Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husservs Theory of Signs
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Jacques Derrida Translated, with an Introduction, by Preface by Speech and Phenomena And Other Essays on HusserVs Theory of Signs DAVID B. ALLISON NEWTON GARVER NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS EVANSTON 19 7 3 Copyright © 1973 by Northwestern University Press All rights reserved library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 72-80565 ISBN 0-8101-0397-4 Printed in the United States of America Speech and Phenomena was originally published in French under the title La Voix et le Phinomene, copyright © 1967 by Presses Uni- versitaires de France. "Form and Meaning" appeared in French under the title "La Forme et le vouloir-dire: Note sur la ph6nom6nologie du langage," in the Revue internaHonale de philosophic, Volume LXXXI (1967). "Differance" appeared in French under the tide "La Difference" in the Bulletin de la Society fran^aise de philosophie, Volume LX1I (1968) and was reprinted in ^Thiorie d'ensembte, a collection of essays published by Editions du Seuil in 1968. Quotations from the following works of Edmund Husserl are used by permission of the publishers: Logical Investigations, translated by J. N. Findlay. Copyright © 1970 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, London, and Humanities Press, Inc., New York, Ideas, translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson. Copyright © 1931 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, and Humanities Press, Inc., New York. Jacques Derrida is Professor of Philosophy at the Ecole Normale Sup&ieure of the University of Paris. David B. Allison is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the State Uni• versity of New York at Stony Brook. Contents Preface, by Newton Garver / ix Translators Introduction, by David B. Allison / xxxi Speech and Phenomena: Introduction to the Problem of Signs in Husserl's Phenomenology Introduction / 3 1 / Sign and Signs / 17 2 / The Reduction of Indication / 27 3 / Meaning as Soliloquy / 32 4 / Meaning and Representation / 48 5 / Signs and the Blink of an Eye / 60 6 / The Voice That Keeps Silence / 70 7 / The Supplement of Origin / 88 Other Essays Form and Meaning: A Note on the Phenomenology of Language / 107 Differance / 129 Index of Passages Cited from Husserl / 161 Index / 163 [vn] Preface DERBIDA'S CRITIQUE of Husserl is a first-class piece of analytical work in the philosophy of language. But since Derrida belongs to a philosophical tradition which is foreign, both geo• graphically and intellectually, to most English-speaking philoso• phers, he is difficult to read. To see the power of his thought, it is necessary for us to see how the problems that he articulates and the comments that he makes fit within the framework of issues in the philosophy of language that are commonly con• sidered in Britain and America—which is difficult to do without irreparably distorting his thoughts. Surely for this purpose it is wiser not to try a direct translation from Derrida's Heideggerian language into the more straightforward prose of American an• alytic philosophy, but rather to look for a wider framework in which both these schools can be seen and compared. Mediaeval thought can give us this wider perspective, if we take as our starting point its pedagogical division of the study of language into three parts—grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The mediaeval trivium is a much sounder approach to the study of language and gives a much more adequate framework for under• standing the philosophy of language than its all too fashionable neglect might lead one to suppose. The three studies correspond nicely to three skills, or three sorts of competence, that we ex• pect of a person who uses language. We expect, first, that a speaker (and mutatis mutandis a hearer) will be able to put together the words of the language in acceptable phrases and will be able to modify those words as required by their position in the phrases. The details of this requirement are studied by grammarians; and though grammatical skill is superficial from [lx] X / SPEECH AND PHENOMENA the point of view of philosophical problems, it is nonetheless a prerequisite for the other sorts of competence we expect of lan• guage-users. We expect, second, that a language-user will be able to recognize when an expression or a sequence of expressions is absurd or contradictory. The expressions which are recognized as absurd or contradictory will always be somehow complex, rather than simple, and it is in the combination of more simple expressions that this absurdity or contradiction lies. For example, "the colorless green ball," "the shapeless square box," and "the alert response of the dead man" are all noun phrases, but in each one of them there is a combination of more than one expression, and it is the combination of incombinables that makes these noun phrases absurd or illogical. In the case of sequences of expressions, such as "The poet is a penguin" (e. e. cummings) or "All the boys went on a hike, but two of them stayed in their rooms," where we have a predicative sentence or a conjunction of two sentences, it is obvious that more than one expression is involved. In a broad sense logic studies both these sorts of ab• surdity and proceeds formally, presenting its rules in terms of thQ expressions themselves without reference to the time or place or circumstances of their use. We expect, third, that a speaker will know how and when to use the linguistic expressions whose grammar and logic he has mastered. We expect that he will know when it is appropriate, and when it is not, to describe his sensa• tions, to offer a definition, to curse, to pray, to utter an imperative, and so on. Traditionally rhetoric, ignoring the details of these common garden-variety uses of language, has concentrated its attention on the more subtle features of public speech and of literature and on the classification of styles and tropes. In spite of the way that the tradition has restricted itself, it has included within its purview a discussion of the proper use of contradictory expressions, such as the logical absurdities that occur in meta• phors, and has thereby implicitly claimed a kind of priority over logic. This implicit claim sets the stage for an important con• troversy that concerns us directly. But the traditional restriction of scope is bothersome, and it is more useful to think of rhetoric as the general study of the aptness and ineptness of the use of various expressions or sorts of expressions in various sorts of circumstances. Rhetoric is thus not a matter of pure form but has to do with the relation of language to the world (to life) through the relation of linguistic expressions to the specific circumstances in which their use makes sense. Preface / xl In these traditional terms, the central issue of philosophy of language, the issue around which all other issues revolve and to which they all return and in terms of which we can surely see the relation of Derrida to other philosophers, is the issue about the relation of logic and rhetoric. Grammar, having to do with the good order of signs and their relation to one another, is rela• tively superficial. Logic and rhetoric, on the other hand, both lead us into more profound areas because they both have to do with the use and interpretation of signs. The very fact that logic and rhetoric both have to do with the use and interpretation of signs leads us immediately into the all-important question of their relative priority: Can there be two independent foundations for our theory of meaning? Must there be two irreconcilable criteria for the use and interpretation of signs and hence for linguistic description? Or is one of these two seemingly funda• mental disciplines in fact contained in or derivative from the other? When we are able to resolve (his fundamental question about the relation of logic to rhetoric, we will then have estab• lished a solid vantage point from which to resolve the subsidiary questions about private language, about meaning, about form and use, about Sinn and Bedeutung, about Ausdruck and An- zeigung, and about the temporal and the nontemporal aspects of discourse. In the history of Western philosophy, the philosophy of lan• guage—including a great deal of its metaphysics—has almost invariably been based on logic rather than rhetoric. This is cer• tainly true of Plato's theory of forms, of Aristotle's doctrine of predication, of the mediaeval controversy over universals, of Leibniz* grand project for a universal symbolism, and of ration• alism and idealism in general. It is also true, though less ob• viously so, of empiricist philosophy from Hobbes and Locke through to Brentano and James and Russell; for the empiricists have taken it for granted that the ideas represented by our linguistic signs already stand in logical relations to one another before we have signs to represent them. The exceptions that come to mind are on the fringe of the philosophical tradition rather than in its mainstream. Ibn KhaldOn is one: as much a historian and sociologist as a philosopher (he regarded philosophy as frivolous), he characterized language as a "technical habit" (that is, a trait or talent having to do with some art or craft or tech• nique—malaka sintfiyya), and for him grammar and logic seem to be refinements of rhetoric, in our broad sense of the term. Xii / SPEECH AND PHENOMENA Condillac is another, with his view that language began with gestures and that verbal language has retained the essential features of this original "language of action." Rousseau is perhaps the best known of these exceptions; much influenced by Condil• lac, he saw the origins (and hence the essence) of language in the rhythms and intonations of our passions rather than in the more logical realm of practical affairs—reason enough for Der- rida to devote a long section of his De la grammatologie to a sympathetic account of Rousseau's Essay on the Origin of Lan• guages.