. Do we (can we?) ever 'actually know' what we are actually talking about when we say 'actually exist'? Or, and now it turns back on me, when we say 'actually know'? It's largely blind or pre-articulate skill.
Hence my interest in semantic constraint, presumably primarily pragmatic. As we wander from practical contexts, there's less and less constraint. Only the symbols returned by smaller and smaller groups, naturally biased toward the intelligibly and significance of the coin of the realm.
I suppose one could make a more or less successful case for one of the branches of your either/or, or for its dissolution in some more profound framing of the situation. But while I feel able, if willing, to play at this level of abstraction, I become more...skeptical...of this twilight kingdom's secret candy.
@Streetlight has clearly fucking read lots of Derrida and many many other thinkers, while certain other rowdy participants have clearly not.
Folks should maybe work out why they simultaneously want to nullify Derrida and yet find it impressive enough to have grokked him to demand proof of that accomplishment.
Just admit that you want in and put in the effort.
FWIW, I've been through weird bouts of resistance/desire myself with thinkers. It's normal...I hope.
Jackson's request is reasonable. Let Streetlight respond please.
Here’s my collection of Derrida quotes about Sartre. They’re all nasty. Hold onto your seat:
The Pocket-Size Interview with Jacques Derrida Freddy Tellez and Bruno Mazzoldi “It is true that in my work Sartre was very important, in the beginning. When I was a student, he was already there, and it's by reading Sartre that, in a certain way, I began to get into the field of philosophy and literature. For this reason, it would be absurd for me to try to absolutely distance myself from Sartre. That being said, quite quickly I thought it clear that Sartre was a representative of a philosophy like Husserlian phenomenology, adapted to France, a philosophy that was already beginning to make some noise but that at the same time, and even with respect to what he was introducing or translating from phenomenology, from Heidegger even, that there were some enlargements, distortions, simplifications, which from that point of view seemed to me to amortize what was essentially interesting about the work of Husserl and Heidegger. And so since then I have never ceased, in a certain way, to see better into all of that. [Lights up a cigar.]
FT: But do you mean that from the point of view of the legitimacy of Husserl's and Heidegger's thought, for instance, or of a critique of the reading offered by Sartre of Husserl or Heidegger? JD: Yes, I mean that both in what he was keeping and in what he was critiquing, in my opinion, he was not a rigorous enough reader. And from that point of view, it turns out that the work done by him in France was very ambiguous. I am not saying that it was simply negative, but he and others with him kept from us for a long time the real importance and the sharpness of Husserl's and Heidegger's work while importing them and pretending to critique them, as both translator, if you like, of Husserl and Heidegger and critic of Husserl and Heidegger. This is not to say that it was simply a question of finding our way back into Husserlian and Heideggerian orthodoxy against Sartre. Not at all. But I think that even in order to understand, to critique Husserl and Heidegger, it was necessary to understand them better than Sartre did in those days. The point is not here to issue some condemnation; since that's how it happened, it couldn't have happened otherwise, in those conditions and in a certain number of historical conditions. But it is a fact that Sartre's thought obscured in quite a powerful way what was happening elsewhere in German philosophy, even in the philosophy that he himself pretended to be introducing in France. To say nothing of Marx and to say nothing of Freud and to say nothing of Nietzsche, whom he, in a way, never really read. I mean that he misunderstood Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche (to put them together as is usually done) even more than he misunderstood Husserl and Heidegger, whom he nevertheless quoted.
And so, from that point of view, we have to deal with a huge sedimentation of thought, a huge philosophical sediment that covered the French scene for quite a few years after the war and that, I think, has marked everyone from that generation. I would say that there was a lot of dissimulation, and subsequently it has been necessary to undo this sedimentation in order to find again what was dissimulated by it, in a way. But, in the end, I don't want to take it all out on Sartre now and say that he as an individual is responsible for this obscuring. If this obscuring has taken place it is due to a great number of conditions: the French tradition of thought, the state of the French university, the ideological scene in Paris, the political scene in the postwar period. OK, all of that is worthy of an analysis that would not be limited to Sartre as an individual. I would not want to privilege..not even in a critique..the case of Sartre. An analysis would have to be undertaken that would run, again, through very complex historical and political networks, right? Through, evidently, once again, what the French university was like. But Sartre is still, I would say, on this point, even though he left the university quite early and, until today, is very deeply marked, more than some professional academics, by the university, by this very building, by the rhetoric, by the display of the dissertation, of the lesson, in his writing. For this reason his writing, for instance (I haven't read the text on Calder, but I have read others), is still, in spite of his agility, his talent, and his resources, marked by a French university rhetoric against which he has never really busied himself, whatever his position against the university might have been. That doesn't change anything.
I think that, for example, "Cartouches" is more of a rupture with respect to this rhetoric..even though I, me, personally [smiles], am inside the university to a greater degree than Sartre..let's say, more of a rupture against that kind of writing than that of Sartre's.” From ‘Points':
Q.: It is then that you began to read Sartre, right?
J . D . : A little earlier. He played a major role for me then. A model that I have since judged to be nefarious and catastrophic, but that I love; no doubt as what I had to love, and I always love what I have loved, it's very simple . . .
Q.: Nefarious and catastrophic! That's a bit strong; you'll have to explain . . .
J . D . : Do you think we should keep that or cut it? Okay. First of all, I repeat, Sartre no doubt, well, guided me, as he did so many others at the time. Reading him, I discovered Blanchot, Bataille, Ponge-whom I now think one could have read otherwise. But finally, Same was himself the "unsurpassable horizon"P Things changed when, thanks to him but especially against him, I read Husser!, Heidegger, Blanchot, and others. One would have to devote several dozen books to this question: What must a society such as ours be if a man, who, in his own way, rejected or misunderstood so many theoretical and literary events of his timelet's say, to go quickly, psychoanalysis, Marxism, structuralism, Joyce, Artaud, Bataille, Blanchot-who accumulated and disseminated incredible misreadings of Heidegger, sometimes of Husserl, could come to dominate the cultural scene to the point of becoming a great popular figure? It is true that works can traverse their time like tornadoes, overturn the historical landscape, interpret it without seeming to understand anything about it, without being sensitive or acquiescing to every "novelty."
I don't think this is the case with Sartre but, while asking myself a lot of questions, even about his likeable and legendary generosity, I sometimes share the almost familial affection that many feel for this man whom I have never seen. And who does not belong to the age of those works that matter for me . . .
Q. : And that were being written at the same time . . .
J . D . : Or even much earlier, look at Mallarme! What must a French intellectual be if such a phenomenon can happen or happen again? What grants authority to his evaluations? What interests me still today is especially the France of Sartre, the relation of our culture to this man (rather than to his work) . And also Sartre's relation to the University. It is said that he escaped it or resisted it. It seems to me that university norms determined his work in the most internal fashion, as they did for so many writers who don't realize or who deny this fact. An analysis of his philosophical rhetoric, of his literary criticism, and even of his plays or novels would be greatly helped if it took into account, for better or worse, the models and the history of education, the lycee, the khagne, the Ecole Normale, and the agregation.4 I began this exercise, one day, with some students, taking the example of Sartre's Saint Genet. Thus an enormous screen of French culture. But reading it, I no doubt learned a lot and, even if it goes against him, I am indebted to him. But tell me, is this an interview about Sartre!
Q. : So, in short, you see in Sartre the perfect example of what an intellectual should not be . . .
J . D . : I didn't say that . . .
Q.: But, then, what should be the attitude of an intellectual in relation to political affairs?
J . D . : No one stands to gain by there being a model, especially just one model. Also the category of "intellectual" no longer has very strict limits, and probably never did. It is true that Sartre's example, which is why one has to insist upon it, incites one to prudence. His academic legitimacy (graduate of the Ecole Normale, agrege) and his legitimacy asa writer for a major publishing house5 (don't ever separate these two things, but I am going too quickly) lent to his most impulsive remarks, whether or not you take them seriously, a formidable authority, the authority that was not granted to stricter and more interesting analysts. In political affairs especially, as everyone knows. One could take other examples today, because the thing is being amplified here and there as new powers and new structures appear (media, publishing, and so forth). Not that one has therefore to go into retreat or avoid taking public positions: quite to the contrary, the moment has perhaps come to do more and better, that is, otherwise . . .”
“After the war, under the name of Christian or atheist existentialism, and in conjunction with a fundamentally Christian personalism, the thought that dominated France presented itself essentially as humanist. Even if one does not wish to summarize Sartre's thought under the slogan "existentialism is a humanism," it must be recognized that in Being and Nothingness, The Sketch of a Theory of the Emotions, etc., the major concept, the theme of the last analysis, the irreducible horizon and origin is what was then called "human-reality." As is well known, this is a translation of Heideggerian Dasein. A monstrous translation in many respects, but so much the more significant. That this translation proposed by Corbin was adopted at the time, and that by means of Sartre's authority it reigned, gives us much to think about the reading or the nonreading of Heidegger during this period, and about what was at stake in reading or not reading him in this way. Certainly the notion of "human-reality" translated the project of thinking the meaning of man, the humanity of man, on a new basis, if you will. If the neutral and undetermined notion of "human reality" was substituted for the notion of man, with all its metaphysical heritage and the substantialist motif or temptation inscribed in it, it was also in order to suspend all the presuppositions which had always constituted the concept of the unity of man.
Admit you haven't read enough Derrida for this dialogue, swallow your pride, eat your crow, and go read some Derrida. Pursue wisdom, not winning.
It's the beauty of anonymity: you can digest your glaring deficiencies in private.
It's obvious to anyone watching this slaughter - and who's read a few of his books - that you haven't read enough Derrida to have a leg to stand on.
My wanting him banned as a moderator is because he couldn't provide clear explanation of what he claims to know -- twice! He is a moderator after all.
Jackson's request is reasonable. Streetlight asked for a quote, I provided one that's written by Miller.
When Jackson asked for support of Streetlight's knowledge of deconstruction, this is what Streetlight said. Seriously? A simple request and his answer is this.
Quoting Streetlight
Again, let Streetlight provide an answer to a reasonable request.
I have been describing skepticism in terms of the impossibility of transcending the rift between our representations of truth and meaning , and the world itself. Is that your notion of skepticism?
The very idea of the rift is skepticism.
I agree
Like I said: go read some more Derrida.
I disagree with Miller’s account of deconstruction. His definition is one that has been used within literary theory, but their understanding of deconstruction differs from Derrida’s. For one thing, there is never just one “alogical” element in a structure, as if the structure is unified outside or apart from this one element. A structure is a system of differences in which no part has a ‘logical’ relation to any other part. This does not mean that these relations are alogical either. They are neither one nor the other, but both at the same time. We don’t first have structures and then their unraveling. The unraveling is one with their formation , always one element at a time.
According to his profile and my experience Streetlight hasn't been a moderator for some time now.
The staff page corroborates my comment above:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/profile/members/staff
Not sure of what but you're likely right if it has to do with Derrida. I've only read three or four of his books.
No contest with your disagreement with Miller's explanation.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, and this requires more explanation, of course. When deconstruction claims that we really do not have grounds upon which the truth of our literary writings rest, this is the stuff that skepticism is made of. There's more, but I've been overposting here already. :joke: :
Note: grounds here means external foundation upon which truth is based on.
That's the attitude I remember. Personally I think Derrida is a more consistently powerful thinker, but Sartre has powerful moments, and not only in Nausea. Being and Nothingness is amazing at times.
It's hard not to see some relationship between the impossible project of being God and the pursuit of some pure and original plenitude. Being here, presence there. If philosophy ever gets its own Harold Bloom, the Derrida-Sartre anxiety might feature with the Heidegger-Nietzsche version. Bloom makes the point that the strong point isn't like most people. He's far more terrified of death. Hence the need to build A pyramid.
Good. I didn't notice.
Quoting L'éléphant
But deconstruction doesn’t need external grounds. When one assumes such ‘externality’, one is already courting skepticism. Deconstruction doesn’t do away with grounds , it takes what has preciously been assumed as ‘external’ and makes it internal to a structure. Put differently , what grounds any element of meaning is memory , history , a formal basis from which I intend to mean something. But the catch here is that in intending to mean what I mean , I alter that history , memory , form. So each element of meaning rests on a ground that it alters , and both of these features take place at the same time( form and content , memory and change. It is not the case that this constitutes lack of a ground, and therefore a skepticism. Deconstruction reveals an extraordinarily intricate order to the flow of meaningful expereince. It reveals ongoing patterns and thematics, and how they are created and persist by continuing to be the same differently. The kinds of things one expects from skepticism: chance, randomness, arbitrariness , meaninglessness, are utterly missing from deconstruction.
Wrong way to put it. Deconstruction demonstrates there is no external source of the truth of our claims, rather Quoting Joshs
Do you see why I charge skepticism? Our traditional belief is that what we write as history, for example, is based on some objective measure of truth. But deconstruction critic says that there is no objective, external support.
Excellent quote. I've only seen and loved the manifestoes. I've had good luck with artists. Like Ad Reinhart say (kwotes below.)
//////
Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.
The one object of fifty years of abstract art is to present art-as-art and as nothing else, to make it into the one thing it is only, separating and defining it more and more, making it purer and emptier, more absolute and more exclusive - non-objective, non-representational, non-figurative, non-imagist, non-expressionist, non-subjective. the only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not.
My painting represents the victory of the forces of darkness and peace over the powers of light and evil.
Art is too serious to be taken seriously.
If you like that one, Approximate Man would be your cup of tea. A hundred-plus pages of more or less sustained lucid illumination.
Quoting igjugarjuk
Lyricless music was always that. I prefer the weirdly-representational to the non-.
I wonder if there's a secret koanic intent in perfectly non-representational art.
Citation please.
Quoting L'éléphant
Citation please.
I don't quite get non-expressionist or non-subjective. Can a movement be alembicated to sterility?
Also, I'd like to ask for you also to provide citation for your explanation of deconstruction. I'm not picky, just provide some published source. Thanks.
Hah! Good point.
[quote=Miller]Deconstruction as a mode of interpretation works by a careful and circumspect entering of each textual labyrinth. The [deconstruction] critic feels his way from figure to figure, from concept to concept, from mythical motif to mythical motif, in a repetition which is in no sense a parody. It employs nevertheless, the subversive power present in even the most exact and ironical doubling. The deconstructive critic seeks to find, by this process of retracing, the element in the system studied which is alogical, the thread in the text in question which will unravel it all, or the loose stone which will pull down the whole building.
The deconstruction, rather, annihilates the ground on which the building stands by showing that the text has already annihilated that ground, knowingly and unknowingly. Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of the text but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock but thin air.
The uncanny moment in Derrida’s criticism, the vacant place around which all his work is organized, is the formulation of this non-existence of the ground out of which the whole textual structure seems to rise…[/quote]
Where does this quote speak of external sources of truth, or their lackthereof?
Why do you continue to make things up?
Are you a skeptic?
Danke!
Claims which I will continue to ask you to substantiate if you continue to make them, regardless of weather you feel like talking to me or not.
:snicker:
That sounds too rhetorical or poetic for my practical taste. I attach much importance to conceptual clarity. A good workman keeps a neat set of tools, and a philosopher's tool are his concepts.
:up:
Quoting Streetlight
Aka "The Shit on the Bed" ...
Don't be so hard on yourself.
In the most general sense, for understanding deconstruction! :D But also clearing grime off old memories.
One of the questions I'm coming to right now is this notion the thread started with -- of deconstruction deconstructing itself -- and trying to draw out a communicable distinction between refutation and deconstruction. Because if Derrida had wanted to refute Husserl or Saussure, then I don't think he'd have to develop deconstruction -- it would be straightforward, right?
In Streetlight's quote the beginnings of an answer:
Somehow the problems Derrida are interested -- or the question driving his writing -- will easily be swept away in this old style.
But reflecting back onto deconstruction -- it would mean that refutation isn't the goal of deconstruction. And that perhaps deconstruction deconstructing itself would actually be an affirmation?
After all, that's just good old self-consistency, yes?
But there is something beautiful in it, at times. And seeing that beauty requires me to put aside my own projects and try to understand why someone would go on the way they did.
I beg to disagree. :-)
It was pretty accurate, from my limited POV. It's just difficult stuff. And you need to see examples for that summary to have definite and significant content. Otherwise it's just vague grandiose claims. As Hegel saw, one really can't summarize philosophy. Or, better, such summaries are only for those who've already walked the path. To learn about Derrida requires (surprise!) jumping in the passenger seat for one of his readings of Saussure or Husserl or Austin or ....
This is a pre-Hegelian vision of truth, that one simply refutes a strong thinker...from the 'outside.'
What Derrida does with Saussure is read his radical side against his obliviously still-phonocentric side. The points he makes against Saussure are made possible by Saussure in the first place. Metaphorically, it is immanent critique. One steps 'in' to the perspective criticized thinker and discovers where and how that thinker disappointments his or her own principles. Interpersonally, that'd be like me showing you how you have failed in terms of your own criteria and not mine. Saussure and Husserl are worth critiquing this way precisely because they are worthy. Their standards and insights are powerful, so that one would like 'fix' their system, unclogging it...but at the cost of shifting the original goal perhaps. For instance, Saussure insights really apply to more than just speech. They implicitly uncover the structure of any signifying code. For rhetorical/historical reasons, Derrida calls this new semiology a grammatology, but writing is something like the best introductory metaphor.
Well, I guess it could be both unclear, uninformative and yet accurate.
Perhaps I was wrong to assumes that deconstruction has a clear objective and follows some sort of standard process. Maybe it's more fluid, creative, intuitive. Which is fine too.
There's quite an industry of gentle introductions to famous and famously difficult thinkers.
Gasché is writing for insiders. But here's a decent expositor.
[quote=Derrida]
Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written ...can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. This does not suppose that the mark is valid outside its context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring. This citationality, duplication, or duplicity, this iterability of the mark is not an accident or anomaly, but is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could no longer even have a so-called “normal” functioning. What would a mark be that one could not cite? And whose origin could not be lost on the way?”
[/quote]
What are the consequences of this simple fact, that the concept of the sign implies an unbounded possibility of recontextualization? Especially given that philosopher's purported eternal truths live in this medium? What if anything anchors the meaning of signs ? Already in Saussure we get insights and rethinkings of semantics that threaten Plato and the gang. What happens if we lean in to such insights? Or what happens if we really think about how metaphor functions in philosophy? How is the possibility of grand, totalizing philosophy affected thereby? While Derrida is not only a linguistic philosopher, that approach toward his work has been helpful to me. He's something like Wittgenstein with Nietzschean exuberance-- without Nietzsche's creepier side.
Indeed. And it isn't axiomatic that grokking Derrida is the best way to spend one's time. Some people just naturally monger concepts. They really are turned on by what are otherwise extremely dry issues. In the same way some people really like math. The Weierstrassian definition of a limit is a beautiful piece of engineering, if you ask them (I'm one of them). Most do not care in the least about linguistic philosophy or math. Which is fine, because they are only very indirectly practical, and a taste for such things may even be correlated with underachievement in economic terms.
I'm passionately committed to elusiveness of meaning in such anti-practical contexts, but I feel like this motherfucker is as chill as possible. Art is some zen state of being. The opposite of business. Almost a negative theology of the (purified) idea of art. Probably the Japanese philosophers of nothingness are relevant here. IMV, this is a place where only modest claims or guesses make sense.
That quote I do understand. And you have a talent for entertaining and pellucid explication.
And so on. Come on class, read slowly and with purpose!
I think it's fair to say that Derrida can be annoyingly poetical and rhetorical. I'm on a Brandom kick lately, and he's almost too dry and longwinded and careful. But I like those norms in general.
That said, it's exactly a concern for conceptual clarity that makes Derrida interesting in terms of content. My interest in him is primarily for what he has to say about semantics. Especially when folks wax metaphysical about mind and matter and truth and so on, it's my suspicion that they only very vaguely know what they are talking about. For instance, you use 'clarity.' I also seek clarity. But this is a dead, literalized metaphor. What exactly do we mean by it ? Can we just mean easy to read? But surely some texts are more intrinsically difficult than others. Do we mean then as easy as possible? That seems more like it. A clear writer minimizes the discomfort in interpretation. But clarity is not the only value. We also value a motivating dramatic context. We want to feel with the author. That emotional framing is not obviously secondary, unless we simply unphilosophically assume that philosophical truth is as cold a fact as a telephone number in a phone book. Rightly or wrongly in aesthetic terms or our comfort, Derrida 'lives' his transcendence of various superstitions of philosophy (that it's only secondarily metaphorical or literary, that it's a solemn, serious business, ...) This is the main thing that pissed people off, IMO. Derrida is simply not an irrationalist. He's more serious about truth and reason than most people, just as Nietzsche was (hence his willingness to question the foundation of the philosophical project itself ( the idea of such a foundation?), perhaps the maximal philosophical gesture, its purity.) The same people who love Wittgenstein (just as indulgent in his own way) reject Derrida, seemingly because Derrida is more of a jester than a holy ascetic.
Thanks for the kind words! It keeps me chugging along. I also clarify my own understanding by digging for paraphrases and quotes. It's an endless task to be a little less confused.
Well put. In a way it's always doing this, because it's explicitly dependent upon the very ideas it challenges. It's even banal, since in general we've only ever had our own reason or rationality available for a critical examination of that rationality. What were Kant and Hume doing, after all ? Any science of science is a pseudo-paradoxical 'ologyology.' Yet Kant and Hume don't trigger folks the same way, perhaps because they are more familiar..and incorrectly assumed to be dead and safe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_(compilers)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurath%27s_boat
wow, wiki.
I thought you were afraid of me. Good to see you off your back, toy soldier.
wow
I like elusiveness of meaning but prefer some kind of possibly humanesque organ weirdly represented in the visual art I admire.
I Googled the name and I dig his color schemes; and the room full of black canvases is ingeniously inventive.
Quoting igjugarjuk
I think this is what I had in mind when I said 'a secret koanic intent.' The notion of creating an unintelligible or negative space resonates.
I'm fine with poetry that helps relate to the essence of an issue, even with some rhetoric. In any case even a dry text seemingly avoiding any rhetorical effects... is itself using dryness for rhetorical effect!
Purity from what? If nothing human is foreign to philosophy, sin is philosophical, and as many holy men have told us, philosophy is sin.
Personally, I hold Wittgenstein as a fake, an imposter, a very sad clown. I'd rather read from a funny one.
He's got all the looks of a true philosopher, so aesthetic is apt in this way. If this take seems harsh, let me add that he played in stiff Cambridge a useful role, that of the guy who points to the inherent vagueness of things. Things, such as concepts, are often more vague than scolars think.
In my heart of hearts, I'm a sucker for presentations of the human form and face. But I found a nice quote relevant to Ad's black paintings. As I see it, this sums up the implicit negative monotheism involved.
[quote= Hegel]
For at the stage of romantic art the spirit knows that its truth does not consist in its immersion in corporeality; on the contrary, it only becomes sure of its truth by withdrawing from the external into its own intimacy with itself and positing external reality as an existence inadequate to itself. Even if, therefore this new content too comprises in itself the task of making itself beautiful, still beauty in the sense hitherto expounded remains for it something subordinate, and beauty becomes the spiritual beauty of the absolute inner life as inherently infinite spiritual subjectivity....
The true content of romantic art is absolute inwardness, and its corresponding form is spiritual subjectivity with its grasp of its independence and freedom. This inherently infinite and absolutely universal content is the absolute negation of everything particular, the simple unity with itself which has dissipated all external relations, all processes of nature and their periodicity of birth, passing away, and rebirth, all the restrictedness in spiritual existence, and dissolved all particular gods into a pure and infinite self-identity. In this Pantheon all the gods are dethroned, the flame of subjectivity has destroyed them, and instead of plastic polytheism art knows now only one God, one spirit, one absolute independence which, as the absolute knowing and willing of itself, remains in free unity with itself and no longer falls apart into those particular characters and functions whose one and only cohesion was due to the compulsion of a dark necessity...
[/quote]
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/part2-section3.htm#s1
Since this is a Derrida thread, I should add a nearby quote that seems relevant.
[quote=Hegel]
...the determinate being of God is not the natural and sensuous as such but the sensuous elevated to non-sensuousness, to spiritual subjectivity which instead of losing in its external appearance the certainty of itself as the Absolute, only acquires precisely through its embodiment a present actual certainty of itself. God in his truth is therefore no bare ideal generated by imagination; on the contrary, he puts himself into the very heart of the finitude and external contingency of existence, and yet knows himself there as a divine subject who remains infinite in himself and makes this infinity explicit to himself....
If we compare this vocation of romantic art with the task of classical art, fulfilled in the most adequate way by Greek sculpture, the plastic shape of the gods does not express the movement and activity of the spirit which has retired into itself out of its corporeal reality and made its way to inner self-awareness. The mutability and contingency of empirical individuality is indeed expunged in those lofty figures of the gods, but what they lack is the actuality of self-aware subjectivity in the knowing and willing of itself. This defect is shown externally in the fact that the expression of the soul in its simplicity, namely the light of the eye, is absent from the sculptures.[2] The supreme works of beautiful sculpture are sightless, and their inner being does not look out of them as self-knowing inwardness in this spiritual concentration which the eye discloses. This light of the soul falls outside them and belongs to the spectator alone; when he looks at these shapes, soul cannot meet soul nor eye eye. But the God of romantic art appears seeing, self-knowing, inwardly subjective, and disclosing his inner being to man’s inner being. For infinite negativity, the withdrawal of the spirit into itself, cancels effusion into the corporeal; subjectivity is the spiritual light which shines in itself, in its hitherto obscure place, and, while natural light can only illumine an object, the spiritual light is itself the ground and object on which it shines and which it knows as itself. But this absolute inner expresses itself at the same time in its actual determinate existence as an appearance in the human mode, and the human being stands in connection with the entire world, and this implies at the same time a wide variety in both the spiritually subjective sphere and also the external to which the spirit relates itself as something its own.
[/quote]
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/part2-section3.htm#s1
So instead of a preexisting world of Platonic essences, we have the mess of the world (neither mental nor physical yet in this time before distinctions) as primary, and it's within that mess that some of that mess develops a system of signs that slowly attains a self-referentiality which prefers to understand itself (deceive itself) as truly independent of its medium. As Feuerbach put, Christianity ('the Platonism of the masses') is essentially the fantasy that man is radically distinct from nature. The goal is a transcendence of nature, of all limitations. It's as if nature is created as that which is not yet under control. The self is that which one is socially responsible for. Nature is the shit in the way of our projects, and yet also their condition of possibility and value (sort of like our filthy inherited thought system, in some ways a prison, is also our only hope of a relative escape...we are the system trying to slide out of itself.)
You are of course entitled to such a view, but I rate Wittgenstein highly. Given the general reputation of Wittgenstein among scholars, I think it's just not that plausible that Wittgenstein was a 'sad clown' and 'fake.' For that to be true, many experts in the field, who almost certainly have studied the work more carefully than you, have to be (self-)deceived in a way that somehow you were not. Is it not just as likely or more likely, from a neutral perspective, than you are yourself conveniently self-deceived in a way that conveniently exempts you from having to read difficult texts?
To be sure, it's of very little practical relevance whether you are right or wrong about Wittgenstein. No one cares. Only on obscure stages like a philosophy forum can such gestures signify. In my view, it's almost always a bad move to play the 'he's a fraud' card. Only by providing an immanent critique, demonstrating genuine familiarity along the way, can such an accuser differentiate himself from what is almost the default anti-intellectual position...that there's nothing to all these fancy words ... Without such proof, it's reasonable to write off the accuser as another fox who can't or won't reach the grapes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes
A Derridean point maybe, and I agree. There's always some notion of the proper in effect, something that got there before we did, a background against which our performance will be judged. Along these lines, I also don't find pure concepts available. I find words entangled in histories with connotations and 'irrational' overtones. I find hieroglyphs like 'clarity' or 'foundation,' dead metaphors that somehow signify beyond the pictures at their root.
Purity from irrationality, from prejudice. Philosophy is sin to the holy men precisely in its "Satanic" humanism. We humans decide what is true and good, for ourselves. That's the Enlightenment, in the eyes of which religious superstition is impure.
The Left Hegelians are useful here. They would criticize various secular philosophers (one another, often enough) for being still-too-theological, still insufficiently rational or critical. The 'sin' for humanism and rationality is the unjustified assumption, the incomplete achievement of autonomy, etc. The battle against superstition and puerility/slavishness is endless. Derrida fits pretty nicely into this project. He just added some worthy targets. Sometimes husk is mistaken for kernel.
Wittgenstein and Derrida were both beautiful men. That probably helped them and hurt them at the same time. Derrida was especially annoyingly attractive. It doesn't annoy me, but I think it annoyed others. It was as if he was taking the liberties of a good looking person, fucking around where ugly men had to be serious and earnest to get any respect. The fantasy might be that academics are above such petty responses, but we are primates. And Derrida's fame in literary departments was probably dependent on both a cartoon misunderstanding of him and the T-shirt readiness of his pleasant face and hair. He was a womanizer like Sartre, but with better hygiene. (I really enjoy the persona of Sartre. He was virtuous in some ways but a creep in others, and I think being a little wicked helps with access to unpleasant truths about human nature. It may be that saints don't make the best philosophers.)
Again...the kind of point I find in Derrida.
I haven’t read much on this aspect of Derrida’s life. Can you say more?
Ok, but remember, the mark is undecidable(because it is split into two equivocal aspects), not indeterminate, so he would probably bristle at the term ‘vague’. In its own way it is very precise.
But as Collingwood implies, there is no thought without premises. Without at its root some absolute unprovable presuppositions. An axiomatique is always there somewhere, often unconscious. Think of it as an operating system, without which no computer can function. The operating system provides a creed, a credo based on which computing can happen.
I see patterns, though -- something is going on. And, much to my relief, it seems some others here are able to corroborate, and disentangle, some of my impressions and wonderings
However, in line with what I've been saying about how one reads a text, I was only able to begin to tease out what was going on by doing a soft reading, and reading what others who had read were saying. And I was intrinsically motivated to do so just because I like philosophy on the whole -- like a nerd who just likes things and starts to learn about them on his own because the nerd likes them.
So for me the whole idea of defending a philosopher is already something I'm not really doing. It's easy to refute philosophy -- all you need to do is say "Nope!" , and insofar that you or your audience are satisfied your refutation is complete. I've long ago given up on proselytizing philosophy to others -- if they have the interest then great! And if not, then I don't know how to impart the bug. It's just a matter of preference, as far as I can tell. Or maybe accident.
Quoting Moliere
Derrida’s notion of deconstruction is not a method but a way of understanding the basis of all methods. And it not an algorithm but a way of understanding how all algorithms deconstruct themselves.
What is the "basis of all methods?"
The structure of temporality is the basis of all methods , in that it throws us into a world that is already intelligible to us in some way. This familiarity with the world is the basis of method.
Okay. And what does that have to do with method?
A method is a way of proceeding in the world , a way of organizing particular meanings according to a larger scheme or totality of relevance. In that sense , method cannot be separated from value system, of which it forms a subspecies.
Okay, agree.
So, it is safe to say deconstruction is not a way of proceeding in the world. And it's larger than what I was imputing -- a way of reading a philosophical work.
Oh I recall Derrida avoiding 'ambiguity' somewhere for some sanctified synonym, but that's a point for insiders. I'm probably just the right amount of insider (as in not too much of one) to play a Derrida whisperer, but it doesn't bother me to translate 62 bits into the most relative 32 bits. The metaphor here is unsupervised machine learning, a bottlenecked autoencoder. For what it's worth, I acknowledge the possibility that you may be better read in Derrida. But I can't help thinking my irreverent style of paraphrase might offer something that yours doesn't, maybe because of the fidelity of your approach (which can be just as hard to decipher as the original text.)
Exactly, and this is a Heideggerian/Derridean point too. What makes rationality possible is a system of inherited concepts. But this same system makes 'pure' rationality impossible...or always 'to come' as a sort of point at infinity, a hope, a mere direction of travel. This is epistemological Geworfenheit. It's what endangers modern philosophy's Kantian project while making it enticing in the first place. This project might be framed as the automation of critical thinking. If a philosopher could once and for all articulate the essence of rationality and lay down rules that would remain genuinely binding, that'd be the end of a particular story. It'd be a machine because that philosopher would die and leave his signs behind, somehow true and binding and intelligible in his absence, a 'bone machine' that reveals what it means to be a 'bone machine' in a way that governs inferences about inference, etc. (The philosophical dream is of 'the system' of traces/signs that somehow nets the truth about truth. 'Bone' refers to the endurance of these traces, and their having been stripped of all contingent flesh.) What would be left would just be empirical. We would have at least have grasped our essence as scientific beings. The science of science's essence would be complete.
He had an illegitimate child with a student (or ex-student, can't remember when the affair started.) And the Peeters bio suggests (gently, respectfully) that our world-traveling Derrida never exactly settled down. I got the impression that he was adulterous when traveling (when his wife stayed home) but careful to maintain his marriage and family life too. The Post Card is, I believe, addressed to the mother of his illegitimate child. Also noteworthy: he gave very long talks, suggesting an extraordinary narcissism, which, as you may know, was sometimes explicitly discussed, along with his related fear of death and the destruction/loss of his archive. His affection for writing was probably connected to its partial or temporary escape from the abyss of death. As Bloom said, the strong poet is more afraid of annihilation than most...and tries harder to be worth remembering.
Your writing is a lot more entertaining than mine. ( that’s a compliment)
A very generous comment, sir! For what's worth, I'm glad someone as clearly informed and enthusiastic about this stuff is here for me talk with. And I appreciate your even tone and good manners.
But no, monseiur, writing IS time. ( you know, the repetition that alters )
I see nothing intrinsically impure about faith. All this seems like a pointless direction of thought to me, in search of some sort of ghost, a thought without heart, a philosophical algorithm or as you say, the automation of critical thinking.
Granted that the positivists tried it, as well as the logical positivists genre circle of Vienna. But as Popper and Socrates before him have shown, they were on an unproductive track in search of positive, definite certainty.
The essence of rationality is a ghost. Essences are always ghostly. We can barely watch them, let alone catch them.
bitch.
( thought I’d keep you off guard)
OK but the concept of alteration depends on the endurance of the same. I've been mentioning the self that functions as a player on the great stage of fools known as the world, the one responsible for claims, subject to praise and sanctions. It's this thing that we identity with and whose destruction we fear. Why did Derrida (why did Milton?) want his text saved from the grave? To be seen is the ambition of ghosts. To be remembered is the ambition of the dead.
Well fucking played!
Perhaps, but isn't this metaphor of a ghost precisely one more such attempt?
I don't see how Derrida isn't doing basically the same old song and dance or pointing out and trying to work around or epistemological throwness. If he's worthless or unnecessary (which is no doubt true for someone just trying to pay the rent), then so is Kant. It's arguably a weird, elitist interest. One doesn't need to think about this stuff...or about real analysis, which is not the source of our faith in applied mathematics, or only very secondarily so. The anti-intellectual attitude can always accurately point out that it's a lot of trouble for not much external reward.
What about the idea that the same endures by continuing to be itself differently? From this vantage, it is endurance of the same which depends on alteration. I would say that this is the essence of deconstruction. If by endure , you mean an empirical notion of duration as persisting self-identity over time, this was critiqued by Bergson, Husserl , Deleuze and Heidegger in different ways.
Continuing the thought above about the uselessness or Derrida (and Kant and Hume and calculus and ...), I offer a quote from Hobbes about power. The context is a catalogue of all the sources of power, while power itself is roughly the command of human effort (as in labor or war.)
[quote = Hobbes]
Also, what quality soever maketh a man beloved, or feared of many; or the reputation of such quality, is Power; because it is a means to have the assistance, and service of many.
Good successe is Power; because it maketh reputation of Wisdome, or good fortune; which makes men either feare him, or rely on him.
Affability of men already in power, is encrease of Power; because it gaineth love.
Reputation of Prudence in the conduct of Peace or War, is Power; because to prudent men, we commit the government of our selves, more willingly than to others.
Nobility is Power, not in all places, but onely in those Common-wealths, where it has Priviledges: for in such priviledges consisteth their Power.
Eloquence is Power; because it is seeming Prudence.
Forme is Power; because being a promise of Good, it recommendeth men to the favour of women and strangers.
The Sciences, are small Power; because not eminent; and therefore, not acknowledged in any man; nor are at all, but in a few; and in them, but of a few things. For Science is of that nature, as none can understand it to be, but such as in a good measure have attayned it.
Arts of publique use, as Fortification, making of Engines, and other Instruments of War; because they conferre to Defence, and Victory, are Power; And though the true Mother of them, be Science, namely the Mathematiques; yet, because they are brought into the Light, by the hand of the Artificer, they be esteemed (the Midwife passing with the vulgar for the Mother,) as his issue.
[/quote]
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm#link2H_4_0034
(Hobbes is just great, by the way.)
I though about starting a thread on this, because it's such a killer line. For Science is of that nature, as none can understand it to be, but such as in a good measure have attayned it.
A buffoon like Jordan Peterson (when he wanders from his actual field) is indistinguishable from a more serious and successful thinker on the same topics. In the same way, a math crank cannot be distinguished from the outside from a Field'e medalist, except by social indicators like that medal. At least a fake plumber is revealed by leaks. But the indirect path from science to the practical life gives the real thing a kind of temporary invisibility to outsiders, so that Derrida or Wittgenstein are easily called frauds. Note that Kant was a Derrida in his day. Check out Beiser on the history of this period. Such as The Fate of Reason. Kant was a nihilist, an idealist, etc. Folks don't like their proprieties fucked with.
A lifelong student of the likes of Freddy & Witty, Peirce & Chomsky, I still find 'p0m0 post/structuralism' as redundant as it is rhetorically obscurant. Life's too short for more than a cursory read of Derrida's (et al's) deliberately prolix muddle, and his apologists and expositors, on this thread and elsewhere, continue to persuade (remind) me that Derrida's "texts" are only academic flypaper.
Anyway, by all means, carry on ... :mask:
Sure. I'm down with that. I'd just stress the interdependence of the concepts involved. And I'd look to local practical/context. The most recent context is the 'master madness' of the fear of death. Granted 100% that there is no 'truly' enduring self (and that one cannot step into the same river twice), I'd also make the opposite point and say that making unequal things equal is automatic and properly presupposed --- so one can step into the same river twice, because 'river' organizes or captures a flux, makes flux possible in the first place, one might say. Though the concepts are independent. There's no origin.
The unripe toe tag of the proper legal name also has an enduring referent. We can say that the referent changes if we want. But that depends on how we approach the institution of names and referrals. The thing referred to can change only if it's gathered as a stable unity that frames such a change. (I don't think either us is lacking comprehension of any of the relevant issues, so it feels like a matter of focus or preference.)
Concepts evolve, they have a life, a vitality which you can kill if you try to trap them.
OK, but I can't personally see the big gap between Derrida and Nietzsche or Derrida and Wittgenstein. Not now that the movement is a relic and basically just texts. Maybe Nietzsche 'already said that' in some sense, but Derrida would hardly deny the influence of a primary hero, and to me his best passages are like some of my favorites from Nietzsche. As good, as poetic, as penetrating.
I basically agree with all of that.
I would maybe say here though that concepts evolve because we try to trap them. They have a life because we keep trying to put them death. Philosophy seeks for more clarity than the carpenter requires. The astronomer doesn't care about ICBMs. Philosophers are especially itchy fuckers, especially irritable (Schopenhauer's insight). Either those [s]drapes[/s] inconsistencies/ambiguities go or I do !
Quoting igjugarjuk
If you haven’t read him, you might enjoy Husserl’s analyses of the constitution of a real spatial object.
The real object is never completely fulfilled. It is a concatenation of memory , actual appearance and anticipation that changes slightly moment to moment. So the object is an idealization, a kind of faith in a total unity that is never fully achieved.
“The consciousness of its [the object’s] existence is here a belief in act; by virtue of the accord in which the perceptive appearances flow off in original presentation, retention, and protention, an accord of continuous self-affirmation, belief is continuous certainty of belief, which has its certainty in this originality of the object in its living being-present.”
The object is “a unity which “appears” continually in the change of the modes of its givenness and which belongs to the essential structure of a specific act of the ego.” “The "object" of consciousness, the object as having identity "with itself" during the flowing subjective process,
does not come into the process from outside; on the contrary, it is included as a sense in the subjective process itself and thus as an "intentional effect" produced by the synthesis of consciousness.”(Husserl 1973)
“ Every temporal being "appears" in one or another continually changing mode of running-off, and the "Object in the mode of running-of" is in this change always something other, even though we still say that the Object and every point of its time and this time itself are one and the same.”(Husserl 1964)
I have (somewhat), and I like Husserl. And that theme of a unity to come also appears valuably in Gadamer's theory of interpretation. I think it also applies to the adjacent concepts of referral and representation. How can I talk about an object that I know little or nothing about? How can my label stick to the right place?
Quoting Joshs
To me this is like poetry that pretty much gets it right. It accords with introspection. But I'm more drawn to the view from the outside. Rationality is prior to any claim worth taking seriously, and that implies (it seems to be) that we are on the stage, so that the meaning of words is best looked for in proprieties of use. The object is the same (despite subjective sensory flux) because we treat it as the same. We are the 'same' person day after day, because in fact I wake up responsible to others for what I did and said the day before.
But Wittgenstein's Blue Book helps us imagine a different way of life. For example, what if there's a weekend me and the weekday me? With two names? The same with you and everyone. It's how we all roll. Maybe one of the selves sharing my body is thrown in prison for murder, probably the weekend self. But obviously the weekday self can not be punished for this crime, so the one body is only locked up on weekends.
One might speak of the fantasy of something 'deeper' than such norms that gives them necessity.
The Sokal Affair is relevant here, in case you haven't heard of it:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
"... an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor, specifically to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies—whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross—[would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions.""
Yes, something like that. We struggle with them, try and harness them or even defeat them. Like Jacob struggled with a god all night and for this reason was called Israel. And that fight altered him and perhaps it altered the god too.
It was a great prank, and some French thinkers have been guilty of playing fast and loose with concepts from other fields, and some of them just suck, but what does it really prove that one journal was fooled ?Antipomo types on the other side seem just as liable to bias. It's some nerdy version of the culture war.
I remember Scruton calling Zizek an anti-Semite on a very thin pretext. So I didn't mind so much when it happened to Scruton. It's like the bitchiness in this thread (I'm as guilty as others.) We are tribal fuckers, only relinquishing our prejudices under pressure, if even then.
:up:
:up:
I agree: a great prank that proves, at the very least, that distinguished folks at the journal in question can't always distinguish sense from non-sense.
It makes you wonder how many other journals would have been fooled. So it has something to say about the pomo echo chamber. I'm far from anti-pomo but appreciate iconoclasm of any kind.
This bit is fascinating enough: suggesting the most concrete-seeming creations may hide a secret abstraction: the inhuman in human form.
Rich stuff.
Same here. I hate the idea of being trapped in a tribal bubble. I guess my fantasy of the philosopher is tied up to some kind of neutral Shakespearean consciousness that can be everyone and no one.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
... Or more broadly about the various echo chambers and sins of convergent thinking in Academia at large.
Yes indeed, and outside too. But inside is sadder in a way, just as dirty cops are worse than other criminals.
I'm basically progressive and liberal, I guess, but I don't like institutions betraying their principles in fits of topical self-righteousness. Areopagitica, motherfuckers !
[quote= Milton]
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.
Let her [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.
Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary…. They are not skillful considerers of human things who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin.
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.
[/quote]
It has the optics of an abuse of power and that's always gross. It's unfortunate it can happen inadvertently.
For all his vision he hadn't the vision - can't blame him, of course - to forsee something like Facebook.
For precision's sake, Sokal pranked Social Text, an academic journal published by Duke University Press.
Right. But what I was referring to is this:
[quote = wiki]
In 1997, Sokal and Jean Bricmont co-wrote Impostures intellectuelles (US: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science; UK: Intellectual Impostures, 1998).[14] The book featured analysis of extracts from established intellectuals' writings that Sokal and Bricmont claimed misused scientific terminology.[15] It closed with a critical summary of postmodernism and criticism of the strong programme of social constructionism in the sociology of scientific knowledge.[16]
[/quote]
I presume that Sokal's annoyance with these 'imposters' inspired the prank in the first place. It seems that Sokal depended on his own credentials as a physicist to overcome editorial concerns. While the editors surely look bad, it doesn't make Sokal look all that great. His parody of post-modernism, which admittedly scores some points, also echoes the conspiracy theory about 'postmodernists' that one might get from Tucker Carlson. Lots of that parody might apply to an early reception of Kant, except for the topical political progressivism bit (as if reactionary politics isn't just as threatening to science.)
My theory is that folks are at their worst intellectually (at their blindest) when they talk about their perceived enemies. 'Math is racist' is stupid. But go too far in the other direction and one is shrieking about the newspeak denial of biological sex --when all that's happening is a change in manners, predictably occasionally awkward or nasty.
I agree with the implication that maybe he was wrong on that point. That's quite a can of worms in itself, the private ownership of the de facto town square (not that it is or has to stay Facebook.)
For Hume, there is no inside or outside, as metaphysical categories. Actual physical objects do not have continuity and neither do our perceptions. Hume's main criticism is at the concept of identity. Are physical objects real, yes. Are acts of mind real, yes. Is the mediation between object to mind real, yes. So it is a non-representational idea.
So far, though, your challenge seems to consist in accusations that you have not yet substantiated. I'm not saying you can't make a great case but that you haven't yet. So far your critique is all too familiar. The thread would only benefit if you expand your comments, go into more detail.
Quoting igjugarjuk
Applying a paraphrase of Hitchen's Razor: what can be expressed without substantiated clarity can also be dismissed without substantiated clarity. And yet, I'm sure my dismissals of Derrida-ism are far clearer than anything Derrida "defers".
this thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/705495
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/706931
other threads:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/510980
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/570551
Sorry if those posts are not "substantiated" enough for you, igjugarjuk; just dismiss them (or defer their contents) as you see fit. :ok:
NB: If you haven't noticed, I've a very low and cranky tolerance for academic or political sophistry (aka "bullshit" ~ H. Frankfurt).
Ahhh -- ok. That's fair. Plus, it keeps things interesting when we find places to dispute rather than simply dismiss.
I appreciate your taking the time to provide the links. It seems we both agree that 'the modern' is already self-critical. I go on from this idea to include Derrida in the same old tradition. He doesn't even necessarily deserve an especially prominent place. Perhaps his early work is pepper to the later Wittgenstein's salt.
As for the intolerance of bullshit, that's the rule that binds all of us as we play at being philosophers. I expect that most of us would understand ourselves to be virtuously cranky in the same way. It's just not always easy to decide whether something is bullshit.
When and where academia becomes an inbred clique of self-serving poseurs, it is right to ridicule them. It's the Voltairian thing to do. The same kind of prank could have been played on the analytic philosophy clique when they were still dominant in anglo-saxon academia.
Agreed. And I love Voltaire. But there's always the danger of deceiving ourselves with a little cartoon gang of bad guys. Tucker Carlson probably gives his loyal viewers that they are the shrewd, rational minority on this great stage of fools, and this anti-academic anti-fancy-talk vibe fits right in. Sokal's target was specifically political, aimed at feckless progressives rather than old-fashioned science-denying creationists. I grant that academia is so liberal that it's hard to take the reactionary threat seriously, and one feels that progressive sentimentality is the real threat, but that's ironically an ivory tower illusion itself.
Ah but that's what a biblethumper would say about Darwin or Hume. (I'm not accusing you of that, let me be clear, but riffing on your phrase.) The issue is what one takes for tradition. Many opponents of (their idea of ) deconstruction ( not all !) are likely gobbling up Jordan Peterson's strange brew -- hho is or was likely convincing lots of white boys with no interest in science that they were the knights of rationality against the black tide of a progressive hoard that could no longer tell pussy from asshole.
I guess what I really see in Derrida -- my interest in him -- is what I often see in philosophers. There's a unique perspective there that I don't see anyone else really doing or trying to do within philosophy.
The broadening of philosophical activity is a natural goal and interest of mine, given that I'm not within the institutions of academia but this stuff still floats about my head, and Derrida's project naturally lends itself to broadening the notion of philosophy.
And I see it as a continuation of -- in line with -- the philosophical project. If Derrida is no skeptic -- and at this point in the thread it seems we're pretty much in agreement on that, minus Jackson due to Hume -- then his is a response to the problem of skepticism, ye olde classic question that marks the traditional history of the modern era of philosophy.
I don't know first, but certainly Hume was radical.
But then it would seem that Hume wouldn't undermine Derrida, but get along with him?
That's why I asked, because I'm not sure if your reading of Hume is in some sense undermining Derrida, or if it's just that Derrida is not original due to Hume.
Not sure. Hume did not reduce philosophy to text. But, there may be similarities.
I believe I answered this charge here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/707330
Derrida might be a latter-day paleo-Kantian after all, proposing an analogous (semiotic) ruse "to limit knowledge in order to make room for faith"; unlike Kant, however, he fails to cogently make the internal critique – fails to make the argument from within argument-making itself – in order to establish a compelling case for 'logocentricity as more bug than feature' of Western philosophy in particular (that's 'symptomatic' of discursive reasoning in general).
(Actually, Derrida reminds me more of the itinerant sophist Gorgias than the philosophy professor Kant.)
Quoting 180 Proof
The term ‘self-refuting’ tips me off to the root of the issue here, which is less about Derrida in particular than about every one of the numerous philosophical discourses thar have appeared over the past 100 year which take their leave from Nietzsche’s
critique of truth.
And I say this as someone who finds value in Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Henry and even Zizek. I think reading Derrida can be enjoyed if it is read as a species of arcane literature. where it is his imaginative gymnastics that are being admired, but I don't take it seriously as philosophy.
You first have to be able to decide what you think it means before deciding whether you think it is bullshit.
Just be careful not to universalize your sentiments. It’s fine that FOR YOU he is only enjoyable as arcane literature, and YOU can’t take him seriously as philosophy, but there are many scholars inside and outside of philosophy who consider his work to be a prime example of substantive and serious philosophy. I am one of them.
I’m reading his biography right now, and I’m starting to think that his extremely neurotic and depressive personality entered into his writing in the form of endless asides, apologies, digressions and ass coverings , and this is a large part of what makes it so tortuous to read him. Compare his style to early Heidegger, who on the one hand shares many ideas with Derrida and is difficult for many to read, but so much more straightforwardly methodical and systematic in Being and Time than anything that Derrida has ever written.
The first few books by Derrida were interesting and original. After that he just published stuff that seemed Scholastic and writing for the sake of writing.
Here’s a snippet from his early 20’s:
As for madness, Jackie sometimes felt he was on the verge of succumbing to it as he started his second year in khâgne. Discipline in the boarding school weighed on him even more heavily than it had the previous year. The cold, the lack of hygiene, the horrible food, and the absence of any privacy had become intolerable. Some evenings he fell into a crying jag and was unable to work or even talk to his friends. Only his ever-more intense friendship with Michel Monory enabled him to keep going. Working together in the thurne de musique – Michel had special permission to keep the key to it –, they wrote sketches for short stories and poems that they nervously submitted to each other. But as the weeks went by, Jackie complained more and more of a ‘malady’ as serious as it was ill defined. He was constantly on the edge of a nervous collapse: he suffered from insomnia, loss of appetite, and frequent nausea. In December 1950, Derrida’s morale had sunk to a new low. For reasons that remain unclear, he did not go back home for the Christmas vacation, but remained alone in Paris – probably at the home of his uncle, since the boarding school was closed. In prey to a vague attack of melancholia, he moped around far from his friends. In a letter to Michel, the beginning of which has unfortunately been lost, Jackie tried to explain his confused feelings. For some time, he had felt as if he were going around ‘in regions too difficult, if not to explore, at least to show even to one’s dearest friend’. The lack of any letter from Michel for several days did not help matters. More depressed than ever, Jackie may have contemplated suicide.”
And at age 29:
“The more the months went by, the less did Derrida attempt to conceal his disenchantment. Genette was pleased to have set up ‘a nice little team’ with him but realized that his former fellow student considered the post as a second best. Derrida brooded over his failure to get the Sorbonne job as if he were being persecuted. Initially, his malaise expressed itself in a period of hypochondria. Every day, he discovered new and alarming symptoms. He feared cancer or some other deadly illness, and the various doctors whom he consulted did not manage to allay his anxieties. During the third term, his depression became evident – his ‘big depression’, he later called it, since he would never experience one so serious. When Derrida arrived in Le Mans, he was unwilling to confess the depth of his disappointment. And all at once, he collapsed under his despair. He had suffered for years before passing the exam to Normale Sup, then the agrégation. He had put up with twenty-seven months of military service, waiting for the day when life would finally open up before him. All this effort, just to end up here, standing in front of pupils who did not understand what he was telling them, with colleagues who could talk about nothing but holidays and sport! All this, to wear himself out preparing his lessons and marking boring schoolwork! For months, he had not managed to work on anything personal. He no longer felt up to staying in touch with his closest friends. In conditions like this, how would he ever manage to finish off a thesis?
Like, I don't understand fluid mechanics but I don't get mad about it and rant at physicsts about how I am not intelligent enough to understand fluid mechanics.
If anything I love Derrida for the fact that he makes insecure people consistantly want to exhibit their insecurity. It's awesome.
I've noticed this phenomenon for many years and wondered why it is that Derrida seems to be the one to arouse the most antipathy and toxic bewilderment. I might have expected this reaction to Heidegger or Hegel, perhaps. I looked over Derrida's writing some decades ago and occasionally since then and, in my case, I have to accept that I've been too lazy and don't know much about the philosophical tradition he emerges from and that he is just too intricate for me to follow. I have no idea if his contribution was or is useful and, as with string theory, I'm quite happy to assume that some people (and I imagine it's not many people) actually know what is at stake.
I don't concern myself with FAUX News anchors. If I find parts of academia laughable, I'm going to laugh. Simplify your life.
I guess so. :smirk:
Quoting Joshs
:victory:
:ok: :lol:
Quoting Joshs
"It is because of differance that the movement of signification is
possible only if each so-called "present" element, each element appearing on
the scene of presence, is related to something other than itself, thereby keeping
within itself the mark of the past element, and already letting itself be vitiated
by the mark of its relation to the future element, this trace being related no less
to what is called the future than to what is called the past, and constituting what
is called the present by means of this very relation to what it is not: what it
absolutely is not, not even a past or a future as a modified present. An interval
must separate the present from what it is not in order for the present to be itself,
but this interval that constitutes it as present must, by the same token, divide
the present in and of itself; thereby also along with the present, everything
that is thought, every being, and singular substance or the subject.
In constituting I itself, in dividing itself dynamically, this interval is what might be called spacing, the becoming-space of time or the becoming-time of space (temporization)." (Derrida,'Margins of philosophy').
At the center of our temporality and the constitution of our being, Derrida places 'what absolutely is not.' As a result, our experience, oriented to revealing some presence, has always been determined by the differential movement from which it is affected. Any apparent presence, full givenness, or definite meaning has become impossible. How can this project become "a way of understanding the basis of all methods"?
In the same way that deconstruction reveals the basis of all idealisms and empiricisms in the movement of differance.
Quoting Joshs
Quoting 180 Proof
Might be a good place to call it -- seems we're back around to post-modernism, considered generally.