Reading Group: Derrida's Voice and Phenomenon

Maybe I missed something, but is there a reason you want to do the introduction last?

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

In the interests of keeping up momentum, might it be worth collapsing the reading weeks for chapters 1 and 2? Having just read over them, c2 is basically a slight deepening of c1, and week 2 might be a little boring if we just stick to the 4 pages that make up c2. Either way works for me tho.

Reply to StreetlightX I'd prefer not to, because I think that while brief, Chapter 2 is dense to the point of impenetrability, and especially its last long paragraph is almost impossible to disentangle.

Fair enough.

Quoting The Great Whatever

and especially its last long paragraph is almost impossible to disentangle

If we can't disentangle it, then we may need to deconstruct it ;-)

Some preliminary summary of Chapter 1.

Derrida begins with Husserl's distinction, found in Investigation I of the Logical Investigations, between two kinds of sign: indication and expression. Indication is something like a Peircian sign, something that stands as a mark pointing to something else, a signified, by whatever mechanism (iconic resemblance, symbolism, etc.) and whether naturally or artificially made. Expression by contrast is something imbued with semantic meaning in particular: it holds the 'exclusivity to pure logicity' (p. 16), which I take to mean that it is truth-conditional and compositionally built out of smaller truth-conditional pieces, in the way that only (declarative) language can be, allowing it to take part in all the hallmarks of reasoning and logical deduction. Derrida says it is the exclusive domain of 'spoken discourse' (German Rede), but at this point it seems that this means language generally, and not only that which is literally spoken (and as we shall see, apparently, not that which is literally discursive, in the sense of communicating information to someone else). All that's required of expression is that it have 'meaning' in the way that only a bit of language can, in the way that meaning can 'tell the truth' as opposed to merely being a signal for something else.

Husserl draws this distinction because he thinks it's important to keep the two apart. Uncontroversially (and Derrida seems never to challenge this point), there are signs that partake in indication without expression – a boundary stone, for example, points to the division between two distinct territories without in the strict sense saying anything (as a sign with printed words might: 'here is the border between...'). Husserl will also claim that some signs partake in expression without indication as well, which Derrida will protest. Somewhat confusingly, Derrida opens by saying that indication '...is different from expression because it is, insofar as it is an indication, deprived of Bedeutung or Sinn [meaning, or sense]' (p. 15) – this isn't true for either Husserl or Derrida, since for both an indicative sign can also have meaning in the stricter linguistic sense, so I take this to mean something like 'mere indication.' The point, then, is that what we call meaning in the strict sense, Bedeutung, belongs only to language and expressive signs. Indicative signs signify something, but in the strict sense, if they don't express anything, they're meaningless. A less confusing English translation for Bedeutung might be 'semantic content,' since we can indeed talk of a merely indicative sign, like a boundary stone, as 'meaningful' too. Derrida uses the French vouloir-dire ('to want to say, to mean') in order to capture the relation between language and expressive meaning (and also, as we'll see later, between volition and expressive meaning). Husserl also acknowledges a wider range of meaning, in the sense that all intentional acts of consciousness besides linguistic communication (wanting, wishing, intending, perceiving, willing) are meaningful too: he reserves the term Sinn for this wider domain of meaning, and uses Bedeutung for the restricted linguistic domain, for the meaning carried by expressive signs. Note that this distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung bears no relation to the one drawn by Frege.

This distinction isn't an either/or deal, though. For one thing, the same sign might be indicative/expressive or not, depending on the situation. Things aren't signs all by themselves, but have to be 'animated' by experience to act as a sign (if no one sees the boundary stone as a boundary or treats it that way, it's just a rock, and indicates nothing). Likewise a series of marks might be construed as linguistic signs or not, depending on who looks at them. Second, since it seems we can have indication without expression, the question arises whether the reverse is true, whether there can be expressive signs with semantic content, but which indicate nothing. Husserl's position here is twofold:

1) Insofar as signs are discursive, that is, insofar as they partake in concrete communication of some information between parties, they must be indicative
2) Insofar as a sign is used in fact, it is discursive, or partakes in communication

So the result is that all uses of expressive signs in fact are indicative as well as expressive. The two are 'entangled' together in ordinary communicative use of language.

So what does this mean for the relation between the two? Still Husserl wants to draw a distinction between indication and expression, but what kind of distinction is it? Is expression a sub-species of indication, just one kind of indication? If it weren't, we would presumably want to find a case where the two were distinct. Husserl wants to maintain the independence of these two notions, and so claims there are in fact expressive signs with no indication. We find these in the 'solitary life of the soul' (p. 19), when a person speaks to themselves (more on this in later sections). So neither indication nor expression encompass the other, even though as a matter of empirical accident expression is in actual linguistic usage intermingled with indication. There is something strange, even paradoxical, about the idea that the essence of expressive meaning, which is usually employed for linguistic communication, is revealed when there ostensibly is no communication taking place, when one is talking to oneself. But Derrida points out that this is just phenomenology's modus operandi: the phenomenologist brackets a certain worldly exteriority, in order to reveal something's essential traits, because in experience itself we find an 'inner' possibility of relating to an outside, and this entire relation takes place 'inside' of experience.

Derrida concludes by questioning Husserl as to what it means for something to be a sign generally, if there really is no species-genus relation between indication and expression, and the two are strictly distinct. In what sense then are both 'signs' at all? Don't we have some prior knowledge of what it means for one thing to 'stand for' another, which both indication and expression take part in? Derrida offers two possible ways of attacking this question. First, we might criticize Husserl as prejudiced, and claim that in refusing to try to understand what a sign is generally, he overlooks essential questions pertaining to the foundations of phenomenology (and the weakness of those foundations). Second, we might praise Husserl for an analytical rigor: after all, part of the phenomenological project involves bracketing prior biases, and we aren't entitled to assume from the beginning that the notion of both indication and expression as 'sign' is anything fundamental rather than an accident of language. Further, such a move allows a potentially revolutionary move on Husserl's part: by claiming that the notion of truth is not applicable to the sign in general, but only to one type of sign (expression), he may be going against the tradition of metaphysics which tries to reduce everything to truth, by claiming that there are modes of signification that lie outside of this domain – a sign 'produces truth or ideality rather than records it' (p. 22). Derrida admits that this revolutionary tendency is part of Husserl's project. But at the same time, he avows that phenomenology has an even deeper commitment than this, which is squarely within the domain of traditional metaphysics, and binds it to 'classical ontology' (ibid.). Derrida's overarching thesis will be that phenomenology weds itself to the traditional metaphysical project by partaking in 'the metaphysics of presence,' on which more later.

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

Damn fine summary, think you got it all.

Quoting The Great Whatever

Is expression a sub-species of indication, just one kind of indication?

...

if there really is no species-genus relation between indication and expression, and the two are strictly distinct. In what sense then are both 'signs' at all?

This is what I see as the principal issue, and the answer depends on how clearly, or ambiguously, one defines these terms, expression, indication, signification. Husserl denies that expression is a sub-species of indication. But if expression and indication are distinct forms of signification, then how do we account for the intermingling of the two?

Here is a question to keep in mind. Is it really true that all expressions contain indication, and not all indications are expressions? Or is this an assumption of convenience made by Husserl, to support an argued position? I think that we may be able to find examples of expression which are not indications. And, the problem in saying that not all indications are expressions, is that if we take examples of indications which are not expressions, it can be argued that all these so-called "indications" are really
false indications. It may be argued, that only an expression is a true indication.

From this perspective, Husserl may have things backwards.

So for Derrida, the question becomes "what is the sign in general". We must determine the essence of this broader category, "sign" in order to see how the sub-sets fit within, to judge Husserl's position. In this respect, there are a number of issues raised, "unity", and "truth", to begin with. I see "unity" as the most difficult issue here, and one which must be surmounted before we can even approach "truth".

Reply to The Great Whatever That really is a thorough summary. I'm struggling to find anything to add.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

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

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

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So for Derrida, the question becomes "what is the sign in general".

It's not clear to what extent Derrida tries to answer this. He explicitly says at one point that he won't be trying to answer the question, at least for now, but also hints that he will return later to how the question is important for the foundations of phenomenology. But there are a lot of allusions in the text that so far as I can tell Derrida doesn't ever cash in on.

Quoting csalisbury

Importantly, Husserl wants to argue the opposite.

Do you mean Derrida wants to argue this?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Do you mean Derrida wants to argue this?

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

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

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

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

Reply to csalisbury Are you saying that Derrida misrepresents Husserl when he says things like this:

"Let us pursue our reading. Every expression would therefore be gripped, despite itself, by an indicative process."

"In order to do that, he must therefore demonstrate that expression is not a species of indication even though all expressions are mixed with indication, the reverse not being true."

The point being, that Derrida represents Husserl as saying that "all expressions are mixed with indication". Then we have the quote from you, revealing where expressions "no longer function as indications".

Do you think that this is meant to demonstrate that Husserl contradicts himself? Or, is this meant to display a complete separation, disjunction, or disunity, between expression and indication, such that they operate in separate domains? Then the fact that an expression is indicative would be some sort of random coincidence.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover It's confusing because Husserl concedes the point that every actual use of language makes use of indication. Husserl retreats to the position that therefore we must find purely expressive signs by examining language without actually using it. This apparently occurs when speaking to ourselves privately, because in so doing we don't communicate to ourselves at all.

Reply to The Great Whatever

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

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

Reply to csalisbury For one, I think discussing the premise 1) in the summary above would be helpful. From this first chapter, it is not clear why Derrida takes this to be true, and so we can't evaluate whether the reasons for him thinking so are plausible. If he is just deferring to Husserl, then we need to know why Husserl thinks it is plausible.

To start with, what does it mean to say a linguistic sign is indicative? The clear cases Derrida alludes to in Ch. 2, like brands and canals and chalk marks, make intuitive sense. But what is the linguistic expression 'indicating' in this way? It's not at all clear, and so the initial problem seems to have little compelling intuitive evidence.

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

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

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

As for 1), it's very unclear, I would even say outright dubious, that the purpose of linguistic expression is to relay some mental state of the speaker. Usually we are concerned with whatever the sentence is talking about, not what the speaker is thinking about at the time of uttering it – and certainly whatever the sentence is talking about is what its expressive content deals in, not the speaker's thoughts or experiences! Certainly the speaker's thoughts can be expressed in virtue of talking about something else, but the 'logicity' Husserl is concerned with, its truth conditions, are separable from this in principle; and anyway, even if this is the case, we do not need to infer anything about the speaker's mental state in order to understand what is literally said, and in fact Derrida's own characterization seems to imply that whether a sign indicates anything about a person's experience is depending on how that sign is experientially construed by the speaker. To make the point more vivid, note that a road sign, which has no thoughts at all, can just as well say something in virtue of having letters printed on it, and make use of expressive linguistic signs, and we can understand it. So why should 1) be plausible? Can we really think that linguistic signs serve as indications of the experiences of those who think them whenever they are used?

As to 2), the metaphysics are just not clear enough to me to pass judgment. What is going on, exactly? Is the sensible sign-vehicle separate from the expressive sign? Does it indicate that expressive sign? But if so, then the expressive sign itself need not be indicative in virtue of the sensible sign vehicle. So it must be that the sign vehicle itself is somehow both indicative, in virtue of being sensible, and expressive too? But then, what is it indicating? I can't make sense of it in terms of the simple canal examples and so forth.

Perhaps what is meant is something like, the expression indicates some state of affairs? But that doesn't seem right either. And there seems to be no textual evidence that this is what Derrida has in mind.

So what is it that makes 1) in the OP plausible, can either of these two suggested explanations be made sense of? And if this is not intuitively compelling to begin with (that all expression is indicative), then does this have consequences for the further argument?

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

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

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

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

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

Quoting csalisbury

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

No, I get it, but I'm wondering if, even if we have the distinction in hand, we will be able to justify the thesis that all uses of language are indicative in the relevant sense. It is still not clear to me why Derrida thinks this, unless he is merely as you say piggybacking on Husserl's own conceptions. But then, Husserl might just be wrong about something pretty pedestrian, and not open to the more basic criticisms Derrida wants to level at him.

Even taking the rudimentary knowledge we have now of what indication is, my question is: why should we think all uses of language are indicative? This is in my view not at all obvious.

As to the association ideas, this is really complicated because as I understand it, Husserl also believes in a kind of transcendental association of ideas that I never quite understood. Derrida alludes to that in the footnote as well.

Quoting csalisbury

My approach has been to treat Derrida, in these early chapters, as a neutral exegete* who - & this may be a little too cute - is performing his own sort of epoche. I think, at least at this stage, he's bracketing the validity of these distinctions, and is simply trying to suss out the immanent logic of Husserl's project.

This strikes me as correct and commensurate with Derrida's 'methodology' more generally: his deconstructions are always immanent critiques, and they try very hard to remain within the limits of their texts they examine. His remark on the first page about his 'solutions... be[ing] valid only within the limits of Husserl’s texts", and "being halfway between commentary and translation", although strictly about his translations, is synecdochal of the reading as I whole, I reckon. One of Derrida's basic operations is to tease out tensions between facts and principles, and side with 'facts' as it were, showing how they exceed and destabilize what the principles are supposed to circumscribe. There's a reason Derrida always seems to italicize the phrase 'in fact'.

--

Quoting The Great Whatever

To start with, what does it mean to say a linguistic sign is indicative? The clear cases Derrida alludes to in Ch. 2, like brands and canals and chalk marks, make intuitive sense. But what is the linguistic expression 'indicating' in this way? It's not at all clear, and so the initial problem seems to have little compelling intuitive evidence.

Also, without looking too far ahead to the third chapter, if the category of indication seems a little fuzzy, it's perhaps best to consider it a purely negative category for now; it is everything that does not fall under the ambit of expression. Whether or not this should remain a provisional move will remain to be seen.

Quoting StreetlightX

Also, without looking too far ahead to the third chapter, if the category of indication seems a little fuzzy, it's perhaps best to consider it a purely negative category for now; it is everything that does not fall under the ambit of expression. Whether or not this should remain a provisional move will remain to be seen.

To be clearer, I don't really have a problem with the notion of indication – it makes intuitive sense and I have enough of a working understanding of it that employing it doesn't bother me.

What bothers me is the claim that all (actual) uses of linguistic signs are necessarily indicative. This is certainly not obviously true, and it's not clear to me why Derrida/Husserl thinks it is.

Quoting StreetlightX

Also, without looking too far ahead to the third chapter, if the category of indication seems a little fuzzy, it's perhaps best to consider it a purely negative category for now; it is everything that does not fall under the ambit of expression

I am not too comfortable with this position, as it creates the complete disunity within the concept of "sign", which was briefly alluded to. This, is/ is not perspective, implies that there are two distinct ways of using "sign", and to mix the two would be equivocation. That is, unless we remove one "expression" for example, from the category of "sign". But what sense does it make to say that an expression is not a sign? And, if we approach the expression as if it is a sign, what gives it the appearance of a sign? Is it the act of interpretation which makes it appear like a sign, or is it something about the act of expression itself, which makes the expression appear to be a sign. If the latter, then sign, and indication, are inherent within the expression, whether or not all expressions are indications..

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover I'll be honest and say this question doesn't strike me as that interesting, because the ambiguity of the word 'sign' seems like an artificial one foreign to ordinary discourse. So far as I know people generally take 'sign' to mean indication. This might just be a feature of English, since Husserl apparently claims the reverse. It's only really in formal disciplines that people start talking about 'signs' in this expressive sense.

And there's not much to worry about in the mysteries of why a technical term should have been invented that has something to do with a non-technical one.

Reply to The Great Whatever

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reply to csalisbury Is there some problem with circumventing the issue altogether and using printed words on a page or road sign, then?

Even if we don't, it seems absurd to me that part of using an expressive sign essentially involves indicating the speaker's thoughts. Surely I know what the sign means in virtue of my linguistic competence, and not in virtue of my ability to mind-read; and furthermore the word would mean the same thing, in the sense we're interested in (logicity), regardless of who said them, excluding first-person indexicals and so on. That's not to say anything of the fact that I might hear what someone says and, being uninterested in what they're thinking (a flight attendant asking what I want to drink), my lived experiences are animated with no such indicative intentions.

I just don't understand what the problem is or why Derrida thinks this is such a sticking point. Also, I think Derrida at least means 2) as well, but he only alludes to it without saying it outright, and I'm having trouble finding the quote (it's a parenthetical remark where he alludes to the twofold reason).

Also, this is telling me I do need to reread the first investigation, so I will (and report back) once I can get to a library that has it.

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

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

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

Rather than contest these examples, I think it would be easier to try to make the point even clearer. Suppose we had, first, a language learning class, in which we're taught sentences and their meanings on a blackboard. We can understand these, and do so, without using them in any concrete communicative context. In fact, the whole point of using sentences in this way is not to actually employ them in a communicative act at all.

Or suppose we had a simple grammar that constructed a variety of simple English sentences according to a couple simple structural principles. We hit a button and a sentence of English, randomly constructed according to these principles, appears on the screen. No one is saying it; there is no sign-maker; there is no intelligence to which the sentence, being generated by no speaker or thinker, refers; we understand it as pointing to no one's thoughts. Nevertheless, we know perfectly well what it means, in virtue of knowing how to speak English, and we do not recognize it as employing any communicative function.

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

Quoting The Great Whatever

Nevertheless, we know perfectly well what it means, in virtue of knowing how to speak English

With speech, meaning can change depending on which word is emphasized, whether the ending trails up or down in frequency, by the facial expressions of the speaker. Where there's a known speaker, a commentator can spin the expression this way or that.

With randomly generated text, there's none of that. It looks to me like possible meanings would abound.

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

Please wait for chapter three! A lot of this stuff gets taken into account there, or at least, is made alot more explicit. May not solve anything, but will provide grist for the mill.

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

I will post a very moving thread.

Reply to StreetlightX ??

Reply to Mongrel I don't think it matters – you can accompany it with a phonological component to pronounce the words with differing stresses, etc. Still it's not meant to be used to communicate, and still there is a layer of meaning that we can discern merely in virtue of our semantic competence.

As for whether there is any expression going on in these cases, it seems there must be if our concern is 'logicity;' we can understand, for example, that certain arguments are intuitively valid even if not used communicatively (in fact, logic itself would be impossible if we could not do this, and so extract truth preservation in virtue of form).

Reply to The Great Whatever True. But if you and I did happen to disagree about what it means, there's no way to resolve the conflict (assuming we have equal linguistic competence). So giving up a real speaker means that though we may be able to discern a meaning, there's no such thing as the meaning.

Quoting The Great Whatever

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

This would not be too accurate, because rather than the mental state of the speaker, the sign indicates what the speaker wants, or more precisely, what the speaker wants you to think. The more precise qualification has to be kept in mind to account for the fact that it is possible to deceive.

Quoting The Great Whatever

Surely I know what the sign means in virtue of my linguistic competence, and not in virtue of my ability to mind-read; and furthermore the word would mean the same thing, in the sense we're interested in (logicity), regardless of who said them, excluding first-person indexicals and so on.

We can only say that you know what the sign means if you interpret the sign in the way that the person who put it there wants you to. Your linguistic competence may or may not enable you to do this, depending on your capacity in relation to the norms employed by the sign producer. Therefore "linguistic competence" does not suffice to give you "the meaning of the sign". It only possibly gives you that meaning. Linguistic competence gives you the capacity to produce an interpretation of "what the sign says". But "what the sign says", in actuality, is that a very particular mental process, is desired from you, one which you may or may not produce. If you produce the appropriate mental process, you have "correctly" interpreted the sign.

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

Reading through this some more, and looking ahead to section 3, I think that I have been going about expression in slightly the wrong way, and 'semantic content' might be a misleading way of putting it, because it conjures up the way modern linguists think about meaning. It seems to me that what Husserl means by expression (and the way I just used the word there <- is an instance of this use) is the sense in which we say 'but that is not what I meant,' when someone misinterprets us (and note here, far more is required than semantic competence to figure out what someone 'means'). It appears not to be the abstract semantic value of a bit of language at all, but something imbued with the desire to make public something gleaned from a private intentional act. This becomes clearer later in the text.

It may be that for Husserl, as for many philosophers of language prior to the mid 20th century, this notion of meaning to say something is one and the same as the meaning of the piece of language simpliciter. But I'm not so sure about that either: Husserl also was on his way to formulating, along with Frege, an abstract combinatorial semantics based only on interpretaiton of abstract syntactic categories. In any case, what Husserl is concerned with here, and Derrida's target, is meaning in this sense, 'intention,' and yet at the same time not the sort of intention that can be conveyed without language. It's a very specific sort of thing, that combines the Gricean notion of 'meaning-NN' but in such a way that it applies only to linguistic signs.

It therefore might well be that Husserl would simply deny that the signpost or the program mean anything at all in this sense, that not all productions of language are sufficient to be expressive, since after all in this sense a signpost indeed doesn't mean anything (but of course in a wider sense it does). There still remains the question to what extent Derrida's criticism relies on this weirdly parochial view of language.

Quoting The Great Whatever

in this sense a signpost indeed doesn't mean anything

This thread had me thinking about the ancient art of reading goat entrails. If the entrails have the appearance of a monster called Humbaba, it means something bad. I could see it as silly superstition, but I think that entrails actually could mean something bad. It could work the same way I-Ching, horoscopes, tea-leaves, cards, palms, etc. work: I think when people attend to those indications, what they're really listening to is their own intuitions. The reader hears his own voice coming through the entrails and so his own fears or joyful expectations are there. His own mind is trying to talk to him.

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

Quoting csalisbury

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

It is a bit unfortunate, though, that 'vouloir dire' is also commonly used, just as the English 'meaning' is used, to refer to the conventional linguistic/semantic meaning of a sign and not merely to refer to the communicative intention of whoever uses this sign, on a particular occasion, in speech or thought/soliloquy.

Reply to Pierre-Normand Yeah, this confused me too. I don't speak French, but there is a cognate in Spanish, querer decir, which also means 'mean,' but you commonly use it to ask what a word or piece of language in the abstract means, like ¿qué quiere decir 'caballo?' – 'what does 'caballo' mean?'

The translation is confusing because 'want' in these cases don't actually have to tie to volition, which is the parallel Derrida draws later.

Quoting The Great Whatever

Yeah, this confused me too. I don't speak French, but there is a cognate in Spanish, querer decir, which also means 'mean,' but you commonly use it to ask what a word or piece of language in the abstract means, like ¿qué quiere decir 'caballo?' – 'what does 'caballo' mean?'

Yes. When inquiring about the usual meaning of a word or phrase we can sometimes ask "Qu'est-ce que ça signifie?" but it is much more usual to ask "Qu'est-ce que ça veux dire?" This last question would be the standard translation of "What does it mean?"

But then, we can also ask "Qu'est-ce qu'elle veut dire (par là)?" meaning exactly the same as "What does she mean (by that)?" in cases where the communicative intention appears to go beyond, or be more precise than, the mere semantic/conventional meaning.

A couple things.

First, I found the place where Derrida implies the twofold reason for thinking language is indicative when used communicatively. It's on p. 19.

Since contamination is always produced in real colloquy (at once because in real colloquy expression indicates a content that is forever hidden from intuition, namely, the lived-experience of the other, and because the ideal content of the Bedeutung and the spiritual side of the expression are united in real colloquy with the sensible side)...

I have a copy of the Investigations now, and am looking to see what Husserl says about this second point.

Second, here is an interesting passage that my summary didn't address, on p. 18, insertions mine.

...we would be tempted to say that this hiatus [between fact and essence], which defines the very space of phenomenology, does not preexist the question of language, and it is not inserted into phenomenology as within one domain or as one problem among others. It is opened up, on the contrary, only in and by the possibility of language.

I hadn't realized on my previous read that this claim was so strong – Derrida seems to claim that the fact/eidos distinction is one that can't exist without language, and that indication and expression more or less stand for either side of the divide. There's no justification for this statement here, and having read forward I have not found any yet, but this sort of move seems to be indicative of what Derrida will be doing throughout the whole text.

Again, this points to the question of why 'needed for language' means 'needed for everything.' It also seems to me, at least at this stage, not to get the distinction right: there can also be an essential component of indication, and a fact of a particular expressive intention. Derrida makes this distinction a lot, and I can't find out where it's justified. He seems just to assume that if indication is (or needs to be) present at all, then the phenomenological method of the reductions just can't go through, because reductions 'bracket' the empirical, but this as I said in the previous thread seems to be a misunderstanding.

Let me know if anyone else wants to do the summary of Chapter 2. If not, I can do it.

Reply to The Great Whatever I'll take a stab at it

Theme song for team Husserl.

I lose my shape, I tumble
And I drift across the sea
I lose my thoughts, I watch them
In graceful movements flow

I catch the raging darkness
And transform it into light
I try to catch a second
But it slips out of my hand

When I reach the
Glorious
My silence within
Enormous
A journey begins

All the words fall so silent
No need to react
I'll remain in my silence within

Illuminated highways, only used for thoughts
They're winding through the mountain still covered with snow
When touching time they ignore it, it stands still
The only thing that matters is the silent inner will

Increasing the innermost recesses
Of the heart and of the soul
The utmost of the inner
Revelations is the call

Inside the echoes of the laughter
Underneath a waterfall
Beyond the growing trees of knowledge
In a forest still unknown

Untie
Unfold the silence with
Unveil
We caught the silence within
We sold
We caught (we caught) (we caught)

I watch the sounds, they're fading
Into a silhouette
Of all the silent courts I've reached
But lost along my way

I touch vibrating timbres
Inside my silent voice
Out of an ocean of my thoughts
I catch a single drop

When I reach the
Glorious
My silence within
Melodious
My journey begins

All the notes fall so silent
No need to react
I'll remain in my silence within
I'll remain in my silence within

Reply to The Great Whatever

That's real cute!

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

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

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

Derrida then turns to Husserl’s text.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reply to The Great Whatever ha, this'd be team Derrida (the end of it anyway)

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

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

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

Thanks for the summary, it's very helpful.

I don't know about anyone else, but I found this chapter a little bewildering, and am not sure even now I understand it. The last paragraph, in particular, is very difficult to parse. In particular, Derrida's insistence that what was outside essential demonstration was therefore 'outside of truth' was a little bizarre. This is characteristic of my frustration so far with this text – Husserl never disavows empirical truth.

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

Quoting csalisbury

Yet the origin of indication, for Husserl, lies in the association of ideas (as the footnote on page 25 tells us

True. Though late in his career, Husserl also begins to speak of a pure phenomenological notion of association that does not have to do with empirical psychology (even pure psychology). Again, I do not really understand how this works: it's one of the mysterious sections in the Cartesian Meditations (and may appear elsewhere).

Quoting csalisbury

Husserl still sees us as discovering ideal logical truths/relations/orders, rather than transcendentally constituting them. Thus, at this stage the processes whereby we discover these truths must be something entirely separate from the truths themselves (otherwise the psychologists are right.) In other words expression must be absolutely separable in principle from indication, otherwise expression (and so the order of ideal logical/mathematical truths) falls right back into the maw of psychologism.

I am having a hard time with this because the fact that the psychological acts whereby these truths are discovered require indication does nothing, at least in principle, to show that logic itself must be psychologistic. All it shows is that the human practice by which these non-psychological laws are discovered is amenable to psychology, which I take it no one denies. The point is just that regardless of how we discover the logical truths or draw logical implications, these implications in themselves have adequate evidence, and the psychological means by which they're reached is irrelevant. We would not, for example, mention necessarily any such method of discovery in a logic textbook at all.

Derrida also talks about how the reductions factor into this, and Husserl had not come up with the notion of reduction in the Investigations yet. So if Derrida means to criticize Husserl, and not just 1901-Husserl (which is the only way the text holds together), this sort of subjectivity versus objectivity thing, and discovering versus constituting ideal truths, should fall through, since as Derrida admits, Husserl's method of viewing ideal objectivities in terms of experiential constitution effectively transcends the subjectivist-objectivist divide (phenomenology is if you like no more than an assimilation of the science of experience to logic rather than to physics).

So when Derrida says this:

Husserl's whole enterprise–and well beyond the Logical Investigations–will be threatened if the Verflechtung attaching indication onto expression is absolutely irreducible and in principle inextricable, if indication were not added onto expression as a more or less tenacious bond, but inhabited the essential intimacy of the movement of expression.

Okay, but why? Seriously, why? There is no attempt to explain this, and it is so important! None of this matters unless we understand why he feels confident in asserting this!

Quoting csalisbury

In other words expression must be absolutely separable in principle from indication, otherwise expression (and so the order of ideal logical/mathematical truths) falls right back into the maw of psychologism.

Surely Husserl wants a complete separation between expression and indication, but not just to keep expression away from psychologism, more importantly I believe, this separation is what supports the notion of "natural indication". Without the separation, it will become impossible to maintain this principle, that there could be indication which is not expression. .

Reply to The Great Whatever

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

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

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

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

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover Husserl does recognize the ability of indication to be independent of expression, but my sense is the thinks this is already intuitively obvious from everyday examples. Neither Husserl nor Derrida seem to expend effort defending this claim.

Though hey, there's a possible reversal of Derrida, if you were up for it. The more I think about it the less obvious it seems. Both admit already that indication requires the animation of 'lived experiences' – who's to say this doesn't require that the person who sees the indicator as an indicator must not 'mean' something in the expressive sense in order for it to work...?

I'm really looking forward to the time-consciousness section. Probably one of the most interesting philosophical issues period. Time-consciousness is mind-blowing, even 'sensuously' and pre-philosophically, and Husserl's writings evidence a genuine recognition of this.

In the meantime I still don't want to pass over this section with burning questions remaining that the text itself can't be squeezed for. To that end I think I want to compile a list of 'problem sentences' alongside questions about them. Anyone who has ideas or is similarly frustrated by these sentences, comments would be appreciated.

Quoting The Great Whatever

Husserl does recognize the ability of indication to be independent of expression, but my sense is the thinks this is already intuitively obvious from everyday examples. Neither Husserl nor Derrida seem to expend effort defending this claim.

But that's the point, it is essential to Husserl that indication is independent of expression. Take a look at the beginning of the chapter. The subject being addressed is described as "the exteriority of indication in relation to expression". Husserl wants to "reduce" indication as an extrinsic empirical phenomenon. It is a motivator, or "motivation". Then towards the end of the chapter it is said that all other "reductions", to follow, are dependent on this hiatus. There is what is in the world, psychical, and what is not in the world, transcendental.

Clearly, Derrida is not ready to accept this separation, and this is evident in the final sentence of the chapter "Although there is no possible discourse without an expressive kernel, we could almost say that the totality of discourse is gripped by an indicative web".

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

Re: the last paragraph, it's aim seems to be to indicate the ramifications of Derrida's investigation, an attempt to explain how this seemingly trivial point about indication and expression has implications beyond what is immediately obvious. In particular, it bears upon "all the reductions to come, whether they are eidetic or transcendental." The whole first part of the paragraph (up to the words "And yet Husserl... (middle of p.26)) is just a series of ways of saying the same thing. Every 'reduction to come' will be affected by this problematic (I don't want to say problem), such that "indicative signification will cover, in language, all of what falls under the blows of the “reductions”: factuality, mundane existence, essential nonnecessity, non-evidence, etc." The bit about the 'hiatus' between indication and signification again, just says the same thing.

At this point (after 'And yet Husserl...), Derrida indicates that there are 'two paths', as it were, that one can follow at this point, paths opened up by Husserl himself. Husserl opts to follow one path, but Derrida signals his intention to follow the other. One is to follow Husserl in simply bracketing indication as something that must be taken into account, only be to put aside, as it were, in following the travails of expression. The other is to ask what would happen if we take indication to be intrinsic to expression itself, if, by necessity, it 'contaminates' the purity that ought to characterize expression. Derrida clearly opts for this latter understanding: "Although there is no possible discourse without an expressive kernel, we could almost say that the totality of discourse is gripped by an indicative web."

You can start here to see Derrida's complex relation to the phenomenological project more generally; Derrida never claims to be engaged in a 'critique of phenomenology'; rather, he always generally takes himself to hewing closer to the foundations of phenomenology than Husserl himself. Elsewhere (I can't remember where), he will speak of the necessity of the phenomenological reduction as a starting point for philosophy in general. Len Lawlor sums up Derrida's strategy thus: "Derrida argues that every time Husserl tries to define the transcendental without the empirical he fails, necessarily, to be rigorous. The transcendental is contaminated by the empirical and vice versa." This is the program that will be pursued in the following chapters.

Quoting csalisbury

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

The problem I see, is that in the end, it is "sign" which needs to be defined, and this cannot be done by reference to expression alone, we need to refer to indication as well. If we allow the separation intended by Husserl, we have two distinct senses of "sign", one in relation to expression and one in relation to indication. Objectivity will be lost. Then if we come full circle, and look at what it means to be a sign in the sense of indication, without expression, and this I take to be a natural indication. we will find absolutely no meaning here, of any sort, without referring to expression. This undermines the whole practise of separation which would bring us to this point in the first place.

Quoting StreetlightX

The other is to ask what would happen if we take indication to be intrinsic to expression itself, if, by necessity, it 'contaminates' the purity that ought to characterize expression. Derrida clearly opts for this latter understanding: "Although there is no possible discourse without an expressive kernel, we could almost say that the totality of discourse is gripped by an indicative web."

We could consider such contamination in the sense of an accidental. Indication is not essential to expression, but it just so happens to occur within expression. You are saying that expression is essential ("by necessity") to indication. I would question the necessity you refer to, is this the only place indication occurs. This would tie in with, why does it appear to exist as an external web, if it's really intrinsic to expression.

Reply to StreetlightX It has never been my impression that Husserl has tried to define the transcendental without the empirical, and on the contrary he insists that perception of an eidos can only ever come through the instantiation of some fact (cf. the fact-eidos connection and the inability of one to exist without the other in Ideas S. 2). This is why Derrida's way of speaking confuses me. He also seems to speak of the transcendental reduction in such a way that he thinks that empirical reality 'falls to' it, or 'outside of it.' This, if taken seriously, is a misunderstanding of the epoché; it's the eidetic reduction that deals with essence.

Indeed indication is itself something to be studied phenomenologically, and it's not as if Husserl expects all indication to disappear once the epoché is performed. The epoché does not bracket particular things or phenomena; it brackets an attitude and commits a reversal, so that previously one was seen to be constituted by preexisting things, now all these things are seen to be constituted by consciousness. This is not in itself a move to ideality in the relevant sense.

Reply to The Great Whatever The problem that Derrida will go on to tease out however - and this is more indicated in the first chapter than this one - is that Husserl will go on to isolate a mode in which there is expression that explicitly excludes any kind of indication whatsoever. Hence the discussion (in the first chapter) about expression not being a species of the genera indication, which Husserl will go on to affirm.

Quoting The Great Whatever

He also seems to speak of the transcendental reduction in such a way that he thinks that empirical reality 'falls to' it, or 'outside of it.'

Derrida is very clear, that "the world" is psychical, and "the transcendental" is what is not contained within the world. He is quite unclear with his use of "empirical" though. Perhaps this will become clearer with more use, but I assume that this word indicates some relation between the world and the transcendental. I think that we should not be hasty in designating "the transcendental" as necessarily external to "the world", because there are internal aspects of experience which escape "the world", just as much as there are external aspects. Remember, Kant designated space as an external intuition, and time as an internal intuition.

Reply to StreetlightX I agree that showing that indication can't be disentangled from expression goes against what Husserl explicitly says. What I don't understand is why Derrida thinks this would be ruinous for the phenomenological project. There are many things Derrida is saying about the relation of indication and expression to fact and essence and so on, and the consequences for phenomenology, that I can't make sense of. I don't understand why he thinks the fact-essence distinction is mappable onto indication-expression, for example (there is an essence of indication, in fact Derrida himself describes it in Chapter 2, from Husserl's own text), and there are factual instances of expression, and neither so far as I can see is meant to 'fall to' the reduction.

But I want to put the 'problem sentences' up to go more into this.

In some analytic jargons, an utterance is literally sounds or marks used in communication. Is that the same as an artificial indication?

If two people are in agreement, we would say that both are prepared to assert the same proposition. One utters a sentence in order to express a proposition. Is this the way "expression" is being used? If not.. how is it different?

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

Reply to The Great Whatever Quoting The Great Whatever

I agree that showing that indication can't be disentangled from expression goes against what Husserl explicitly says. What I don't understand is why Derrida thinks this would be ruinous for the phenomenological project.

The best I can think is that it would be a matter of evidence - if evidentiary intuitions* are built on the nonevident (or intertwined with them all the way down) that would be a problem for phenomenology, no? Though, you're right, that's not quite what Derrida himself is saying, at least thus far.

*I'm sure my terminology's off, because it's been a while, but referring to the opening sections of Ideas here.

Reply to csalisbury I can see this, but the discussion of time-consciousness then seems far more relevant than the discussion of expression, whose significance I still don't really understand. I know Derrida wants to show there is no pre-linguistic substratum of experience, and that the fact/essence distinction somehow maps onto the indication/expression distinction, and that these distinctions can't be made pre-linguistically, but thus far I only know that he claims these things, but neither why nor how.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover To the best of my knowledge Derrida is being faithful to Husserl here. Husserl is broadly Kantian on this point: the transcendental conditions of experience are unworldly, not in the world, but are themselves experiential (except, confusingly, perhaps the transcendental ego, though this changes in his later philosophy). This is an important point about Husserl's philosophy: Husserl believes that you can perceive essences as well as facts. This is a kind of empiricist-rationalist 'fusion:' Platonic forms are real but experientially constituted, in such a way that you can literally see them. Just not in the same way you see an empirical object, because it's not the same sort of thing (though forms depend on empirical objects for their existence). Perception for Husserl is the ur-epistemological act; his 'principle of principles' which Derrida will mention later is founded on perception in this extended sense.

'Empirical' so far as I can see is just a synonym for 'worldly' with Derrida, but it also implies non-essentiality, belonging to matters of fact rather than essence. For Husserl, essences are 'irreal,' which he means in a technical way not as unreal or fake, but as opposed to 'reality' in the way that the transcendental idealists roughly use it (bound up in causal efficacy, in the world, etc.)

Reply to The Great Whatever Consider this passage from p25 then, and see if you can interpret it for me, because I'm stuck.

"Motivations linking lived-experiences, the acts intending objective-ideal, necessary, and evident idealities, may be of the order of contingent and empirical, 'non-evident' indication. But the relations uniting the contents of ideal objects, in evidential demonstration, do not belong to indication. The entire analysis of section 3 demonstrates that (1) even if A indicates B with a complete empirical certainty (with the highest probability), this indication will never be a demonstration of apodictic necessity, and, to find here again the classic schema, it will never be a demonstration [31] of 'truths of reason' in opposition to 'truths of fact'. Section 3's analysis also demonstrates (2) that even if indication seems nevertheless to intervene in a demonstration, it will always be on the side of psychical motivations, acts, convictions, etc., and never on the side of the contents of truths that are linked together.

Reply to The Great Whatever

I can see this, but the discussion of time-consciousness then seems far more relevant than the discussion of expression, whose significance I still don't really understand. I know Derrida wants to show there is no pre-linguistic substratum of experience, and that the fact/essence distinction somehow maps onto the indication/expression distinction, and that these distinctions can't be made pre-linguistically, but thus far I only know that he claims these things, but neither why nor how.

Yeah, I agree. (My cynical suspicion is that Derrida's starting with indication/expression for the theatricality: The very first distinction in the very first logical investigation! In Phenomenology's beginning lies its ruin! The optimistic and charitable part of me hopes this is cleared up a bit as the book progresses.)

I'm going to take a crack at the supplementary text to see if it has any ideas, but so far I haven't found it extraordinarily helpful. Much of the front matter before the text seems irrelevant, and the discussion of the text itself seems in some places to be reducible to repetitions of what Derrida actually says with certain things repeated and certain words italicized.

Reply to The Great Whatever My copy of Logical Investigations mentions another book that includes a close (though critical) reading of V & P (one chapter for each chapter of V&P) - Strategies of Deconstruction: Derrida and the Myth of the Voice by Joseph Claude Evans. Gonna see if there's any insight there.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover The lived experiences are what's going on with the thinker when they make some logical deduction. These are connected to each other – one motivates the other, but because they are psychological processes taking place in an empirical mind, they only indicate one another. We move from one thought to another via the suggestion of one thought by another, but not in such a way that the association between these thoughts is in any way logically guaranteed. Rather, it's subject to the frailties of our mental capacities and our powers of association, and there is no logical guarantee that one thought will suggest another in strict logical fashion (we can make deductive mistakes). The things thought about however, in making the deduction, don't have this empirical flavor: a syllogism shows the truth of its conclusion being guaranteed by its premises in such a way that this truth must follow, the conclusion is tied to the premises with 'adequate evidence' or with 'insight.' Thus even though our thoughts are empirically collocated, what we think about in making logical deductions is not; they are related by an internal necessity, and we deduce correctly insofar as our contingent psychological powers lead us to see this with adequate evidence.

Here we invoke the Humean notion of contiguity never implying necessity, and the corresponding division between matters of fact and matters of reason. No matter how strongly A suggests B (there are lightning storms often here in Chicago; whenever you see a certain sort of flash from indoors, you can bet with an extremely high probability that a roll of thunder is coming in several seconds), there is nothing essential about B's following from A. It is only their constant juxtaposition that psychologically inclines us to see A as justifying B, as movement from one empirical state of affairs to another. So we can expect thunder form lightning, and be justified in doing so, but cannot deduce thunder from lightning, nor any indicated thing from its indication.

When we appeal to indication in talking about logical deduction, we always do it with respect to our psychological acts or thoughts, where one indicates another empirically, like lightning and thunder. The ideal objects themselves, however, do not indicate one another but are demonstrated from one another. In showing how a syllogism works, we do not point to the psychological acts that discover how it works, because these are irrelevant, except insofar as they serve to get us to see the connection that lies between the ideal objects themselves.

This isn't totally relevant, but I thought it was funny: The introduction to Strategies of Deconstruction includes a gallery of existing interpretations of V&P & one interpreter, Scanlon, thinks that the book is written in character, that it's a subtle joke - Derrida isn't writing as Derrida, is the idea, but as a caricature of a pedantic academic exegete, a bumbling one who believes that every detail of the text has to manifest, equally, the idea of the metaphysics of presence (perhaps the way a goofy monk might try to argue that that the most trivial or auxillary sentence in the bible is a perfectly clear manifestation of the essence of God's will.)

I think this is obviously absurd but its a funny lens through which to view the text (and i suspect Scanlon himself, whoever he is, probably views his reading the same way I do)

Quoting The Great Whatever

What I don't understand is why Derrida thinks this would be ruinous for the phenomenological project.

I get what you mean, though I think this is (partly) an issue with the book's structure. The first part of the book is given over to explicating 'the problem of the sign' (note that this is the subtitle of VP itself), while the second half (chpts 4 onwards) shows how this problem comes to bear on the phenomenology of internal time consciousness, and then consequently the phenomenological project as a whole. I think you're right that at this point in the book, Derrida is making claims he's not yet really entitled to, but I think he will begin to remedy this as the book goes on.

Reply to csalisbury I like that, although I think I would like it even more if it were real. Deep cover jokes that can only be gotten by an extremely narrow audience are great – like the Sokal hoax but with a real 'journal' and a real 'social scientist.' I'm sure Borges' Tlönian philosophers would approve, as would paradigm pirates. And there's an exquisite pleasure in coming to understand that you're reading a joke after careful study, especially if others who are less attentive or skilled have been unable to 'get it' and made fools of themselves trying to take it seriously.

I once tried to write a parody Wikipedia-style article on continental philosophy, in the overly affected style of a continental philosopher, but I found I just didn't have the knack for it. I think I might be able to do an analytic one.

I remember reading somewhere (I can't remember where) that Derrida was told by his teacher Jean Hyppolite (one of the major progenitors of French post-war philosophy) that Derrida would need to put out some more 'serious', studied work before he could practice the kind of playful, wandering writing that would characterize his later work. Voice and Phenomenon was, apparently, one of the fruits of that advice.

Note also that VP is not Derrida's only work on Husserl. Pretty much the entirety of 'early Derrida' is marked by an engagement with Husserl, from his doctoral dissertation (The Problem of Genesis in the Philosophy in Husserl) to the two other essays which are commonly cited ("Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction" and "‘Genesis and Structure’ and Phenomenology" (in Writing and Difference). Some further secondary reading would be:

Leonard Lawlor - Derrida and Husserl
Paola Marrati - Genesis and Trace: Reading Husserl and Heidegger
Joshua Kates - Essential History: Jacques Derrida and the Development of Deconstruction

Re: Evans, he and Lawlor have been arguing about how to interpret VP for ages. There's an interesting exchange in the Philosophy Today journal between them, with Lawlor defending Derrida from Evans, although their exchange has taken place outside that journal as well. I read the exchange a long time ago so I don't quite remember the meat of it, but I can provide... things to anyone interested in the exchange.

One thing I find interesting about Husserl is he is perhaps the most unflinchingly serious and earnest philosopher I've ever read. The greats that he respected, like Hume, all had a playful, deconstructive, even destructive side to them, but Husserl really had his nose to the grindstone. His distinctions and analyses are so numerous, so subtle, and so wide-reaching in scope and insight: I feel like for a lot of philosophers, it's a matter of 'there but for the grace of a serious work ethic go I,' I just don't see that kind of sheer backbone in a writer like Derrida or even Heidegger. Their writings are too eager to get to the point and to be clever, and lack that sheer earnest labor. Who but Husserl would be insane enough to bulldoze through the issue of other minds while swallowing all of the classical Cartesian assumptions?

What's interesting though is that the approach of Husserl and Derrida to their work is in some manner reflected in their various philosophies themselves. Husserl was after foundations, he appreciated the Cartesian drive for certainty, sought after essences and the guarantee of truths against the various 'crises' of European philosophy. In turn, Derrida's own playfulness is itself valorized in the 'play' that he affirmed at work in all philosophy, that play that will both unsettle and establish any philosophical system subject to the 'metaphysics of presence'. In other words, if Husserl's is a kind of principled seriousness, Derrida's is no less a kind of principled play.

Reply to StreetlightX True but I feel that while play always eventually gets boring, seriousness can suck you in and become increasingly enrapturing. And at the end of the day I want Husserls building the planes.

Quoting The Great Whatever

The ideal objects themselves, however, do not indicate one another but are demonstrated from one another.

OK, so here's the part which stumps me. He refers to the "contents" of ideal objects, and the relations between the contents, and that these do not belong to indication. How can there be a relation which is not indicative, what kind of relation is he assuming for these contents?

For example, I assume that logic proceeds through relating symbols, "if A then B", and such things, and these relations are in some sense indicative. This is one relation, which relates the symbols necessarily, it is established by the premise as necessary. There is another relation which relates the symbols to the content, "A" signifies a particular idea. This relation is contingent. But I don't see any relationship between the contents themselves, except those established through relating the symbols in the premises. All the relations between the contents are created through this extraneous means of relating the symbols.

Is it the case, that by "contents" he is referring to the symbols themselves, "A" and "B"? If so, then why does he call them the content of ideal objects rather than the formal aspect of ideal objects? As this is consistent with the traditional form/content distinction?

Then he distinguishes "truth of reason" from "truth of fact", which I don't see at all. Where does he pull "truth of fact" from, aren't logical truths, truths of reason? And finally, he concludes with "the contents of truths that are linked together". What is he referring to with "contents of truths"?

OK, in time for the start of the third chapter tomorrow, I have some puzzling sentences and what I have been able to make of them.

Indication falls outside the content of absolutely ideal objectivity, that is, outside the truth.

It seems that here Derrida is not accusing Husserl of disavowing empirical truth generally, but rather using 'truth' to mean the sort of truth provided by 'absolutely ideal objectivity.' I think this is fair, since reading the First Investigation, Husserl at least once does this himself, saying that an object perceived only mediately but not intuitively given (like someone else's mind), and so indicated, has 'no truth in it.' What Derrida seems to mean then is that indication can never provide for 'truth' in this especial sense.

Here again, this exteriority, or rather this extrinsic characteristic of indication, is inseparable, in its possibility, from the possibility of all the reductions to come, whether they are eidetic or transcendental.

I'm still not sure what to make of this one. For one thing, the 'here again' seems to suggest that Derrida has made this point before, or given some justification for it; but I can't find anything to that effect. Grammatically, it's a little confusing what's being literally said here: is it that the reductions cannot be performed without making use of indication? Or is it that indication cannot happen without the reduction? Presumably the former is more in keeping with the tone of the text. But then I do not know why this is so.

Having its "origin" in the phenomena of association and always connecting empirical existents in the world, indicative signification will cover, in language, all of what falls under the blows of the "reductions": factuality, mundane existence, essential non-necessity, non-evidence, etc.

The idea that mundane existence "falls under the blows of the reductions" seems misleading. In introducing the epoché, Husserl is careful to explain that there is no particular phenomenon or set of phenomena that it cordons off, nor is the idea to shave off an empirical layer of the world to reach its non-empirical substrate. After reduction, the world faces us just as it was, empirical existents and indications and all, but just as world-phenomenon. The difference is not one of content, but of attitude, the exchanging of the natural attitude for the phenomenological. So we should expect, for instance, that within the reduction we will still undergo motivation via indication, and further that [i]these indicative motivations will themselves be material for phenomenology[i]. This is underscored by the fact that Husserl himself attempts to provide an essential analysis for indication (which would, according to his method, have to operate via eidetic reduction on particular cases of indication). So we should not be misled into thinking that the point of the reduction is to 'get rid of indication,' and therefore that any sign it might be 'seeping in' is a sign that the reduction has failed on Husserl's terms.

Do we not already have the right to say that the entire future problematic of the reduction and all the conceptual differences in which they are declared (fact/essence, transcendentality/mundanity, and all the oppositions that are systematic with them) are developed in a hiatus between two types of signs?

Here is sort of the clincher, and the most confusing part of the chapter. Why do indication and expression map onto these two sides of the dichotomy? And why should we see this linguistic difference as having consequences for all of phenomenology?

Going off of what csalisbury has said, I wonder if we should take the bolded words here more seriously. Maybe Derrida is being quite literal when he asks about the differences in which they are declared? As in, phenomenological results, in order not only to be communicated among phenomenologists, not only to be written down and stored, but to be conducted to begin with, must be encoded within the language of the phenomenologist? When we want to express phenomenological insights or formulate them, if indication is bound up with expression, then all phenomenological method will be indicative as well, and therefore purely eidetic results will be impossible, because we cannot coherently mean them, at least not in the way Husserl wants, not purely apodictically and securely in evident intuition. We would depend, for the security of these expressed results, on a gap or lack of expression coming from empirically recalling or representing what is absent. This is how we 'develop' the theory.

I went back (forward?) to the Introduction, and some support for this view seems to come from the following comment on p. 7:

And, as Fink has indeed shown, Husserl never posed the question of the transcendental logos, of the inherited language in which phenomenology produces and exhibits the results of the workings of the reduction.

Perhaps what is at stake here is not the reduction itself, but any efficacy it has in reporting its results. I suspect for Derrida that these two things turn out to be inseparable – if we can't secure phenomenological results, then tho that extent there really is no reduction the way Husserl wants for there to be one. This in turn seems to be based on the following gambit: knowledge is not properly knowledge unless it can be recorded and communicated linguistically, and Husserl's notion that there is a pre-linguistic stratum of experience is a fantasy. Husserl would hold, I imagine, that it is possible to conduct eidetic analyses intuitively, without needing to record them linguistically, and the fact that we must resort to language to communicate them is a mere accident (one that could perhaps be bypassed if we were a certain sort of intuitive mind-reader?) This can work to make Derrida read as someone throwing in his gambit against Husserl's, but not yet, so far as I can see, as someone deconstructing Husserl from the inside or even producing a convincing thesis counter to him. It seems like we can't trust Derrida in making these claims until we know beforehand how crucial language is to the enterprise.

Here’s a summary for Chapter 3.

In this chapter, Derrida is concerned with tracing Husserl’s move toward the ‘solitary life of the soul’ in Chapter 1: he expounds further on Husserl’s notion of expression and the steps that must be taken to isolate it from indication, and shows the way in which this requires an imaginative speech to oneself, in order to purge language of its communicative (indicative) elements. There is also a footnote in this chapter that lays out the course of the entire work in extreme brief.

—

The first thing to note about expression is that, like its prefix ex- implies, it’s a movement outward. From what, and toward what? First there is something a thinker experiences, in a pre-linguistic substratum of experience, which takes the form of some intentionality: there is an act and an object, and so the act reaches ‘toward’ the object (perceiving the sky, imagining a centaur, etc.). Once the meaning (in Husserl’s wider sense of Sinn, sense) is present, expression can then supervene on this and move it ‘outward’ again, by ‘reflecting’ or ‘mirroring’ the intentional object (the noema) in a linguistic expression of what is experienced. In effect, the experiencer comes to ‘say’ exactly what he ‘sees.’ In this way all pre-linguistic experience tends toward being expressed: it is there for the expressing, and giving it a linguistic sense in a way only reduplicates what was already there. Importantly, all of this takes place within experience, and does not involve the positing of or exiting toward an outer world transcending experience.

Second, expression is purely voluntary. Here Derrida’s translation of Bedeutung as vouloir-dire comes into play: expression must be intentional in the non-technical sense, it must be done on purpose by the thinker. This means that any accompaniment of expression that its non-essential to this intentional redoubling of sense has to be excluded, and this includes any communicative features carried along with the expression by accident (here facial features and gestures are mentioned, though presumably the form of the un-intentionality doesn’t matter, and presumably also these gestures can be voluntary as well). These things can merely accidentally indicate the sense that the speaker wants to express, and while other people can pick up on these indications and infer what the speaker thinks from them, they only do this insofar as they themselves express something with regards to the involuntary acts, intentionally; otherwise, the smile indicating happiness is much like smoke indicating fire, strictly speaking not meant. Expression has to be purged of all such indicative impurities. Derrida makes two accusations of Husserl at this point – first, that Husserl is reinstituting a kind of voluntaristic metaphysics, since all experience seems to ‘tend toward’ a voluntary reduplication of it, while passivity (i.e. indication) is set to the side as secondary, and second, that this sort of move represents a deep fear of death and lack of presence (and lack of control) that Husserl’s metaphysics of presence is trying to resolve, by keeping the willed and present front and center.

In this connection Derrida notes there is a sort of mind-body split, reborn in the split between the intentional and the accidental, which is involved in the way Husserl holds that all physical expression of a sign contaminates its expressive capacity with indicative elements. When listening, to someone, we must attend to the physical side of a sign, and from it perceive mediately the sense expressed. Communicative speech thus requires mediation through physical objects that indicate one another: we can see another’s feelings and emotions, but not purely intuitively or originarily by nature, we only originarily see the physical signs through which they’re conveyed. Although expression is therefore generally intended to be used in communication, communication itself paradoxically destroys expression in its most basic form. For that, we need a lack of indicative mediation, which means a lack of mediation through physical signs, which means a lack of mediation through other people: we essentially have to talk to ourselves.

In talking to ourselves, Husserl thinks, we are indifferent to the actual existence of any word, and only need to imagine the word being used. Furthermore, we indicatively communicate nothing to ourselves, since our meaning is already intuitively present in our own experience. In soliloquizing, the word, as ideal linguistic object, still has all of the same meaning it has when we employ it in actual acts of communication, and actual speech only exteriorizes this to intertwine it with an indicative function. Therefore it doesn’t matter if we actually speak or not, and therefore indication is absent in talking to ourselves because indication relies on the reality of the indicator to motivate conviction in the indicated. But here we have merely imagined words, not words themselves, and we are indifferent to whether anything indicator or indicated exists at all.

—

There are two other explanatorily important things I think should be discussed at some point about this chapter: first, that monster footnote on pp. 38-39 (which maybe has as much content as the rest of the chapter combined), and second, the technical jargon surrounding Husserl and Saussure that Derrida alludes to at the end, regarding the reality of objects.

Reply to The Great Whatever good stuff - I probably won't be able to respond til tuesday, pulling a couple long shifts at work, but I'll join back in when I can.

Nice summary TGW, thanks for that. Here's my take.

I see three phases of separation, or "removal" in this chapter. First, and primarily, the word as it appears within a human mind is removed, or separated from the physical existence of the word. This is tied up with the separation between indication and expression. By removing the psychical occurrence of the word, its occurrence within the mind, from the physical occurrence of the word, Husserl is able to consider the imagined word as a pure form of expression. This is expression without indication. This form of pure expression is referred to as "the solitary life of the soul", talking to oneself, soliloquy. The expression is said to be pure because the meaning is self-present, there is no manifestation, no medium between word and meaning, and therefore no indication.

However, there is a second phase of removal described. This is the removal of the act of imagination from the thing which is imagined, in this case, the word. Following this there is a third phase suggested, and that is a removal of the contents of the act of imagination, the noema, from the act of imagination. Now it is implied, if not explicitly stated, that the contents of the act of imagination, the noema, is not actually the imagined words. If this is the case, then I believe that Husserl's claim that the imagined word is a form of pure expression, cannot be upheld. The act of imagination forms a mediation between the imagined word, and the content, or noema (this could be 'the concept') , and therefore I believe we have indication. In other words, the imagined words are not properly "the content" of the act of imagination, they are in some sense a manifestation, or indication of the actual content.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

However, there is a second phase of removal described. This is the removal of the act of imagination from the thing which is imagined, in this case, the word. Following this there is a third phase suggested, and that is a removal of the contents of the act of imagination, the noema, from the act of imagination. Now it is implied, if not explicitly stated, that the contents of the act of imagination, the noema, is not actually the imagined words. If this is the case, then I believe that Husserl's claim that the imagined word is a form of pure expression, cannot be upheld. The act of imagination forms a mediation between the imagined word, and the content, or noema (this could be 'the concept') , and therefore I believe we have indication. In other words, the imagined words are not properly "the content" of the act of imagination, they are in some sense a manifestation, or indication of the actual content.

This has to do with what I mentioned with regard to Husserl's many arcane distinctions about what is real and not real, and the distinction between noesis (act of consciousness) and noema (object of consciousness). I will try to talk more about this later when I have time, but for now I think I should say, that the noema need not point to, or motivate belief in, any really existent thing.

It's easier to see this if we use an example of something we take to be purely imaginary, like Husserl's own example of the centaurs. If we imagine a centaur, there is the act of imagination, and its object, its noema, which is the imaginary centaur. According to Husserl, there is still an object of imagination, even if there is no centaur (this is a holdover from Brentano, the 'inexisting intentional object'). Furthermore, we do not take there to be any centaur, nor do we feel that the imagination of a centaur motivates the existence of any centaur. The same is true for anything, including a word. The act of imagination itself suffices to see the expressive essence of the word – just as, I might add, we can see the essence of a centaur from imagining it, even though there are none, nor do we take there to be any!

So to be a little obtuse we can speak of 'the imaginary word' versus 'the imagined word.' The former exists qua intentional object, but the latter not only doesn't exist, we don't even take it to. It's not like because we talk to ourselves we suddenly think some real word somewhere has been actually uttered, and we're thinking about that. Likewise with centaurs, there is 'the imaginary centaur,' but there is no centaur, period, the centaur is the imagined object, but there are none, so the imagined object doesn't exist.

Importantly the notion of imagination that Husserl is appealing to is that of 'phantasy,' which is sort of like a plain old fantasy: it's not the kind of imagination where we e.g. imagine what someone else is doing right now, in hopes we are imagining correctly. Sometimes we say 'imagine' to mean something roughly like 'think,' but this is not what Husserl has in mind here.

Reply to The Great Whatever

The imagined centaur is composed of elements that do exist, and not of anything that doesn't, so what you say above seems somewhat superficial or at the very least, moot.

Reply to The Great Whatever Thanks, that all makes sense. But the issue for me is that the act of imagination is a mediation between the imagined word "centaur", and the noema, the imagined centaur. Doesn't this imply that the meaning of the imagined word is not immediately present to the one who imagines it, there is no self-presence, and therefore there is indication. Is it not the case that "mediation" is what distinguishes indication from expression?

Quoting The Great Whatever

Communicative speech thus requires mediation through physical objects that indicate one another: we can see another’s feelings and emotions, but not purely intuitively or originarily by nature, we only originarily see the physical signs through which they’re conveyed. Although expression is therefore generally intended to be used in communication, communication itself paradoxically destroys expression in its most basic form. For that, we need a lack of indicative mediation, which means a lack of mediation through physical signs, which means a lack of mediation through other people: we essentially have to talk to ourselves.

So the question is, how is the psychical act of imaging the words, as a mediation, fundamentally different from the psychical act of hearing the words. as a mediation, such that one is indicative, and the other is not?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So the question is, how is the psychical act of imaging the words, as a mediation, fundamentally different from the psychical act of hearing the words. as a mediation, such that one is indicative, and the other is not?

Derrida talks a little about this on pp. 37-38.

But why is Husserl not satisfied by the difference between the existing (perceived) word and the perception or the perceived being, the phenomenon of the word? It is because in the phenomenon of perception, a reference is located in phenomenality itself to the existence of the word. The sense "existence" belongs then to the phenomenon. This is no longer the case with imagination. In imagination, the existence of the word is not implied, not even by means of the intentional sense.

Perception differes from imagination as an intentional act in that the former takes its object to be existent, even just within the experience of perception itself. To perceive something existent is a redundancy (we can then have beliefs regarding the perception that neutralize this belief, when we choose not to 'trust our senses,' or simply bracket this belief, as we do in the epoché, but the sense of existence remains in the experience itself, even if at a higher level we choose not to make use of this in theorizing).

Hearing the words is a kind of perception, which implies the existence of the heard word (to hear something, there has to be a sound). Indication requires that something existent give us motivation to believe in the existence of something else. With imagination, then, we have no existent thing to serve as motivation, nor is there any other existent thing that we take to be motivated by the imagination. The imaginary centaur not only doesn't exist, but it points to nothing else existent and motivates no new belief about existent things on our part. This is unlike with hearing someone else communicate with speech, where we perceive an existent word and this indicates an existent psychological state of some kind.

Quoting The Great Whatever

The imaginary centaur not only doesn't exist, but it points to nothing else existent and motivates no new belief about existent things on our part.

This is equally true or untrue of an imaginary apple, landscape or motor bike.

Reply to John Are you reading V&P? If you're looking for clarification to better understand the book, that's great, but, if not, it might be better to bring this up in another thread, just to keep the convo on point. Not trying to be rude, just the book itself is complicated enough.

Reply to The Great Whatever Let's look at it this way then. Suppose I memorize "a centaur is a creature with the head, arms and torso of a man, and body and legs of a horse". Also, I write this on a piece of paper. How is the "existence" of those words on the piece of paper fundamentally different from the "existence" of those words in my memory, such that on the paper the words exist, but in my memory they are non-existent?

Incidentally, there is some mention by Derrida in this chapter, concerning the written word, which is quite unclear. We should bear in mind that in Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations", in the so-called private language argument, the private language is characterized by a marking down. This 'taking note' is carried out such that the individual can note each time a certain sensation occurs.

I think it is important to respect a fundamental difference between written language and spoken language. I believe that there is such a fundamental difference, and that it is based in a difference of intention behind these two types of language. Spoken language is intended principally, as communication between individuals. Written language is intended principally, as a memory aid. I write things down so that I can refer to them and remember them at a later time. So with respect to "the solitary life of the soul", we should really pay special attention to the written word, rather than the spoken word.

Having said that, suppose I write something down, say my doctor's appointment, and later I take a look at this note to affirm, or refresh my memory. I infer that the physical existence of the note contaminates what could have been a pure expression, with some degree of indication. Now assume that I didn't write it down, and I remembered it correctly. How is the "self-presence" of the meaning of those words, (the date), any different between these two cases, such that the written word involves indication while the remembered word does not?. Here's a third possibility, suppose that I don't write down the date, and I remember it wrong. Now I have words in my mind, the date, and the meaning is self-present, this is the time of my appointment, but the meaning is wrong, false.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

How is the "existence" of those words on the piece of paper fundamentally different from the "existence" of those words in my memory, such that on the paper the words exist, but in my memory they are non-existent?

A couple things – first, memory and imagination are very different for Husserl. Husserl does think that memory is 'positional' just like perception is: it also presents the remembered thing as existent (in the past). My guess is that when we imagine a word to ourselves in silent speech, we are typically not remembering some past actual instance of that word spoken or inscribed. Though of course we can, in which case the actual past existence of that word may motivate any number of things, and so serve as an indicator.

Second, it looks like in the next chapter Derrida will ask this question and come to the conclusion that there really is no difference between phantasied and actually used language. It may be possible you are sympathetic to his argument, but I'm not sure because I don't understand the fourth chapter very well yet.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I think it is important to respect a fundamental difference between written language and spoken language. I believe that there is such a fundamental difference, and that it is based in a difference of intention behind these two types of language. Spoken language is intended principally, as communication between individuals. Written language is intended principally, as a memory aid. I write things down so that I can refer to them and remember them at a later time. So with respect to "the solitary life of the soul", we should really pay special attention to the written word, rather than the spoken word.

Derrida will claim, AFAIK, that this is basically how western philosophy has always treated writing v. speech, although I don't know if he goes over it in this book. That is, speech is primary, used to express communicative intentions, and then writing comes along as a representation of speech. It seems like Husserl would be sympathetic to this, although perhaps writing itself isn't so important as the communicative immediacy, which is just typically higher in speech than writing (a recorded message on an answering machine, for example, while technically 'speech,' would seem less immediate than an instant message sent to an attentive audience, which is technically 'writing' – so what matters is not the sensory modality, but the use it's put to, and the degree to which it's 'symbolic,' 'recorded,' 'repeatable,' etc.). Husserl seems to want to get rid of any sort of use of actually existent symbols, to get rid of communication, though I'm not sure if writing used merely as a mnemonic aid would trouble him, since it would indicate the expression desired, but then the expression itself, once gotten ahold of, could be seen in its own right. Though maybe I am being flippant here. It looks like Derrida will ultimately argue that the 'repetition' of writing is in fact in no way secondary to the original 'production' of intended meaning, since the latter relies on the former in alway employing pre-understood symbols (that is the best I can make of it in this early stage).

There is a footnote on writing by Derrida on p. 23, at the beginning of chapter 2, though honestly I haven't quite figured out what's going on in it yet, and some of the vocabulary is opaque to me.

Reply to John Yes, my point was just that this lack of motivation is easier to see with a centaur, since there is no temptation to think imagining a centaur motivates any existence. It holds equally true for the imagination of things, instances of which actually exist.

Quoting The Great Whatever

My guess is that when we imagine a word to ourselves in silent speech, we are typically not remembering some past actual instance of that word spoken or inscribed. Though of course we can, in which case the actual past existence of that word may motivate any number of things, and so serve as an indicator.

There is a passage concerning this on page 35, what makes a word recognizable as the same word, "...the sameness of the word is ideal." "It is the ideal possibility of repetition...". Further, he says that Husserl says, that what we are to receive as an indication must be perceived as an existent, but "the unity of a word owes nothing to its existence". By "unity", I assume he is referring to this sameness. That each occurrence is of "the same" word, creates a unity of those occurrences, or, it is "the same" word by virtue of this unity. Thus expression is a "pure unity". I assume that each occurrence of the word, in the imagination, is the same, as it has no physical properties to make a difference

Quoting The Great Whatever

That is, speech is primary, used to express communicative intentions, and then writing comes along as a representation of speech.

What I was saying is not that writing comes along as a representation of speech. I think writing and speech came about separately, in parallel, for different reasons. At first, there wo
that we would today classify as art, should really be classified more as written language, memory aids. Consider artificial landmarks, direction indicators and such things as memory aids. It was when these two forms of language, communicative, and memoric, merged, when it was learned that oral sounds could be remembered through representation with writing, that the evolution of language exploded. A symbol could represent an artificial sound, and this would enable the memory of that sound, and how to make that sound. The writing down of the symbol enables the memory, which ensures the unity, or sameness which is referred to above.

Reply to The Great Whatever

Well I think there's an ambiguity in the idea of 'motivating existence', and I'm not sure what you want it to mean; but in any case I won' t pursue it here. Maybe I'll start another thread.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

There is a passage concerning this on page 35, what makes a word recognizable as the same word, "...the sameness of the word is ideal." "It is the ideal possibility of repetition...". Further, he says that Husserl says, that what we are to receive as an indication must be perceived as an existent, but "the unity of a word owes nothing to its existence". By "unity", I assume he is referring to this sameness. That each occurrence is of "the same" word, creates a unity of those occurrences, or, it is "the same" word by virtue of this unity. Thus expression is a "pure unity". I assume that each occurrence of the word, in the imagination, is the same, as it has no physical properties to make a difference

Yeah, or the word has an essence as a sign: an essential sound-form, an essential syntactic role, and an essential semantic role. We can then put the latter to use in expressing what we mean, independent of the fact that any occurrence of the word exists. Like anything else, what makes it the 'same' word is that it fits beneath the essence of all the other instantiations. Derrida seems to object that a word's essential features and its features in actual use are one and the same.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

What I was saying is not that writing comes along as a representation of speech. I think writing and speech came about separately, in parallel, for different reasons. At first, there wo that we would today classify as art, should really be classified more as written language, memory aids. Consider artificial landmarks, direction indicators and such things as memory aids. It was when these two forms of language, communicative, and memoric, merged, when it was learned that oral sounds could be remembered through representation with writing, that the evolution of language exploded. A symbol could represent an artificial sound, and this would enable the memory of that sound, and how to make that sound. The writing down of the symbol enables the memory, which ensures the unity, or sameness which is referred to above.

I don't know how much this matters, but there's nothing essential about writing it seems to me that services memory more than sound: it just so happens that the materials we had lying around were better for inscribing visual marks than sound waves, which changed once phonograph cylinders were invented. It might have been otherwise. Also, sound forms were themselves used as mnemonic devices in epic poetry long before the stories were written down, and sometimes remembering a pattern in verse is even more effective than searching a text. In any case I do not think language as a mnemonic device is crucial for Husserl once we separate imagination from memory (also, I don't think Husserl would want to claim a word's unity comes along with writing – surely he wants to attribute the same unity to languages spoken in pre-literate societies, and words can have unity, as I said, via their phonological, semantic, etc. functions). It seems like it might become important for Derrida, who seems to be going in the direction of claiming that any use of a sign brings with it a 'memory' of a different sort, of its institutional uses and place in a symbolic system, which will be preserved equally in imagination and ordinary communicative use.

Reply to The Great Whatever

'Here again, this exteriority, or rather this extrinsic characteristic of indication, is inseparable, in its possibility, from the possibility of all the reductions to come, whether they are eidetic or transcendental.'

I'm still not sure what to make of this one. For one thing, the 'here again' seems to suggest that Derrida has made this point before, or given some justification for it; but I can't find anything to that effect. Grammatically, it's a little confusing what's being literally said here: is it that the reductions cannot be performed without making use of indication? Or is it that indication cannot happen without the reduction? Presumably the former is more in keeping with the tone of the text. But then I do not know why this is so.

Grammatically, I think he's saying something like: "that (approach/stance/method) which makes it possible to consider indication as extrinsic, is also what makes it possible to perform (or even conceive of) eidetic and transcendental reductions."

Perhaps what is at stake here is not the reduction itself, but any efficacy it has in reporting its results. I suspect for Derrida that these two things turn out to be inseparable – if we can't secure phenomenological results, then tho that extent there really is no reduction the way Husserl wants for there to be one. This in turn seems to be based on the following gambit: knowledge is not properly knowledge unless it can be recorded and communicated linguistically, and Husserl's notion that there is a pre-linguistic stratum of experience is a fantasy. Husserl would hold, I imagine, that it is possible to conduct eidetic analyses intuitively, without needing to record them linguistically, and the fact that we must resort to language to communicate them is a mere accident (one that could perhaps be bypassed if we were a certain sort of intuitive mind-reader?)

This seems right to me. (It could be fruitful to bring PI-era Wittgenstein in here, but I'm not well-versed enough to do so.) The broad strategy of chapter 3 is to characterize the 'soliloquy' section of the first Logical Investigation as a larval 'epoche,' where words are seen as irreal noemata (which double, without modifying, other noemata.) The idea appears to be that the discussion of 'the solitary life of the soul' is the place, in LI, where Husserl determines the essence of expression and thus offers especial insight into what he's about.

Derrida shuttles between Ideas and LI constantly throughout this chapter, which makes things difficult. Everything about the 'ex' in expression, the movement outward, comes from Ideas. It's the story of a 'meaning' produced by a noetic act and then carried delicately into the arms of a word, which will preserve it. Derrida, if I understand him, is taking this later understanding of expression and retrojecting it onto the first investigation, in order to sketch a movement in which meaning is produced, proceeds outward, and is instantly reabsorbed. The 'imagined' word expresses something we already understand (having produced it in a noetic act) and so immediately grasp.

I honestly don't understand the purpose of the 'soliloquy' chapter in LI. It doesn't seem to have, for Husserl, the import or ultimate significance Derrida ascribes to it. It feels less like a honing-in on the essence of expression and more like an aside on a unique case. But even taken on its own terms, I don't really understand what Husserl is saying. If we already understand immediately what we're saying to ourselves, what's going on with these interpolated (and yes, inherited) signs? Why are they there? Why is the immediacy of meaning taking a superfluous detour through a self-dissolving mediator?

There is something deeply unintelligible about the soliloquy section, at least to me - maybe that's Derrida's point. Expression without indication doesn't make sense at all (why would we reflect what we already have back to us through a contingent symbol?) Either you dispense with the external movement toward a sign (and so are left, I guess, with 'pression') or the translation of experience into words somehow, by that very movement, reshapes that experience and gives you something new. A closed circuit from meaning to expression to immediate comprehension is a bit like mailing yourself letters which explain why you sent them. (This goes beyond the texts but, in my experience, if you listen, really listen to your interior monologue, it's not a neutral expression of your thoughts, but a very subtle kind of theater where different voices with different 'tones' present those thoughts to you in a certain way, consoling or cajoling you. Honestly, try it out, take a close listen for a half hour.)

So, I think I disagree about the centrality of soliloquy to Husserl's thought generally. Husserl has a certain tenor to his work, and that tenor certainly includes a belief in an absolute withdrawal into the self and a sometimes shocking sense of solitude and metaphysical loneliness. It's part of his reduction to the sphere of ownness, his detour through solipsism in the Fifth Meditation, his obsession with Augustine and his comments about 'the inner man,' the belief in the transcendental ego constituting all cultural sedimentations, his adoption of the Leibnizian notion of the 'monad,' his accusation that other philosophers are 'afraid' to go down the hole into the origin of origins in the 'Ur-ich,' the primal solipsism, for fear they cannot make it back out, and so on. I do not think Derrida is being tone-deaf here, even if at this initial stage he takes himself to be psychoanalyzing something that Husserl has ;let slip' at the beginning of the Investigations.

It is important to remember that all transcendental thinkers flirt with solipsism, and I think this is not an accident: Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer are prime examples, and I think a certain solipsism can be read into, even follows from, Kant himself. Husserl clearly thinks at some level that we can communicate completely alone, and the notion that presence as Husserl conceives of it has not only to do with being in the present, but also alone, is on point.

Quoting csalisbury

I don't really understand what Husserl is saying. If we already understand immediately what we're saying to ourselves, what's going on with these interpolated (and yes, inherited) signs? Why are they there? Why is the immediacy of meaning taking a superfluous detour through a self-dissolving mediator?

Husserl does admit that the point of using language is to communicate: that we can talk to ourselves doesn't mean that it's often a useful exercise, except in his little faux-examples, where one addresses oneself as 'you.' It's still phenomenologically important, though, because we can extract the essence of, say, the semantics of a word, or the semantics of it relative to a certain intention.

Personally I think self-directed speech is important, and psychologists generally have been very interested in it, because we can indicate things to ourselves or communicate to ourselves. But I don't find Husserl's notion that there's a layer of sense and experience that has no need for indication at all implausible. In fact it seems to me the vast majority of my experience goes on like this without communicative comment. Crispin Sartwell has a great comment to this effect as well, that even trying to imagine what it would be like to have a running commentary on all your experience, or to think that all experience is linguistically mediated, is just totally absurd and impossible. Generally philosophers overrate language because they spend a lot of time talking and reading: I think Derrida is one of them (and he strikes me as someone who likes the sound of his own philosophical voice as well, and deeply fears, just as much as Husserl fears death, that someone will force him, or the tradition he's a part of, to shut up), but that doesn't necessarily make his criticisms of Husserl off point.

Reply to The Great Whatever I don't know Husserl as well as you, but I do know him well enough to agree with your comments about his often solipsistic tenor. What I meant, though, was that I just don't see the centrality here, in the first logical investigation. It's passed over so quickly, soliloquy (all of the sections on indication are as long or longer!). It's only by reading certain sections of Ideas back into the investigation that Derrida can give the soliloquy section such weight. And maybe that's fine. I don't want to press the point too much, but just note that we've definitely moved from a close reading of the investigation to something entirely different.

I don't find Husserl's notion that there's a layer of sense and experience that has no need for indication at all implausible. In fact it seems to me the vast majority of my experience goes on like this without communicative comment. Crispin Sartwell has a great comment to this effect as well, that even trying to imagine what it would be like to have a running commentary on all your experience, or to think that all experience is linguistically mediated, is just totally absurd and impossible

Mmm, but I guess that would have nothing to do with expression, right? For these experiences, one could simply say 'it is what it is.' What would it mean to express these experiences to ourselves? Or to indicate them to ourselves? I think self-directed speech is important, as well, but it seems something very different then presenting a mediately immediate re-experience of what we're already experiencing.

It's still phenomenologically important, though, because we can extract the essence of, say, the semantics of a word, or the semantics of it relative to a certain intention.

Do this, though, as an experiment - imagine the word 'contemplation' and extract the semantic essence from it. And attend closely to how this plays out. It's really not clear what's going on, at least when I try to do it.

Quoting csalisbury

Do this, though, as an experiment - imagine the word 'contemplation' and extract the semantic essence from it. And attend closely to how this plays out. It's really not clear what's going on, at least when I try to do it.

Here are some things I can pull out rather quickly:

-Contemplation is an activity that something can partake in.

-Contemplation is not something an inanimate object can take part in. It requires animacy at the very least, and probably intelligence at least comparable to that of a human at least of a certain stage of cognitive development.

-Contemplation is deliberate, and cannot be done involuntarily or un/subconsciously.

-As opposed to thought generally, it is unhurried. In at least its most canonical forms, it is also penetrating, revealing all accessible aspects of something.

-Contemplation is telic: it aims at something contemplated, and seeks to discover something about it, and in particular something having to do with its structure that can't be gleaned from a superficial observation of it. The results of contemplation are intended to be consciously understood if successful.

How do I know all of these things?

Reply to The Great Whatever That's perfect (let me build on what you've said about Derrida and language) How do you? Would most competent english speakers agree? Would this be possible without a deep immersion in the english language? What are you understanding in this solo imagining? Where does it come from? How do you think your understanding of this idea would be different if you hadn't immersed yourself in language?

when i do this same experiment, it's very strange. I have all sorts of attendant dreamlike images. I have the same sort of linguistic breakdowns too. But the word itself is like a weird center (a kind of 'fire pit') all these things congregate around. It seems like language is what creates these firepits that allow my thoughts to coalesce. But they also flow into pre-established channels. The word itself seems somehow outside myself, its in the shared space beyond my hut, so to speak.

Quoting csalisbury

Would this be possible without a deep immersion in the english language?

Obviously not, but we need to stay on guard against the fallacy that Kant warns against in the very first sentences of the CPR.

There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience. For how should our faculty of knowledge be awakened into action did not objects affecting our senses partly of themselves produce representations, partly arouse the activity of our understanding to compare these representations, and, by combining or separating them, work up the raw material of the sensible impressions into that knowledge of objects which is entitled experience? In the order of time, therefore, we have no knowledge antecedent to experience, and with experience all our knowledge begins.

But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience. For it may well be that even our empirical knowledge is made up of what we receive through impressions and of what our own faculty of knowledge (sensible impressions serving merely as the occasion) supplies from itself. If our faculty of knowledge makes any such addition, it may be that we are not in a position to distinguish it from the raw material, until with long practice of attention we have become skilled in separating it. This, then, is a question which at least calls for closer examination, and does not allow of any off-hand answer: -- whether there is any knowledge that is thus independent of experience and even of all impressions of the senses. Such knowledge is entitled a priori, and distinguished from the empirical, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience.

Certainly Husserl is aware that one has to be exposed to empirical light in order to see – but it would be a bad misreading of Husserl to suppose that this fact threatened the possibility of eidetic analyses of visual phenomena.

Quoting csalisbury

when i do this same experiment, it's very strange. I have all sorts of attendant dreamlike images. I have the same sort of linguistic breakdowns too. But the word itself is like a weird center (a kind of 'fire pit') all these things congregate around. It seems like language is what creates these firepits that allow my thoughts to coalesce. But they also flow into pre-established channels. The word itself seems somehow outside myself, its in the shared space beyond my hut, so to speak.

Have you ever made up a word before, with a gerrymandered meaning that would be difficult to get beyond the inner sphere of expression into communication? One reason I've always been skeptical of OLP-oriented criticisms of private meanings is that even as a child, before ever hearing any of these arguments, I had seemed to have done exactly what these philosophers were telling me I could not do, and I just assumed everyone else had, too. The word is no less potent for my private musings for the fact that I'd have a hard time explaining it. Some of them in fact ended up having real words that I understood immediately to be what I had been thinking of all along. "Virtue signaling" is one such case – I had always known on a very fundamental level what virtue signaling was, but had never thought to communicate the notion. I don't think I ever attached a phonological form to the notion, but I had a sort of 'private word' for it all along.

Quoting The Great Whatever

There is a footnote on writing by Derrida on p. 23, at the beginning of chapter 2, though honestly I haven't quite figured out what's going on in it yet, and some of the vocabulary is opaque to me.

I didn't think much of this footnote when I read it, but now that you highlighted it, here's a crack at it: I think that Derrida is alluding - he doesn't quite spell out an argument, and in fact he says quite explicitly that he won't 'stress the problem' - to the fact that if Husserl had considered 'non-phonetic' writing in a bit more depth, he might have saved himself alot of trouble (the kind of trouble Derrida will stir up in this essay). The distinction between phonetic and non-phonetic is the distinction between languages whose spelling will tell you how to pronounce the word (English, French, etc), and languages whose form will tell you nothing about it's pronunciation (Chinese). The character "ren" (?), for example, taken on it's own as a graphic inscription, will tell you nothing about how to pronounce it.

Intuitively, one can see, I think, how there is 'more indication' in phonetic languages than there is in non-phonetic languages: that is, there is more that is 'communicated' in phonetic language (the pronunciation), than in non-phonetic languages (where the pronunciation is not indicated). Hence non-phonetic languages tend to coincide more with a kind of 'sheer expression' than phonetic languages. Thus the line: "non-phonetic discourse would substitute for that which unites expressive discourse immediately to the meaning" - the 'mediation' of 'indication' plays a smaller part.

Of course to the extent that non-phonetic language is still language - that is, to the extent that it communicates at all - this would make it 'indicative' in Husserl's sense to begin with. What I think Derrida is trying to get at is that you can see a kind of scrambling or 'disorganization of essential distinctions' at work here, one that takes place within the grapheme itself, and not even yet at the level of communication/non-communication. Hence the employment of what should be a strange syntagm, given everything that's been discussed so far: "expressive discourse" (isn't the whole point that expression is precisely non-discursive?).

I'm not sure if this retroactive reconstruction of Derrida's would-be argument 'works', but I think that's the general thrust of it. In any case, it serves to flag the more sustained line of questioning that will make up the rest of the book. If I have time I'd like to deal with the big-ass footnote later on too.

Its perhaps worth noting that the above line of thought is something Derrida will pursue in his Of Grammatology, published in the same year as VP. Here's a snippet:

"What writing itself, in its nonphonetic moment, betrays, is life. It menaces at once the breath, the spirit, and history as the spirit's relation­ ship with itself. It is their end, their finitude, their paralysis. Cutting breath short, sterilizing or immobilizing spiritual creation in the repetition of the letter, in the commentary or the exegesis, confined in a narrow space, reserved for a minority, it is the principle of death and of difference in the becoming of being. It is to speech what China is to Europe"

Note that in this chapter of VP which we are discussing, Derrida already refers to indication as a 'relation to death', 'the process of death at work' (p. 34) and to 'visibility and spatiality' as 'the death of that self-presence' (p. 29). Note also that this reference to death is not (just) a grand rhetorical flourish, but a term motivated by Husserl's own phenomenological emphasis on 'Life' as with the 'Living Present'. Anyway, in Of Grammatology, Derrida also discusses Leibniz's remarks on how Chinese script would serve as a prototype to Leibniz's own imagined universal discourse:

"What Leibniz is eager to borrow from Chinese writing is its arbitrariness and therefore its independence with regard to history. This arbitrariness has an essential link with the non­ phonetic essence which Leibniz believes he can attribute to Chinese writing. The latter seems to have been "invented by a deaf man" ... Leibniz [promises] a script for which the Chinese would be only a blueprint [quoting Leibniz]:

'This sort of plan would at the same time yield a sort of universal script, which would have the advantages of the Chinese script, for each person would under­ stand it in his own language, but which would infinitely surpass the Chinese, in that it would be teachable in a few weeks, having characters perfectly linked according to the order and connection of things, whereas, since Chinese script has an infinite number of characters according to the variety of things, it takes the Chinese a lifetime to learn their script adequately' [end Leibniz quote]

[Derrida continues]: The concept of Chinese writing thus functioned as a sort of European hallucination. This implied nothing fortuitous: this functioning obeyed a rigorous necessity." Figured this is an interesting supplement (!) to the reading we're doing.

Reply to StreetlightX Reply to StreetlightX Thanks a lot for this. Yeah, I was barely on the cusp of understanding that Derrida was referring to logographic scripts, and not some alternate writing technique. Man, this exchange is wild. Derrida's conclusions about the significance of all this seem too excited, as are the cultural comparisons (which reek of a weird Orientalism). But man, given what he was responding to, I can barely blame him – that Leibniz quote is wild. It's so indicative of the time period, but also so astoundingly naive: this episode on 'when a genius says stupid things.'

I do not think this exchange has ultimate bearing on what Husserl is saying, interesting as it is. The fact that alphabetic scripts encode phonological information that logographic scripts don't seems not to detract from the points about communication and indication: perhaps Derrida's mind was more solidly on the subject because of his Saussurean influence, since for Saussure the signifier is a sound-image, but as far as Husserl is concerned, I don't see how it makes a difference even in writing, since the crux is on communication and not any particular sensory vehicle that accomplishes it, so logograms do not get us 'closer' to pure expressivity in that sense. Additionally, the privileging of the spoken word makes all of this moot, since of course it's not as if Chinese has any less of a phonology than European languages for not encoding it in a script (and any European ideas that it might are totally ridiculous). A pedantic clarification here: it is the script that matters, not the language, since of course Chinese can be very easily written in alphabetic script, and often is, and while the reverse is not really done as a matter of common practice, nothing precludes it in principle.

Quoting StreetlightX

"expressive discourse" (isn't the whole point that expression is precisely non-discursive?).

Rather, that it doesn't include discourse essentially, not that it excludes it essentially, since communication is both indicative/discursive and expressive simultaneously.

Quoting The Great Whatever

Rather, that it doesn't include discourse essentially, not that it excludes it essentially, since communication is both indicative/discursive and expressive simultaneously.

Ya, good point.

Quoting The Great Whatever

perhaps Derrida's mind was more solidly on the subject because of his Saussurean influence, since for Saussure the signifier is a sound-image,

I think this is right, which perhaps also explains in part the sudden appearance of Saussure at the end of the chapter (other than helping - to those familiar anyway - to clarify by similarity, the notion of imagination and the 'iireal'). The discussion in Of Grammatology re: Chinese script itself is largely carried out in a context of a critique of Saussure as well.

Quoting The Great Whatever

As far as Husserl is concerned, I don't see how it makes a difference even in writing, since the crux is on communication and not any particular sensory vehicle that accomplishes it, so logograms do not get us 'closer' to pure expressivity in that sense.

Yeah, I think this is the case too. If I have time, I'll try go back to OG to see how and where the point about non-phonetic scripts is explicitly made (again I think it's in conversation with Saussure), to see how Derrida gets to his 'excited' conclusion (the whole of OG is a rather 'excited' book as a whole, to be fair).

Quoting StreetlightX

The distinction between phonetic and non-phonetic is the distinction between languages whose spelling will tell you how to pronounce the word (English, French, etc), and languages whose form will tell you nothing about it's pronunciation (Chinese).

It may be worthwhile to consider here, the non-phonetic language of mathematics, and all of those mathematical symbols which are principally written but usually have a corresponding spoken word. To a limited extent, we can do mathematics in our heads, but to sit with a pencil and paper greatly facilitates this. And in extension, we now have calculators and computers which we can make to do our math for us. These mathematical expressions, when I sit with my pencil and paper, are generally very personal, and are not meant for communication at all.

Quoting The Great Whatever

The fact that alphabetic scripts encode phonological information that logographic scripts don't seems not to detract from the points about communication and indication: perhaps Derrida's mind was more solidly on the subject because of his Saussurean influence, since for Saussure the signifier is a sound-image, but as far as Husserl is concerned, I don't see how it makes a difference even in writing, since the crux is on communication and not any particular sensory vehicle that accomplishes it, so logograms do not get us 'closer' to pure expressivity in that sense.

I think that communication and indication might be correctly related, but it is the role of the physical existence of the sign, which I question. I think that pure expression, with no intent to communicate, utilizes the physical existence of the sign just as much as communication does. This is evident from the example of mathematics, above.

When I imagine words, or think in words, it is almost always with the goal of communication, I am thinking of what I will say to someone else, or what I will write here, for someone else to read. So as much as imagining words, and thinking with words, might appear to be pure expression, the motivation, or intent is still communication, hence it is not free from indication. So thinking in words cannot be pure expression, if expression is lost in communication, as thinking in words is already contaminated by this motivation. On the other hand, when I am thinking with numbers I am working out my own problems, and not thinking with the goal of communicating. When I use numbers, regardless of whether I give them physical existence on the paper or not, I do not have this motivation of communication, so this must be a more pure form of expression.

Quoting StreetlightX

Note that in this chapter of VP which we are discussing, Derrida already refers to indication as a 'relation to death', 'the process of death at work' (p. 34) and to 'visibility and spatiality' as 'the death of that self-presence' (p. 29). Note also that this reference to death is not (just) a grand rhetorical flourish, but a term motivated by Husserl's own phenomenological emphasis on 'Life' as with the 'Living Present'.

I can't quite figure out these references to death, maybe it will become more clear later in the book. The life of self-presence is exiled by the exitings of indication, and this is the process of death at work. And the one on p29 is even more intriguing.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

It may be worthwhile to consider here, the non-phonetic language of mathematics, and all of those mathematical symbols which are principally written but usually have a corresponding spoken word. To a limited extent, we can do mathematics in our heads, but to sit with a pencil and paper greatly facilitates this. And in extension, we now have calculators and computers which we can make to do our math for us. These mathematical expressions, when I sit with my pencil and paper, are generally very personal, and are not meant for communication at all.

Mathematics is an interesting case, and is in fact one of the sources of Derrida's reflections here. Apart from his uni dissertation on Husserl, his earliest published work was in fact an 'Introduction' to Husserl's 'The Origin of Geometry', where Derrida first began to think about the problems between expression and indicaiton, although not in those terms. The problem outlined there is basically this: to the degree that mathematical truths are meant to be "eternal", how does the necessity of the empirical transmission of those truths bear upon that supposed eternity of mathematical truth? You can see, in VP, where these reflections eventually led Derrida.

Reply to StreetlightX Thanks for the info. I find this a very interesting subject. as I have believed, for a long time, that there is a distinct difference between spoken and written language. That is how I approach Wittgenstein's private language. Spoken, I assume to be communicative, while written, I assume is essentially non-communicative. Written language I believe evolved from personal expressions which were not meant to be communicative, they're created to reflect meaning back on the one who created them. This may be found in the basis of art as well, it is fundamentally a non-communicative form of expression, produced for personal satisfaction.

Evidence of the difference between communicative and non-communicative language exists in the fact that in common communicative language, writing consists of a representation of the spoken words, yet the inverse is true of mathematics, the spoken word is a representation of the written symbol. So the spoken "seventy two" for example, is a representation of the written "72".

Reply to The Great Whatever
Derrida: Signs always point to other signs but have no meaning in themselves.. Everything is mere indication and not completed expression. Meaning cannot be bracketed as was the project of Husserl. It would be an error to jump to presence, the underlying experience of the signifier.. Essentially, the map is not the territory. Pace Wittgenstein: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Hey guys,

Sorry it's been a little tough keeping up the energy this week. I want to close out just by mentioning a couple things as promised about the series of distinctions Derrida mentions near the end of the chapter regarding Husserl and Saussure.

First, Husserl, or "what the fuck does 'non-reell' mean?"

Husserl was obsessed with the real versus the unreal, and with belief and the postponement of belief. The epoché, as a method of 'bracketing' the world and our natural attitudes toward it, was effectively a massive 'neutralization' of our ordinary credence in a sort of naïve metaphysical picture, which allows phenomenology to happen. As such, he drew many distinctions regarding reality and unreality, and belief thereof. Some clarification on what Derrida is on about with his two levels of unreality and so on may be helpful to some of the questions MU was posing earlier this week.

The first distinction that's important for Husserl here is the real versus the 'irreal,' a term Derrida also uses here. Reality in this first sense usually corresponds to the German Wirklichkeit or Realität, which means reality in a pretty unphilosophical sense: real stuff in the real world, things that have causal effects on one another, are concrete an manifest in space in time, and in short, partakers in efficient causation. Pretty much all of the talk Derrida goes into regarding ideality versus the empirical, mundane, accidental, etc. has to do with this distinction: so indication, for example, as something involving a really existent sign that motivates belief in something else that is really existent, owes its efficacy to its reality in this basic sense. On the other hand, we have things that are 'irreal,' that is, unworldly, ideal as opposed to empirical, not party to efficient causation, non-spacial, atemporal, and in short, Platonic. The bizarre neologism 'irreal' is meant to contrast with 'unreal;' these things are real, but have a different sort of reality from concrete stuff, in the way that the Platonic forms do. These would be things that we classically think of ideal, like mathematical objects, but also crucially for Husserl, things that are closer to what you might call Kantian forms of intuition, things that are a little bit more 'sensuous' despite having no existence, like the form of the color blue, for example.

Two important points for Husserl here: irreal things can still be perceived, in a quite literal sense: for Husserl, all cognition is ultimately due to perception, direct 'seeing' of something before the ego's gaze, whether ideal or concrete; and second, the real and irreal crucially depend on each other, in contrast to the more unidirectional instantiation-Form Platonic model. All irrealities are perceived via concrete existent things, and all concrete existent things are in turn only able to exist insofar as they fit the mold of abstract forms or essences. This is the basic phenomenological distinction between fact and eidos, and the basic phenomenological method for securing results, which secures perception of the eidos from some fact, is the aptly named eidetic reduction.

The second distinction is between things that are real as concrete or inherent pieces of consciousness versus things that are not constituted as part of consciousness, but outside of it. As Derrida mentions, things that are 'real' in this second sense include (1) hyle, (2) morphe, and (3) noesis. Hyle is sensory matter, the raw sensory 'stuff' out of which experiences are built, sort of like Humean impressions or the Kantian sensory manifold: hues, light, timbre, odor, and so on. Morphe is then shape or form, which imposes on the matter some shape, and allows the hyle to be seen as objects of one sort or another. For Husserl, there is no pure perception of hyle not molded to morphe, although the status of these two is left unclear ultimately. Finally, there is noesis, which is the act of consciousness itself, which 'animates' the hyle into its form: so noetic acts will include perceiving, wishing, wanting, believing, doubting, and so on.

Across the divide from noesis is the noema, which is the object of consciousness. It is important to remember that the nomeata need not exist in the ordinary sense of being 'real' as above. Thus, for example, we can imagine a centaur, and there is a noema there, qua imagined object: there is an 'imaginary centaur,' but no 'imagined centaur,' since of course there are no centaurs. Direction toward a nomea, therefore, does not require existence: Husserl distinguishes between the noema roughly as the 'sense' of the object, and the 'underlying X' which we take in ordinary realistic thinking to underly it, the existence of which the epoché brackets. Thus in doing phenomenology we see the nomea, the object-sense, which equates roughly to Brentano's 'intentionally in-existing object,' but we do this purely within experience, and do not take our experience to motivate a transcendent underlying X that the noema directs us to; instead we merely examine phenomenologically our positing such an X, i.e. in perception, even as we don't buy into this positing. A nomea is 'unreal' in this second sense, because unlike the hyle, morphe, and noesis, it is not an inherent or concrete part of consciousness: consciousness is directed at it, as something that is constituted outside of it (even though, in the usual phenomenological paradox Derrida mentioned last chapter, we examine this 'outside' from purely 'within' experience). It is this second sense of being 'unreal' that the unfortunate term non-reell is being used to describe (with the inherent parts of consciousness then being 'reell').

So in soliloquy, in speaking to ourselves, Husserl wants to maintain that we merely imagine the words, and that they are not real: so in what sense are they unreal? We have seen two ways in which this holds:

(1) The word itself is not real in the ordinary sense, and experience in no way claims that it is: it is only imaginary. Crucially, this is because imagination, unlike perception and memory, is what Husserl calls a 'non-positional' attitude: it does not motivate belief in or commitment to the existence of its object.

(2) As noema, the word is non-reell because it is not an inherent part of consciousness.

Finally, it bears mentioning that insofar as our goal is to express something by means of the word, we have a third kind of non-reality, or irreality:

(3) What is expressed is an ideal, as opposed to a concrete and actual, meaning. And so we see the word in its essence, not as a concrete thing being used to indicate concrete experiences or states of affairs to anyone.

I will try to say a little something about the comments on Saussure too, but I don't know how much would be helpful. In the meantime, let me know if anyone else wants to take up summarizing Chapter 4.

Damn fine clarification regarding the ireell. I'll be keen for summerizing 4 - it's where things start to get real interesting :D

Reply to StreetlightX Alright, nice. It seems like the stakes get successively higher with each section, though 6 and 7 are still beyond me ATM.

Quoting The Great Whatever

Reality in this first sense usually corresponds to the German Wirklichkeit or Realität, which means reality in a pretty unphilosophical sense: real stuff in the real world, things that have causal effects on one another, are concrete an manifest in space in time, and in short, partakers in efficient causation.

I do not think that this assumed category of "real stuff", as separate, transcendental "things", is justified. The world is psychical. If there is such stuff, it is transcendental. We cannot make any judgements whatsoever concerning the transcendental, because such judgements would be based on how the transcendental appears to us, as phenomena, and therefore not judgements of the transcendental itself, but of the phenomenal.

So this assumption, which Husserl makes, that there is a "really existent sign", is completely unsupported at this point in Derrida's book. There have been no principles presented which would warrant this assumption. When someone speaks a phrase, and I hear it, there is an appearance of the words within my imagination, as phenomena within my psychical world. But this is the only way that words exist to me, as phenomena within my world. No principles have been presented whereby I can assume individual objects within the transcendental.

OK. Catching up. Just finished chapter 4. Would be willing to do the next, chapter 5. (finally have the time to do it next weekend :) )

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover A terminological point – transcendent would be for objects existing beyond experience, transcendental for the conditions of possible experience.

And part of the phenomenological method is explicitly bracketing credence in transcendent objects in order to study the experiential structures of positing those objects. So we see the outside from the inside: in perceiving a transcendent object we note the way in which the perception itself requires positing a transcendent thing, without actually believing there is any such thing.

Reply to The Great Whatever Thanks for the clarification on terminology. My point being that we haven't yet seen the justification for positing the word, or the sign, as a transcendent object. To do this requires justification for the notion that objects may be transcendent. To posit "a transcendent thing, without actually believing there is any such thing" is somewhat incoherent, and doesn't explain the necessity for positing transcendent objects. If perceiving a transcendent object necessitates that there is a transcendent object, then the positing is justified, and we should actually believe that there is such a thing, but the logic of this has not yet been explained.

whoa what a shift with this chapter - I take back what I said earlier about the soliloquy chapter in LI - I've read it 10x now and it really is a bottleneck where Husserl narrows in on what he sees as the purely expressive, in order to move on to more general concerns. It's just so subtle and almost insouciant, it's hard to recognize what's going on. I do think this imaginary communication falls apart for exactly the reasons Derrida cites. I look forward to Street's summary

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover The transcendent object isn't posited by the theorist – it's part of the structure of perception. When we perceive something, we perceive not only one side or phase of it, but it projects countless other sides or phases we know we could 'fulfill' by further perceptions (like walking around to the backside of a spatial object). But these projections are infinite and impossible to exhaust in principle, so the object confronts us as transcendent, a hidden 'X' behind all possible phases of it, we seeing those phases as identical, but knowing that no tallying up of them can possibly exhaust the object in experience. Thus the structure of perception itself posits this transcendent object, not 'we' the phenomenologists. All this is observed without 'believing' what perception tells us – we just note that perception is indeed 'positing' in this way, it takes there to be a real, transcendent object.

But the point about the words is that it takes place in imagination, which unlike with perception, does not involve a 'positing.'

Reply to The Great Whatever All right, I'll go with that. The act of perception itself posits the transcendent object. The object is apprehended as possible phases, perhaps an infinity of possibilities. In what sense are the possible phases "identical"? Is this an equality, in the sense that numerous possibilities could have equal probability? If we cannot apprehend all possible phases, how could we divide probability equally?

Quoting The Great Whatever

But the point about the words is that it takes place in imagination, which unlike with perception, does not involve a 'positing.'

This is where I find the difficulty, the proposed distinction between imagined words and perceived words. In imagination, the words are apprehended as unities independent from each other, objects of the imagination. What does the positing here, to make them appear as objects? It doesn't suffice to say that the words were at some time perceived as objects (the positing occurred at this time), then they were recollected in the imagination, because words are artificial, so we must account for them coming into existence, being created as objects, units of identity.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

In what sense are the possible phases "identical"? Is this an equality, in the sense that numerous possibilities could have equal probability? If we cannot apprehend all possible phases, how could we divide probability equally?

There is no probability involved: the phases are perceived as noemata, but there is a kind of 'synthesis' that unites all of them to the same object, the same transcendent underlying object. There might even be cases where the difference between seeing two objects in virtue of seeing two phases, and seeing one, breaks down: suppose you're looking at a chair and it seems to 'blink' out of existence, for just a moment, then reappear. What happened? Did the 'same' chair come in and out of existence, and are you seeing two phases of it, or did one chair disappear and another coalesce? Here our positing intuitions break down, as can be seen in problems involving teleportation that people often discuss. Clearly we have robust but mysterious intuitions about which phenomenological conditions allow phases to be united in this way, and there are borderline cases.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

What does the positing here, to make them appear as objects? It doesn't suffice to say that the words were at some time perceived as objects (the positing occurred at this time), then they were recollected in the imagination, because words are artificial, so we must account for them coming into existence, being created as objects, units of identity.

Again, the words are not being recollected, since memory is a memory of something real that has past (or rather, memory presents what is being remembered as real in the past). Imagination is different: it doesn't posit because in virtue of imagining something, you do not take it to exist. This raises interesting questions about the identity conditions of imagined objects, which are different from those of perceived objects: for example, can two people phantasy the same imaginary centaur, if there is no common fictional character or anything like that for them to latch onto? If I make up a centaur, does it really have any other phases that I could fulfill, by seeing its backside, etc.? Surely I can make them up in my imagination, but it doesn't seem as if, with a real horse, say, they were already there – and so there seems to be phases uniting the imaginary centaur, but only insofar as the activity of my imagination holds it together, and so I take there to be no transcendent underlying object, and I do not take any actual centaur to exist.

What Derrida says in Chapter 4 here, as I understand it, that this distinction cannot holds for linguistic signs, since to use a sign in the imagination fulfills all the same indicative functions that constitutes its real, actual existence in discourse.

Quoting The Great Whatever

Again, the words are not being recollected, since memory is a memory of something real that has past (or rather, memory presents what is being remembered as real in the past). Imagination is different: it doesn't posit because in virtue of imagining something, you do not take it to exist. This raises interesting questions about the identity conditions of imagined objects, which are different from those of perceived objects: for example, can two people phantasy the same imaginary centaur, if there is no common fictional character or anything like that for them to latch onto?

With words though, different people do imagine the very same words. For example, you and I can both imagine "word". If this is not a case of us both recollecting that I just suggested the word "word", then why would we both be imagining the same word now.

Quoting The Great Whatever

What Derrida says in Chapter 4 here, as I understand it, that this distinction cannot holds for linguistic signs, since to use a sign in the imagination fulfills all the same indicative functions that constitutes its real, actual existence in discourse.

I believe it is claimed by Derrida that the sign is necessarily an instance of repetition. If it is not a repetition, then there is nothing that it could signify and therefore it could not be a sign. Since it is a repetition, then in relation to presence it must be a re-presentation rather than a presentation. The re-presentation is necessarily of the same thing, by identity, while presence itself consists of difference. This allows that the re-presentation, transcends presence, making the sign a transcendent object regardless of whether or not there is real physical exterior existence . If I understand correctly, it is this very same principle which gives us "the present", and "being" as transcendental to presence, and this allows for the possibility of death. Therefore "I am" is to place "I" in the present, instead of understanding "I" as presence, and this is an affirmation of mortality.

Righty-o, fourth chapter, where things get interesting. Derrida decidedly shifts from commentary to critique, and there's finally some payoff after the meticulous distinction-drawing of the first three chapters. A note of orientation to begin with: this chapter largely deals with questions of 'communication', which, as outlined by the previous chapter, belongs to the sphere of 'indication'. Derrida here follows Husserl in distinguishing - within the category of indication - two types of communication: actual communication and represented communication, or reality and representation. At stake in this chapter however, will be the breakdown of this distinction, and the consequences of this breakdown for 'internal discourse'.

So, this chapter begins with Derrida recalling that for Husserl, there is, strictly speaking, no communication in the 'solitary life of the soul'. Husserl: "In internal discourse, I communicate nothing to myself. I indicate nothing to myself." At best, I represent myself communicating to myself, I imagine that I do so. Putting this in the terms above: there is only 'represented communication', and not 'actual communication' in 'internal discourse'. Before we come back to this, it is important to emphasize that for Husserl, there is no necessary connection between actual and represented communication. That is, "representation is only an [exterior] accident added contingently onto the practice of discourse."

It is precisely at this point that Derrida will stage his intervention, asking whether or not this attribution of exteriority can really be sustained. In fact, this chapter will proceed by explicitly arguing that it cannot be: "there are grounds for thinking that in language representation and reality are not added together here and there, for the simple reason that it is impossible in principle to distinguish them rigorously." Derrida's argument will turn on the necessity of repetition as belonging inherently to any possible employment of the sign. That is, for a sign to be a sign, it must have an ideal, formal identity that persists throughout any one instance of it's employment. Derrida argumentation on this point is pretty clear, imo, so I'll just remark here that this necessity is why Derrida speaks of a 'structure of repetition'; and because it applies to any sign, Derrida will also specify that his argument applies 'prior' to the distinction between signs employed for communicative processes and those not.

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Before continuing, I want to expand upon a seemingly tangential remark that Derrida makes, which I think is easy to overlook, but vitally important for understanding his philosophy as a whole. It's this one, at the end of the second last paragraph on p. 42: "And no doubt we must not say that that impossibility [of distinguishing between reality and representaiton] is produced in language. Language in general is that impossibility — by means of itself alone." This is an incredibly curious statement insofar as it puts into question exactly what is meant by 'language' here. By defining language in terms of this 'formal' structure - whereby reality and representation cannot be properly discriminated between - Derrida throws open, in an incredibly wide manner - what it is we understand by language.

I mean, really think about it: if the impossibility of distinguishing between reality and representation just is language (rather than being a particular quirk of language), then what exactly is the scope of language? It's not 'just' representation, as classically understood (although it is not 'beyond' representation either). It is limited to the words that we exchange and the books that we read? Or is there, just as much, a language of gesture, a language of flowers, a language of... Where does language end and reality begin (which is not to say, as reductive, banal readings of Derrida will have it, that 'everything is language')? Is this an appropriate question? This is the germ of the distinction that Derrida will later make between 'writing' in it's 'restricted' and it's 'general' sense, where 'writing' doesn't at all refer just to empirical instances of marks of a page, but a general structure, no less than language is here a kind of 'mechanism independent' structure of it's own'.

I won't say much more about this because it's not strictly pursued in VP itself, but understanding this argument (or at least where it comes from) is vital to anyone looking to follow up on Derrida's other works, and just thinking a bit more deeply about what 'language' is in general.

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Anyway, back to it: if, on account of the necessity of repetition in ideality, we cannot rigorously distinguish between 'actual' and 'representative' discourse, then the very distinction between indication and expression is also threatened. Note the twisted topology here: although actual and representative discourse belong to the sphere of indication, by undoing a distinction internal to indication, this will have repercussions on the distinction ('external' to indication) between indication and expression. Basically, if 'actual communication' partakes of the order of ideality (which requires repetition), then to the degree that expression also partakes of this order, then expression must also be subject to the repetitions of the sign, and thus language (understood here in it's general sense mentioned above)

I'm skipping ahead a bit, but it's on p. 48 where all this is stated categorically: "Therefore, whether we are dealing with indicative communication or expression, there is no sure criterion by means of which to distinguish between an external language and an internal language, and even if we grant the hypothesis of an internal language, there is no sure criterion for distinguishing between an actual language and a fictional language. Such a distinction, however, is indispensable for Husserl in order to prove that indication is external to expression, and for all that this distinction governs."

I'm stopping here for now, but I'm not done with the summary just yet. In this post I mostly want to grasp the 'topology', the twists of inside and outside, that mark the argument here, as I think it's the best way to get a full picture of what's going on. I think if we can understand that, alot falls into place quite easily. The specific discussions - about imagination, fiction, death, presence, etc, will be dealt with in another post.

Quoting StreetlightX

Basically, if 'actual communication' partakes of the order of ideality (which requires repetition), then to the degree that expression also partakes of this order, then expression must also be subject to the repetitions of the sign, and thus language (understood here in it's general sense mentioned above)

I'm not sue that it follows necessarily that expression is subject to the repetitions of the sign. It might just mean that we have to go deeper within the psyche to find pure expression. What has been exposed is that expression is already contaminated at this level, the level of the sign, and the ideal. The repetition which gives identity to the sign is a sameness, and this is what enables memory, the recognition of a sameness which transcends the moment of presence, creating a temporally extended unity. But we can go beyond this, to look for pure expression in the difference of presence. This is what we find, for example, in music, difference from one moment to the next. Though I admit that there is an appeal to sameness in the overall structure of a piece of music, which makes it such that the artist can remember it, and also, acceptable to others, communicative, a non-repetitive piece of expression is not impossible..

On to some thematics:

Originality of the Sign

Part of what's at stake in Derrida's reading here is to affirm what he refers to as the 'originality of the sign'. As he notes, traditionally, the sign is often treated as derivitive with respect to 'presence', where in this case, presence refers to the presence of 'actual communication' on the one hand, or expressivity on the other. Derrida will have alot to say about presence in the upcoming chapter, but to prempt a little, one can correlate the distinction between presence and sign with the distinction between voice and writing. The voice being a kind of immaterial purity of sense, and writing being a kind of derivative material inscription of that purity.

Anyway, in making the sign derivative, Derrida claims that Husserl is basically following an ancient trope that has been in operation since the advent of philosophy itself: "The philosophy and history of the West ... has in this wayconstituted and established the very concept of the sign, this concept, at
the moment of its origin and in the heart of its sense, is marked by this will to derivation and erasure. Consequently, to restore the originality and the non-derivative character of the sign against classical metaphysics is also, by means of an apparent paradox, to erase the concept of the sign whose entire history and entire sense belong to the adventure of the metaphysics of presence."

One must be careful however, not to treat the notion of the orginality of the sign as a mere "reversal", where the sign itself takes on the status of presence. Part of what is at stake in Derrida's work is to divest the very notion of 'originality', and by reading the sign as origniality, the point is to cast suspicion upon all notions of orignality tout court. Derrida will begin to clarify this in the chapters that follow, but it's pretty important to keep this in mind, least we consider Derrida simply swapping out one notion of presence for another. In the last chapter, Derrida will make this point by referring to sign as a paradoxical 'originary supplement'.

Life/Death/Presence

Following the discussion of the presence of the sign, Derrida will further thematize what's at issue by mapping presence and sign onto life and death, respectively. As he writes, "It is therefore the relation to my death (to my disappearance in general) that is hidden in this determination of being as presence, ideality, as the absolute possibility of repetition. The possibility of the sign is this relation to death." In so doing, Derrida also brings to the fore the theme of mortality which underlies much of this work. For Derrida, there is no such thing as a life without a relation to death: all life - all presence - is marked by it's constitutive relation to death. Hence: "I am means therefore originarily I am mortal. I am immortal is an impossible proposition."

An interesting resonance with the theological tradition comes out here in the next line, when Derrida concludes that therefore, “I am the one who is” is the confession of a mortal. Although it is not mentioned explicitly, I'm almost entirely sure this is an allusion to God's declaration to Moses in Exodus that "I am who I am". I wonder if this allusion might be made clearer in the original French, which might accord better with the biblical line itself. In any case, if one were to extrapolate, the inference here is that not even a God could be immortal. If anyone's interested, Martin Hagglund more or less reads Derrida explicitly along these lines in his Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life, which is one of the single best resources in coming to grips with Derrida in general.

Imagination/Fiction

Finally, Derrida turns to the notions of the imagination and to fiction to round out his thematization of these issues. As with Husserl's supposed continuity with the metaphysical tradition in treating the sign as a derivation from presence, so too does Derrida claim that Husserl's treatment of the imaginary also follows the same path. While acknowledging that Husserl "profoundly renews the problematic of imagination", and that there is much that is novel is Husserl's conception of the imagination, for Derrida, we must 'notice the inheritance' (of the tradition) at work in Husserl. Like the sign, imagination is derivative of presence "A reproduction of a presence", and "keeps within itself the primary reference to an originary presentation."

Noting Husserl's 'fascination' with Hume (the allusion here being to Hume's problem of induction, wherein it is imagination which ties together cause and effect), Derrida finally turns toward the idea of fiction, such that fiction itself becomes something 'originary', rather than derivitive: "If we admit, as we have tried to show, that every sign in general consists in an originarily repetitive structure, the general distinction between fictional usage and actual usage of a sign is threatened. The sign is originarily worked over by fiction". Note again the purposeful conflation of categories: 'original fiction' - again, this will later become 'originative supplement'.

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Derrida will also begin here to thematize things in terms of consciousness, proximity and experience, but these ideas are picked up with greater detail in what's to come, so I wont' say too much about them other than to note their presence at the end of the chapter.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover Preempting a little, this 'digging deeper' is exactly what Husserl does in the Lectures on Internal Time Consciousness, which Derrida will shortly turn to. The example of music is an apt one, because music (or rather melody) is precisely the basis upon which Husserl will consider the notion of time. I don't remember if Derrida does talk about melody (a quick search says no), but it's good to keep in mind as you read on.

I'm not convinced that an idiosyncratic sign can't be a sign, and I think it shows some structuralist prejudices, which are plausible if we are sympathetic to Derrida to begin with, but won't be convincing.

I guess the question is: how could an idiosyncratic sign be a sign? That is, if a sign is in principle unrepeatable (and when I think about it, the only paradigm I know of this is divine revelation), in what way can it be properly called a sign? Or better, what kind of a thing would a sign be if it were in principle unrepeatable? And what would it not be? (what theory of the sign would be at work?).

Reply to StreetlightX I'm going to be a little reductive here and point out that analytic and continental philosophers, around this time (50s and 60s) were both going through a violent backlash against mentalistic pictures of meaning, and especially linguistic meaning. However, the general line of attack curiously tended to go in opposite directions between the traditions.

The analytic philosopher (exemplified by Wittgenstein) says: the problem with language being idiosyncratic is that would mean it couldn't suffice for communication. But, communication is essential for language; so language can't be idiosyncratic.

The continental philosopher (exemplified by Derrida) says: the problem with language being without communication is that then it would be idiosyncratic. But, a lack of idiosyncrasy is essential for language: so language can't be non-communicative.

Now it doesn't take a genius to see that there's a sort of circle of related concepts going on here. If we are a Husserl who is not within this circle, then something else is going to have to convince us to step into it.

So let's think about the way a sign might be idiosyncratic. Well, we know even from Derrida that indicative signs that are non-linguistic are only so functionally, given the lived experience that animates them. This means that what something indicates to someone depends on the experiencer. If I see food missing from the pantry, it might indicate the local rat has been about again; but to everyone else, not knowing about the existence of this rat, this is no such indication at all. Within this limited scope, then, the sign is idiosyncratic. So does Derrida mean by 'sign' only a linguistic, or expressive sign? Is it only these that cannot be idiosyncratic (note the strength of his claim: a sign cannot be idiosyncratic, essentially). He must mean something like that. But then, why is it important for him to cordon off language in this way, given his general desire to collapse expression and indication?

If we were to move into only expressive or linguistic signs, then we might think about empirical phenomena that sit uncomfortably with both the analytic and continental pictures, including twin languages, self-directed speech, child nonsense words, studies involving experimental subjects who learn on language fragments containing nonce-words, ephemeral names like 'Mr. I Don't Know What Time It Is,' which only require one tokening to be understood, and may never be used in a speaker's life again afterward, and so on. We might also with Quine question to what extent the forceful leveling of our linguistic practice to something common and repeatable really removes all of the inner kinks of each individual, and to what extent language actually is idiosyncratic, but the idiosyncrasies are just washed out by the needs of communication (and so communication shaves off, can never really capture all the nuances of, expression). To do this would be to accuse Derrida of a kind of blindness: he sees the ideality and repeatability of the sign as essential precisely because for him as a structuralist, this is the only thing that counts as 'signage' to begin with, and in fact, to turn his method around on him, there is no essential separation between the repeatable and the idiosyncratic, but they shade into each other.

But before going there, we would have to know what the generality of Derrida's claim is supposed to be, and what he thinks of idiosyncratic indications. As it stands there is a discomfort here, and he seems to be doing something like what he's accusing Husserl of doing: trying to sequester indication away, once we're to talk about 'signs' (where Husserl's 'slips of the tongue' according to Derrida went in the opposite direction in saying, 'signs, namely indications').

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I also wonder whether anyone would be interested in talking a little bit about the background involving Saussure. He was overtly mentioned last chapter, but this one seems to me to be where his influence is most obvious and crucial for getting at what's going on.

Quoting StreetlightX

“I am the one who is” is the confession of a mortal. Although it is not mentioned explicitly, I'm almost entirely sure this is an allusion to God's declaration to Moses in Exodus that "I am who I am".

I thought this too. It can't be an accident. Also, the footnote following this is funny.

I am basically on board with Derrida with these motifs. I agree about the possibility of death and the tradition's aversion to it through perpetual self-actualization and presence and so on. I have little to say in trying to critique them because they strike me as deeply correct in some way, and at this point they're more allusions than arguments.

Quoting The Great Whatever

If I see food missing from the pantry, it might indicate the local rat has been about again; but to everyone else, not knowing about the existence of this rat, this is no such indication at all. Within this limited scope, then, the sign is idiosyncratic.

...If we were to move into only expressive or linguistic signs, then we might think about empirical phenomena that sit uncomfortably with both the analytic and continental pictures, including twin languages, self-directed speech, child nonsense words, studies involving experimental subjects who learn on language fragments containing nonce-words, ephemeral names like 'Mr. I Don't Know What Time It Is,' which only require one tokening to be understood, and may never be used in a speaker's life again afterward, and so on.

I think these examples betray a misunderstanding. Idiosyncratic does not mean 'used only once'. The notion of idiosyncrasy at stake turns not upon matter of facts, but a matters of principle: is this sign, in principle, repeatable, even if it is, in fact, only ever used the one time? That is, if I notice the food missing from the pantry, then any one, in principle, could do the same. It is a matter for the capacity or the ability for repetition. Alphonso Lingis, whose wrote a stunning book on these matters (one that is easily as good, if not far better than VP), makes this clear in one of his passages, where he speaks of ideality in the Husserlian sense:

"The objects of the theoretical attitude are ever ideal objectives. An idea is an ideal object, a structure of factors or elements which cohere necessarily such that if anyone of them is there, all are there; ... It is an identity. If ever it should recur, it will recur with the same identity. If ever it could recur even once ... it could recur at any time, anywhere. This repeatability is not a property that follows from its ideal essence, but constitutes it; for Husserl, who is not a Platonic substantialist, ideal being insists not in intemporal subsistence but in unrestricted recurrability. The form of infinity - the ad infinitum - enters into the constitution of every idea." (Lingis, Deathbound Subjectivity, my emphasis).

Derrida himself is not exactly equivocal on this point either. Note the insistence on possibility in the following passage: "We come to make Vorstellung in general and, as such, depend on the possibility of repetition, and the most simple Vorstellung, presentation, depend on the possibility of re-presentation ... This ideality, which is only the name of the permanence of the same and the possibility of its repetition, does not exist in the world and it does not come from another world. It depends entirely on the possibility of acts of repetition. It is constituted by the possibility of acts of repetition. Its “being” is proportionate to the power of repetition. Absolute ideality is the correlate of a possibility of indefinite repetition." (p. 44-45). Everywhere it is a question of possibility. So long as that possibility exists, or rather, so long as that possibility insists, in principle, then the sign contaminates all presence.

Another passage, in the same chapter, for substantiation: "It is therefore the relation to my death (to my disappearance in general) that is hidden in this determination of being as presence, ideality, as the absolute possibility of repetition. The possibility of the sign is this relation to death. The determination and the erasure of the sign in metaphysics is the dissimulation of this relation to death which nevertheless was producing signification. If the possibility of my disappearance in general must be in a certain way experientially lived so that a relation to presence in general can be instituted, we can no longer say that the experience of the possibility of my absolute disappearance (of my death) comes to affect me, supervenes over an I am and modifies a subject." To put it as programmatically as possible: signs, to the degree that they are repeatable in principle (even if there is no 'actual' sign), are not - or rather cannot be - idiosyncratic.

That all said, I think you're entirely right to note the profound similarity between Derrida and Wittgenstein on these matters. I've always considered Derrida's arguments regarding repetition to be another - superior - way to pose the 'private language argument' that Wittgenstein advances in the PI. Henry Staten wrote a nice little comparative study (endorsed by Derrida in fact!), the imaginatively titled Wittgenstein and Derrida that addresses some of these proximities.

--

I also wonder whether anyone would be interested in talking a little bit about the background involving Saussure. He was overtly mentioned last chapter, but this one seems to me to be where his influence is most obvious and crucial for getting at what's going on.

I'll see If I can conjure something up on this at some point if I can.

I'll put together a more thorough response later this evening, but, I don't understand how the possibility of indefinite repetition occludes my death. In the first part of LI, Husserl waxes a bit poetic (& I'm smuggling in later terminology to paraphrase) - but he speaks with a certain solemity about science as a project of preservation and transmission which allows the noetic acts of long-dead men to be repeated anew. Wouldn't the death of all rational beings be what's effaced here? It feels a little to me like Derrida's forcing Heideggerean considerations where they don't quite fit - as tgw says, whether you agree with the ideas or not, they're allusions here, not arguments, and I'm not sure how well they illuminate the text purportedly under discussion.

Reply to The Great Whatever I wonder if the examples of exceptional words you cite points less to a problem with possible repetition and more to a problem of access. Certain people can repeat these, others cannot. This is especially clear with twin language. I have twin brothers and have witnessed some of this firsthand - it doesn't seem all that different from watching very close friends exchanging in-jokes or personally charged words. a close friend and I, in high school, built our own secret language referring to certain shared ideas - "fly fishing" "glitch lake" "the french thing" - which allowed us to communicate quickly based on all-night conversations we'd had - these conversations, so to speak, were taken as read. What's idiosyncratic isn't unrepeatable, I think, it's just not democratic. Husserl's own idiosyncratic terminology is a perfect example.

.

Reply to StreetlightX I'm not really comfortable with the appeal to counterfactuality, because I think it will explode the thesis into triviality: talk of what could be repeated obscures important points about what it takes, empirically, for a sign to be part of a sign-system, and we could say for instance that a cloud could be a letter, and so on.

The point is that all that it takes for an indicative sign to function is to indicate once. So we're faced with a bit of a fork: either we admit it can be idiosyncratic, because counterfactually it would take a lot of strain to convert the indicator into an indicator for anyone else (and indeed, this will be more and more difficult the more we specify the specific act of indication, e.g. by specifying a time or circumstance under which it must occur in order to count as 'the same,' which is variable depending on what description of the indication you prefer), or in order to make it non-idiosyncratic we stretch the counterfactual conditions to such length that the could have clause becomes trivial, since anything 'could have' been anything in the widest possible sense. The semantics of counterfactuals are hard anyway, especially when it comes to things like signs that 'get essentialized.'

These aren't knock-down rebuttals, just concerns.

Also, just to make the scope of my concern clear, note that Derrida refers to 'absolute ideality.' The gulf between ideality and non-ideality is characteristic of structuralism. All I am saying is that ideality may be gradable, such that we could say something weaker like 'the less idiosyncrasy, the more ideality / the more signhood.'

Reply to csalisbury I'd like to make it clear that Derrida is not really psychoanalyzing Husserl's concerns with death. Husserl was mystified by personal birth, death, and sleep, and the ways he thinks about them are fascinating, especially in his late career. There is even a place where Husserl claims that the primal ego (which in late Husserl looks like it's even deeper than the 'sedimented' transcendental ego!!) is immortal. Now, you can make of this enigmatic comment what you will. But damn.

As for the death of all rational beings, well I don't know. Certainly I think there's a sense in which, Schopenhauer-like, Husserl thinks the world would be destroyed in such a case. He also seems to think the world could be destoryed while the people survive (!!)

I feel good about the allusions to death and so on. He is hitting on a crucial nerve. All this stuff about classical voluntarism, immortalism, body-soul distinctions, and so on is not just hot air. (also, I think the repeatability reveals my own death rather than occluding it).

Reply to The Great Whatever
I'm not trying to say that Derrida isn't touching on things that are deeply part of Husserl's philosophy - I'm just trying to understand how the first 3 chapters bring us to the themes of chapter 4. If, in chapter 4, the tight - tho oft-interrupted - analysis gives way totally to a freewheeling impressionistic meditation on various phenomenological themes, well, I feel a little disappointed. It seems straightforward that the the possibility of indefinite repeatability, or iteration, has no bearing on my death, unless it's specifically the possibility of my iterating.

So, if Derrida wants more than to simply re-announce the relation that the metaphysics of presence has to one's own being-toward-death, thereby elucidating for the readers that he's read Heidegger; if, that is, he wants to make of iteration tout court a privileged window onto this relation (which he surely does, given the labor he's expended in the first 3 chapters setting up all the pieces); then I think he's failed to do so. The most one can say, at this point, is that the possibility of indefinite iteration evades the death of all rational beings.

(I am familiar with section 39 of Ideas but (one of) Derrida's aim(s), in chapter 4, is to show that the discussion of signs in the first LI occludes the inevitability of my death. It would be easy to show that section 39 of Ideas is super presence-y and very death-averse. All you have to do is quote it in full. But presumably the originality of the book is that it's not making the easy move of saying 'someone who thinks consciousness survives the destruction of the world probably has some death-issues.')

Reply to csalisbury Isn't the point that philosophy has some death issues, though, not Husserl in particular? I think the point about my death is that the realization that everything I can express about myself, and what I am, is from something handed down from the past and that can be iterated indefinitely into the future. I mean, the extremity of Husserl's position on time-consciousness relates any kind of past- or future-hood to death, removal from presence (although I'm not sure I buy Derrida's take on this).

I also think this sprinkling in of large themes has been characteristic of Derrida's style so far, but before some of it was in footnotes.

Reply to The Great Whatever

I think the point about my death is that the realization that everything I can communicate about myself, and what I am, is from something handed down from the past and that can be iterated indefinitely into the future.

You may be right, but I haven't read beyond chapter 4, and can't find this idea there.

I also think this sprinkling in of large themes has been characteristic of Derrida's style so far, but before some of it was in footnotes.

That's true, but earlier they were more like coquettish teasers of what's to come, little flashes of the summit motivating the weary reader to continue to scale the monotonous lower cliffs . What feels different about chapter 4 is that suddenly - bam! - we're at the summit and seemed to have skipped 70% of the mountain. Kinda like 'ok we've proved we can do a little bit of climbing, call in the helicopter, let's get to the good stuff'

Do you get that sense at all? It feels a lot like that to me.

Quoting csalisbury

Do you get that sense at all? It feels a lot like that to me.

As I said, Derrida strikes me as impatient. Fine, it just means we have to read him less linearly. The best authors successively blow your mind in slow steps, with each step.

Reply to The Great Whatever yeah, idk, I'm fine with nonlinearity -usually prefer it actually - but I look to literature or avowedly experimental philosophy when that's what I'm after. I feel kinda of annoyed at the idea of book that painstakingly draws all sorts of distinctions, progesses from one point to another, pretending it's linear, when it isn't (If you want to just go for the jugular, why waste all that time on the early chapters?.) I'm still trying to charitably read the book as what it pretends to be, and criticizing it from that standpoint.

Reply to csalisbury From what I've read, Chapter 5 is the most important. It also seems to me to contain the decisive point at which Derrida has to choose a reading of Husserl, and is the only time in the work where Derrida does not take Husserl's text at its word, and makes an argument that crucially relies on a claim that he can't possibly have meant what he said. From what I have read, the crux of the whole work seems to be here, on this decision. I think the whole thing would have been easier to understand and maybe more effective if he began with time-consciousness rather than expression. But that is with an incomplete understanding of the work. I don't know why the language stuff is arranged in quite this way.

Reply to The Great Whatever Time-consciousness has always been the most intriguing part of Husserl for me, but, though I own it, I've yet to read his work on the subject. I only know of it through the sketches of others. I've been reluctant to read it out of both intimidation and fear of being let down (everyone speaks so highly of Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness, but Proust has so far exceeded any philosopher I've ever read on the topic (utterly on another level) that I'm a bit worried it won't live up to the hype. ) Anyway, Proust-signalling aside, I'll bracket my broader criticisms of Derrida's approach until the end of the book. I'm going to reread ch.4, as well, because there's still some things I'd like to say about the whole reality/imagination/sign thing.

Reply to csalisbury I'm not sure what to think about Husserl on the subject anymore. The absolute flow is a mind-boggling concept, very deep and very hard to fathom, as is the notion of horizontal intentionality. But I've become more skeptical over time of the notions of protention and retention. I think they might be remnants of the natural attitude which linearizes time, and they may not be real. If they aren't, that takes some wind out of Derrida's sails.

Quoting The Great Whatever

If I see food missing from the pantry, it might indicate the local rat has been about again; but to everyone else, not knowing about the existence of this rat, this is no such indication at all.

I think that what is meant by repetition in relation to the sign, is that if the missing food, in your example, is a sign of the rat, then this is a repeated occurrence. You would not say this unless you had already drawn that association from a prior occurrence. Repetition is of a temporal nature, it occurred in the past that the food was missing, and you associated this with the rat, so only upon repetition is it seen as a sign.

So if, when the rat takes the food the fist time, you are to make, within your mind, the missing food into a "sign" of the rat, you are anticipating a possible future occurrence, a possible repetition. Without anticipating a possible repetition, you would not create the sign. And if you create the sign only after the second occurrence, you remember back to the first, and say "that rat's been here again", then this is an actual repetition. Either way, the sign is based in repetition, whether it is possible repetition, actual repetition, or most likely both.

In this way, "missing food" becomes an ideal. It is the way that you signify to yourself, the presence of the rat. There is no longer any particularity about it, the particulars, or accidentals of this instance, or that instance, of missing food are irrelevant, there is just the sign of the rat which transcends individual instances. This sign is an ideal object which transcends any particular instance of you perceiving missing food, as each instance of perceiving missing food is apprehended by you as "the rat has been here".

Quoting csalisbury

I'll put together a more thorough response later this evening, but, I don't understand how the possibility of indefinite repetition occludes my death.

I think that the realization of death is brought about by the transcendence of the ideal. Notice the difference between "presence" and "the present", on p46. Presence refers to my empirical existence, while "the present" is the ideal which transcends my empirical existence. Because my empirical existence, my presence, is transcended, by "the present", death is necessitated.

Quoting csalisbury

I'm just trying to understand how the first 3 chapters bring us to the themes of chapter 4. If, in chapter 4, the tight - tho oft-interrupted - analysis gives way totally to a freewheeling impressionistic meditation on various phenomenological themes, well, I feel a little disappointed.

I think something to keep in mind is that this is par for the course for Derrida's writing -- he will often place chapters in a non-linear fashion, as if they came from two different books or as if he cut his original essay in half and flipped around the ends.

Also, I don't think his writing hinges as much on argument -- in the sense that we have an assertion supported or refuted. While it has some academic prose -- such as the distinctions you mention -- I think he reads more like Nietzsche, in the sense that you have to think along with the writing. So when we read the first three chapters it's sort of like reading LI1 as Derrida.

Something that's been helping me in reading along is the thought that the act of deconstruction isn't set out, but is implied by the reading on offer. So while there is the text, there's also how the text upon which a reading is "parasitic" to, the text is being re-arranged in a way to attempt to show us the metaphysical thinking within the text.



Not that people aren't familiar with any of this. But it's worth noting, I think -- at the very least, to prepare ourselves for disappointment ;). (I haven't finished the book yet so not sure if you will be, but it's possible)

Quoting The Great Whatever

I'm not really comfortable with the appeal to counterfactuality, because I think it will explode the thesis into triviality: talk of what could be repeated obscures important points about what it takes, empirically, for a sign to be part of a sign-system, and we could say for instance that a cloud could be a letter, and so on.

I think I'd be careful in framing this talk of possibility in terms of counterfactuality. At issue is not the choice between two different possibilities, x and y, but simply the possibility or not of repetition. As such, the possibility at stake is transcendental, in the Kantian usage of the term: is it a matter of the "conditions of the possibility of the sign": to be repeatable (qua capacity) is the condition of possibility of a sign. Although Derrida at this point will not phrase things this way he will soon begin to in later works, and it's worth putting things in these terms even here, because they clarify things quite nicely (I think anyway).

So - what is crucial to note (and this is Derrida's modification of, and contribution to, the transcendental tradition of thought), is that this condition of possibility (repetition) also doubles as what Derrida will later also refer to as the condition of impossibility of the sign. That is: if a sign is to be a sign, it must be open to the possibility of repetition. This is it's condition of possibility. However, because no one instance of the sign will 'exhaust' the ideality of the sign, because the presence of the sign will always be infinitely deferred, this condition (repetition) simultaneously functions as it's condition of impossibility (impossibility of 'full instantiation' at any one 'moment').

None of this is covered in VP, but again, I think it helps to frame things in this way as it shows how the moves made in VP can be articulated in a wider context regarding the transcendental. In fact, if one could summarize the thrust of all of Derrida's work, it's this: that these conditions of (im)possibility, once thought specific to the sign, are the conditions of (im)possibility of anything whatsoever.

Re: Saussure, this is how he will read Saussure's work too: because Saussure conceived of language as a differential system, where the value of each term was only ever determined by it's position in a system of language, the immediate question is: what defines the limit of this system? Saussure never quite got around to answering this question (or rather, he struggled with it his entire life), and Derrida more or less grasps the nettle and says something like: the limit is the world in it's entirety (although Derrida will probably have no tuck with the notion of 'world' or the notion of 'entirety'). This is why I highlighted, in my summary, the strange remark about how the impossibility of distinguishing between representation and reality just is language.

Reply to StreetlightX

So - what is crucial to note (and this is Derrida's modification of, and contribution to, the transcendental tradition of thought), is that this condition of possibility (repetition) also doubles as what Derrida will later also refer to as the condition of impossibility of the sign. That is: if a sign is to be a sign, it must be open to the possibility of repetition. This is it's condition of possibility. However, because no one instance of the sign will 'exhaust' the ideality of the sign, because the presence of the sign will always be infinitely deferred, this condition (repetition) simultaneously functions as it's condition of impossibility (impossibility of 'full instantiation' at any one 'moment').

Which is the same as saying that a 'full instantiation' would be be irretrievable and unrepeatable, no? It strikes me that, if one wants to shift things to an existential-psychoanalytic register, in the same way Derrida might say Husserl is evading death ( by insisting on a presence that always underlies signification), one could also say that Derrida is evading trauma (by insisting that signification is always co-originary - so there's always something mediating, making sure the traumatic scene is never fully present.)

But then it gets confusing because birth, death & trauma all sort of bleed into one another. At the limit, man, I don't even see what the difference between full presence and total absence is. A sign that exhausts itself fully in a single instantiation and an experience totally free of signification are equally unthinkable. Maybe that's the point. But then you could even make the case that the interlacing of possibility and impossibility, in a kind of mobius strip, is itself a defense against death - preventing the two terms from collapsing into one another by fucking with the topology a bit. A flickering candle neither goes out nor illuminates too brightly an unbearable scene.

Though, also, at this level, I think you could say just about anything tbh.

Yeah, exactly. Full presence and total absence are basically the same thing for Derrida, and the whole point of Derrida is to conceive of the space (and time!) 'in between' both as it were. In Of Grammatology, he's very clear about this: "pure presence itself, if such a thing were possible, would be only another name for death." In contrast, Derrida will attempt to think a 'time of survival', of 'living on'. If you're interested, check out Derrida's last interview he ever gave before his death, were he's asked whether or not he has 'learnt how to live'. It's a beautiful, moving discussion, and his answer is worth quoting:

"So to answer your question, without further delay: no, I never learned-to-live. Absolutely not! Learning to live ought to mean learning to die - to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality - without positive outcome, or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die. I believe in this truth without giving myself over to it. Less and less in fact. I have not learned to accept death. We are all survivors on deferral ...

The question of survival or deferral ... has always haunted me, literally, every moment of my life, tangibly, unrelentingly ... I have always been interested in the subject of survival, the meaning of which is not supplemental to life or death. It is originary: life is survival. Survival in the conventional sense of the term means to continue to live, but also to live after death. All the ideas that have helped me in my work, notably those regarding the trace or the spectral, were related to the idea of "survival" as a basic dimension. It does not derive from either to live or to die. No more than what I call "originary mourning." It is something that does not wait for so-called "actual" death."

You can find the interview here: http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~dclark/documents/rememberingJD/Derrida.I%20am%20at%20war%20with%20myself2.pdf . There's also Derrida's article, Living On (which can be found with a google search), but that's no where near as fun to read.

Will have post something else about trauma.

Reply to StreetlightX This goes beyond the scope of this thread, but I don't much sympathize with this way of looking at things. It's only if one takes on a Husserlian view of consciousness, even if only to oppose it, that this idea of the entanglement of absence and presence seems powerful. The whole Husserlian thing is to stand stock-still in order to closely attend to some intuition, the way a lepidopterist analyzes a butterfly at his desk. The derridean thing is to look at the intuition, or butterfly, and feel that one can never really understand it just by looking at it, that one will always be separated from it, that one can only look at it because one's separated from it. And but then where do you go from there? It seems to me like it would be good, at that point, to leave the whole Husserl thing behind, to realize that honing-in on something is precisely to forfeit understanding, and so to leave the absence and presence of isolated objects and intuitions in order to be in the world. But Derrida seems kinda neurotically obsessed with the play between absence and presence or the play between high or low or x and y - it's always the same thing - the opposition is turned into a play-between. It's always the same compulsive operation.* And it's as much a shield against death as anything in Husserl.

That interview doesn't feel beautiful or moving to me - it feels profoundly sad. Even near death he's still playing the same compulsive game, for an interviewer. It's like he doesn't understand he's actually going to die, that it's not a rhetorical game anymore.

*Claude Levi Strauss, in Tristes Tropiques on how philosophy was taught in Paris while he was at university: "I began to learn that every problem, whether serious or trifling, may be solved by application of an always identical method, which consists in contrasting two traditional views of the question; the first is introduced by means of a justification on common-sense grounds, then the justification is destroyed with the help of the second view; finally, both are dismissed as being equally inadequate, thanks to a third view which reveals the incomplete character of the first two. These are now reduced by verbal artifice to complementary aspects of one and the same reality: form and subject-matter, container and content, being and appearance, continuity and discontinuity, essence and existence etc. Such an exercise soon becomes purely verbal, depending,as it does, on a certain skill in punning..."

Yeah, I can see that. There's definitely a kind of repetitious formalism that's at work everywhere in Derrida, and part of his stylistic and thematic extravagance always struck me as a kind of hysteric reaction to a deadlock in the Real, in the psychoanalytic sense, a proliferation in the face of what would otherwise be a kind of theoretical monotony. On the other hand, it's one of those things - for me at least - that, 'once you see it, you can't unsee it'. Once you understand the limits that deconstuction places on philosophy, you have to be very careful to work within those limits, or at least, address them head on to explain why they don't apply to you. It's kind of Copernican for me: once you pass though that ring, there's no going back; you can no longer think in terms of pure presence without being either profoundly naive, willfully insincere, OR, you rethink entirely what it would mean to think in terms of presence.

Derrida always functions as a kind of bulwark for me: if you're going to 'do' philosohpy, how do you do it in the face of deconstruction? What kind of vigilance will you need to exercise? Derrida always insists that there's no going beyond the 'closure of metaphysics', but I think that's exactly the challenge that needs to be met, without, for all that, simply falling back into the positions that Derrida everywhere (rightly) critiques. There's no going 'beyond' Derrida, imo, but there are side-steps or side-shuffles that one can make that that escape the very problematic he poses. In truth I hardly read Derrida these days because I feel I've 'absorbed' what I need from him - there are more interesting things to read. But the question always haunts: would Derrida's general critique apply to this, and if not, why not?

-

Heh, yeah, I'm familiar with that Levi-Strauss quote, and given the time period I think he would have been referring too, I always think he's referring to Bergson and Merleau-Ponty, who both pretty much write all their books exactly in that manner.

I may be mistaken in this, so correct me if I'm wrong -- but isn't phenomenology supposed to side step metaphysics by focusing in on lived experience?

I thought that to be one goal of phenomenology. Hence, if one could show that the same dichotomies which (purportedly) dominate the history of metaphysics also dominate phenomenology, then something would be gained by that critique -- that these dichotomies are not so easily escaped as it would seem (that metaphysical thinking re-introduces itself everywhere -- "always already" as the phrase has it).

That, I think in part, is the reason for the elliptical stylistic choice too -- there's a sense in which the text we're reading, the works of Derrida that is, would become dominated by the same categories that have always dominated metaphysics.

In some way I think you have to agree with Heidegger -- at least to a certain degree -- about the history of metaphysics to make sense of Derrida. I remember reading Heidegger was the sort of "lynch pin" that helped me to begin to see what was going on years ago (or, at least, gave my mind handholds)

Quoting Moliere

In some way I think you have to agree with Heidegger -- at least to a certain degree -- about the history of metaphysics to make sense of Derrida. I remember reading Heidegger was the sort of "lynch pin" that helped me to begin to see what was going on years ago (or, at least, gave my mind handholds)

Ya the usual story goes that Derrida took a Heidegger's conception of the history of metaphysics ('ontotheology' in Heidgger) and transformed it into the 'metaphysics of presence', and similarly took Heidegger's notion of the 'Destruktion' of metaphysics and transformed it into the 'deconstruction' of metaphysics. And Derrida, ever the radical, ends up locating Heidegger in that tradition as well, even though he notes that Heidegger was exemplary in trying to escape it.

Interestingly, Derrida never claims to escape what he calls the 'closure of metaphysics' either. As with the double bind of (im)possibility, his reading of that history aims to show the points in it by which it renders itself both possible and impossible. This is why Derrida is always at pains to specify his own position of enunciation, the 'place' from which he makes his judgements. He is neither inside nor outside the tradition but in some indiscernible place on it's edge (or 'margin' - as he would title one of his more well known books 'Margins of Philosophy'): he always says "we", he includes himself in the tradition even as he deconstructs it, and generally never from a point 'outside' of it.

Quoting csalisbury

if one wants to shift things to an existential-psychoanalytic register, in the same way Derrida might say Husserl is evading death ( by insisting on a presence that always underlies signification), one could also say that Derrida is evading trauma (by insisting that signification is always co-originary - so there's always something mediating, making sure the traumatic scene is never fully present.)

Yeah, I've always thought this regarding secondary presentations of Derrida. There's comfort in knowing something can be infinitely deferred.

Quoting StreetlightX

So to answer your question, without further delay: no, I never learned-to-live. Absolutely not! Learning to live ought to mean learning to die - to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality - without positive outcome, or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die. I believe in this truth without giving myself over to it. Less and less in fact. I have not learned to accept death. We are all survivors on deferral ...

The question of survival or deferral ... has always haunted me, literally, every moment of my life, tangibly, unrelentingly ... I have always been interested in the subject of survival, the meaning of which is not supplemental to life or death. It is originary: life is survival. Survival in the conventional sense of the term means to continue to live, but also to live after death. All the ideas that have helped me in my work, notably those regarding the trace or the spectral, were related to the idea of "survival" as a basic dimension. It does not derive from either to live or to die. No more than what I call "originary mourning." It is something that does not wait for so-called "actual" death."

Wow, that's...frank. I mean, I don't find it moving. But it's frank. It reminds me of a lot of old epigrams about being too afraid to live or die.

Reply to Moliere Yes and no, and Derrida talks a little bit about this. On the one hand, phenomenology is opposed to traditional metaphysics (and some phenomenologists oppose it to 'ontology,' which they take themselves to be doing), because of methodological inadequacy. But on the other hand, Husserl took himself to be doing genuine metaphysics, and so only opposed to metaphysics in the true sense insofar as the old metaphysics was false metaphysics.

And yeah, showing that phenomenology at its core is part of the same tradition it's trying to disavow is one of Derrida's main goals.

Quoting StreetlightX

So - what is crucial to note (and this is Derrida's modification of, and contribution to, the transcendental tradition of thought), is that this condition of possibility (repetition) also doubles as what Derrida will later also refer to as the condition of impossibility of the sign. That is: if a sign is to be a sign, it must be open to the possibility of repetition. This is it's condition of possibility. However, because no one instance of the sign will 'exhaust' the ideality of the sign, because the presence of the sign will always be infinitely deferred, this condition (repetition) simultaneously functions as it's condition of impossibility (impossibility of 'full instantiation' at any one 'moment').

I don't see how impossibility can be derived from possibility, because I believe that they belong to distinct categories. Impossibility is a necessity, and this is categorically different from possibility. Things which are not a possibility are impossible, but we cannot proceed from things which are possible, to make a determination as to what is impossible. So I don't see how Derrida intends to support impossibility by referring to possibility.

In the quoted paragraph, you say that a sign "must be" open to the possibility of repetition, this is an assertion of necessity. It is impossible to be otherwise. But the problem is, that the possibility of repetition, to have the capacity to be repeated, does not necessitate that the thing (the sign) must be this way. It is still possible that the thing (the sign) could exist without the possibility of repetition. It is only by definition that this principle is created, "sign" is defined as this necessity, this impossibility. But we cannot constrain real possibilities simply by defining them out of existence, therefore this thing, this ideality, which is called "the sign", could exist as something other than what Derrida defines as "sign", and this negates that impossibility.

That's a bit convoluted, but the problem is very evident at p46 of VP. In the final paragraph he speaks of "the possibility of my disappearance". At the end of the page, this leads to the necessity "I am mortal". But of course the possibility of my disappearance does not necessitate my actual disappearance. Then further, "I am immortal" is said to be "impossible". But this does not follow logically from "the possibility of my disappearance", because unless it is demonstrated that I will, of necessity disappear, my immortality remains a possibility, along with my disappearance.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

In your second para here I think you've hit upon one of the most telling presumptions implicit in the much vaunted notion of finitude of some modernist and postmodernist philosophers. (Y)

Edit: actually made a mistake here: was referring to your third paragraph.

But that whole critique is muddled! Necessity qualifies possibility - that is, for a sign to be a sign, the possibility of it's repetition is necessary; it is necessarily repeatable, on pain of no longer being a sign. A sign for which it would not be necessary to be repeat would be something like God's Word: it would im-mediate and durationless, not unlike the manner in which Augustine writes of it in the Confessions:

"But how didst Thou [God -SX] speak? In the way that the voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son? For that voice passed by and passed away, began and ended; the syllables sounded and passed away, the second after the first, the third after the second, and so forth in order, until the last after the rest, and silence after the last. Whence it is abundantly clear and plain that the motion of a creature expressed it, itself temporal, serving Thy eternal will. ... Thou callest us then to understand the Word, God, with Thee God, Which is spoken eternally, and by It are all things spoken eternally. For what was spoken was not spoken successively, one thing concluded that the next might be spoken, but all things together and eternally. Else have we time and change; and not a true eternity nor true immortality." (Confessions, Book XI).

Basically, Derrida will affirm, against Augustine, upon the necessity of this 'passing away of syllables', of what he will refer to as 'spacing' and 'periodicity', of the necessity of spatialization and temporalization against the eternal: "temporization is also temporalization and spacing, the becoming-time of space and the becoming-space of time" ("Differance", in Margins); In VP itself, although time will be taken up as an explicit theme (especially in the next chapter), space makes quite a few, albeit understated appearances, some of which we've come across already, in the chapter 3 especially: "indication alone takes place in nature and in space ... [while presence]... has still not exited from itself into the world, into space, into nature." (p. 34). And: "Visibility as such and spatiality as such could only lose the self-presence of the will and of the spiritual animation which opens up discourse. They are literally the death of that self presence." (p.29).

With respect to the question of 'finitude' then, Derrida is perhaps more properly spoken of as a philosopher of mortality: if the possibility of death is a necessity (Again: necessity qualifies possibility), then immortality is impossible; the immortal is always haunted by the possibility of His death, necessarily - rendering Him mortal. 'Time and change' (spacing and timing) against 'eternity and immortality', in Augustine's terms.

I think that Signature, Event, Context might be of some use here. He's engaging with Austin and the concept of communication there, but he also lays out his arguments for repeatability there, and ties it into the concepts of death (once again, much later).

http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/inc.pdf

Beginning on Page 7:

A written sign is proffered in the absence of the receiver. How to style this
absence? One could say that at the moment when I am writing, the receiver may
be absent from my field of present perception. But is not this absence merely a
distant presence, one which is delayed or which, in one form or another, is idealized
in its representation? This does not seem to be the case, or at least this
distance, divergence, delay, this deferral [differ-ance] must be capable of being
carried to a certain absoluteness of absence if the structure of writing, assuming
that writing exists, is to constitute itself. It is at that point that the differ-ance [difference
and deferral, trans. ] as writing could no longer (be) an (ontological)
modification of presence. In order for my "written communication" to retain its
function as writing, i.e., its readability, it must remain readable despite the absolute
disappearance of any receiver, determined in general. My communication
must be repeatable-iterable-in the absolute absence of the receiver or of any
empirically determinable collectivity of receivers. Such iterability-(iter, again,
probably comes from itara, other in Sanskrit, and everything that follows can be
read as the working out of the logic that ties repetition to alterity) structures the
mark of writing itself, no matter what particular type of writing is involved
(whether pictographical, hieroglyphic, ideographic, phonetiC, alphabetiC, to cite
the old categories). A writing that is not structurally readable-iterable-beyond
the death of the addressee would not be writing. Although this would seem to be
obvious, I do not want it accepted as such, and I shall examine the final objection
that could be made to this proposition. Imagine a writing whose code would be
so idiomatic as to be established and known, as secret cipher, by only two "subjects."
Could we maintain that, following the death of the receiver, or even of
both partners, the mark left by one of them is still writing? Yes, to the extent that,
organized by a code, even an unknown and nonlinguistic one, it is constituted in
its identity as mark by its iterability, in the absence of such and such a person, and
hence ultimately of every empirically determined "subject." This implies that
there is no such thing as a code-Drganon of iterability-which could be structurally
secret. The possibility of repeating and thus of identifying the marks is
implicit in every code, making it into a network [une grille] that is communicable,
transmittable, deCipherable, iterable for a third, and hence for every possible
user in general. To be what it is, all writing must, therefore, be capable of functioning
in the radical absence of every empirically determined receiver in general.
And this absence is not a continuous modification of presence, it is a rupture
in presence, the "death" or the possibility of the "death" of the receiver inscribed
in the structure of the mark (I note in passing that this is the point where the
value or the "effect" of transcendentality is linked necessarily to the possibility of
writing and of "death" as analyzed). The perhaps paradoxical consequence of my
here having recourse to iteration and to code: the disruption, in the last analysis,
of the authority of the code as a finite system of rules; at the same time, the radical
destruction of any context as the protocol of code. We will come to this in a
moment.

What holds for the receiver holds also, for the same reasons, for the sender or
the producer. To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine
which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle,
hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be
rewritten. When I say "my future disappearance" [disparition: also, demise,
trans.], it is in order to render this proposition more immediately acceptable. I
ought to be able to say my disappearance, pure and simple, my nonpresence in
general, for instance the nonpresence of my intention of saying something meaningful
[mon vouloir-dire, mon intention-de-signification], of my wish to communicate,
from the emission or production of the mark. For a writing to be a
writing it must continue to "act" and to be readable even when what is called the
author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he
seems to have signed, be it because of a temporary absence, because he is dead
or, more generally, because he has not employed his absolutely actual and present
intention or attention, the plenitude of his desire to say what he means, in
order to sustain what seems to be written "in his name. " One could repeat at this
point the analysis outlined above this time with regard to the addressee. The
situation of the writer and of the underwriter [du souscripteur: the signatory,
trans. ] is, concerning the written text, basically the same as that of the reader.
This essential drift [derive] bearing on writing as an iterative structure, cut off
from all absolute responsibility, from consciousness as the ultimate authority,
orphaned and separated at birth from the assistance of its father, is preCisely what
Plato condemns in the Phaedrus. If Plato's gesture is, as I believe, the philosophical
movement par excellence, one can measure what is at stake here.

And starting on page 16:

Austin thus excludes, along with what he calls a "sea-change," the "non-serious,"
"parasitism," "etiolation," "the non-ordinary" (along with the whole general theory
which, if it succeeded in accounting for them, would no longer be governed
by those oppositions), all of which he nevertheless recognizes as the possibility
available to every act of utterance. It is as just such a "parasite" that writing has
always been treated by the philosophical tradition, and the connection in this
case is by no means coincidental.

I would therefore pose the following question: is this general possibility
necessarily one of a failure or trap into which language may fall or lose itself as in
an abyss situated outside of or in front of itself? What is the status of this parasitism?
In other words, does the quality of risk admitted by Austin surround language
like a kind of ditch or external place of perdition which speech [la locution]
could never hope to leave, but which it can escape by remaining "at home,"
by and in itself, in the shelter of its essence or telos? Or, on the contrary, is this
risk rather its internal and positive condition of possibility? Is that outside its
inside, the very force and law of its emergence? In this last case, what would be
meant by an "ordinary" language defined by the exclusion of the very law of
language? In excluding the general theory of this structural parasitism, does not
Austin, who nevertheless claims to describe the facts and events of ordinary language,
pass off as ordinary an ethical and teleological determination (the univocity
of the utterance [enonel?}--that he acknowledges elsewhere [pp. 72-73] remains
a philosophical "ideal"-the presence to self of a total context, the
transparency of intentions, the presence of meaning [vouloir-dire] to the absolutely
singular uniqueness of a speech act, etc.)?

For, ultimately, isn't it true that what Austin excludes as anomaly, exception,
"non-serious,"9 citation (on stage, in a poem, or a soliloquy) is the determined
modification of a general citationality-Dr rather, a general iterability-without
which there would not even be a "successful" performative? So that-a paradoxical
but unavoidable conclusion-a successful performative is necessarily an "impure"
performative, to adopt the word advanced later on by Austin when he
acknowledges that there is no "pure" performative.

I take things up here from the perspective of positive possibility and not simply
as instances of failure or infelicity: would a performative utterance be possible
if a citational doubling [doublure] did not come to split and dissociate from
itself the pure singularity of the event? I pose the question in this form in order to
prevent an objection. For it might be said: you cannot claim to account for the socalled
graphematic structure of locution merely on the basis of the occurrence of
failures of the performative, however real those failures may be and however
effective or general their possibility. You cannot deny that there are also
performatives that succeed, and one has to account for them: meetings are called
to order (Paul Ricoeur did as much yesterday); people say: "I pose a question";
they bet, challenge, christen ships, and sometimes even marry. It would seem
that such events have occurred. And even if only one had taken place only once,
we would still be obliged to account for it.

I'll answer: "Perhaps." We should first be clear on what constitutes the status
of "occurrence" or the eventhood of an event that entails in its allegedly present
and Singular emergence the intervention of an utterance [enonel?] that in itself
can be only repetitive or citational in its structure, or rather, since those two
words may lead to confusion: iterable. I return then to a point that strikes me as
fundamental and that now concerns the status of events in general, of events of
speech or by speech, of the strange logic they entail and that often passes unseen.
Could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation did not repeat a
"coded" or iterable utterance, or in other words, if the formula I pronounce in
order to open a meeting, launch a ship or a marriage were not identifiable as
conforming with an iterable model, if it were not then identifiable in some way
as a "citation"? Not that citationality in this case is of the same sort as in a theatrical
play, a philosophical reference, or the recitation of a poem. That is why there
is a relative specificity, as Austin says, a "relative purity" of performatives. But this
relative purity does not emerge in opposition to citationality or iterability, but in
opposition to other kinds of iteration within a general iterability which constitutes
a violation of the allegedly rigorous purity of every event of discourse or
every speech act. Rather than oppose citation or iteration to the noniteration of an
event, one ought to construct a differential typology of forms of iteration, assuming
that such a project is tenable and can result in an exhaustive program, a
question I hold in abeyance here. In such a typology, the category of intention
will not disappear; it will have its place, but from that place it will no longer be
able to govern the entire scene and system of utterance [l'enonciation]. Above
all, at that point, we will be dealing with different kinds of marks or chains of
iterable marks and not with an opposition between citational utterances, on the
one hand, and singular and original event-utterances, on the other. The first consequence
of this will be the following: given that structure of iteration, the intention
animating the utterance will never be through and through present to itself
and to its content. The iteration structuring it a priori introduces into it a dehiscence
and a cleft [brisure] which are essential. The "non-serious ," the oratio obliqua
will no longer be able to be excluded, as Austin wished, from "ordinary"
language. And if one maintains that such ordinary language, or the ordinary circumstances
of language, excludes a general citationality or iterability, does that
not mean that the "ordinariness" in question-the thing and the notion-shelter
a lure, the teleological lure of consciousness (whose motivations, indestructible
necessity, and systematic effects would be subject to analysis)? Above all, this
essential absence of intending the actuality of utterance, this structural unconsciousness,
if you like, prohibits any saturation of the context. In order for a
context to be exhaustively determinable, in the sense required by Austin, conscious
intention would at the very least have to be totally present and immediately
transparent to itself and to others, since it is a determining center [foyer] of
context. The concept of -Dr the search for-the context thus seems to suffer at
this point from the same theoretical and "interested" uncertainty as the concept
of the "ordinary," from the same metaphysical origins: the ethical and teleological
discourse of consciousness. A reading of the connotations, this time, of Austin's
text, would confirm the reading of the descriptions; I have just indicated its
principle.

Probably easier to read it in the pdf, but I wanted to highlight areas in that essay where he talks about repetition -- and he touches on some of the same themes which VP is talking about now with respect to consciousness, death, meaning, and communication.

Quoting StreetlightX

But that whole critique is muddled! Necessity qualifies possibility - that is, for a sign to be a sign, the possibility of it's repetition is necessary; it is necessarily repeatable, on pain of no longer being a sign.

But the issue goes deeper than the sign, which is the possibility of repetition, to the possibility of ideality itself. Expression, for Husserl seems to be an absolute ideality, an indefinite possibility. When Derrida defines this absolute ideality as "the sign", or "the possibility of repetition", he thereby limits possibility, by means of this definition, such that we are no longer referring to an indefinite possibility.

Now we have an inconsistency. I believe Derrida's criticism of Husserl is based in this inconsistency. By defining absolute ideality with "the sign", a qualified possibility, the possibility of repetition, this is no longer the same absolute ideality which Husserl refers to as indefinite possibility. So Derrida has simply replaced pure expression with a form of indication, the sign, and wants to claim that this form of indication, the sign, is the same thing which Husserl intended as pure expression. It is not, because it is not indefinite possibility, it is qualified possibility.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

There's definitely a reversal at work in VP -- but I don't think the claim is that Husserl intended this reversal. Chapter 1 makes this pretty clear -- I think the last sentence of that chapter is really important to the remainder of this text:

We have chosen to be interested in this relation in which phenomenology belongs to classical ontology

(emphasis mine)

Derrida's reading of Husserl isn't exclusive of the second reading he proposes at the end of chapter 1. Rather, he has chosen to hone in on this possible reading which, if he is correct at least, the text affords or allows. Not that his reading is fixed by Husserl's intent, but that the text allows this as a possible reading.

Also, the notion of choice here being important because it means you could also choose to read the text in a different way from the one presented here -- one governed by authorial intent, for instance.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

But the issue goes deeper than the sign, which is the possibility of repetition, to the possibility of ideality itself. Expression, for Husserl seems to be an absolute ideality, an indefinite possibility. When Derrida defines this absolute ideality as "the sign", or "the possibility of repetition", he thereby limits possibility, by means of this definition, such that we are no longer referring to an indefinite possibility.

Sorry Meta but this is a total garble. Not only is there no textual evidence for any of this (can you cite, exactly - page number and quote - where 1) Derrida 'defines absolute ideality as the sign', and 2) where Husserl defines expression in terms of "indefinite possibility"?), but you're not going to find any because you're completely confusing categories that simply have nothing to do with each other.

First of all, it literally would make no sense to "define ideality as the sign". At best, one can say that Derrida claims that ideality partakes of the structure of sign, but to say that ideality = sign is simply to utter an absurdity, a meaningless string.

Second, it similarly makes zero sense (it is literally non-sense) to refer to expression as "indefinite possibility". Neither Husserl nor Derrida ever make this claim. Insofar as the phrase is employed, it is with respect to the sign and its "indefinite possibility" of repetition, but to speak of "indefinite possibility" simpliciter, especially in relation to expression (which is in no way some kind of modal category), is just word-salad. Please try to at least get the vocabulary right if you're going to try and advance a critique.

Quoting StreetlightX

Sorry, can you cite, exactly, where Derrida 'defines absolute ideality with the sign'? Page number and quote.

p44: "In this way, against Husserl's express intention - we come to make Vorstellung in general and, as such, depend on the possibility of repetition..."

p45: "But this ideality, which is only the name of the permanence of the same, and the possibility of repetition, does not exist in the world, and does not come from another world"

p45: "Absolute ideality is the correlate of a possibility of indefinite repetition. We can therefore say that being is determined by Husserl as ideality, that is, as repetition".

Clearly, on p45, the ideality referred to is absolute ideality, and this ideality is taken to be the possibility of repetition, and the name of that ideality is "the sign", The mistake here is that there is no necessity to assign to absolute ideality, any particular possibility, which is done with "the possibility of repetition". To maintain pureness in absolute ideality, we must maintain an absolutely indefinite possibility.

Quoting StreetlightX

Can you also provide citational evidence for the claim that "Expression, for Husserl seems to be... an indefinite possibility"? - especially the notion of 'indefiniteness'.

I do not have access to Husserl's material right now, only what Derrida gives me to support his argument, so I cannot provide direct citations. But the difference between real, and imaginative should indicate to you, that the imaginative is not limited by the real. This means that the imaginative is not limited to representation as Derrida claims at p42: "I must operate (in) a structure of repetition whose element can only be representative." It may be true that Husserl uses "representation" to refer to imaginations, but I am not completely familiar with how he uses that term.

Imagination creates new things which need not be representative. That is how the word "imagination" is commonly used, the imagination creates new things which are not representative. So this claim of a necessity of representation is unfounded. It is only produced by restricting imagination to representation. Such a move negates, or denies the creative power of imagination, assuming that imagination can only be representative. If we maintain that imagination consists of indefinite possibilities we are not restricted by this claim of representation.

The relationship between imagination, memory, and representation, is further described by Derrida at p47. This is somewhat obscure: "...Husserl constantly emphasizes that, in contrast to memory, the image is a 'neutralizing' and non-'positing' representation..." Then Derrida proceeds on p48 to describe what is meant by "purely fictional". We must question whether "purely fictional" can refer to anything representational, and this has bearing on the originality of the sign.

What I suggest, is that "pure ideality", or the "ideal ob-ject", as described at the end of p45, into 46, is to be understood as an absolute indefiniteness, the possibility to imagine anything, not as Derrida characterizes this, as the possibility of infinite repetition.

Literally none of the quotes you Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

p44: "In this way, against Husserl's express intention - we come to make Vorstellung in general and, as such, depend on the possibility of repetition..."

p45: "But this ideality, which is only the name of the permanence of the same, and the possibility of repetition, does not exist in the world, and does not come from another world"

p45: "Absolute ideality is the correlate of a possibility of indefinite repetition. We can therefore say that being is determined by Husserl as ideality, that is, as repetition".

Clearly, on p45, the ideality referred to is absolute ideality, and this ideality is taken to be the possibility of repetition, and the name of that ideality is "the sign",

Literally none of these quotes even use the word 'sign', and your quip about 'the name of that ideality is sign' simply begs the question. Again, there's zero textual support for your line of reasoning.

As for your discussion of imagination, as you said, you simply don't understand the vocabulary here, and very little of what you say makes any sense whatsoever within the context of either Derrida nor Husserl's discussions.

Here's the point StreetlightX. If absolute ideality is characterized as imagination (pure fiction) on the one hand, and the possibility of indefinite repetition on the other hand, there is a huge gap or difference, between these two. This difference is representation. Representation is not a condition of imagination (pure fiction), it is a condition of repetition. Therefore these two conceptions of "absolute ideality" are distinct.

Please come back when you're done mixing up categories.

MU, imagination is representative not in the sense that it has to depict some real thing, but in the sense that for Husserl it's derivative of perception, which is presentation proper. Imagination and fiction aren't just ideal: when fantasizing, there's a concrete act going on as well, and a particular fantasied object. We can perceive idealities by extracting them both from perception and from fantasy.

I want to recap my understanding of chs. 1-4 very simply to see if others agree with this interpretation. Husserl sets out to determine what a "sign" is. He distinguishes between indication and expression. He explicitly defines indication but not expression. In fact, every time he discusses expression it's bound up with indication (as in the "intimation" of interpersonal communication). This leads to a very strange section on soliloquy where the use of expressive sign occurs in solitude. Here indication, it's true, is absent, but the idea of an imaginary sign that communicates nothing (and the idea that this is where one would find the non-indicative essence of expression) is so bizarre and contradictory that its worth looking at in detail - what's going on here, why's Husserl getting all weird? And when we look at the weirdness in depth, it's clear that he's trying to resolve all sorts of inherent paradoxes of the sign (prsence/absence, reality/representation) by focusing on an instance where a sign supposedly coincides immediately with what it expresses. In other words, he's trying to understand the sign by totally glossing over what a sign is and how it works. And it's this strange, confused knot in Husserl's text that Derrida uses as a springboard to jump into *all* the contradictions and hidden assumptions of phenomenology.

Reply to csalisbury Sounds about right to me.

Quoting StreetlightX

Please come back when you're done mixing up categories.

If you don't want to discuss the text with me, that's fine. But to make such unsupported accusations is not. Clearly, as per the quotes provided by me above, what is being described in this chapter of the book is "absolute ideality". If there is any "mixing up categories" going on here, it is being done by the one (Derrida) who claims that the possibility of repetition is a necessary condition of absolute ideality.

If you would consider the first page of the chapter, p41, it is described how, for Husserl, (2) internal discourse is not a case of communicating to myself, "...the existence of psychical acts is immediately present to the subject in the present instant."

Therefore it is impossible that this internal discourse is understood as a "representation". "Immediately present" denies the possibility of representation, which indicates that the object being considered is not immediately present.

Further, it is explained in the quote from Husserl, "that one merely represents oneself as speaking and communicating". So according to Husserl, we must distinguish between what is actually occurring in the case of internal discourse, from the representation of this, which is a speaking and communicating. Then Derrida explains that to avoid this distinction between what is really happening (reality), and the representation of it, we would have to follow Husserl into the category of "fiction" which Husserl defines as a "neutralizing representation".

So instead of going into this concept of "neutralizing representation", Derrida claims that it is impossible, in practise, to make such a distinction, between reality and representation, and that this impossibility is not produced in language, language is that impossibility. This is where Derrida makes the mistake which you accuse me of, mixing up categories. What is being discussed is a separation between reality and representation within ones own mind, and this is necessarily a theoretical separation, an ideal. By asserting the impossibility of this theoretical division, in practise, Derrida finds reason to move from the category of the ideal, to the category of practise, which is other than ideal, and proceeds to discuss the properties of language, as they occur in the practise of communication. But this claim of "impossible" is unsupported

The first mistake which manifests at the bottom of p42, is the claim that when I make use of words, I must do so in "a structure of repetition whose element can only be representation". This is clearly false. It is only by limiting the existence of the word, to being a property of communicative language, that such a conclusion follows. As I indicated earlier, the example of music gives us repetitive sounds, words, syllables and tones, which are often not meant to represent. We use them to entertain, stimulate us, bringing us passion and spirit, rather than representation.

The possibility of such reality, the reality of music and other art forms, which is not representative at all, indicates that Derrida's claim that it is impossible to distinguish between reality and representation, and that the use of the imagination is necessarily representative, is not accurate. Perhaps even some metaphor may be free from representation. Clearly we can imagine a reality which excludes representation. But Derrida appears to proceed from this false premise of "impossibility", that there cannot be expression which is not in some way representative.

Quoting csalisbury

And it's this strange, confused knot in Husserl's text that Derrida uses as a springboard to jump into *all* the contradictions and hidden assumptions of phenomenology.

Before we jump on that springboard we should consider it for soundness, and examine it for weakness.

Reply to csalisbury I may just be more sympathetic to Husserl, but I don't find expression more mysterious than indication. It's linguistic meaning capable of taking part in logical relations, as intended by some agent. The soliloquy example itself also doesn't seem strange to me, although it's a separate question how strange it is after Derrida's criticism, viz. that imaginary and actual uses of language are both equally indicative.

Quoting The Great Whatever

MU, imagination is representative not in the sense that it has to depict some real thing, but in the sense that for Husserl it's derivative of perception, which is presentation proper. Imagination and fiction aren't just ideal: when fantasizing, there's a concrete act going on as well, and a particular fantasied object.

Yes, sure there is a concrete act occurring as the act of fantasizing, but is it not the fantasized object which is immediately present to the mind of the fantasizer rather than the act of fantasizing? If the object is immediately present, then how is this a representation? It must be a presentation of the object rather than a representation.

Reply to The Great Whatever Regardless of whether expression is mysterious, though, Husserl treats it mysteriously. My impression of the structure of 'essential distinctions' in LI is that it runs something like this: Husserl distinguishes between indication and expression, then slowly, step by step, excises indicative elements until only expression is left - the end-product is the chapter on soliloquy. It's very much like 'reduction' in the sense that street mentioned earlier in this thread, not an 'epoche,' but a reduction in the sense that one 'reduces' a sauce. Only after this reduction, does he finally move on to a broader discussion of sense and reference. But it seems strange that the one situation Husserl identifies in which expression is fully, exclusively, expression is one in which expression is entirely superfluous. If we take the idea of expression in Ideas, where an inner sense is 'exteriorized' in a sign, then we have a situation in which someone is externalizing and instantly reabsorbing something he already has in full.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover It's not entirely clear. Husserl thinks that there's a sense in which perception is primary presentation, and imagination, memory, etc. are secondary, hence re-presentation. So it's reproductive without actually having to reproduce some really perceived thing – every fantasy is (merely) a fantasy of some conceivable perception. And of course there's the decreased vivacity, the need for the imaginer to actively keep the fantasy in existence.

Reply to csalisbury Maybe the reason I'm not that surprised by this is that I think I can and have done it? Whether or not this ability is independently mysterious, it seems to me I can in soliloquy describe what I see with a self-present intention in such a way that I'm not really 'telling myself' anything at all in the sense of giving myself new information I didn't know or intimating my own thoughts to myself, but just expressing what something is in silent words appropriate to a perception. And I think in doing so, yeah, I can 'see' what the words mean, which perceptions they'd be appropriate to and which not, and so on. It seems commonplace to me.

Reply to The Great Whatever yeah, i guess I wasn't looking at as something that simple or commonplace, but that makes sense - and you're right, it's eminently doable. But now I feel adrift again in terms of understanding V&P. Like the actual/imagined distinction w/r/t words would be simply an individual utterance vs the word itself considered ideally. Which is totally valid, even if iterability is baked into the sign.

Reply to csalisbury I see the pull of the idea that a sign's function is carried out in full whether any actual tokening of the sign exists, and that even an imaginary sign defers to a symbolic system in the same way it does in actual communication. I'm still a little shaky on what this means or how it corrupts all expression with indication, unless the point is something like 'a sign always indicates the symbolic system it belongs to and all of its other possible uses' which doesn't seem right.

I've always liked Merleau-Ponty's take on this, who provides an account of the transcendental illusion (or what he calls the 'trick') involved in thinking that thought is 'inner': "Thought is nothing “inner,” nor does it exist outside the world and outside of words. What tricks us here, what makes us believe in a thought that could exist for itself prior to expression, are the already constituted and already expressed thoughts that we can silently recall to ourselves and by which we give ourselves the illusion of an inner life. But in fact, this supposed silence is buzzing with words – this inner life is an inner language. “Pure” thought is reduced to a certain emptiness of consciousness and to an instantaneous desire. The new meaningful intention only knows itself by donning already available significations, which are the results of previous acts of expression" (PoP, p. 188-189, Donald Landes trans.)

*M-P uses the term 'expression' here in a different way than the technical sense we've been discussing here; he means it in the more colloquial sense of 'to express an inner thought' - although this is just what he will challenge.

There are some incredible resonances between Merleau-Ponty's and Derrida's work on language, although in truth, I much prefer reading M-P than Derrida. There's just something... elating about M-P's use of language, where Derrida comes off as just trying to be a bit too clever alot of the time.

Quoting StreetlightX

What tricks us here, what makes us believe in a thought that could exist for itself prior to expression, are the already constituted and already expressed thoughts that we can silently recall to ourselves and by which we give ourselves the illusion of an inner life.

Out of curiosity, do you believe this? It seems like it can give you a sort of theoretical elegance, especially if, like MP, and Derrida, you want thought and experience to have a structuralist flavor (and MP's increasing dependence on structuralism is a little questionable). But it seems to be straightforwardly wrong phenomenologically, and no insisting on the contrary is really going to help.

Why is it considered such a philosophical virtue to everywhere deflate or otherwise 'expose' the notion of something being inner? Is it because philosophers only know how to deal with the external?

Quoting The Great Whatever

It's not entirely clear.

Well, it seems to be a pivotal point. If there is ambiguity on Husserl's part, then although StreetlightX has accused me of category error, and I have counter-accused Derrida of the same mistake, it could be that we each have equally valid interpretations. But these interpretations appear to be vastly different.

Let me see if I can sort this out. In chapter three we had the distinction between the imagined word, and the act of imagining. Now at the beginning of chapter four we have a distinction between the act of imaging words, and the representation of this, "speaking to oneself". We can take the act of imagining words as what is real, and the "speaking to oneself" as a representation of this.

Now, at p42 Derrida makes the claim that in language, we cannot distinguish "rigorously" the difference between what is real, and what is representative, so this is referred to as an "impossibility". What I believe is relevant at this point is the distinction between the real act of imagining words, and the representation of this, "speaking to oneself". Surely we can distinguish between the act of imagining, and the representation of this, the description, "speaking to oneself".

I've tried and I've tried, but I cannot understand the reasoning for Derrida's claim of this impossibility. Perhaps StreetlightX can explain why Derrida is insistent on this claim. First it is claimed, "Between actual communication (indication) and 'represented' communication, there would be an essential difference, a simple exteriority." But this is clearly a misrepresentation of Husserl's stated position, that "speaking to oneself" is the representation. The imagining words is not a communication at all, it is only represented as communication, "speaking to oneself". So this is not a case of actual communication and represented communication as Derrida presents it, it is a case of imagining words, which is not supposed to be a form of communication at all, being represented as a form of communication, speaking to oneself.

Derrida then proceeds to talk about the "actual" practise of language, but as far as I can tell, this is a reversal of Husserl's position. Husserl has exposed something, imagining words, which is actually not a practise of language, it is only represented as a practise of language, "speaking to oneself" and Derrida now treats this as if it is an actual practise of using language, and proceeds with his argument. Now I really do not see how it is claimed that we cannot distinguish between this thing, imagining words, and the representation of it "speaking to oneself", such that we would believe that the thing represented, imagining words, is an actual practise of language.

Reply to The Great Whatever

I'm still a little shaky on what this means or how it corrupts all expression with indication, unless the point is something like 'a sign always indicates the symbolic system it belongs to and all of its other possible uses' which doesn't seem right.

I don't know if that is the point, but it does seem plausible me that a sign always indicates --maybe not the entirety of the symbolic system to which it belongs, or all of its other possible uses - but that it indicates at least the linguistic neighborhood of which it is part. I suppose you could say the sign always indicates a larger language game (without necessary saying it indicates the totality of the system of signification)

To add to that, you'd mentioned, much earlier in this thread, sentences used to teach another language. Barthes has an interesting passage on this in his Mythologies

"I shall borrow [an example] from an observation by Valery. I am a pupil in the second form in a French lycee. I open my Latin grammar, and I read a sentence, borrowed from Aesop or Phaedrus: quia ego nominor leo. I stop and think. There is something ambiguous about this statement: on the one hand, the words in it do have a simple meaning: because my name is lion. And on the other hand, the sentence is evidently there in order to signify something else to me. Inasmuch as it is addressed to me, a pupil in the second form, it tells me clearly: I am a grammatical example meant to illustrate the rule about the agreement of the predicate. I am even forced to realize that the sentence in no way signifies its meaning to me, that it tries very little to tell me something about the lion and what sort of name he has; its true and fundamental signification is to impose itself on me as the presence of a certain agreement of the predicate. I conclude that I am faced with a particular, greater, semiological system, since it is co-extensive with the language: there is, indeed, a signifier, but this signifier is itself formed by a sum of signs, it is in itself a first semiological system (my name is lion). Thereafter, the formal pattern is correctly unfolded: there is a signified (I am a grammatical example and there is a global signification, which is none other than the correlation of the signifier and the signified; for neither the naming of the lion nor the grammatical example are given separately."

Reply to csalisbury I reread Chapter 4 this afternoon and don't really understand any better. The point about language use in imagination and actuality collapsing because it is representative equally in each case, and that the distinction between reality and representation breaks down there, is on the cusp of making some kind of sense, but I still just can't see why language is supposed to be shot through with fiction, or however you want to put it.

The tensions between being as ideality (infinite repeatability) and presence (full presence with no need for repetition) makes a little more sense, though I now agree with you that the reference to mortality could only be plausible for the end of the form of the present in general, not for me personally. Though maybe since the form of the present is linked to the transcendental ego, Derrida is hinting at the deeper foundation of the form of 'now' within myself.

Reply to The Great Whatever

but I still just can't see why language is supposed to be shot through with fiction, or however you want to put it.

Just spitballing here, but maybe the idea is that, since the word is ideal in both actual and fictional discourse, language functions the same way whether used nonfictionally or fictionally. Like, that we are able to write fictions at all is because language operates in this ideal, iterable way. Words don't simply correspond immediately with their referents but operate according to this ideal iterability.

Does that make sense ?

Reply to csalisbury I agree with that as far as writing fiction as a genre. I thought the focus was on fiction in the sense of imagining speech (whether the imaginary speech is intended to be fictional or non-fictional in genre).

I feel like I almost get it, but it's just not clicking for me. Isn't Husserl going to agree the ideal function is retained in imagination? Isn't that the point of doing expressive exercises in soliloquy? What would be a problem is if language's indicative functions follow Husserl into soliloquy. So Derrida's move requires something more radical – linguistic signs always have the same functions, imagined or not: actual linguistic use is 'representative' as much as supposedly 'representational' (imagined) use is actual. You can't 'imagine' a discourse because to imagine it is just to have it.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

What I believe is relevant at this point is the distinction between the real act of imagining words, and the representation of this, "speaking to oneself".

I think it is the difference between a real communicative linguistic act and an imagination of this (which is the representation). Not a a representation of the imagination, which goes one level too far.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Derrida then proceeds to talk about the "actual" practise of language, but as far as I can tell, this is a reversal of Husserl's position. Husserl has exposed something, imagining words, which is actually not a practise of language, it is only represented as a practise of language, "speaking to oneself" and Derrida now treats this as if it is an actual practise of using language, and proceeds with his argument. Now I really do not see how it is claimed that we cannot distinguish between this thing, imagining words, and the representation of it "speaking to oneself", such that we would believe that the thing represented, imagining words, is an actual practise of language.

But yeah, this sounds right. We need to understand what it is about linguistic signs that makes Derrida think their being used, and imagination of their usage, collapses.

Reply to The Great Whatever

You can't 'imagine' a discourse because to imagine it is just to have it.

Yeah, and that actually makes sense to me intuitively. I suppose the next step would be that if imagined and actual discourse are the same thing, by imagining discourse one introduces the same play of absence/presence reality/representation you find in communication into the very self-presence of the imaginer. The problem is that discourse is always working no matter where and how it appears, so you can't do the thing of calling it an 'irreal' product of a noetic act in order to fix it in place and observe it. The category of 'existence' never applied to it in the first place, and, as discourse, it continually produces itself. It kind of fuck ups the unilateral constitutor-constituted thing. I guess, that is, you can't observe discourse without actually being drawn into it and, in a way, doing it.

I'm not sure how much sense that makes. I feel similar to you, it's all kind of there in a tip-of-the-tonguey way, without quite clicking - It also gives me that slightly nauseatingly recursive feeling I get when trying to do something like e.g. determine if the word 'autological' is itself autological.

Quoting The Great Whatever

I think it is the difference between a real communicative linguistic act and an imagination of this (which is the representation). Not a a representation of the imagination, which goes one level too far.

The problem I see with this is that in the quote from Husserl, on p41, it is clearly stated: "...there is no speech in such cases, nor does one tell oneself anything; one merely represents oneself (man stellt sich vor) as speaking and communicating."

So there is an activity, which has been referred to as imagining words, and this is represented as "speaking to oneself". The act of imagining words is that act in which there is no actual speech, nor does one really tell oneself anything, but this is represented as a speaking or communicating with oneself.

Quoting The Great Whatever

Out of curiosity, do you believe this?

Yes, with qualification. At this point in his writing, thought remains a matter of 'words' for M-P (i.e. the first line you didn't quote: "Thought is nothing “inner,” nor does it exist outside the world and outside of words). But as M-P would realize (and this is where Derrida more or less 'begins'), 'words' are a case of a more general phenomenon of what he calls 'expression' (employed in a very different way than in Husserl). Expression is perhaps the the most interesting concept in all of MP, and it designates a paradox in which what is expressed does not pre-exist it's expression, but is engendered along with it. For MP, expression will become the manner in which pretty much every phenomenon is subject to, and comes about from (from perception to language, art and ontology).

So I would shift the emphasis on 'language' and 'words' in the passage, to expression tout court. Although already couched in the language of expression, at this point, language remains the model of expression in MP. But if - in a manner analogous to Derrida - expression becomes a model unto itself as it were, one that applies to all phenomena indiscriminately, then thought is just as much a matter of say, gesture, as it is words (gesture being another theme that is incredibly important in MP). One can literally think in gestures, in movement: thought as affect. So there's something more to 'inner thought' than the mere recollection of expressed language or expressed speech. Insofar as language itself is - as far as I'm concerned - a species of affect, what is 'silently recalled' is more or less a complex of affects, sometimes couched in the form of language, sometimes not.

To try and bring this back a little to Derrida, the point of convergence is that just as M-P generalizes 'expression' (initially a feature of language, now a feature of things more generally), so too does Derrida generalize the 'structure of repetition' as no longer belonging solely to the sign, but as 'contaminating' any and all 'presence'. In both cases, what is attacked is any kind of 'simple' from which everything else flows: inner speech, presence, etc. In both cases it's always a matter of attending to the reality of expression itself, of bestowing existential weight, as it were, the process of unfolding, rather than treating expression (in MP's sense) as immaterial scaffolding. They are both 'anti-reductionist' imperatives, where things can't be 'reduced' to other things without remainder. So it's not a matter of siding with an 'outside' against an 'inside', so much as refusing any attempt to isolate any 'region' whatsoever as being somehow primary, with everything else derivitive.

This is why Derrida will end up talking about 'originitive supplements' at the end of VP, where supplementarity (derivation) is mapped right into the 'original' itself. But we'll get there soon enough.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover I think I agree, all I am saying is that sometimes the way you are wording it makes it seem as if there's first an imagination of a word, and then a representation of that imagination. What I'm saying is that's one level removed, and the text treats the imagination as the representation to begin with (of the actual use of the speech in communication).

Reply to StreetlightX Okay. All I am saying is that I don't see anything of thought as I actually live through it in these accounts. It sounds like an alien who lives a very different life from me describing the way they think, because I don't think that way. The folk description of thought and inner life is much more accurate.

I don't think my inner life is primary, merely that it is primary for me. And that it is distinct from my outer life and not reducible to it, or to gestures and language, and the majority of it is incommunicable.

Reply to The Great Whatever I definitely don't have a voice that exhaustively narrates everything I experience, but I do find, if I pay close attention, that there's usually a sort of murmur. I'd have trouble agreeing that my inner life isn't inner, but it's definitely laced through with (and built deeply upon) layer upon layer of inherited forms.

Reply to csalisbury I agree, but I don't see any reason to believe that those inherited forms privilege language or gesture in any interesting way. Even trying to conceptualize what that would be like is difficult. I imagine myself playing a text adventure game or Dance Dance Revolution; a caricature of living.

My inherited forms seem to me something more like a soul or personality, a memory in every novelty, which is refracted through a prism that is 'me.' In other words, I just can't agree with Hume: when I look into myself I do find myself, and his description seems to be one of someone who is very, very high looking through a kaleidoscope. Furthermore, my skepticism toward these positions increases insofar as I am attending to how I actually live, and decreases insofar as I am attendant to resolving aporia in the philosophy literature.

Reply to The Great Whatever

Not to get too deep into it, and get too off topic, but when I look into myself, I find...well yes a soul, or personality, but it's something like - if I focus deeply, or if I'm high - it's like a collection of many 'choices' (though the term is bad because they're often the results of deep persuasion, sometimes coercion, sometimes desperate decisions made under duress) but certain ways of experiencing and organizing my understanding that I chose long ago at the expense of other ways and other organizations, and that I've since forgotten I've chosen, or that those other ways are even possibilities. But then all of those choices were to preserve something and survive somehow and I suppose what I need to preserve and what needs to survive is 'me.'

Phenomenologically, my favorite writing on the topic actually comes from Denise Riley, a philosopher/poet whose essay "A voice without a mouth: inner speech" is indispensable reading for this stuff. She brings out, very nicely, the impersonality of the 'inner voice', which, I think if one really attends to it, becomes quite obvious. Some choice cites (sorry for the length but the essay is too good):

"As to how I inhabit my own inner speech, I am probably more accurately described as talking with myself rather than to myself. A great deal of what goes on in the head consists of an agitated running self-interrogation; ‘What did I just come into this room to get? Oh, I know, I probably left my cup of coffee in here, it’ll be cold by now. No, no, I had to telephone someone, but who was it?’ That is, there is an internal dialogue, but in these exchanges I appear to occupy both sides of it, and there is no one heavily weighted side to my garrulous split self.

...Still, perhaps at times a sense of dialogue can spring up in me, and I may feel that I’m talking both to and with myself when I notice that I have become my inner companion. Then I can silently calm myself, debate with myself. More censoriously, as my knowing superego I can berate myself, upbraid myself, goad myself along. But very often I do not actually address myself at all, and there is simply talking inside me. There is a voice. Questioned as to its origin, I would be in no doubt that it’s my own voice, but its habitual presence in me resembles a rapid low-grade commentary without authorship, rather than any Socratic exchange between several loquacious and attentive inner selves. Better Beckett’s accurate assertion: ‘whose voice, no-one’s’.

... We might say that inner speech itself lives as a state of ventriloquy, in that there is talking within us as if we are spoken from elsewhere; but this state just is our main mode of speaking. It’s present in the ordinary experience of overhearing myself speaking inwardly in a well-formed voice, whether as an outcome of switching my attention onto my inner speech or of feeling it to have risen and swum forward to claim my attention. Ventriloquy makes this daily inner speech: the state of sensing that words are running through me, across me. There is a kind of ‘it is speaking in me’ which is not exactly ‘it is speaking me’, but is an unwilled busiedness which I catch and may try to inhibit in myself.

Words race across me in polyphonic brigades, constantly swollen by the forces of more inrushing voices, and I can put up only a rear-guard censoring action. But this impression is no fully blown hallucination, for again there is no disowning and projecting of my inner voice, only my feeling of becoming a vehicle for words from elsewhere, much as a ventriloquist’s dummy or doll is made to speak vicariously. The real speaker’s, the ventriloquist’s voice, is thrown as if to issue from the passive doll, seemingly animating it. But the person who is the terrain of imperative inner speech, whether of love or hate or some other force, herself becomes the theatre for the performer and the puppet alike. The performer here is the arch-ventriloquist, language.

... Inner speech is no limpid stream of consciousness, crystalline from its uncontaminated source in Mind, but a sludgy thing, thickened with reiterated quotation, choked with the rubble of the overheard, the strenuously sifted and hoarded, the periodically dusted down then crammed with slogans and jingles, with mutterings of remembered accusations, irrepressible puns, insistent spirits of ancient exchanges, monotonous citation, the embarrassing detritus of advertising, archaic injunctions from hymns, and the pastel snatches of old song lyrics."

Reply to csalisbury The choices, in my experience, warp around a core, and what surprises me as the years pass is how little what happens to me changes me, and how much I see in stages manifestations of the same old self in different clothing. Even traumatic things, I understand that I react to them in certain ways and they result not in a new person but reflect the one who was traumatized. Part of it is, having lived longer, I can now recognize myself more easily, and so I am becoming increasingly sympathetic to perennial rationalist truisms, and less impressed by their historical dissidents (empiricism, Buddhism, analyticism, continentalism), which seem by comparison like passing fads, and built on promises (of scientific advance, ending suffering, solving aporia) rather than being philosophies organic from life as lived. I want to see myself as I am, not as I wish I would be.

Quoting StreetlightX

"As to how I inhabit my own inner speech, I am probably more accurately described as talking with myself rather than to myself. A great deal of what goes on in the head consists of an agitated running self-interrogation; ‘What did I just come into this room to get? Oh, I know, I probably left my cup of coffee in here, it’ll be cold by now. No, no, I had to telephone someone, but who was it?’ That is, there is an internal dialogue, but in these exchanges I appear to occupy both sides of it, and there is no one heavily weighted side to my garrulous split self.

I don't know, I'm not schizophrenic. Maybe schizophrenic people think like this, but I do not. I do explicitly carry on dialogue with myself at times, but this is not the normal mode of my inner speech at all, but a dialectical tactic. I'm not Gollum.

Quoting StreetlightX

Words race across me in polyphonic brigades, constantly swollen by the forces of more inrushing voices, and I can put up only a rear-guard censoring action. But this impression is no fully blown hallucination, for again there is no disowning and projecting of my inner voice, only my feeling of becoming a vehicle for words from elsewhere, much as a ventriloquist’s dummy or doll is made to speak vicariously. The real speaker’s, the ventriloquist’s voice, is thrown as if to issue from the passive doll, seemingly animating it. But the person who is the terrain of imperative inner speech, whether of love or hate or some other force, herself becomes the theatre for the performer and the puppet alike. The performer here is the arch-ventriloquist, language".

This sounds like a description of a mental illness to me. I had a friend who was convinced he channeled demons, and it seems like something he would say.

Part of my interest in this is how much of philosophy, and philosophical pronouncement, is affectation. In my opinion the continental tradition is especially prone to affectation, whereas analytic philosophers are more prone to stifling.

Reply to StreetlightX You don't have to actually articulate thoughts as the inner voice as even preparing to say something is already enough to know where the articulation was headed, and to be responding to that accordingly.

It takes about half a second to assemble a fully fleshed out speech act. Hearing yourself say it as mental imagery certainly helps in provoking more precise responses in turn. You can stop to think about what you just suggested. Yet that is overkill for most trains of thought which are more the chaining of familiar habits. We know the thought was already going to be right and so no need to listen in with any care.

So inner speech is essential in that it gives human thought its rational structure. But then the aural image of a completed speech act is not essential. The latent structure can carry most of the load.

Reply to The Great Whatever What I like about Riley's description(s) is it's attention to the different valences of the 'inner voice'. The inner voice not as one 'kind' of speech, but a variety: sometimes a 'polyphonic brigade', sometimes a explicit dialogue, sometimes fragments and half-finished lines, sometimes phrases 'stuck in the head', sometimes just a intensity of 'wanting-to-say' and so on. Taken together, they paint a picture of a voice that is always in some manner impersonal, never fully under our control, a voice with a life of it's own, even while it belongs to us. I think this accords quite nicely with my experience(s), which are not univocal, don't follow some pretdetermined image of what 'inner speech' ought to be.

I just feel that you've some idea of what it 'ought' to be, and tend to judge everything by that light. The kind of authenticity and REALLY ME sort of thing you ascribe to the inner voice just seem odd to me. Folk, as you say, but precisely in a pejorative way.

Reply to StreetlightX

But very often I do not actually address myself at all, and there is simply talking inside me. There is a voice. Questioned as to its origin, I would be in no doubt that it’s my own voice, but its habitual presence in me resembles a rapid low-grade commentary without authorship, rather than any Socratic exchange between several loquacious and attentive inner selves.

This seems pretty spot on to me. The voice isn't exhaustive of my experience, I would add, but it's definitely usually there.

The puppet/ventriloquist thing doesn't strike me as suggesting mental illness, but rather as a competent, if familiar, move in a contemporary poetic language game where one expresses one's poeticity through a concatenation of imagery involving the body, words, and passivity. It's about demonstrating one's receptivity to the muses, but in a more earthy, edgy register (the nod to Beckett is characteristic.) I don't hate it, actually used to like it a lot, but I've had a subscription to Harper's for a few years now, and I'm more than sated with the stuff.

Reply to StreetlightX Sure, but none of this goes anywhere toward justifying the kinds of sweeping claims you're praising MP or Derrida for, and which are still a bad description of even the most basic experiences. Sometimes I dialogue with myself. Sometimes words seem to flit by. It's not about thinking the inner voice ought to be some way, but rather that philosophers have a vested interest in taking some aspect of it that they think will be congenial to their project and blowing it up ludicrously. So for me it is an interesting psychological and sociological question how it is people come to write such things – how people like Hume, or Derrida, come to believe things that are not only so false, but so obviously false. This has to do with the effect philosophical stakes can have on people.

And I think the folk are wiser on this subject. Continental philosophers have, in my experience, never taught me anything important about personal identity, with the exception of Husserl, who in truth belongs to an earlier era (he is like the legendary band that inspires the colorless clones). And I do not brush off their texts, but struggle with them ingenuously, nor do I think any special philosophical incompetence keeps me from understanding them. So there must be some explanation as to why either their texts are so devoid of insight, or that insight is especially closed to me for some reason. I sometimes just cannot believe MP is serious. He's ridiculous. He writes like a clown.

Eh, I feel differently, but then, there's no argument here.

Reply to csalisbury Yeah, the invocation of the Muses is interesting. I do believe in the Muses, and I'm even for going back to ingenuously thanking them before a written work with a disclaimer that nothing I think is good enough to publish is truly my own, but was given to me freely by quasi-divine powers. But inspiration is close to madness, and it's more invigorating and interesting than the sort of tedious schizophrenic deferral and linguistic games that are at play in these sorts of descriptions SX is citing. I just feel like, I don't know, maybe continental philosophers really do live like this, maybe their whole life is a dumb frenetic language game, which strikes me as sad and irritating, but different strokes.

Certainly something sad about Derrida has emerged over the course of reading V&P. Not in a condescending way, but I really am starting to empathize with him the more times I read the chapters. He seems like a sad person.

Reply to The Great Whatever

But inspiration is close to madness, and it's more invigorating and interesting than the sort of tedious schizophrenic deferral and linguistic games that are at play in these sorts of descriptions SX is citing

Hey, to be fair, you yourself likened the passage to madness. (couldn't help myself there, I do see where you're coming form)

There is a lot in continental philosophy I sincerely cherish, but there's plenty I don't, and there's a sense in which the tedious, repetitive invocations of this or that radical idea mirror the tedious, repetitive anti-authority gestures of those who came of age in the US in the 60s. One way to view continental philosophy is a means of preserving the intricate ornamentative forms of catholicism or the inexhaustiblity of the text in rabinnic judaism against the pragmatism of a secular age. There is definitely a kind of familiar fondness for the tradition being critiqued or deconstructed- and, in my limited experience anyway, you don't usually see that in analytic philosophy (Wittgenstein being maybe the canonical example here)

Reply to csalisbury I really love the formal semantic tradition in analytic philosophy, actually (which Witti is a part of), to the extent that I don't mind reading endless boring exegesis about it and learning little technical quirks and solving puzzles. I do feel a deep fondness for it, and for the beauty of the work of someone like Richard Montague (this beauty, I think, comes from the fact that semantics is one of those places where mathematics and empirical science blur, making it both real and formal). But there I feel like it's an engineering thing, doing cool things with mathematical models. I'm not sure what continental philosophy is for, except, as you say, being a bulwark of self-perpetuating Jesuitism (Freud and Marx will simply not stop being cited, ever, I guess). Maybe reading, and reading, and reading engenders its own kind of fun, because you can make notes in the margin and read some more. But then, I can't help but think that the fixation on words is a result of not knowing anything else. And the works that I personally have felt drawn to read again have been actually religious, not just substitute-religious, or old.

(also, there's a shiny well-regarded and romantic kind of madness, and the mundane sort of mental illness that makes you unable to eat right and hear intrusive voices, nothing romantic about the latter).

Reply to The Great Whatever Oh, I wasn't saying there's nothing of value in analytic philosophy, just that it seems to have a very different kind of relationship with its forebears. (I'm not well-versed enough in the tradition to speak about its intricacies, but it sounds similar to the enjoyment I got out of solving programming puzzles during my brief computer science stint. I really enjoyed that and am strongly considering gearing up to give it one last go)

I think continental philosophers have more insightful things to say about culture, art (& spirituality, tho they code it) than do analytic philosophers. There were so many moments for me, in college, reading Deleuze and just being like Yes! - things I'd felt, but didn't know how to express, and hadn't seen anyone express elsewhere. He made me feel much less alone. Recently, I've been having that same experience with Peter Sloterdijk. Derrida has always been one of my least favorite continentals precisely because I don't get any of that from him. I've never had one of those 'aha!' moments with him. Reading him has been fun, if infuriating, but it hasn't really deepened my interest in his work, tbh (tho it has deepened my interest in Husserl.)

(Also fwiw, Deleuze had an alcohol problem, which he overcame, and his writing on alcoholism is the most authentically insightful and compassionate (tho not sentimental) stuff I've ever read on the topic.)

Quoting The Great Whatever

I think I agree, all I am saying is that sometimes the way you are wording it makes it seem as if there's first an imagination of a word, and then a representation of that imagination. What I'm saying is that's one level removed, and the text treats the imagination as the representation to begin with (of the actual use of the speech in communication).

Yes, there are two levels of distinction referred to. In ch3 it was the distinction between the thing imagined, (the imagined word in this case), and the act of imagining. In ch4 it is the distinction between the act of imagining, and the representation of this, as a type of communication, speaking to oneself.

The claim of Derrida appears to be that in language we cannot, in common practise, distinguish between the real, and the representation. But this is clearly false, in common language use we have no problem distinguishing between the representation, which is the word, and the real thing, which is what the word refers to. So we have no problem distinguishing between the act of imagining, and the words which represent this, "speaking to oneself", such that the "speaking" in "speaking to oneself" is understood as more of a metaphor.

It is only when we go to the next level. where the words appear as imaginary objects, and there is an act which moves these imaginary objects, the act of imagination, that the distinction between real and representation becomes difficult. Both of these are already within the category of "ideal", because the objects, are understood as imaginary, i.e., only within the mind, as ideals are. Therefore the act itself should be considered ideal. So it appears like we have nothing real here to cling to. That could be the problem brought up in ch 3, but now in ch 4, the act of imagination is given reality, as something spoken about, referred to as "speaking to oneself".

The question which comes to my mind is, is it necessary for this ideal act, and its ideal objects, the act of imagination and its imaginary objects, to be represented, identified and spoken about, in order that it be something real? It appears like it was only by identifying this act of imagination as something real, representing it as "speaking to oneself", that this realm of the ideal, the act of imagination, and the imaginary objects, can be considered as something real. Therefore it appears like without representation, there cannot be anything real.

But this is not to say, as Derrida does, that the two are indistinguishable. In fact, contrary to Derrida's claim that language "is" the impossibility of distinguishing between the real and the representation, language actually "is" this distinction. When something is identified and spoken about, it is considered to be real, by virtue of it being represented. We cannot consider anything to be real without representing it somehow. Without representing it, it is not even considered. But inherent within this act of identification is a recognition of the distinction between the real thing, and the representation, the word.

Remember that Homer explained that the Muses always tell the truth, because even their lies are true.

Quoting csalisbury

I think continental philosophers have more insightful things to say about culture, art (& spirituality, tho they code it) than do analytic philosophers. There were so many moments for me, in college, reading Deleuze and just being like Yes! - things I'd felt, but didn't know how to express, and hadn't seen anyone express elsewhere. He made me feel much less alone. Recently, I've been having that same experience with Peter Sloterdijk. Derrida has always been one of my least favorite continentals precisely because I don't get any of that from him. I've never had one of those 'aha!' moments with him. Reading him has been fun, if infuriating, but it hasn't really deepened my interest in his work, tbh (tho it has deepened my interest in Husserl.)

Interesting. I've always enjoyed experiencing art or participating in spirituality, but have never really enjoyed commentary on them that much. Some of the things Henry has said about seeing the invisible in visual art or that Schop. has said about the sublime resonated with me, but only because they said things I already knew from appreciating art to begin with.

Derrida is hard for me because I sort of 'see' what the rhetorical strategy is supposed to be, but it never really gets into my stomach.

Reply to The Great Whatever I hear you - I'd like to go into what I get out of the commentary (and how it often goes beyond commentary) but it'd take us a bit too far afield, maybe I'll get a thread going sometime soon. (quickly tho, I'll say that any commentary is useless if you don't have that resonance from personal aesthetic experience. But if you find yourself on that same wavelength, you're open to new nuances of understanding which build from there.)

OK, halfway mark, Chapter 5 tomorrow, on everyone's favorite, time consciousness. Moliere, let us know if you are still willing to summarize.

Reply to StreetlightX

One of the most questionable presumptions of phenomenologists (and not just phenomenologists!) is that it must be the same for everyone.

Reply to John This is not an assumption of phenomenology.

Reply to The Great Whatever

So when Denise Riley gives her account of 'thinking with herself' does she believe its character applies to everyone else, or even anyone else? (She does transition from "me" to "us").

Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty claim no universality for their analyses of consciousness, lived experience and perception?

Riley isn't a phenomenologist (or at least she doesn't claim to be), she's just someone who's writing I find helps bring out many aspects of the 'inner voice'.

Reply to John Universality and objectivity require intersubjectivity, and the ability to constitute others and relay the results of observation. This requires a commonality to the extent this can be transmitted, but makes no assumption of universal faculties and holds out the eventual possibility even for communion with animals. Husserl's mature position was that each person must treat themselves as the standard and act as if every other were deficient with respect to them, with the differences to be washed out where needed and preserved where needed.

Reply to The Great Whatever

But this does not seem to be something we need to, or even ever could, explain. We already know we can communicate with others and even commune with animals. We don't need to prove it; or to try to find the inter-subjective (universal) factors that make such communication and communion possible.

I do kind of agree that each person must "treat themselves as the standard", but only insofar as that means trusting, above all else, one's own intuitions. Perhaps in dialogue with others, one may become convinced that their intuitions were not as good as the others; but only if this realization were somehow genuine could there be any real advance in understanding. And it is so hard to determine exactly what it is that sometimes convinces people to abandon their own opinions for those of another.

I would say that inter-subjectivity equally requires universality and objectivity as the other way around, and so I think that there must be some presumption of universality if there is to be any inter-subjectivity; but the problem comes with knowing exactly what things about us are universal or even in common, and sometimes whether we are even talking about the same things or in the same way.

Kant thought that lying was a big deal for a reason, because it's an assault on all of our intuitions. Just be honest.

Reply to StreetlightX

I agree that,for me, she does capture something of the character of the internal dialogue. And yet others might not find it so; what then?

Then they can pose their claims, their account of those claims, and then one can debate over those accounts and how they coordinate with various presuppositions and so on, like people have done from time immemorial. I mean sorry but this is a really dumb line of questioning.

Reply to StreetlightX

But this is precisely what people have not done from time immemorial.There have been shared understandings of universal truth to ground discourse right up to the enlightenment. Now all universalist assumptions are 'officially' discredited; so what makes you think the discourse of postmodernity is actually going anywhere, rather than simply wallowing in affectation, self-congratulation and its own curious forms of dogma? If nothing universal or even true (apart from empirical facts) can be determined about humans, then what's the point of any discursive enquiry?

What discourse of postmodernity? Who said it? Whose theory of truth? Which take on universality? Despite, or better, in spite of your total ignorance on these matters, there isn't some manifesto which thinkers you consider postmodern agree with and espouse in the same voice. If you've got a text or a thinker in mind, or even an argument which you'd like to engage with, please present it. I have no interest in your caricatures and bad faith proselytizing. If anything, your posts themselves are a kind of performative indictment as to the banality and violence of thrusting universality upon disparity. And in any case, please take it outside this thread, where you can tout your agenda without disrupting a reading group.

Reply to StreetlightX

You know nothing at all about what I've read, what I know or what I understand. It's a fact that there is general consensus among the postmoderns when it comes to the issues of truth and universality; if it wasn't for that they could not rightly be referred to as 'postmoderns'. So, there is, broadly speaking, a general discourse of postmodernity with its own defining characteristics.

Anyway I can't see any point in engaging with you any further; as usual when someone disagrees with you you become all defensive, uppity and condescendingly abusive. I've seen it way too many times, so, I won't bother to "take it" anywhere else; I'll leave you in peace instead. :-}

Quoting John

there is general consensus among the postmoderns when it comes to the issues of truth and universality; if it wasn't for that they could not rightly be referred to as 'postmoderns'.

Yes - which is why "they" are wrongly referred to as postmoderns, except by the ignorant and the unstudied.

Reply to StreetlightX

So, you claim that there is no commonality between the attitudes of say Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida when it comes to truth, dialectic, universality and transcendence?

I tell you what; I'll start a thread about this very question.

There probably are commonalities, no less than they are differences. But this is of course to say literally nothing at all. That's what happens when you pose bullshit psychology questions in place of analysis.

And in any case, why just those three? Why not Judith Butler, Kelly Oliver, Dorothea Olkowski, Vicki Kirby, Ernesto Laclau, Elizabeth Grosz? These are authors who, coming out of a very similar tradition, have written much on the above questions, with many places of agreement and disagreement between them. Why not Kaja Silverman, or Julia Kristeva, or Francois Lyotard, or John Sallis, or Isabelle Stengers, Bruno Latour, Rosi Braidotti, Paul Ricoeur, or Sara Ahmed? Or are all these names interchangeable to you? Is the complete and utter dumbness of your question concerning 'attitudes' coming through right now?

Reply to John

Then other people don't find reflective of their experiences of the internal dialogue. I certainly don't at times. Sometimes my internal voice is just regurgitating dry dogma or an expected rule. We have nothing more to say. Taking the universal assumption that everyone must experience such an inner voice cannot be made. It also says nothing about people. Such an assumption is just what someone imagines another person to be like, not a description of who they are.

John:If nothing universal or even true (apart from empirical facts) can be determined about humans, then what's the point of any discursive enquiry?

To understand what is not universal: each state of the world, in its distinction, regardless of it similarity.

Consider various "nature" arguments which make a generalisation about human ability of behaviour. Is it true someone with an AMAB (assigned male at birth) body is stronger than someone with a AFAB (assigned female at birth) body? The old universal assumptions say: "Yes." We are to know, from merely the presence of a categorised body (rather than, you know, someone's actual strength), that someone will be stronger than another. It's a rule which applies regardless of time, environment or the individual.

The post-modern approach disbands this inaccurate (and contrary to the empirical) form of argument. It turns the argument into a question of individual expression, rather than determining constraint. We understand the generalisation about strength to be false. There is no such universality. AMAB bodies are frequently stronger, but they are so on the basis of that individual's strength, not because of a body with a particular sex categorisation.

Instead of relying on ad hoc assertions of necessity, nature, reason and desires, we have to actually to the work to describe people honestly.

We even get around the "distinction is universal" objection, for it is not "universal." We are all part of a shared world. We share an environment. A child shares their mothers body. An artist shares ideas with an audience. And so and so on. We might always be distinct, but we are also always together too. Distinction is not universal.

Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness

Since this discussion is probably out of context in this thread it might be better to re-post this in the thread I have just started.

Discussion is kind of moot, as we don't think in the same dominant faculties in the first place, Spinoza knew that -- but a better example is... hmmm, don't recall the source of this one, damn, won't look as cool, but I think is was Chomsky probably...

He talked about trying an experiment where he would try to keep track of a minute, and see what he could do while doing that. He discovered that he could read, but not speak when doing it, and told a friend of his that didn't understand why he wouldn't be able to speak while doing it. So he learned to keep track of a minute and demonstrated that he could speak, but not read. Upon further analysis it came to light that Chromsky was just audibly counting in his head, occupying that faculty, so that he could look at the pages and read them, but not speak. Whereas his friend was visually imagining a clock counting, so that he couldn't "take his eyes of it" as it were to read, but he could speak no problem, because they thought in predominantly different faculties.

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

Taking the universal assumption that everyone must experience such an inner voice cannot be made.

That's right, as we can imagine human beings who don't think with words at all, and especially other animals which don't use words, but still think. There is no reason to assume the universality of an inner "voice".

I often think in images, imagining events, ordering my day, or next few minutes, by imagining where and when, what will occur. Then I put words to the events which have been ordered, and this is how I remember the intended order. This is similar to the way I memorize occurrences which I have observed. I go over the images in my mind, numerous times, choosing words to describe the occurrence, trying different words, exchanging the words for better words, until I am satisfied that the chosen words adequately describe the event as it occurred.

Then there is very often a song playing in the back of my mind. I could be carrying on my normal thinking, ordering images and putting words to them, while seemingly all the time I am doing this, there is a song playing as well. Is there multiple inner voices? In fact, I can go to sleep with the song playing, and wake up any time at night, or in the morning, with the same song playing. How does that work, is it playing inside my memory? But it is also present to my conscious mind. It's almost involuntary though, because it takes an enormous amount of effort to remove the song and replace it with another. This can be annoying when it's the jingle from a bad TV commercial. I haven't quite put my finger on the remote control.

So the "inner voice" is extremely complex, and what one person refers to as "the inner voice", may be just one aspect of a vey complex thing. And the aspects present to an individual may vary from one to another, just like the aspects of our physical traits.

If you're not here to talk to things at least tangentially related to V&P, take it to another thread or PM.

Reply to The Great Whatever Yup, definitely. Just got up and am getting on it now. (One of the reasons I was willing -- I have today off so have enough time to put in :) )

There's some guess-work in this rendition so by all means please bring in your own thoughts on this chapter. This is just a first stab. I found it hard to follow at times.




I decided to reread 1-3. I think there's actually more argument going on in the first three chapters than I initially surmised. Especially in 2 and 3 -- which are linking indication and expression, respectively, to the metaphysics of presence. 1 still reads as a introduction to the problem Derrida wishes to explore along with a quick announcement of how he's going to tackle said problem. And 4 is a statement of Husserl's arguments in favor of the distinction between indication and expression in order to see how they likewise work in favor of presence and absence (and, also, against the sign -- or, rather, for the sign as a modification of presence); or, as Husserl would have it, the "solitary life of the soul" bears the weight for the distinction between expression and indication, and this -- according to Derrida's reading, at least -- is the reaffirmation of the metaphysics of presence which from this point onward never goes unquestioned by Husserl. Chapter five begins:

The sharp point of the instant, the identify of lived-experience present to itself in the same instant bears therefore the whole weight of this demonstration

If I'm correct in my reading then 1-4 are meant to justify this statement.

The introduction to this section is surmised a few paragraphs down:

If the punctuality of the instant is a myth, a spatial or mechanical metaphor, a metaphysical concept inherited, or all of that at once, if the present of the presence to self is not simple, if it is constituted in an originary or irreducible synthesis, then the principle of Husserl's entire argumentation is threatened

I read this as -- if a or b or c or (a and b and c), or d, or e, then p

Purely in a logical way, at least. I don't think the disjunctive language is meant to spell out a rather messy syllogism, but is meant to elucidate the meaning of the term

"the present of the prsence to self is not simple"

So that this can be read as --

if q, then p

And the remainder of the chapter is basically arguing for "q", thereby concluding that Husserl's entire argumentation is threatened. The interesting part about "q", from my standpoint at least, is that Derrida is attempting to make that argument primarily by way of citation of Husserl's texts. (note that I am certainly in no position to evaluate whether or not what Derrida states of Husserl's is a fair reading -- this is just my summation of how the argument works).




1. Punctuality plays a major role in Husserl's thought even while Husserl attempts to disavow this.

Although the flowing of time is "indivisible into fragments that could be by themselves, and indivisible into phases that could be by themselves, into points of continuity," the "mods of the flowing of an immanent temporal object have a beginning, a, so to speak, source-point This is the mode of flowing by which the immanent object begins to be. It is characterized as present" Despite all the complexity of its structure, temporality has a non-displaceable center, an eye or a living nucleus, and that is the puncutality of the actual now

Derrida goes on to claim that this domination of the now is characteristic of the metaphysics of presence. In contradistinction to said metaphysic Derrida here makes reference to Freud's unconscious (or similar constructions, one presumes) to elucidate in what way Husserl is committed to this metaphysics of presence, and goes on to quote Husserl rejection of the unconscious.


I must admit that part 2's argument is something I find difficult to evaluate because of my lack of familiarity with the content it's drawing from. But what I gather is the following

2. In LI Husserl utilizes punctuality. This allows him to make the distinction between expression and indication, which likewise is how Husserl is able to interpret language, at large, as a modification of presence (and, hence, non-expressive). However, in The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness and elsewhere the content of the description forbids us from speaking of a simple self-identity of the present. So self-identity is not simple.

3. Here Derrida opens with a restatement of the conclusions of 1 and 2, to give what he calls their "apparent irreconcilable possibilities" -- and then what follows is a reconciliation of the two by way of repetition. i.e. the sign.

It seems to me that Derrida restates this on several fronts -- that what makes expression possible is the hiatus between these two irreconcialable possibilities -- at least, irreconcialable unless one accepts the sign as what allows these two possibilities to co-exist. So it is not so much that Husserl is even wrong in his analysis, but rather, in accord with his own philosophical project, we can reconcile what is apparently contradictory if we think of language not in terms of a modification of presence, but rather as what allows this original distinction to make sense.

Or, if that not be the case, then expression at least is not linguistic, but expressive language is "added on to an originary and pre-expressive stratus of sense. Expressive language itself would have to supervene on the absolute silence of the self-relation"

One sentence I want to highlight that I read and re-read and for the life of me find difficult to understand what it is saying -- I don't know if I'm just being dense, if I'm just not familiar enough with the referenced content, or if it is genuinely a difficult idea being expressed -- I wanted to post to see if others found it either difficult or really, really obvious. Page 53, paragraph 3, sentence begins on line 8:

It therefore prescribes the place of a problematic that puts phenomenology into confrontation with every thought of non-consciousness that would know how to approach the genuine stakes and profound agency where the decision is made: the concept of time

I gather that this means that the domination of the now prescribes the importance of the concept of time, which is the same metaphysic both of the greek world and the modern world where the idea is thought of as representation. Followed by saying that The phenomenolgoy of Internal Time-Consciousness is not some chance fluke, but rather very important to the point Derrida wants to make.

But that was some guess work on my part

My biggest puzzlement with this chapter, before more substantial commentary: the argument here explicitly depends on Derrida not taking Husserl at his word, which is in sharp contrast with the close reading strategy we've seen up til now. Husserl says that the past is given in originary perception, but if he's serious, this undermines Derrida's whole point, since for Derrida's criticism of Husserl to go through, it must be that all originary perception, and so the principle of principles, must be confined to the present, and so cannot have anything non-punctual related to it. But this is precisely what Husserl denies in insisting that retention is not re-repsentation, but presentation!

So the rhetorical strategy here is extremely odd. We are to criticize Husserl for a metaphysics of presence which, on the most straightforward reading of his account of time-consciousness, he explicitly denies. Now Derrida notes this trouble and tries to garner textual support for why Husserl can't seriously mean what he says here. But is it really convincing? Why not hold, as Husserl says he does, that the past itself belongs through retention to originary perception, and so undermine Derrida's entire claim to presentation being dependent on re-presentation? If the past is 'present' in this way, then the fact that retention and the primal impression are co-constututive simply does not get Derrida what he wants.

The point is just that Derrida's reading of Husserl must take on a different tone for this to work. It cannot be simply that we are digging Husserl's commitments out of his own words: we must now in some sense go beyond them, to find a hidden tension and extract from it something that Husserl would deny is even his position, not because some contradiciton contrary to his intention had been found, but because we have somehow psychoanalyzed him and told him that he did not really mean what he said to begin with. This is a very different strategy, and in my opinion a much less convincing one.

(Also note there is a sly rhetorical move here, which under its strongest interpretation might even be construed as fallacious: that because the present depends on the past, we can therefore say that it is the past or the repetition which must have priority. This of course does not follow, because it overlooks co-constituting or equiprimordiality, which seems to be what Husserl is getting at with his notion of horizontal intentionality; but he does also in some way seem to want to privilege the primal impression as the true present of the present. Also, it is unclear how serious Derrida is to committing to this reversal, rather that breaking down the distinction that makes any privileging of one over the other possible).

To illustrate this as concretely as possible, here is Derrida on p. 55 (my bold, his italics):

We see very quickly then that the presence of the perceived present is able to appear as such only insofar as it is in continuous composition with a non-presence and a non-perception, namely, primary memory and primary anticipation (retention and protention).

This is, in a way, the whole point of this chapter. But look at the bolded: Husserl denies that retention and protention are non-perceptions, this is the whole point. Derrida is punning here or making use of what he takes to be a pre-established conclusion: that perception must be presence in the strict sense of not belonging to the past or future, which retention and protention in some sense do. But there is a weird circle going on here. Husserl is prey to the metaphysics of presence because he takes all originary consciousness to be presentation, as opposed to representation, and all presentation is presence because he takes only the presence and not the past or future to be presentation proper, which we see because retention and protention can't be perception because...they're past and present?! Which was to be proved? This just does not add up.

So what is Derrida's response to this difficulty? We continue:

These non-perceptions are not added on, do not accompany contingently the actually perceived now [again, these are non-perceptions, and not actually perceived - TGW]; indispensibly and essentially they participate in its possibility. No doubt Husserl says that retention is still a perception.

Here Derrida admits his contention is against the letter of Husserl's text. So how will he save his interpretation?

But it is the absolutely unique case–Husserl has never spoken of another–of a perception whose perceived is not a present but a past as the modification of the present"

But this is no answer, surely? We can disregard Husserl from speaking of the past as perceived, because in all other cases that don't have to do with perceiving the past he only speaks of the present as being perceived? Shouldn't it be precisely in the case of retention, i.e. the past, where Husserl speaks of the past as being perceived? Where else would he, or could he, speak of it in such a way?

Derrida then goes on to quote passages in which Husserl seems to equate the shading of the primal impression into retention with the shading of perception into non-perception. But I just don't understand – how in the world do these quoted passages not straightforwardly demonstrate that Derrida is mistaken in thinking Husserl can be fitted into his characterization of the metaphysics of presence? The quotations have an air of triumph, but they sound like he is shooting himself in the foot to me.

But surely the key quote (from Husserl) is the one at the bottom of p.55 and runs over to p.56:

"If we now relate the term perception with the differences in the way of being given which temporal objects have, the opposite of perception is then primary memory and primary anticipation (retention and protention) which here comes on the scene, so that perception and non-perception pass continuously into one another".

Retention and protention are here - in Husserl - explicitly tokened as 'the opposite of perception'. And the quote that immediately follows speaks of a "continuous passage of perception into primary memory", a turn of phrase which explicitly makes primary memory something other than perception.

If anything, what's interesting about Derrida's move here is not to simply accuse Husserl of outright equivocation or contradiction, but to grasp the nettle and say that yes, this is exactly the case, that presence and non-presence, perception and non-perception both inhabit the 'blink of an eye' that is the 'now'.

Reply to StreetlightX Then why is it so crucial for Derrida to overturn Husserl's own insistence here? Clearly Husserl believes in some sort of primacy of the primal impression, but nonetheless takes retention and protention to be perceptual and intuitive. They depend on one another, and shade off into non-perception at their edges, with some ambivalence as to how this terminology should be adequately arranged.

Now, given all this, where are the teeth left in the criticism? Suppose that we can, as Husserl insists, perceive the past, and so Derrida's insistence that perception is strictly the form of the present (segun Husserl) is wrong in the strong sense he has maintained it so far. Suppose further, as he also insists, that non-perception lies at the end of protention and retention as a continuum. Given this picture, what is the appeal of placing Husserl within a 'metaphysics of presence?'

But Husserl's 'own insistance' is just as much that retention and protention are 'the opposite of perception' - this isn't something Derrida is claiming as an 'external' supposition. Husserl actually said that.

Reply to StreetlightX I'm not sure exactly what the context of that quote was, but one of the main theses of the Internal Time Consciousness lectures was to refute the psychological picture, apotheosized in Brentano, that the immediate past was representational or phantasical as opposed to perceptive or intuitive. Given that this was one of Husserl's primary and overriding concerns, and one of the main developments in his account of time consciousness, I'd have to know in what sense 'opposite' is meant here, for it to be capable of standing on equal footing with its antithesis.

Consider one possibility. We schematize the living present as a line:

R <-------- x --------> P

R is retention, P is protention, and x is the primal impression. Now, in this schematization, R and P can be seen in a way as 'opposites' of x; they are at the poles of that which x is at the center of. But this in no way means that they are simply external to perception, only that, as Husserl himself insists, both are intuitive and shade off into non-perception. One could very well read the Time Consciousness Lectures as a rebuttal of a kind of 'psychology of presence' in this vein.

I'm not trying to say that Husserl's thought has no tensions on this score, but this segment really shocked me with the way the argument was carried out. I feel like if I wrote this I would be crossing my fingers that no one read it too closely.

Edit: Apparently there is no citation for the quote, or for the one preceding it. Unfortunate. I feel like re-reading the Time Consciousness lectures would be helpful here.

Yeah, I understand how the living present supposed to 'work', but the question at the heart of this chapter remains: is there a way, in principle to distinguish the living present from what is not? Husserl literally says: "In principle it is impossible to display any phase of this flow in a continuous succession and therefore to transform in thought the flow to such an extent that this phase is extended into identity with itself". It is not impossible on account of some contingent failure of thought - it is impossible in principle.

I get, of course - and Derrida even mentions it - that this is meant to serve as a bulwark against Brentano, but once you turn the living present into a sheer continuum, you're basically faced with the opposite problem: how then to 'introduce' representation into it? The charge of course is that Husserl basically slips it in under the table, hoping that it'll go unnoticed. The living present shades off, and then all of a sudden, at some unspecified - unspecifiable!, in principle - point, boom, you have representation.

I think you're right that Derrida does leave this point annoyingly underdeveloped, so I want to say more regarding the notion of the 'flow' here which is brought up in this chapter, but I dont have my PDFs on me ATM, so I'll try and expand upon this later. There's a bit in Husserl where he speaks of the failure of metaphor in regards to the flow, and there's a ton that can be developed in that breach. But again, I dont have my citations on me right now.

Quoting The Great Whatever

Now, given all this, where are the teeth left in the criticism? Suppose that we can, as Husserl insists, perceive the past, and so Derrida's insistence that perception is strictly the form of the present (segun Husserl) is wrong in the strong sense he has maintained it so far. Suppose further, as he also insists, that non-perception lies at the end of protention and retention as a continuum. Given this picture, what is the appeal of placing Husserl within a 'metaphysics of presence?'

Isn't this actually all granted? It seems to me that these things aren't an issue on their face, but only when you consider the development of the expression/indication distinction -- and not just that distinction, but rather, the argument that goes into separating expression off from indication. What this picture paints is something very much other than the solitary life of the soul which gives us pure expression. Derrida has no problem with that unto itself -- actually, it seems, given what he states about the mixture of presence and absence, he rather favors the view -- but rather that this description of time consciousness does not square away with the now, as described to support the notion of pure expressivity, which is how the sign became subordinate to presence (hence the metaphysics of presence).

EDIT: At least, that's the gist I'm getting from reading -- the goal isn't so much a criticism for participating in the same metaphysical tradition in the sense that he ought not to do it, but rather, that in one case the sign is relegated to a modification of presence -- an eternal "now" outside of, or prior to, the sign, where the sign is produced as a series of exits -- but in the other case this "now" is disrupted in the sense defended in the LI as the basis for expression. Therefore, the enthymeme seems to be, Husserl should accept the subordination of expression to indication -- that Time Consciousness, as described by Husserl, actually takes advantage of this interplay between two positions without owning up to the more prominent role which the sign actually plays. The two sides structure one another, but the truth is somewhere in-between the two extremes that are seemingly contradictory.

I think the focus is more on Husserl's take on language than it is a critique in the sense of Husserl being in error, since that would open the door to the wider picture of language which Derrida wishes to advance.

If anyone participating think that's an entirely off reading please do say so.

Also, it'd be cool to read Time-Consciousness lectures directly after this. But in some sense, at least at this stage of reading, I'm not quite as invested in that project because it would be the more critical project of evaluating Derrida's claims. At this point I'd settle for a fair reading of what V&P is trying to get at more than anything -- not necessarily whether or not it is correct in its assertions. (as is my usual approach to reading phil)

Quoting The Great Whatever

Why not hold, as Husserl says he does, that the past itself belongs through retention to originary perception, and so undermine Derrida's entire claim to presentation being dependent on re-presentation? If the past is 'present' in this way, then the fact that retention and the primal impression are co-constututive simply does not get Derrida what he wants.

The problem I see is that not only retention is proper to the present for Husserl, but protension (anticipation) as well. This creates the divisibility, and non-punctuality of the present, as if part of the past and the future wee both proper to the present. Derrida seems to think that the way to confirm or reaffirm the punctuality of the present is to class retention over with representation. He'll do this by reducing retention to a possibility, the possibility of repetition, which will contrast the "pure actuality of the now". This is toward the end of the chapter, p58.

I wanna post some snippets of Martin Hagglund's reading in his Radical Atheism, where he comments on and extends Derrida's arguments here in a way that's pretty illuminating. There are things here that the next chapter in VP covers as well, but it'll be useful to even keep in mind when we do get round to that. This'll be long but worth it. Hagglund begins by noting how for Husserl, not only the perceived, but the very act of perception itself is extended in time. He beings by quoting Husserl:

"Now let us exclude transcendent objects and ask how matters stand with respect to the simultaneity of perception and the perceived in the immanent sphere. If we take perception here as the act of reflection in which immanent unities come to be given, then this act presupposes that something is already constituted — and preserved in retention — on which it can look back: in this instance, therefore, the perception follows after what is perceived and is not simultaneous with it."

Hagglund comments: "Husserl’s philosophical vigilance concerning the temporality of perception is exemplary, as is his attentiveness to the unsettling implications of such temporality. If the act of immanent perception also takes time, it cannot be given as an indivisible unity but exhibits a relentless displacement in the interior of the subject, where every phase of consciousness is intended by another phase of consciousness. Husserl, however, tries to evade the threat of an infinite regress by positing the foundational presence on a third level of consciousness, which he distinguishes from the temporality of retention as well as reflection.

Husserl: "But—as we have seen—reflection and retention presuppose the impressional ‘internal consciousness’ of the immanent datum in question in its original constitution; and this consciousness is united concretely with the currently intended primal impressions and is inseparable from them: if we wish to designate ‘internal consciousness’ too as perception then here we truly have strict simultaneity of perception and what is perceived".

This brings Husserl to the notion of the 'pre-reflexive absolute flow'. An 'unchanging dimension of consciousness which always coincides with itself', where perception and the perceived are simulanious. This is the thesis of 'logitudianal' or 'horizontal' itnentionality that TGW brought up above. Hagglund: "Husserl describes it as a “longitudinal intentionality” that is pretemporal, prereflexive, and preobjective. ... [Yet] Neither Husserl nor his followers can explain how such an intentionality could be possible at all. How can I appear to myself without being divided by the structure of reflexivity? And how can the retentional consciousness — which by definition involves a differential relation between phases of the flow — not be temporal? The only answer from Husserl and his followers is that there must be a more fundamental self-awareness than the reflexive one; otherwise, we are faced with an infinite regress where the intending subject in its turn must be intended and thus cannot be given to itself in an unmediated unity."

-- Absolute Flow:

Hagglund now turns to Husserl's description of the absolute flow; Husserl: "The flow of the consciousness that constitutes immanent time not only exists but is so remarkably and yet intelligibly fashioned that a self-appearance of the flow necessarily exists in it, and therefore the flow itself must necessarily be apprehensible in the flowing. The self-appearance of the flow does not require a second flow; on the contrary, it constitutes itself as a phenomenon in itself. The constituting and the constituted coincide, and yet naturally they cannot coincide in every respect. The phases of the flow of consciousness in which phases of the same flow of consciousness become constituted phenomenally cannot be identical with these constituted phases, and of course they are not. What is brought to appearance in the actual momentary phase of the flow of consciousness, in its series of retentional moments [“reproductive moments” in the other version], are the past phases of the flow of consciousness."

Hagglund comments: "It is crucial that Husserl in the passage quoted above describes the absolute flow, which in his theory is the fundamental level of time-consciousness. The absolute flow is supposed to put an end to the threat of an infinite regress by being “self-constituting” and thereby safeguarding a primordial unity in the temporal flow. This solution requires that the subject appears to itself through a longitudinal intentionality that is not subjected to the constraints of a dyadic and temporal reflexivity. As we can see, however, Husserl’s own text shows that the absolute flow cannot coincide with itself. Even on the deepest level it is relentlessly divided by temporal succession. No phase of consciousness can intend itself. It is always intended by another phase that in turn must be intended by another phase, in a chain of references that neither has an ulterior instance nor an absolute origin.

...Husserl’s idea that the subject constitutes time is thus untenable. The subject does not constitute but is rather constituted by the movement of temporalization. The consequences of this inversion are considerable, since it is the supposed nontemporality of the absolute flow that allows Husserl to evade the most radical implications of retention and protention. If the reference to a nontemporal instance cannot be sustained, retention and protention cannot be posited as a unity in the “living presence” of subjectivity".

Thus, Hagglund takes aim at Husserl's ultimately incoherent claim that 'we lack names' for designating this 'priomordial source point' of 'absolute subjectivity' which is meant to put a stop to the infinite regress of the acts of perception. Husserl: "It is the absolute subjectivity and has the absolute properties of something to be designated metaphorically as a “flow”; the absolute properties of a point of actuality, a primordial source-point, “the now,” etc. In the actuality-experience we have the primordial source-point and a continuity of moments of reverberation. For all of this, names are lacking."

Hagglund: " As is evident from Husserl’s reasoning ... the latter idea and its connection to an “absolute subjectivity” ... answers to the phenomenological version of the metaphysics of presence. Husserl here claims that the flow of consciousness is an originary presence, a “primordial source-point” that constitutes time without itself being temporal. But whenever Husserl sets out to describe the pretemporal level, he will inevitably have recourse to a temporal vocabulary that questions the presupposed presence. This is not because the metaphors of language distort an instance that in itself is pretemporal but rather because the notion of absolute subjectivity is a projection that cannot be sustained—a theoretical fiction."

Here, as I see it, is 'the problem.' One of Husserl's primary concerns in his account of time-consciousness is to demonstrate that perception is not confined to the present. This simply does not square with Derrida's portrayal of Husserl in this chapter, and while Derrida seems to be aware that his exegesis doesn't make complete sense, he fumbles over the point unconvincingly.

Quoting StreetlightX

I get, of course - and Derrida even mentions it - that this is meant to serve as a bulwark against Brentano, but once you turn the living present into a sheer continuum, you're basically faced with the opposite problem: how then to 'introduce' representation into it? The charge of course is that Husserl basically slips it in under the table, hoping that it'll go unnoticed. The living present shades off, and then all of a sudden, at some unspecified - unspecifiable!, in principle - point, boom, you have representation.

I don't understand what you mean. The perception does not 'turn into' representation at its far end. Representation is going to be things like secondary memory and fantasy, which are not a function of this shading off, but have to be introduced by separate noetic acts (primary memory does not 'become' secondary memory at its far end, and fantasy has to be deliberately introduced by new acts of imagination).

The absolute flow is hard to comment on because it's hard to understand – few people have 'real ideas' in their lives, and I think this is one of them. In any case Hagglund's commentary here is mere incredulity and dismissal, which whatever you think of the notion, is not going to cut it.

I had thought at some point that the pre-temporal names of retention and protention were in fact ethical names, like worry (apprehension) and satiation, or taking for granted. The temporalizing of what is 'done' and what is 'yet to come' – you know the old thought experiments where you wake up in the hospital and hope the painful operation is over rather than about to start, even though both options leave you suffering the same amount 'in the end.' So this line of thought would go, time is the product of pain, and an attempt to unseat it by allowing it to be deferred. Husserl was in my opinion not properly sensitive to the phenomenology of pain and so could not articulate this.

Hey, new here.

Does anyone know of free pdf of Derrida Speech and Phenomenon?

The discussion appears to have stagnated, so I'll share some thoughts. Please feel free to question any of these ideas.

In ch4, Derrida presented "sign" as the possibility of repetition. In defining it this way, it is designated as possibility, and this is somewhat different from describing the actuality of a thing. What the sign actually is, is a representation. However, re-presentation is not necessary for a sign to be a sign, only the possibility of repetition is necessary. The actuality of the sign then is within itself, its identity, while its possibility is "of repetition".

By this designation now, the sign has the nature, or essence, of a possibility, or potentiality. It can be classed under protention, as an anticipation, (perhaps even, pre-tense, or pre-tending), anticipating the occurrence of repetition, as the possibility of such. However, as an actuality, a self-representing representation, it is classed as a retention. This is not perception per se, but in some way appears to be perceptive. The duality of the sign makes it the epitome of presence, the actuality of retention and possibility of protention. But according to Husserl, it is not the present itself.

There is an alienation between the sign and the present itself. The "now" we know as punctual, with the appearance of continuity. The retention and protention of the sign deny the possibility of punctuality, though they do appear to support continuity. This alienation is described at the end of ch4, p50. The sign is "foreign" to self-presence.

Retention, and its alternate, protension anticipation, (the essence of the sign) become a non-present in relation to the present, or non-perceptive in relation to perception. Husserl claims the relationship between these two, non-perceptive to perceptive, or non-present to present, accounts for the continuity of time, the flow. For Husserl this difference is the "speading out" of the now. The actual present, the source point, the beginning, the punctuality, is like the head of a comet. The sign, being like the tail of the comet can never actually partake of the source point, the present.

Now on p58, Derrida wants to insert the possibility of re-petition into the pure actuality of the now. The claim is that the movement of the différance means that the possibility is inserted into the pure actuality of the now. Of course this is a highly contentious claim, because if this possibility really inhabited, or was inserted into, the pure actuality of the present, this actuality would no longer be a pure actuality.

Reply to I like sushi I got up to ch2 free then I had to buy it.

I've honestly kind of lost the plot - sometimes it all seems to hold together, for a second, but then I lose it. All I have, at this point, is something like: retention/protention introduce a non-present into the present the way an indicative sign does, so the 'solitary life of the soul' is infused with non-presence from the get-go.

More or less what @Moliere said above:

At least, that's the gist I'm getting from reading -- the goal isn't so much a criticism for participating in the same metaphysical tradition in the sense that he ought not to do it, but rather, that in one case the sign is relegated to a modification of presence -- an eternal "now" outside of, or prior to, the sign, where the sign is produced as a series of exits -- but in the other case this "now" is disrupted in the sense defended in the LI as the basis for expression.

------ edit -

Thoughhh, now that I think about it, that would be pretty circular. The point of demonstrating that the indication/expression distinction cannot hold is to then show how the failure of that distinction compromises the rest of Husserl's project. But if the rest of Husserl's project is precisely what you need to collapse that distinction....

Quoting csalisbury

All I have, at this point, is something like: retention/protention introduce a non-present into the present the way an indicative sign does,,,

I think it is the difference, or relation between this non-presence, and the present itself which is supposed to be responsible for the flow of time.

MU, I wouldn't associate the sign with protention as you have. The possibility of repetition generally, or expectation generally, is something far and above protention, which is something a little closer to home: the kind of primary expectation that comes in sort of 'seeing the future' when you watch movement, with things that are about to happen seemingly 'getting ready to happen' right before your eyes.

I think it's no question that retention is easier to understand than protention, which is why everyone focuses on retention even when protention could make the same point. I have expressed skepticism about the phenomenological reality of retention previously, but the reality of protention is even ore contentious; I am not even sure where to look for it. The Husserlian metaphor of the comet's trail is no accident: the tail of the comet may extend quite a ways backwards, but if the primal impression is the rock, there is scarcely a prenumbra 'in front of it' – very short, if there at all.

Reply to The Great Whatever It doesn't seem that contentious to me. I find it very difficult to imagine an experience where I'm not implicitly anticipating what's to come. It's not as obvious, but it's easy to draw it out by imagining an unanticipated disruption which prevents what you were experiencing or doing from continuing.

Reply to csalisbury That is hard for me to separate from secondary anticipation, though. Sure, I expect things all the time, but I also have little memories flitting back and forth all the time, little recollections. These are not retentions, since retention has to happen automatically as a condition on perception, and not intrusively as these recollections seem to happen. I guess I can 'see' why the retentional tail is an appealing posit (even though I am skeptical of it). The protentional end is harder. Things get left behind in some sense, but I am unsure I can see the future rather than walking a razor's edge of future-oriented present competence. The more I think about it, the more I seem to live in an endless moment, more than the stretch that Husserl's extended present implies. The easiest example should be a melody, I guess (though even this is misleading because it's not as if anything is happening in a melody that isn't always supposed to be happening), especially a melody that one is familiar with. But here I feel like there are all sorts of little non-passive future intrusions of what's to come as well.

Also, note the oddity that if protention is literally perceptive, this means that the future is in some sense 'there' to be seen. A disruption would have to be literally a kind of illusion, rather than a mistaken doxastic attitude, however momentary.

Reply to The Great Whatever But I'm not talking about expectations you explicitly call to mind (imagining meeting a friend tomorrow, anticipating traffic during the morning commute). I mean think of anything - playing a video game, going outside to have a smoke, typing an email, eating a meal, playing pinball, shining a shoe - in each case there's clearly some sense of what's coming next, even if you're not focused immediately on it. I genuinely have trouble imagining an experience without this layer.

Reply to csalisbury How can I distinguish that from living purely in a present where I simply know what to do at each (the only) moment? Put another way, perhaps protention only gains plausibility as a retrojection of disappointment and tripping and so on.

Reply to The Great Whatever

Also, note the oddity that if protention is literally perceptive, this means that the future is in some sense 'there' to be seen

!
But the way you're using 'perceptive' here is precisely Derrida's point when he says, apropos of Husserl characterizing retention as 'perceptive' immediately after saying it isn't: ""We can therefore suspect that if Husserl nevertheless calls [retention] perception, it is because he is holding on to the radical discontinuity as passing between retention and reproduction, between perception and imagination etc. and not between perception and retention. (bottom of page 55)

The way you're using 'perceptive,' above, can not possibly mean the same thing as the the 'perceptive' elements of protention/retention.

Which, incidentally, may explain your skepticism of the whole Husserlian analysis.

Reply to csalisbury I'm not sure what you're getting at.

Why does Derrida first talk about protention alongside retention, then silently drop only to retention, apparently without comment or reason? I suggest it is because protention is less comprehensible.

Quoting The Great Whatever

I don't understand what you mean. The perception does not 'turn into' representation at its far end. Representation is going to be things like secondary memory and fantasy, which are not a function of this shading off, but have to be introduced by separate noetic acts (primary memory does not 'become' secondary memory at its far end, and fantasy has to be deliberately introduced by new acts of imagination).

Sorry, I mean to refer to the 'structure of representation' qua the possibility of repetition. Hence the losing remarks of the chapter: "Without reducing the abyss that can in fact separate retention from re-presentation .... we must be able to say a priori that their common root, the possibility of re-petition in its most general form .... is a possibility that not only must inhabit the pure actuality of the now, but also must constitute it by means of the very movement of the diffe?rance that the possibility inserts into the pure actuality of the now."

As for Hagglund, you miss the point. Hagglund doesn't simply express incredulity, but notes the instances according to which, "whenever Husserl sets out to describe the pretemporal level, he will inevitably have recourse to a temporal vocabulary that questions the presupposed presence."

Quoting csalisbury

The point of demonstrating that the indication/expression distinction cannot hold is to then show how the failure of that distinction compromises the rest of Husserl's project. But if the rest of Husserl's project is precisely what you need to collapse that distinction....

Yeah, this is a very contentious point of Derrida's philosophy as a whole. He always avows his commitment to the metaphysical tradition, claiming never to be able to quite 'exit' it. There are really two ways to take this. On the one hand, you get an incredibly hostile and foreful reading like the one Nick Land offers, where he accuses Derrida of more or less being a supreme apologist of metaphysical thought:

"Deconstruction is the systematic closure of the negative within its logico-structural sense. All uses, references, connotations of the negative are referred back to a bilateral opposition as if to an inescapable destination, so that every ‘de-’, ‘un-’, ‘dis-’, or ‘and-’ is speculatively imprisoned within the mirror space of the concept. ... Such logicization of the negative leads to Derrida ‘thinking’ loss as irreducible suspension, delay, or differance, in which decision is paralysed between the postponement of an identity and its replacement. Suspension does not resolve itself into annihilation, but only into a trace or remnant that has always been distanced from plenitude (rather than deriving from it), so that differance is only loss in the (non)sense of irreparable expenditure insofar as this can be described as the insistence of an unapproachable possibility, which is to say, under the aegis of a fundamental domestication.

...[In Derrida], the ‘text of Western metaphysics’ finds itself subject to a general ‘destruction’, ‘deconstruction’, or restorative critique, which—amongst other things—fabricates ‘it’ into a totality, rescues it from its own decrepit self-legitimations, generalizes its effects across other texts, reinforces its institutional reproduction, solidifies its monopolistic relation to truth, confirms all but the most preposterous narratives of its teleological dignity, nourishes its hierophantic power of intimidation, smothers its real enemies beneath a blizzard of pseudo-irritations (its ‘unsaid’ or ‘margins’), keeps its political prisoners locked up, repeats its lobotomizing stylistic traits and sociological complacency, and, in the end, begins to mutter once more about an unnamable God. Deconstruction is like capital; managed and reluctant change." (Land, The Thirst for Annihilation)

On the other hand, champions of Derrida will say that Derrida allows for the de-sedimentation and destablization of fixed identities and differences, allowing for ethical openings etc, etc. There's an element of truth in both I think, although I am more sympathetic than not.

Quoting StreetlightX

As for Hagglund, you miss the point. Hagglund doesn't simply express incredulity,

I think I gave the piece you quoted a pretty fair reading and looked it over a few times. I don't find anything in it but incredulity. It may be that you're more sympathetic to the position, which causes you to infer more argumentation into it than I can see. He seems simply to be denying what Husserl asserts, that the division in the temporal structure is not itself temporal, but just insisting it must be isn't all that interesting. If there's something else in there you'd like to draw my attention to, feel free.

And maybe Husserl thought we lacked names, but so what – that doesn't mean we can't see what he's talking about (naming isn't existence), and as I said, my guess is the names are satiation and apprehension, in the ethical sense. In fact my suspicion is there's not really any such thing as protention of retention, just backformation of these ethical tangles. But then, I guess I don't think there's really anything, along the same lines. *shrug*

Reply to The Great Whatever

How can I distinguish that from living purely in a present where I simply know what to do at each (the only) moment? Put another way, perhaps protention only gains plausibility as a retrojection of disappointment and tripping and so on.

Well first, the very idea of doing something in a single moment already strikes me as viewing things through an artificial lens. Any action I can think of requires some duration for its execution. But even if protentional life could only be distinguished from pure-moment-life through some kind of disappointment or tripping - does it matter? We've all tripped and been disappointed, so it's there for us to see - and to see as having been there all along. There are many things we've only been able to learn about through stumbling onto something unexpected which throws what came before into a new light (science progresses this way no?) Perhaps there's even an anstoss-y element to the whole thing: that very disappointment is the condition of our introduction into time.

I'm not sure what you're getting at.

I take that quote to be saying that Derrida considers Husserl's characterization of protention/retention as perceptive as primarily a reaction against Bretano, to say that there is a kind of memory and anticipation that is quite different then recollection and reflective expectation. But if we keep the idea of perception as involving something being 'there' we lose sight of retention/protention altogether. Thus there's some equivocation with 'perception' in Husserl's account.

To go back to music. Much of the emotion and tension comes from a movement away from, then back to the tonic. We feel this tension listening to music. But obviously the tonic is not 'there' in the sense that we can 'hear' it. We've retained it - that's precisely what explains our emotional reaction to the note we hear now.- but it's not 'present'

Reply to StreetlightX I actually sympathize with that Land quote a whole bunch (tho Land himself scares me a lot. He was too smart for his own good and went too deep down a drug/deleuze hole, to emerge bitter and honestly kinda evil. I tried reading his book on Bataille and it was painful, by turns deeply irritating and alarming - Nick Land may be the single best example I know of that kind of bloated self-hating narcissism which usually produces abusive drunks, but may sometimes, in strange conditions, if the subject is smart enough, produce authentically vile academics)

Anyway - while I sympathize with that quote, that's not quite what I meant. I'm talking about V & P's argument specifically. Derrida clearly means to collapse the indication/expression distinction in order to put into question all of Husserl's work. But if you use Husserl's work to collapse the distinction ..... then you've created a weird loop where you're trying to undermine the thing you rely on to produce that undermining, which therefore can't be undermined, lest it no longer serve as a way to undermine itself - this isn't even circularity, I don't know what you would call it.

a simpler way to put that last point: If Husserl himself, in later works, undermines that distinction and admits it, then its pointless to try to undermine it again through intricate analysis of a brief section of an early work - especially if the crux of your argument winds up just being Husserl's argument anyway. I find the Hagglund stuff interesting but it feels like it goes beyond what Derrida's doing here. Tho i haven't read the last two chapters

I can offer something here maybe. Husserl when talking about protention and retention is doing so by use of epoche. We also look at time in the same way although we are blind to this. We bracket out time and replace it with spatial markers. Time "moves", "forward" is future and "backwards" is past. In reference to protention and retention Husserl is highlighting our natural in the world inclination to package time (more deeply instilled by empirical sciences and acts of measuring). This is why we see temrs such as "static flow" used by Husserl.

All we have to see in what Husserl means is that the past is experienced as an experience now and that thoughts of the future are experienced now. In this way we reduce the objective naturalism of time to a purely subjective "non-position". We are not time travellers or beings that experience time. We are time thinkers able to reframe and shift experience in such a way as to "see" time. We can also be space thinkers ... however we shift experience we do so through use of epoche, by bracketing out and statically flowing between horizons (even though there is no literal "between").

The whole mess above points directly to what someone mentioned a few posts back. There are no words here to explicate. Words are not all we have to work with, just the only medium through which we can express and exchange ideas.

Maybe the above is useless to you. I do not have a copy of Derrida so just trying to show my understanding of Husserl.

Things get left behind in some sense, but I am unsure I can see the future rather than walking a razor's edge of future-oriented present competence. The more I think about it, the more I seem to live in an endless moment, more than the stretch that Husserl's extended present implies. The easiest example should be a melody, I guess (though even this is misleading because it's not as if anything is happening in a melody that isn't always supposed to be happening), especially a melody that one is familiar with. But here I feel like there are all sorts of little non-passive future intrusions of what's to come as well

Reply to The Great Whatever

Have you tried meditation? I have found it most beneficial in developing the finer mental faculties for the contemplation of such ideas regarding the self.

Some more guess work.

Reply to csalisbury My thoughts on that are that is that it's justified only insofar that we "open up" the sign. I get the distinct sense that Derrida is not trying to disprove Husserl, as much as inhabit his thoughts out of a kind of respect. Otherwise, wouldn't he just make a straightforward argument? Derrida seems more than capable on that point.

Though, since it's being mentioned, it could just be sympathies playing in Derrida's favor in my part. I don't mind the conclusion -- I tend to fall on the non-Cartesian side of things in my thinking.

But if the latter Husserl trips across indication in the now, by way of the interplay between the present and the absent found in what is all equally now (which is probably the closest to a succinct first reading I can muster at this point. I plan I re-reading the chapter on Thursday to see if I can suss anything else out of it), then the deconstruction is only against metaphysics -- the expression/indication distinction -- and not against phenomenology and Husserl. This "opens" the sign in the sense that the sign is not a modification of presence, but rather allows the "solitary life of the soul" to operate.

Which would mean that it has a kind of existence (existance?) -- it is the concept of the origin, and the sort of ideal meaning, and the notions of language, rather than all the conclusions of Husserl that are threatened.

Though, if that be the case, it is also hard to reconcile statements that Derrida makes like "the project is threatened" -- I suppose it depends on what the project was. If it was to secure a kind of point-like individual separate from the world then that would be the case -- the Cartesian core of a self as a metaphysical entity. But the Cartesian project wasn't predicated on those sorts of conclusions, and I don't know if I'd say anything I've read of Husserl's is actually threatened by this attempt to "drain the presence" out of the text. (of course, I am only passingly familiar with Husserl too -- what say you @The Great Whatever?)

Quoting csalisbury

But if you use Husserl's work to collapse the distinction ..... then you've created a weird loop where you're trying to undermine the thing you rely on to produce that undermining, which therefore can't be undermined, lest it no longer serve as a way to undermine itself - this isn't even circularity, I don't know what you would call it.

I think you'd call it deconstruction :D Anyway, perhaps the trouble is that Derrida doesn't 'simply' collapse the distinction. Part of what's at stake is the refusal of a simple either/or: either pure presence of a single term or sheer distinction between two, which will amount to the same thing for Derrida. Rather Derrida wants what he calls differance (or 'trace') to inhabit the space in-between both, a kind of both/and operation uses the tension between expression and indication, presence and non-presence, as a kind of springborad or propellant which cannot be stilled by settling upon one term or the other.

Speaking broadly, this has to do with Derrida's unwavering commitment to the transcendental, and his refusal to simply cede transcendental thinking to the empirical. Peter Dews brings this out very nicely in his essay on Derrida, where he notes that Derrida consistently defends Husserl against those who would, in fact, simply collapse the transcendental into the empirical: "Derrida vigorously denies that the 'methodological fecundity' of the concepts of structure and genesis in the natural and human sciences would entitle us to dispense with the question of the foundations of objectivity posed by Husserl. He staunchly defends the priority of phenomenological over empirical enquiry, arguing that, 'The most naive employment of the notion of genesis, and above all the notion of structure, presupposes at least a rigorous delimitation of prior regions, and this elucidation of the meaning of each regional structure can only be based on a phenomenological critique. The latter is always first by right...'.

A similar attitude is expressed in Derrida's article of 1963 on Levinas, 'Violence and Metaphysics', where he argues, against Levi-Strauss, that the 'connaturality of discourse and violence' is not to be empirically demonstrated, that 'here historical or ethnosociological information can only confirm or support, by way of example, the eidetic-transcendental evidence'. Furthermore, this parrying of what is seen as a self-contradictory relativism is also central to Derrida's review of Madness and Civilization, and hence to the highly symptomatic contrast between Foucauldian and Derridean modes of analysis. For what Derrida objects to in Foucault is the attempt to define the meaning of the Cartesian cogito in terms of a determinate historical structure, the failure to grasp that the cogito has a transcendental status, as the 'zero point where determinate meaning and non-meaning join in their common origin'" (Dews, Logics of Disintegration)

So I think @Moliere is exactly right to say that Derrida isn't out to 'disprove' Husserl so much as to 'inhabit' his thought. Even in the first chapter Derrida will speak of how "the whole analysis will move forward therefore in this hiatus between fact and right, existence and essence, reality and the intentional function"; and further of "this hiatus, which defines the very space of phenomenology....". It is in this 'hiatus' which Derrida will seek to remain in, without identifying with either term on either side of it.

--

Re: Land, I think that's the general consensus. I've only read the Bataille book as well (it's where the quote comes from, and in truth, it's perhaps the only passage in the whole book that I recall well), and like you said, there's a hyper-intelligence tinged with madness that both terrifying and spectacular at the same time. I only ever see his name now mentioned as one of the pre-cursors to the 'alt-right' movement, which both surprises me and doesn't, but I haven't really followed up on that. Curiously, I noticed he was running an online seminar with the Sydney School of Continental Philosophy just a few months ago, so it seems at least that he hasn't entirely abandoned institutional philosophy.

Quoting csalisbury

Well first, the very idea of doing something in a single moment already strikes me as viewing things through an artificial lens. Any action I can think of requires some duration for its execution.

But it seems to me the stretching things into a length is what's artificial. In other words you have to see the timeline as implicitly linear already to make sense of retention, in terms of the duration of an act, in terms of extension. The notion of an extended present still only fundamentally seems to make sense if you believe time is a series of now-points – adding modifications of it doesn't really change the picture. And if it's demanded of us to explain what we call time or temporality as such without resorting to 'temporal' (read: 'linear,' 'pseudo-spatial') terminology, okay, we use ethical terminology instead. 'Duration' means endurance:

late 14c., "to undergo or suffer" (especially without breaking); also "to continue in existence," from Old French endurer (12c.) "make hard, harden; bear, tolerate; keep up, maintain," from Latin indurare "make hard," in Late Latin "harden (the heart) against," from in- (see in- (2)) + durare "to harden," from durus "hard," from PIE *dru-ro-, from root *deru- "be firm, solid, steadfast"

Quoting csalisbury

I take that quote to be saying that Derrida considers Husserl's characterization of protention/retention as perceptive as primarily a reaction against Bretano, to say that there is a kind of memory and anticipation that is quite different then recollection and reflective expectation. But if we keep the idea of perception as involving something being 'there' we lose sight of retention/protention altogether. Thus there's some equivocation with 'perception' in Husserl's account.

I don't think so, unless you assume to begin with that all that can be 'there' must be temporally present. (and so Derrida's favorite pun, present-present, which while evocative is not an argument). Much of what seems to be going on here looks to me like this incredulity in the face of what Husserl actually says.

Reply to Moliere Insofar as Derrida's conclusions are in conflict with the principle of principles, yes it would threaten the project. But again this would turn on refusing to believe that perception could be of what is past, the grounds of which I don't understand.

The principle of principles is: all perception is a legitimizing source of cognition.

I don't think so, unless you assume to begin with that all that can be 'there' must be temporally present. (and so Derrida's favorite pun, present-present, which while evocative is not an argument). Much of what seems to be going on here looks to me like this incredulity in the face of what Husserl actually says.

But take that music example. If we're listening to a piece that began with the tonic, and has moved on to the dominant - in what sense is the tonic 'there'? Certainly it's not there as a note we're presently hearing. But do we still 'hear' it as past? I don't think we do. What we hear is the dominant as colored by the tonic, whose sounding we've retained. So if it's 'there,' the tonic, it's there in a very strange way. But you seem to be using 'there' in a typical, (tho, yes, non-temporal) way as in this quote, from above:

Also, note the oddity that if protention is literally perceptive, this means that the future is in some sense 'there' to be seen. A disruption would have to be literally a kind of illusion, rather than a mistaken doxastic attitude, however momentary.

Are you suggesting that for protention to be a real thing, we'd have to literally see into the future as through a crystal ball or sci-fi wormhole? If that's what you mean, that seems like a deep misunderstanding, but I may not be following your point.

Reply to Moliere I like the idea of Derrida 'inhabiting' Husserl, and I also read V&P that way at the beginning (I called it the 'sussing out of the text's immanent logic'.) But from the beginning, he's signaled that the telos of this inhabiting is the undermining of Husserl's larger project. (You could make a fine distinction and say that Derrida's not actively undermining anything, the text undermines itself. I've heard that distinction made, but it's a specious one I think. To point out inconsistencies and untenable distinctions is to undermine. Another term for this sort of thing would be, simply, arguing. )

I suspect more and more that this 'inhabiting' and all the close reading - they're stylistic gestures carried out for the sake of demonstrating virtuosity. @@StreetlightX has brought in a ton of outside quotes which are very interesting and thought-provoking, but which, by and large, have nothing to do with the argument of the book. They illuminate Derrida's motives, methods, and conclusions, but don't, in my opinion, help explain the path of the book itself. They tell us how to think and talk like a Derridean, but little insight on how to follow this particular Derridean exercise.

[quote=Moliere]Which would mean that it has a kind of existence (existance?) -- it is the concept of the origin, and the sort of ideal meaning, and the notions of language, rather than all the conclusions of Husserl that are threatened. [/quote]

I think, though, that he's trying not to say that the sign, as opposed to presence, is the concept of the origin, but that the sign undermines the concept of originality altogether (while it's also what makes the notion of 'origin' possible.) To put it cutely: origin and non-origin would be co-original. Hence the significance of the 'trace'.

By the by, has anyone else dabbled in Kabbalah? I'm getting some heavy ein-sof vibes from the discussion in the later chapters. (the "trace" is also very similar to the 'reshimu'

" Ein-Sof must be constantly redefined, as by its very nature, it is in a constant process of self-creation and redefinition. This self-creation is actually embodied and perfected in the creativity of humanity, who through practical, ethical, intellectual and spiritual activities, strives to redeem and perfect a chaotic, contradictory and imperfect world.

The Kabbalists used a variety of negative epistemological terms to make reference to the hidden God; "the concealment of secrecy", "the concealed light", "that which thought cannot contain" etc. (Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 88) each of which signifies that this God is somehow beyond human knowledge and comprehension. However, there are other terms, e.g., "Root of all roots", "Indifferent Unity", "Great Reality," (Scholem. Major Trends, p. 12) "Creator," "Cause of Causes" and "Prime Mover" (as well as the term, Ein-Sof, "without end") which signify that God is the origin of the world, the reality of the world, or the totality of all things. Yet in spite of the positive connotations, even those Kabbalists who utilized such terms held that they referred to a God who is completely unknowable and concealed." - from newkabblah.com, which who knows how authoritative it is, but that quote seems entirely in keeping with what you'll read about the ein sof just about anywhere else.

Quoting csalisbury

But take that music example. If we're listening to a piece that began with the tonic, and has moved on to the dominant - in what sense is the tonic 'there'? Certainly it's not there as a note we're presently hearing. But do we still 'hear' it as past? I don't think we do. What we hear is the dominant as colored by the tonic, whose sounding we've retained. So if it's 'there,' the tonic, it's there in a very strange way. But you seem to be using 'there' in a typical, (tho, yes, non-temporal) way as in this quote, from above:

How does retaining the sound of a past tonic describe the hearing any more than the present perception of a tonic-colored dominant? If I satiate my taste buds with sweetness, so that what I taste next isn't as vivacious insofar as how sweet it is, am I not just tasting less sweetness, and even though this is conditioned by a prior tasting of sweetness, is there any way in which I am 'retaining' a past sweet experience (which must mean, I suppose, that I am in some way 'still' tasting it, although with some past-modification?)

Quoting csalisbury

Are you suggesting that for protention to be a real thing, we'd have to literally see into the future as through a crystal ball or sci-fi wormhole? If that's what you mean, that seems like a deep misunderstanding, but I may not be following your point.

It would not be a very good crystal ball – maybe on the order of milliseconds, and unable to move where one looks, but yes. That is, being surprised or interrupted would have meant, on your account, that in the same way we missee an object, we can missee the future – look at it, but apprehend its properties wrong. It seems more natural to describe the future as something that can't be perceived, not something that we sometimes misperceive.

How does retaining the sound of a past tonic describe the hearing any more than the present perception of a tonic-colored dominant?

It's hard to answer this because I don't see the difference between the two alternatives. A note is not dominant in-and-of-itself, but only by relation to the tonic. The idea of tonic-colored dominant which doesn't rely on a recently heard tonic is a contradiction in terms.

It would not be a very good crystal ball – maybe on the order of milliseconds, and unable to move where one looks, but yes. That is, being surprised or interrupted would have meant, on your account, that in the same way we missee an object, we can missee the future – look at it, but apprehend its properties wrong. It seems more natural to describe the future as something that can't be perceived, not something that we sometimes misperceive.

I think this is a wrong way to look at protention though. It's not that we see or missee a future that is there - it's that we're incessantly projecting into the future. I don't think there's anything mystical about this.

It could be considered, that what we have here is two distinct conceptions of "the present", playing against each other. First we have the punctual "now", which is the tradition in measurement. The now is a point which divides one period of time from another, the past time from the future time. Through extrapolation this becomes "the moment" which divides any period of time. Husserl does not seem to accept this punctual now, at p52-53, the division of the continuum of time is disallowed, though it is allowed to have a source-point. The second conception of the present is the continuity, the living present. This is the conception which Husserl favours.

We can class the punctual now as ideal, it is an ideal division, a point between one part of time and another. As such, it cannot act as the real present which we experience, which is a kind of continuous separation between past and future, the punctual now is an ideal separation. Under this conception, the dividing point, the now, does nothing more than divide two parcels of "time", any two. That one is past, and one is future, making a particular moment the present now, rather than any random moment, is accidental. Notice the end of the chapter where Derrida talks about the fissure caused by "what has been called time".

So Husserl focuses on the real present, in which the distinction between past and future is of the essence. So we have the concepts relating to memory and anticipation. This is the living present. The punctuality of the present is not proper to this concept, as it is the property of the other concept, the one which inserts the point to divide and measure parcels of time, the ideal now. What is proper to the concept of present, in the sense of the living present, is continuity. There is a division between past and future, which we call the present, and we live, perceive, and think, within this "present". Husserl describes our modes of activity within this present What we can say about this division between past and future is that it is continuous.

As Derrida indicates, Husserl does not embrace the first concept of the present, which employs a punctual now. However, he provides a quote at p53, referring to "the actually present now", as something punctual. Derrida seems to seize upon this, to produce a concept of the now as "pure actuality", p58. It should be noted that this is still referred to by Derrida as an ideality, though it is called "the form (Form) of presence itself".

Quoting StreetlightX

"Without reducing the abyss that can in fact separate retention from re-presentation .... we must be able to say a priori that their common root, the possibility of re-petition in its most general form .... is a possibility that not only must inhabit the pure actuality of the now, but also must constitute it by means of the very movement of the diffe?rance that the possibility inserts into the pure actuality of the now."

This is that pure actuality which Derrida refers to. The problem with this is twofold. First, as I indicated already, if the now is a pure actuality, it is impossible that a possibility inhabits it, or is inserted into it because this would contradict "pure actuality".

The second problem which comes to my mind, is that the present, according to the second conception, described above is a continuity. To maintain consistency with classical principles, Aristotelian metaphysics, the continuity must be of the nature of potential, rather than actual. This is the position which Aristotle gives to matter, as the continuity of existence despite changing forms, such that prime matter would be pure potential.

So if we posit the real present as pure potentiality, rather than pure actuality, we maintain consistency with the concept of continuity, in Aristotelian metaphysics. Further, we can resolve the first problem, by allowing that the possibility of repetition, being a potential itself, partakes in the pure potentiality of the present.

Does anyone involved in this reading see any reason why Derrida should designate the now as a pure actuality rather than a pure potentiality? What are the reasons for this move?


Quoting The Great Whatever

MU, I wouldn't associate the sign with protention as you have. The possibility of repetition generally, or expectation generally, is something far and above protention, which is something a little closer to home: the kind of primary expectation that comes in sort of 'seeing the future' when you watch movement, with things that are about to happen seemingly 'getting ready to happen' right before your eyes.

Perhaps, but notice that Derrida wants to downplay the difference between primary and secondary anticipation as well as the difference primary and secondary memory. It seems that these distinctions are only made to facilitate the concept of a continuous present. Primary anticipation, and primary memory blend together, perhaps even within the originary act of perception, and this provides for the continuity of the present. Secondary memory and anticipation are well separated. But if anticipation perceives one side of the present, the future, while memory perceives the other, past, then this is the important difference, and we don't need to focus on the difference between primary and secondary.

In this case, we need to be able to interpret "the possibility" of repetition. As a possibility, it must be classed as an anticipation, as it refers to the future. The sign, as possibility of repetition, is an apprehension of repetition occurring in the future. But as representation, the sign is something completely different. Sure, it can be both a representation, and the possibility of repetition, but one refers to its position in memory, the other to it's position in anticipation.

Quoting csalisbury

I think this is a wrong way to look at protention though. It's not that we see or missee a future that is there - it's that we're incessantly projecting into the future. I don't think there's anything mystical about this.

If we're not seeing the future, then protention is not, contrary to Husserl's claims, preception. We can of course project into the future without seeing it in any sense. This is ordinarily how we think about these things, and is not what Husserl is claiming, so far as I see it.

To make clear just how weird this is, say you're listening to a piece of music you've never heard before. You have certain expectations, perhaps, based on genre stereotypes and certain biologically or culturally ingrained notions of how music ought to proceed, involving tonality and resolution, rhythm, and so on. Let's say that you're broadly correct about which direction the piece will go: it doesn't pull a fast one on you so hard that you think 'what the hell just happened?' What is the best way to describe this situation? Did you perceive the piece as it approached, in the way you might see a truck approaching? That is, is it in virtue of the perceptible qualities of the piece that you understood what course it would take? It seems not – for you would have the same expectations regardless of whether the piece actually went that way, making the qualities of the piece itself irrelevant to your expectations and protentions. But if protention is a matter of perception, it must have been in virtue of perceiving the piece that this was possible.

Quoting csalisbury

It's hard to answer this because I don't see the difference between the two alternatives. A note is not dominant in-and-of-itself, but only by relation to the tonic. The idea of tonic-colored dominant which doesn't rely on a recently heard tonic is a contradiction in terms.

Must I retain a tonic in order to perceive the dominant as tonic-flavored? Is it so implausible, for example, that I might be stimulated to hear a tonic-flavored dominant out of the blue, without actually having perceived a tonic beforehand? In such a way that I could not phenomenologically distinguish between these? If so, it seems implausible to say that I experience the dominant in relation to the tonic in virtue of literally retaining the tonic in perception, rather than there just being facts about my present perception that are influenced by immediately preceding perceptions.

Reply to The Great Whatever

If we're not seeing the future, then protention is not, contrary to Husserl's claims, preception. We can of course project into the future without seeing it in any sense. This is ordinarily how we think about these things, and is not what Husserl is claiming, so far as I see it.

To make clear just how weird this is, say you're listening to a piece of music you've never heard before. You have certain expectations, perhaps, based on genre stereotypes and certain biologically or culturally ingrained notions of how music ought to proceed, involving tonality and resolution, rhythm, and so on. Let's say that you're broadly correct about which direction the piece will go: it doesn't pull a fast one on you so hard that you think 'what the hell just happened?' What is the best way to describe this situation? Did you perceive the piece as it approached, in the way you might see a truck approaching? That is, is it in virtue of the perceptible qualities of the piece that you understood what course it would take? It seems not – for you would have the same expectations regardless of whether the piece actually went that way, making the qualities of the piece itself irrelevant to your expectations and protentions. But if protention is a matter of perception, it must have been in virtue of perceiving the piece that this was possible.

This makes the case excellently that Husserl cannot really mean 'perception' in the traditional sense, but that he simply is using the term to differentiate his understanding from Brentanos, as Derrida suggests. If we think Husserl means 'perception' in the traditional sense, we have to literally understand him as saying we can see into the future, which is absurd for the reasons you've adduced.

Reply to csalisbury I think the case is more plausible for retention. And that is what Derrida specifically criticizes (again, without comment on why protention ought to be ignored), so I don't know if beating up on protention specifically will help that much. However I agree that there is something weird about this, I would just diagnose it differently from Derrida: Husserl meant what he said, but his linearizing of time was still partly naturalistic, and the 'names' he was looking for had to do with ethical qualities his philosophy wasn't attuned to.

Reply to The Great Whatever Back to retention then:

Is it so implausible, for example, that I might be stimulated to hear a tonic-flavored dominant out of the blue, without actually having perceived a tonic beforehand? In such a way that I could not phenomenologically distinguish between these?

It seems implausible to me. It's easy to imagine hearing a note out of the blue, but, again, a dominant is relational. There is no more a dominant without a tonic then there is an uncle without a niece or nephew. To hear a dominant is to hear the tension between itself and the tonic. So, even if we didn't actually perceive a tonic before, we'd have to hear to the dominant as if we had - and how would one characterize this as if?

If so, it seems implausible to say that I experience the dominant in relation to the tonic in virtue of literally retaining the tonic in perception, rather than there just being facts about my present perception that are influenced by immediately preceding perceptions.

Can you expand what you mean by the preceding perception 'influencing' one's present perception and how you see that as different than retention?

Quoting The Great Whatever

I think the case is more plausible for retention.

It can be argued, that whatever is perceived, sensed, is necessarily in the past, by the time the perception of it has occurred. So there is a clear relationship between perception and retention. However, the degree to which anticipation affects perception is not so clear. We could analyze the way that we focus our attention. With all of the things going on around us, we tend to focus our attention on particular things which we are interested in. This is the way that anticipation is related to perception, such that we actually perceive and retain, those aspects of the reality around us, which anticipation has guided us to observe, by focusing our attention on these things.

Quoting csalisbury

It seems implausible to me. It's easy to imagine hearing a note out of the blue, but, again, a dominant is relational. There is no more a dominant without a tonic then there is an uncle without a niece or nephew. To hear a dominant is to hear the tension between itself and the tonic. So, even if we didn't actually perceive a tonic before, we'd have to hear to the dominant as if we had - and how would one characterize this as if?

I guess it depend son what you think of Omphalos hypotheses. Put it this way – if I'm familiar with a piece, and I hear a note or chord from the middle, might my previous conditioning not influence me to hear the pitch as influence by something prior, even though I cannot be retaining the prior pitch because ex hypothesi I have not actually heard it (this time)? I know if my case there are songs that have such deep resonances with me that hearing jus a moment from them allows me to hear them in the context of what came before, but I cannot be retaining this, since I haven't heard anything to be retained.

Reply to The Great Whatever It seems important, though, that in these examples, you are already familiar with the piece. Again the as if is interesting here.

Reply to csalisbury But my familiarity can't have a bearing on retention. Unless I've horribly misunderstood, retention cannot extend years, or even hours, into 'the past.' We would either have a secondary memory here (recollection), or more plausibly, a sort of experiential conditioning (sedimentation, maybe) that itself could possibly be accomplished without having to have any perceptual retention attached to it.

Reply to The Great Whatever So yes, I agree with what you've said, and these cases are interesting snd complicate any account of time --but Husserl uses music and past notes to illustrate what he means by retention and so to understand him we must look at what its like to listen to a piece of music and how the past notes work on the present ones-and I think past notes clearly operate in the way I've outlined.

Reply to csalisbury The crux is this: can you be introduced to a piece of music midstream and have it seem from your perspective that you had been listening all along? If so, then retention loses some of its plausibility, since just like with the future it seems this experiential conditioning from past to present doesn't rely on retaining the notes in perception, since ex hypothesi you did not perceive the other past notes (but the effect was the same). In other words, we don't know whether the past notes are important for the reason Husserl says, or if just because independently they condition your resent perception in certain ways, regardless of our account of perception.

It may be that Husserl's notion of retention is really supposed to be razor's-edge, just a very bare retentional shade that defines any perception no matter how transient (and so in a weird way, perception never 'starts').

Reply to The Great Whatever I think I'm gonna dig into the time-consciousness book a bit - I think Husserl's own account goes against rentention being strictly perceptual, in the same way Derrida argues, but I've only read secondary sources and a few sections.

I agree, btw, that retention for Husserl doesn't extend into the distant past, but I think it kinda does in a deep psychological ot even spiritual way. Maybe along the lines of the ethical time you mention.

Reply to csalisbury Husserl begins to speak at some point of sedimentation, whereby a transcendental ego is affected by a past and starts to take on a personal 'style' of constitution.

I like the idea of sedimentation, but I'd like to understand it better.

Not far into Time Consciousness but it feels like retention is less a razor's edge than a sense that one's current experience is a continuation of an earlier experience, part of the same movement (though not in a narrative way - in fact narrating the movement from what's been retained to where you are now would probably be a surefire sign that those moments are no longer retained.)

Quoting csalisbury

Not far into Time Consciousness but it feels like retention is less a razor's edge than a sense that one's current experience is a continuation of an earlier experience, part of the same movement (though not in a narrative way - in fact narrating the movement from what's been retained to where you are now would probably be a surefire sign that those moments are no longer retained.)

I like this representation. That's the continuity which appears to be so important to Husserl. And I think Husserl conceives of a similar continuity between retention and protension. This continuity is what is contrary to the punctuality of "the now". This is the continuity which Derrida intends to punctuate by positing an actual "present", through reference to the punctuality of the now, and claiming this ideality to be "more 'originary' than the phenomenological originarity itself".

I suppose it's my turn to do the summarization, so unless anyone else has a strong desire to do that, I'll volunteer.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover Go for it. But this chapter is....I dunno.

Reply to The Great Whatever I know, I've read it twice already before really apprehending anything. But a few things are now actually starting to come through. I'll go back and take some notes.

So I'm a bit late on re-reading 5, but I began to see your objection much better @The Great Whatever -- and I think I saw the response, too on the Husserl quote which spans page 55 through 56:

If we now relate the term perception with the differences in the way of being given which temporal objects have, the opposite of perception is then primary memory and primary anticipation (retention and protention) which here comes on the scene, so that perception and non-perception pass continuously into one another

So even granting that retention and protention are perceptive, it will still put a strike against the "solitary life of the soul" because there is non-perception passed continuously into this "blink of an eye".

At least, this reading brought that particular passage out for me. I'm saying something similar to what I said before (and I should note again that I'm not evaluating whether Derrida's claim is true or not, just trying to suss out how the argument works) -- but with a textual reference to back up what I was saying. I'm not sure if that actually persuades you or not. I would like to hear what you think.



Also, the last paragraph -- it was really confusing but I think I'm seeing what he's getting at with it. He's not just asserting the trace, which is what I kind of had as a take-away when I first read it, but claiming that the ideality which Husserl claims -- the Bedeutung of any signifier -- is fully granted, but possible only by repetition. That reptition is, in some sense, Bedeutung, or takes the place of Bedeutung once we see that the eternal now has differance inscribed into it through indication.


Yeah, this next chapter is a doozy. I have some notional ideas, but I'll wait to see what @Metaphysician Undercover says.

The chapter begins with a renewed examination of the distinction between indication and expression. Derrida refers to a double reduction. First the reduction of indication, which requires an other, then the reduction of expression, which has a fictional other. Expression is reduced to theory as not supported by sense (fictional). Here we have the basis of logic. Derrida questions this pure theoretical expression, as there always seems to be a "pointing" to an object, and therefore indication. This culminates at p62 where Derrida claims that the same thing which makes expression non-indicative paradoxically makes it non-expressive, as a fictional signification. The unity of the Zeigen is verified.

We proceed to a short analysis of the present indicative, third person, form of the verb to be, in the form of predication, "S is P". The "is" of predication forms the kernel of expression. But the examples provided by Husserl "you have gone wrong, you can't go on like that", do not utilize that "is", and it is claimed that the "S" must be a name, the name of an object. So we must speak.

It appears to me, that the need for a pre-expressive "sense" leads Husserl to the claim that one must hear oneself. The relationship between sense and expression produces the need for an object. The ideal object is one whose monstration can be indefinitely repeated, and this is related to the historical advent of the phoné. The ideal object is the most objective of objects, it can be repeated indefinitely while remaining the same. But it must be expressed, preserving its presence by means of "the voice". The subject is "immediately affected by its activity of expression"p65. The immediate disappearance, or erasure of the voice is significant in separating it from the written sign. The difference is that the ideal form of the written signifier is "outside".

Derrida calls this "the 'apparent transcendence' of the voice" p66. It is based in the immediacy of the relationship between the "expressed" and the act of expression. The body of the signifier erases itself the moment it is produced. This means that the phoneme is the most ideal of the signs. "Hearing-oneself-speak" is a unique auto-affection because there is no agency of exteriority. It is a pure auto-affection. It is a reduction of space, making it apt for universality, and there is no obstacle which the voice encounters. It is suggested that this universality results in the fact that no consciousness is possible without the voice. Pure auto-affection is produced without the aid of any exteriority. And the voice may be heard by others, and repeated immediately and indefinitely. There is an "absolute proximity" of the signified to the signifier.

Derrida asks, how is this claim, that there are ideal objects only in statements, consistent with the claim that there are scientific truths. The relationship between speech and writing, for Husserl, is discussed. It is proposed that writing is a secondary stratum which completes the constitution of ideal objects.

Husserl's explanation of writing doesn't suffice for Derrida: "the possibility of writing was inhabiting the inside of speech which itself was at work in the intimacy of thought." p70. Further, auto-affection as voice assumes that a pure difference divides self-presence. This is space, the outside. That auto-affection is the condition for self-presence is seen by Derrida as a problem for transcendental reduction. We must pass through the reduction to find the closest proximity to the movement of différance.

So he poses the question "why is the concept of auto-affection imposed on us?"p71. This is the issue of temporality. "Husserl describes a sense which seems to escape from temporality... he is considering a constituted temporality." p71. However, "Even prior to being expressed, the sense is through and through temporal." p71.

So we must move to a different conception of "pure auto-affection", the one which Heidegger uses, derived from Kant. We have now a "source-point", such that pure auto-affection is prior to the movement of temporalization. This is called "the originary impression" p71, and is conceived as the absolute beginning of this process. This impression, this "pure movement" is describable only by metaphor, as it is where language fails. Each now is an originary impression, affected by nothing other than itself, and this is pure auto-affection. When we insert a "being" into the description. we speak in metaphor, speaking about what this "movement" makes possible.

Self-presence, as the living present, is a pure difference with respect to the originary impression. This difference is called a "strange 'movement'", but is described in terms of space. The inside of non-space, time, appears to itself, and presents itself as this movement, while the outside insinuates itself into the movement. Such that, space is "a pure exiting of time to the outside of itself" p73. Derrida closes the chapter with an explanation of the implications which this notion of time has on the phenomenological reduction, and how this relates to expression. Time cannot be an absolute subjectivity.

In closing I'll make reference to the long footnote on p72. I recommend that everyone read this thoroughly, because it is explained here how "absolute subjectivity" is deconstructed through reference to temporality. A constituted temporality has no objectivity, and this lack of objectivity leads us to a point of "now" as a point of actuality, an originary source-point. But this assumption undermines any absolute subjectivity.

The first part of this chapter seems super dumb. Any thoughts on that?

Heh, I dunno about 'super dumb', but the significance of the first three or so pages are kinda lost on me. I'm not sure what the discussion of practise and theory is meant, precisely, to establish. Still, once you get past it, the stuff on the voice is wonderful, IMO. Also I see now that I was anticipating quite a bit when I dragged in the discussions of flow and space, which are probably far more appropriate for this chapter than any others. I'm excitable, what can I say.

Also, this is like one of my favourite places to point to, to anyone who says that Derrida is an idealist in any kind of straightforward manner. It baffles me that for years and years Derrida was considered so by so many of his detractors. This was one of my first Derrida reading experiences, and I remember just being taken aback by how flat out wrong were so many of the characterisations of his work that seemed to have passed around. It was probably Searle's fault.

On yet another unrelated note, ever since reading Henry's Material Phenomenology, I've always thought it would be a fascinating exercise to read this along with it. They're both dealing with almost identical material, but they move in diametrically opposite directions: where Derrida more or less tries to problemetize auto-affection, Henry absolutely embraces it; where Derrida places his emphasis on the sign, Henry places it on affection. It's an incredibly fascinating parallel with no point of convergence.

Quoting The Great Whatever

The first part of this chapter seems super dumb. Any thoughts on that?

I think that the point here is to outline what exactly expression could be. It seems to be imagination, a sort of fiction, so it takes the form of theory and logic. But Derrida is already inserting a wedge between expression and voice by characterizing expression with things that are more commonly expressed in writing. He later he turns back to question why expression is not more closely related to writing than to voice. This is an important point for Derrida to make because he wants to dismiss Husserl's claim that voice is the most pure form of auto-affection.

Quoting StreetlightX

They're both dealing with almost identical material, but they move in diametrically opposite directions: where Derrida more or less tries to problemetize auto-affection...

It appears to me, like Husserl has chosen voice to substantiate expression. He chooses voice over writing because it is seen as a more pure form of auto-expression. But Derrida appeals to an even more pure form of auto-expression which he calls "originary impression" at the bottom of p71. This is where language fails us, and we must speak in metaphor.

"The intuition of time itself cannot be empirical. It is a reception that receives nothing. The absolute novelty of each now is therefore engendered by nothing. It consists in an originary impression that engenders itself:..."

Quoting StreetlightX

Also, this is like one of my favourite places to point to, to anyone who says that Derrida is an idealist in any kind of straightforward manner. It baffles me that for years and years Derrida was considered so by so many of his detractors.

I don't think it is important, or productive, to attempt to class philosophers in this way, idealist, materialist, and such, because this is to place the philosophy within a particular conceptual structure defined by that classification. What is important is to understand the principles put forward by the philosopher, and these may not be so confined.. It is the original aspects of any particular philosopher's philosophy which offer us the most value. So to place the philosopher within a particular classification, is to neglect the principles from that philosopher which go beyond the conceptual structures of that class. And of course, this is the philosopher's originality.

For instance, if Derrida is invoking an objective principle which is more originary than matter itself, then it is impossible to class him as materialist. By going beyond the fundamental principles of a classification, a philosopher cannot be placed within that class. Perhaps some would assume an opposing name, idealist. But his method is not idealist. So what's the point in imposing such names? This is just the progression of philosophy, old principles are overturned by new ones. Then those who classify must produce new classifications.

Home stretch! How is everyone feeling! I'm sorry this has been dead for several days – my mental effort has been taken up elsewhere. We're on the final chapter, then it's on back to the introduction. Let me know if anyone wants to volunteer to summarize again, if not, I'll do it (though it may take me a bit).

Heh. Honestly this last chapter was hard for me. But I'm still down for pushing on.

More often than not I don't absorb everything on a first reading and things start to click later, or on a 2nd reading after letting it sit for awhile.

Yeah, I find this chapter difficult, it seems to be full of inconsistency. I'd better read it again to see what I'm missing.

On Chapter 6:

Stuff started clicking for me once I just decided to ignore the beginning of the chapter. I don't know what the lead-in about silence is supposed to be on about. It almost reads like it comes from another essay -- which, as I recall (though I don't remember where I read this) isn't too far from what Derrida does in these books published this year. After all it would only make sense, being a philosopher of writing, to question the dimensions of the book with a supplement.

But yeah, the stuff about the voice and it leading to auto-affection and securing the seat of ideal meaning and expression -- that all seemed to flow naturally from the last chapter. I just wanted to note that the beginning kept me stumped for awhile. I still don't know what it's about, except by way of some vague metaphorical connections (such as with the notion of hiatus, and the analogy with the trace).

On to chapter 7 then.

Chapter 7 is rather long and convoluted, and no one has offered a summary yet. I vote we give it another week. I, for one have been rather busy, and unable to give it a proper reading.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover I'd be fine with that at this point. I just finished 7 the first time last night.

Reply to Moliere Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, I'm down for an extension, I got burnt out on V & P for a bit and had to take a break, but I'd like to still finish.

I don't get the end of chapter 7 at all, where he starts to say that the infinite différance is itself finite. Then he says absolute knowledge is closure, the end of history, and that this closure has already happened. Then he goes on to talk about what "begins", "beyond" absolute knowledge. Then he goes on to look for "old signs", older than presence, older than history, older than sense, more ancient than originary, etc.. Anyone have any idea of what that's all about?

Alrighty, I have today off and I'm making a second go at chapter 7. I think I'll go piecemeal as I switch between pages and tasks (laundry, phone calls, etc. )

The opening is a little confusing in an almost analogous way to the opening of Chapter 6. He introduces a concept at the end of Chapter 6 -- the originative supplement -- and briefly elucidates said concept in relation to Husserl at the opening, then switches topics to a closer reading of Husserl's distinction between intention and intuition, while questioning not the distinction itself, but rather that Husserl goes too far in the direction of intuition when the original argument should keep the meaning separate from intuition even if there is a "fulfilling object" within intuition.

That takes me up to just before the example of statements about perception to another person on the top of page 79.

79-83 makes a nice thought-bridge.


So the example of statements about perceptions, it seems to me, is meant to draw out how a statement means something even when it doesn't have an intuition which can, in principle, give the statement an object. Bedeutung without intuition -- "I see a person standing before me", "I have a perception of a person standing before me" are about how we see things, and so naturally can't be given over to the person I'm talking to -- yet we understand their meaning. This leads directly into the conversation "I" through the question, "In what way is writing...implied in the very movement of signification in general, in particular, in speech that is called 'live' ".

Husserl will make a special place for the use of the word "I". They are indicative when spoken to others, as is all communication. But "in solitary discourse, the Bedeutung of the 'I' is realized essentially in the immediate representation of our own personality..."

That is, the root of these expressions is the 'zero-point of the subjective origin, the "I," the "here," the "now" "

Derrida goes on to point out that "I" functions like any other word, in that it has a meaning regardless of who speaks it and that meaning is understood. That is we do not need to have a representation of our own personality -- "I" is repeatable, the Bedeutung (being ideal) remains the same, and it will keep its sense "even if my empirical presence is erased or is modified radically...even in soliatary discourse" the possible absence of the object is what gives "I" sense. "I am" is discourse only under the condition that, as with all expressions, that it is intelligible in the abscence of the object. "Therefore in this case, in the absence of myself"

Which is to say, the death of the speaker is a possibility of the statement having sense -- which seems to be how Derrida answers the original question. This is the manner in which writing is implied, even in speech -- even in 'the solitary life of the soul'.

"One has no need of knowing who is speaking in order to understand it ((me: that is the "I am")) or even to utter it. Once more, the border appears hardly certain between solitary discourse and communication, between the reality and the representation of the discourse"

I think Derrida just continues to elaborate this point up to the bottom of the first paragraph on 83, taking note that the distinction between "sense" and "object" reinforces the point that the meaning of the statement "I am" (and, likewise for other statements using this indexical) have no need of an object in order to mean, and must actually be able to mean without an object (and hence are forms of writing).

"Why does Husserl refuse to draw these conclusions from the same premises? The motive for full 'presence', the intuitionist imperative and the project of knowledge continue to govern -- at a distance, let us say -- the whole of the description"

This is argued on the basis that language's telos is the truth, and the truth of its comparison to an object. "If the 'possibilty' or the 'truth' happens to be lacking, the intention of the statement is obviously achieved only 'symbolically'"

"Authentic meaning is the wanting to say-the-truth."

That is, in Husserl, while "the circle is square" has a kind of sense, it is not the kind of sense which is good or authentic. Authentic sense, normalcy, is relagated to knowledge. And not just any knowledge, but the sort of knowledge which can be understood with the form "S is P" -- as opposed to signs like "green is or" or "abracadabra".

"the efficacy and the form of signs that do not obey these rules, that is, that promise no knowledge, can be determined as non-sense only if we have already...defined sense in general on the basis of truth as objectivity"

Why? Because if Husserl meant signification by sense, then poetry would be nonsensical. Husserl wouldn't deny signifcation, but would deny them sense, i.e. they do not want to say-the-truth, when truth is understood as truth as objectivity.

(That takes me to the asteriks on p. 85)

Taking me to the top of 87, and adding some of my own connections along the way that I'm making --

It seems to me that the argument here is to focus in the living-present as the founding concept of phenomenology as metaphysics, because this is the common matrix of all the concepts which have, thus far, been put to the test.

And this concept of the living-present is deferred to infinity, in the sense that Kant states we are approximating the truth -- and that this concept lives on a play between, at least in this demonstration (and I presume elsewhere) ideality and non-ideality -- between objectivity and subjectivity, between Bedeutung and wanting-to-say.

This is important because "In its ideal value, the whole system of the 'essential distinctions' is therefore a purely teleological structure" -- hence, metaphysical. It is teleological in that our goal, our objective is the ideal, and an ideal that is never realized at that.

Which, so it seems to me, is elucidating the concept of erasure. We have the moment prior, where the meaning is objective and divorced from the truth, and the moment after, where language -- though it be divorced from truth -- is always reaching for truth, and is thereby still following a notion of the sign determined as sensical only by the form "S is P" -- so the original insight of language, the sign, having meaning regardless of who is speaking, is erased by this infinite deferal, and the phenomenology of the sign shows in what way differance is the origin of this presence (that we choose to focus on presence).

So, to the end now -- as always, guess work is involved, and this is provisional. I think I get the gist, though the reasoning of the paragraph on page 87, where you were referring @Metaphysics Undercover I'm still smudgy on.



Starting where I just left off:
"How does difference give itself to be thought?" What does all this mean?


Husserl, according to the previous, makes Derrida believe that he never believed in the achievement of an absolute knowledge as presence nearby to itself -- but Derrida also states that even though this is the case, that even though sense and the sign are not anchored by wanting to say-the-truth, the metaphysics of presence weaves its way through Husserl's project and tries to make the sign, difference, derived from presence.

The indefiniteness of differance appears only by way of the positive infinity previously discussed, the telos of language. And, likewise, the Ideal as infinite differance is only produced in relationship to death (generally speaking) -- where said Ideal is the infinite differance of presence, in the case of my-death.

Comparing the ideality of the positive infinite to the relation between my-death and the Ideal (as infinite differance) makes this realtion between my-death and the Ideal finite, an empirical matter. So once infinite differance appears, it is finite, rather than infinite. Differance is the finitude of life as the essential relation to itself as to its death. "The infinite differance is finite" -- a contradiction, of course, but a contradiction meant to elucidate differance as play between oppositional concepts -- finite:infinite, absence:presence, negation:affirmation.

If differance appears between, outside, or points to a place that is not dominated by these oppositions, by the metaphysics of presence, then the metaphysics of presence is the end of history. Or, perhaps a better way of saying it, it is a closed history whereupon we master it as we master an object. And, furthermore, even "history" has this quality of mastering, of knowledge as a relation to an object, and is the production of the being in presence.

And full presence is meant to go to infinity to where we have absolute presence to itself -- where we achieve absolute knowledge. But this is only possible in an ideal sense. Hence the oppositional categories which "passes over" ((to use a Heideggerian phrase)) differance and the play between. Metaphysics is wanting-to-hear-itself speak (autoaffection). And this voice, being without differance, is both alive and dead.

2nd paragraph, page 88: Seems to me to be speculating on what this outside of a closure would mean, and acknowledges that if we were to encounter such a question it would sound unheard-of, that it would not be either knowledge or not-knowledge, and that it would seem as if we were wanting to say nothing. I believe the reference to "old signs" is the sort of phenomenological etymology that Heidegger practices, but clearly Derrida believes something more must be done in order to escape this closure. It seems to me that this paragraph acknowledges that we must use signs such as "knowledge", "objectivity", "affirmation:negation", "absence:presence", "finite:infinite" because these oppositions structure our very way of thinking. But there is some hope that through differance we can "break free" of these hierarchies.

Since this is the case we don't know when using these old signs if they are used in the metaphysics of presence or in some novel way. We do not know if the classical distinctions which we have inherited are actually true, or if they are a way of suppressing the truth (since they are so totalizing of our way of thinking, but differance shows us that this totalization, to be cryptic about it, is not total).

The concluding paragraphs seem to be wrapping up these conclusions through metaphore, and noting that, yes, we must speak, yes, we are engaging philosophy in the same manner as it has always been engaged, through the opposition of these concepts -- but what Derrida is after is outside of the concepts of intuition and presentation, outside of sense and non-sense. In fact, given what was just said, it would sound like non-sense.

And though Husserl is the foil through which we are able to see this, he, like others in the philosophical tradition, makes a choice and secures the thing itself -- when the thing itself is infinitely deffered and in each deferal there is a difference from it, something which defines it. Therefore, "the look" (present-at-hand) cannot "remain" (itself a sign steeped in the metaphysic of presence).

I will say -- at parts of the text I feel like, even just to understand the argument, I just need to be more familiar with Husserl than I am. I did my best with my passing familiarity, which includes selections from the Logical Investigations but not Time Conscsiousness, but there was a lot of presumed understanding in the arguments -- which seems to almost always be the case anytime I read Derrida. (For Of Grammatology I had to stop and read Saussure, for instance)

Quoting Moliere

Comparing the ideality of the positive infinite to the relation between my-death and the Ideal (as infinite differance) makes this realtion between my-death and the Ideal finite, an empirical matter. So once infinite differance appears, it is finite, rather than infinite. Differance is the finitude of life as the essential relation to itself as to its death. "The infinite differance is finite" -- a contradiction, of course, but a contradiction meant to elucidate differance as play between oppositional concepts -- finite:infinite, absence:presence, negation:affirmation.

Thanks Moliere,
Now here's where I have difficulty. We have first, "the ideality of the positive infinite". Then we have "the Ideal (as infinite differance)". Then "the Ideal finite". How can the Ideal be both infinite differance, and also finite? Don't you think that there is contradiction in referring to the Ideal as both infinite, and finite? What could be the purpose for such a move? We could assume two distinct Ideals, one infinite and the other finite, but then one would be the true Ideal, and the other not.

"So once infinite differance appears, it is finite rather than infinite". This really doesn't make sense either. If the true Ideal is infinite, then how could it ever appear as finite? It is as if Derrida cannot decide whether the true Ideal is infinite or finite, and so wants to say that it is both. Is it the case that the true Ideal is infinite, but it appears as finite? To say of something, like the Ideal, that it is both of two exclusive attributes, does not demonstrate that this thing is the "play between oppositional concepts", it is simply to make contradictory claims.

We can express the relationship between the Ideal and the opposing terms in far simpler ways. For instance, the Ideal is comprised of both opposites, like temperature, an ideal, consists of both hot and cold, and size consists of big and small, etc.. That is how the Ideal allows each of the two opposing terms to partake in itself.

The issue here though, I believe, is that finite and infinite are not properly opposed. Unlike true opposites, each of which always exists within the same category as the other, infinite and finite are categorically different. Those words name distinct categories. So I think that what Derrida is exemplifying here is a crossing from one category to the other. Perhaps what he is saying is that I relate to my death through the Ideal, as infinite differance, but this act itself causes the Ideal to become finite. However, if this is the case, it implies that we have a deep misunderstanding of the nature of the Ideal, as infinite.

Quoting Moliere

If differance appears between, outside, or points to a place that is not dominated by these oppositions, by the metaphysics of presence, then the metaphysics of presence is the end of history. Or, perhaps a better way of saying it, it is a closed history whereupon we master it as we master an object. And, furthermore, even "history" has this quality of mastering, of knowledge as a relation to an object, and is the production of the being in presence.

Under the interpretation which I offered above, this "mastering" is really the developing of a deep misunderstanding. It is a deep misunderstanding because the Ideal is understood as being of a particular category. But when the Ideal is mastered, the Ideal is known and knowledge is therefore absolute, according to knowing the Ideal, history is closed, but then the Ideal is suddenly of a different category, and all that existing knowledge is for naught. It is as if knowing the object turns it into a subject, and then it is no longer an object but a subject, so that the entire knowledge of it, as an object is no longer valid knowledge, such that we have to start all over again, to come to know it as a subject.

Quoting Moliere

2nd paragraph, page 88: Seems to me to be speculating on what this outside of a closure would mean, and acknowledges that if we were to encounter such a question it would sound unheard-of, that it would not be either knowledge or not-knowledge, and that it would seem as if we were wanting to say nothing. I believe the reference to "old signs" is the sort of phenomenological etymology that Heidegger practices, but clearly Derrida believes something more must be done in order to escape this closure. It seems to me that this paragraph acknowledges that we must use signs such as "knowledge", "objectivity", "affirmation:negation", "absence:presence", "finite:infinite" because these oppositions structure our very way of thinking. But there is some hope that through differance we can "break free" of these hierarchies.

I think, that what might be hidden in these cryptic messages is that this closure is not complete, it is not really absolute. How could it be absolute when the infinite changes to become finite the moment it becomes known? Then the finitude of it cannot be known because it is known as infinite, and this knowledge of it as infinite, reveals that it is finite. So I believe there is some cyclical process being referred to here. That is why we must go back, and refer to "old signs", to pick up the cycle all over again, from the beginning. We have to face the reality, that what we think of as absolute knowledge, must really be a closure of history, a closure not because knowledge is complete, and there is nothing more to know, but because of that deep misunderstanding, we have to go back and start the cycle all over again.

Still pondering the rest, but on your closing -- I agree that there is a cyclical process. But I don't think the solution is to restart the cycle as much as it is to disrupt the cycle -- the discovery of differance, in this case through the sign and through Husserl's phenomenology, is that concept which is meant to stop the cycle from repeating itself.

Reply to Moliere I think that Derrida implies an actual restart, by claiming closure. Then, he starts saying we have to go older than this, and older than that, finally saying more ancient than originary, implying that we go back to a start prior to the original start. I think that the cycle is like a spiral, such that each time we go back to the "older", it must be older than the older that we went back to the last time.

Something I've always struggled in being able to clearly differentiate is between the empirical ego and the transcendental ego. As I'm reading the introduction it seems that this distinction is being brought up once again.

I have guesses, but they feel very much like guesses and are vague. In Kant I know why I have these guesses, but I also know that these are very far from central to his philosophy. They're important but not the "meat", so to speak.

I'd be very appreciative of anyone still following the thread if they could give their take on this distinction between psychology and transcendental consciousness or ego. (and if there's even a distinction there, too)