Contradiction and Confirmation: Validity As Persuasiveness

Contradiction and Confirmation: Validity as Persuasiveness

TANYA DITOMMASO, University a/Ottawa

Derrida's deconstruction of metaphysical identity, authority, and certainty has left contemporary philosophers scrambling to fmd ways in which they can describe and evaluate the interpreter's task without appealing to metaphysical dogma. l At the present moment, given Derrida's deconstruction, it is impossible to say that an interpretation is either "valid" or "invalid." The task of comparing and deciding between interpretations must be performed without absolute standards. Yet the postmodern interpreter is no less confronted with the task of reading competing interpretations and deciding which to accept. How, then, does the postmodern reader perform this task? What postfoundational tools or guides are available? While Derrida has taken great pains to deconstruct metaphysical grounds, we should not conclude that there are no postfoundational principles informing interpretive judgement.

Undecidability Versus Indeterminacy

Throughout Derrida's deconstruction of metaphysical grounds is the claim that the meaning of any text is undecidable. It is important to note, however, that the notion of undecidability does not entail the complete absence of principles in reading. Indeed, Derrida fIrmly rejects the notion of indeterminacy of meaning. In an effort to clarify his position, he claims that undecidability rather than indeterminacy is the implication of deconstruction.

[AJt stake is always a set of determinate and fInite possibilities ... otherwise, one could indeed say just anything at all and I have never accepted saying, or encouraging others to say, just anything at all, nor have I argued for indeterminacy as such .... I do not believe I have ever spoken of "indeterminacy," whether in regard to "meaning" or anything else. Undecidability is something else again .... I want to recall that undecidability is always a determinate oscillation between possibilities .... These possibilities are themselves highly determined in strictly defined situations.2

Undecidability refers not to the impossibility of making any decision at all, but to the inherent complexity of decision making itself. Derrida stresses the fluidity of borders and the need for "an incessant movement ofrecontextualization" while admitting that the reader's activity limits and affects what a text means. Readers interpret within a context; "there is nothing outside context ... nothing exists outside context," and what is more, "one cannot r

24 Contradiction and Confinnation Contradiction and Confinnation 25 do anything, least of all speak, without detennining a context.,,3 The context of we can only read by deciding to highlight particular connections in a text. interpretation cannot be absolutely indetenninate or perfectly fluid; in being forced Essentially, reading or interpreting consists of organizing words into webs of to make decisions about a text's contextual margin, readers create readings that are relations, where such relations spread their effects in chains or webs over the rest detennined in part by these decisions. To say that contexts remain fluid is to of the text. Presumably, this is what Derrida is driving at when he writes: acknowledge that the meaning of an interpretation can change. It does not mean, "following the appearances of the word 'supplement' and of the corresponding however, that there is absolutely no determination to that interpretation's meaning. concept or concepts, we traverse a certain path within ... [the] text.'06 Maintaining that meaning is neither detenninate nor indetenninate, Derrida claims An appeal to structural dependency is implicit to Derrida's observation that he has never proposed an "'all or nothing' choice between pure realization of that the question "what is writing?" is guided by the interpreter's belief in the self-presence and complete freeplay or undecidability," and declares: "what has certitude of essence. Derrida, of course, rejects such essences, yet while recogniz always interested me the most ... is not indetenninacy in itself, but the strictest ing that a belie/in essences is necessary in prompting and guiding both the question 7 possible detennination of the figures of play, of oscillation, of undecidability.'''' "what is?" and the metaphysical answer that follows. Thus, as Derrida notes, "if While words may possess numerous meanings which alter according to words ... receive meaning only in sequences of differences, one can justify one's different readings, this does not entail a complete lack of margins for interpretation. language, and one's choice of tenns, only within ... an orientation in space." There are no absolute standards; readers must make decisions regarding the Elsewhere, Derrida suggests that the notion of "objectiVity" implies a certain contextual boundaries of a given text. With the recognition that contextual context, for ."what is called 'objectivity,' ... imposes itself only within a context decisions must be made by the reader, we have stumbled upon something that is which is extremely vast, old, powerfully established, stabilized or rooted in a invariably and necessarily the case in interpretation--contextual structural network of conventions ... which still remains a context."g Moreover, Derrida's dependency. As a procedural condition for the possibility of reading, this structural assumption of the critical role played by the reader's context-fonnation decisions dependency provides a partial basis for interpretive adjudication. is the very thing that fuels his critique of Searle's interpretation (or misinterpreta tion) of deconstruction. Derrida argues that Searle's misinterpretation is a result of 9 Contextual Structural Dependency his misunderstanding of the context of deconstruction. The above examples illustrate Derrida's acknowledgment that the reader's Derrida's writings present no exception to the rule that words mutually affect one context-fonnation decisions provide a condition for the possibility of reading, and ·another to fonn a structural dependency. If, as Derrida maintains, words contain that such decisions contribute to the success or failure of interpretation. Without alterity, then they necessarily affect and point to other words. The otherness in absolute grounds, the reader can appeal to structural dependency in judging an every word implies that words necessarily have effects. All writing is an effect of interpretation. In this light we can read Derrida's comment that "we would have to differance. That effects are integral to writing is further evident in Derrida' s reexamine all these concepts in tenns of what more and more clearly appears to be description of the supplement. In pointing toward and being dependent upon its their concantenation, not their ... identity"l0 as an indication that all is not lost in supplement, writing "marks an irreducible and generative multiplicity," where what resolving interpretive conflict. is written "unceasingly dislocates itself in a chain of differing and deferring Reading is a process wherein an interpreter, at the very least, attempts to substitutions." Differance makes supplementation not only possible but, more sketch out the margins of a structurally dependent context. The reader must decide importantly, necessary. Writing, as differance, requires a chain of affects and what he/she will regard as the "best" structurally dependent context for a given effects. Remarking that ''the concept of experience in general ... remains governed text. In attempting to make sense of a text, he/she highlights contextual connec by the theme of presence ... [and] difJerance finds itself enmeshed in the work that tions, thereby reducing ambiguity to a minimum. Without eliminating ambiguity pulls it through a chain of other 'concepts,' other 'words,' other textual configura absolutely, we can certainly limit it. This is precisely what we try to do when we tions," Derrid~ clearly acknowledges that words mutually affect, and simulta decide upon the "best" possible context for a text. On precisely this point, Derrida neously impose themselves upon, one another. 5 writes: To speak of a structural dependency is to acknowledge that writing must generate effects; it is structurally impossible to employ words without generating In addressing my answers to you, in the first place and as effects (words affecting other words as well as affecting the reader). Reading is a directly as possible, in entrusting myself to the contextual limits process of focusing on and winding around efficacious and dynamic word detennined by your questions, I shaH reduce just a little the connections. Despite the fact that readers never exhaust all possible connections, violence and the ambiguity. For that is what we want, isn't it, to 26 Contradiction and Confmnation Contradiction and Confirmation 27

reduce them, if possible. denied, or enclosed in a book." While the community of interpreters does not exist in a realist sense, "the reconstitution of a context ... is [nonetheless] a regulative Without identifying a context, reading and speaking about a t{;xt would be ideal in the ethics of reading, of interpretation, or of discussion." The reader's impossible. As Derrida observes: belief in the "regulative ideal" of a larger interpretive community provides a partial basis for contextual decisions. The reader's contextual decisions revolve around the Without a solid competence in this domain, the most venture establishing of boundaries of what is believed to be the social consensus regarding some interpretations of Of Grammatology would have been that particular text and, also, the general process of and forum for interpretation. neither possible nor intelligible, nor even subject to discussion. Readers interpret texts from the inside andlor outside of what is believed to be the What must be understood is not what this or that French word boundaries adopted by a "regulating ideal" interpretive community. Derrida's means to say naturally or absolutely, beyond all possible remarks indicate support for the idea that interpretation is grounded (at least in equivocations, . but rather, first, what interpretations are part) by the belief of a larger interpretive community: probabilistically dominant and conventionally acknowledged to grant access to what Rousseau thought he meant and to what [N]o research is possible in a community ... without the prior readers for the most part thought they could understand .... search for this minimal consensus and without discussion around [W]hat holds for the context "Rousseau" ... also holds for the this minimal consensus. Whatever the disagreements between context in which we speak of it today. I I Searle and myself may have been, for instance, no one doubted that I had understood at least the English grammar and vocabu This interesting passage reveals Derrida's acknowledgement that readings are lary of his sentences. Without that no debate would have grounded in the establishing of a context that is somewhat unambiguous. While we begun. 13 can neither define nor limit word meanings definitively, we read by making decisions that we hope will generate a relatively unambiguous contextual meaning. Appealing to the interpretive norms of a community amounts to the beginnings of Before considering how an appeal to a contextual structural dependency a non-absolute foundation for interpretive adjudication. figures into the process of interpretive evaluation, we must first consider a related When we combine the reader's belief with an appeal to a contextual and indispensable condition for the possibility of reading: that is, belief structural dependency we have the makings of a rule-of-thumb procedure for evaluating interpretations. We rank as the "best" that analysis which succeeds in The Power of Belief satisfying our belief that an efficacious and convincing structural dependency has been demonstrated with minimal ambiguity. In saying that the preferred interpreta In the notion of undecidability we glimpse a powerful margin for interpretation: tion is one that makes forceful and convincing word connections, connections that namely, the interpreter's belief. While interpretations are neither true nor false in confirm the reader's belief that there is a convincing contextual structural a metaphysical sense, they are nonetheless believable or unbelievable. The dependency at work in the interpretation, we are effectively talking about a notion authority of belief winds its way throughout Derrida's writings, including his ofvalidily. cryptic suggestion that "we must begin ... wherever we are: in a text where we already believe ourselves to be" (emphasis added).12 Here Derrida grants-at least Moving Toward Validity: Karl-Otto Apel in a preliminary way-that belief is a condition for both the construction of a text's context as well as the evaluation of that context. It is important to note that the notion of "validity" that will be developed here is not To read, critique, or even misunderstand a text, we must believe the text's the validity for which E. D. Hirsch is rightly criticized.14 As Gary Madison notes, context to be this rather than that. As an aiming that is a sort of non-aim Hirsch "puts forward and attempts to defend a thoroughgoing realism in matters of ing-toward neither the author's intentions nor something outside the text-read interpretation," and as postmodern interpreters we must acknowledge that "the ing is guided by the reader's belief that texts are meaningful and that they are meaning of a text as determined by interpretation is not for all that immutable and capable of being misinterpreted. What is more, reading is guided by a belief in how self-subsistent; it arises and exists only in and through acts of interpretation and is a larger community of interpreters might receive a given interpretation. To say that related essentially to them.,,15 there is nothing outside the text "does not mean that all referents are suspended, Karl-Otto Apel is one exception to the trend that sees validity as a 28 Contradiction and Confinnation Contradiction and Confinnation 29 metaphysical relic. Apel' s position, while not without problems of its own, defends ostensibly taken for granted by philosophical henneneutics) is the only means of a conception of validity far removed from the realism of Hirsch. While problems identifying "the conditions of the possibility and validity especially of unmasking with Apel's position ultimately cause us to reject his theory, we may set the stage critiques." Apel's defense of "universally valid criteria for convincing by means for a postmodem conception of validity by examining the strengths and weaknesses of arguments" amounts to a reflection on "the necessary (that is, under pain of of Apel's position. performative self-contradiction, nondisputable) existential and rule presuppositions In his essay, "Regulative Ideas or Truth-Happening? An Attempt to of philosophical discourse." In understanding all language as argumentative, and Answer the Question of the Conditions of the Possibility of Valid Understanding," in conceiving of invalid arguments as resulting from "a perfonnative contradiction Apel expresses frustration with Gadamer's refusal to "indicate anything relevant between the content of a proposition and self-referentially implicitly or perfonn about the correctness, or depth, of understanding." Apel seeks to push Gadamer's atively explicit intentional content of the act of proposing the proposition within "fusion of horizons" to the point where readers not only understand in a different the framework of an argumentative discourse," Apel maintains that the following way, but understand "at the same time in a better, or deeper way." Apel argues that statement is invalid on grounds that it generates a perfonnative self-contradiction: philosophical henneneutics, being grounded in truth qua al theia, does nothing "I hereby affInn that I have no truth-claim." A valid argument, according to Apel, to explain the correctness or falsity of interpretations, from which he concludes: is one that acknowledges and embraces the perfonnative assumption implied within "the fact-related truth ofvalidity claims is not yet sufficiently detennined by the the expression of an argument (an assumption amounting to the statement "I affmn factual manifestation of meaning. Rather it requires some additional fact-related this argument to be valid,,).!7 insight to assess it." In contrast to Gadamer's position, Apel argues that there is a The merit of Apel's position stems in part from his recognition of the way in which we can talk about having a progressively better understanding.!6 centrality of argumentation and from his acceptance of Wittgenstein' s view that Attempting to steer clear of objective grounds, Apel remarks: "I should like to "every language game stands or falls ... upon paradigmatic evidence." Apel adopts make clear that I indeed do not consider the objectivity ideal ofnatural science .. . Wittgenstein's position: "All examination, all confinnation and refutation of an as a possible paradigm for the factual reference of henneneutic understanding ... . assumption, occurs within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary [FJactual reference is not detennined by an object which is fmished and only to be and doubtful beginning point of all our arguments, rather it belongs to the essence explored progressively, but by history's irreversible happening." After offering this of what we call an argument. This system is not so much a point of departure, as qualification, Apel proposes a foundation for the possibility of progress in it is the life-element of arguments." In grounding validity in the rules of argumenta understanding: "But could one not also talk of intersubjective validity of tive discourse, and in describing invalidity as essentially an issue of perfonnative norms-nonns of ethics and nonns that guide the evaluational understanding of self-contradiction, Ape! concludes that "a priori rational and deliberate affirma critical-henneneutic social sciences, humanities, and arts? .. [W]hat really is at tion of the transcendental language game rules ... are always already impliCitly stake here is the provision of nonnative standards even for the critical assessment accepted as valid," and further that we can "decide neither for nor against the rules of ... validity claims." At this juncture, Apel is absolutely correct in pointing out the ofthe transcendental language game without these rules being presupposed.,,!8 difficulty of his task: Moving Away From Apel However, not only Gadamer, but all present philosophers who see themselves as post-Nietzschean, post-Heideggerian, or post Derrida could well accept an appeal to procedural rules of discourse in the activity Wittgensteinian seem to be totally confused on the question of of reading (recall Derrida's idea that all language generates and demands effects, thejustification ofinter subjectively valid norms, if the question and that reading "cannot be executed however one wishes. It requires protocols of is recognized as a meaningful one at all. On the whole, the reading").!9 While we may indeed appeal to procedural rules as a basis for justification is regarded as an impossible task, if one attempts to assessing interpretations, we must take issue with some aspects of Apel's position. avoid returning to religious or metaphysical dogmas. Apel's discussion of contradiction, while both Useful and important, is overly narrow. Why restrict the contradiction essential to invalidity to performative Recognizing the difficulty of his task, and seeking to avoid metaphysical self-contradiction alone? Ape!'s most frequently cited example of a perfonnative assumptions, Ape! advances a postmodem conception of validity by appealing to self-contradiction-the denial of "I think, therefore I am"-unduly limits the scope the structure of argumentative discourse. of discussion. Moreover, given Ape!'s position, it appears to follow that any Apel contends that an appeal to the structure of argumentation (a structure position that does not admit a concept of validity effectively commits a perform- ,

30 Contradiction and Confirmation Contradiction and Confirmation 31

20 ative self-contradiction, and is accordingly invalid. Clearly, such a conclusion is make it clear that the notion of validity being used here refers to an interpretation unacceptable. To critique Gadamer's position, for example, and to find him guilty that is persuasive rather than true. of a performative self-contradiction (because he does not embrace what Apel What, then, is a persuasive interpretation? Let us speak of this as an describes as the "I affirm as valid" ofperformative utterances), absurdly reduces interpretation that coaxes the interpreter from word to word-sentence to sentence, the majority of philosophical positions to invalidity (with the exception of passage to passage, and argument to argument-while inducing the interpreter to Descartes and others who admit a similar conception of validity). regard these connections as convincing. Recently, Derrida has considered the Another problem within Apel's conception of validity lies in his closet question of what constitutes a "good" interpretation; interestingly, we find him Hegelian belief that argumentative discourse is progressing toward completion, and welcoming the idea that a "good" interpretation is one that leaves the reader feeling that this completion is grounded in transcending "by means of critical reflection" satisfied and assured that the interpretation is flowing and convincing. Derrida specific language games.21 In his "Reply to Karl-Otto Apel," Gadamer takes up writes: precisely this point, accusing Apel of appealing to a notion of completed enlightenment that would "require a world revolution of pure reason." Gadamer is What is most often called "relevant"? Well, whatever feels right, at a loss to see what Apel's closet-Hegelian notion of "progress" in philosophy whatever seems pertinent, apropos, welcome, appropriate, could mean, and adds that Apel's "wanting to understand an author better, even opportune, justified, well-suited or adjusted, coming right at the better than he understands himself, would eventually render all communication moment when you expect it.... [AJ relevant translation would impossib Ie. ,,22 therefore be, quite simply, a "good" translation, a translation that Essential to Apel's notion of progress in argumentation is his equally does what one expects of it, in short, a version that performs its questionable appeal to universal truth claims. As he writes, "in arguing we cannot mission, honors its debt and does its job or its duty.24 give up raising claims ... to universal truth to be valid for, and hence acceptable by everyone, i.e., for every possible member of the indefinite 'system' of an ideal In a much earlier interview, Derrida suggests: "I would not say that some communication community.,,23 Equating validity with the requirement of universal interpretations are truer than others. I would say that some are more powerful than truth Apel leaves his postmodern reader wincing in dreaded anticipation of yet others. The hierarchy is between forces and not between true and false.,,25 In another essentialist position waiting in the grass. avoiding reference to truth and focusing on the persuasive force of a "good" Despite these shortcomings within Apel's position we can commend his interpretation, perhaps Derrida himself would welcome the present endeavor to willingness at the very least to discuss this much-neglected topic. If we are ever to construct a postmodern notion of validity as persuasiveness. achieve a working, postmodem conception of validity, we must take Apel's project As in Apel's account, contradiction plays a decisive role in determining into consideration while modifying our notion of validity in more general, more what makes an interpretation valid. Contradiction, however, should not be limited practical, less universal, and less Hegelian terms. to performative self-contradictions but extended to include all internal inconsisten cies within interpretation. Regarding the notion of contradiction, consider how a Toward a Postmodern Notion of Validity valid argument is defined in logic: "A valid argument is one wherein if the premises are jointly asserted, then the conclusion cannot be denied without How, then, should we think of validity? What can we mean when we say, for contradiction." This defmition may be applied to interpretation without appealing example, that Ross' interpretation of Derrida's deconstruction is more valid than to notions of truth, falsity, or accuracy. As Charles Altieri aptly notes, ''the better Caputo's? What is already clear from our rejection of Apel's position is that we understand why a language of truth-functions cannot account for interpretive validity cannot refer to what is universally and invariably true, or the simple validity, the more it also becomes clear that we need to supplement our concerns absence of performative self-contradiction. . .. on who we become as interpreters." Altieri is correct in arguing that the The Latin root-validus-connotes strong, powerful, able, and effective. movement away from the language of truth should coincide with a movement Ifwe emphasize the rhetorical force of validus, we can defme a valid interpretation toward a qualitative assessment of the text's relation to the reader. As he writes: as a powerful, effective, and convincing interpretation. Highlighting the rhetorical "by concentrating on our being addressed by texts, and correspondingly on our sense of validity, and conceiving it as a powerful and convincing argument, allows addressing them in internal monologues, we shift from concerns for knowledge to us to avoid notions of accuracy, facts, and truth. In speaking of validity it is concerns for the quality of intimate relationships.,,26 imperative to distinguish validity as persuasiveness from validity as truth, and to In replacing validity as truth with validity as persuasiveness, we can speak 32 Contradiction and Confinnation Contradiction and Confinnation 33 of a valid interpretation as "one wherein if all the words are woven together as dynamic of writing as differance. In the end, it can be said that writing always and powerful and convincing connections, then the interpretation cannot be denied already wanders away from ever having an absolute ground. (Derrida, Positions, without contradiction." Because logical contradictions of the [T & - T] sort are trans. Alan Bass [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981],94; hereafter PS. woven into Derrida's semiotics, by "contradiction" we must mean something other See also Margins ofPhilosophy, trans. Alan Bass [Chicago: University of Chicago than [T & - T]. When speaking of validity as persuasiveness, contradiction refers Press, 1982],320,316,318,329; hereafter MP) to ineffectual, weak, and disconnected word connections. Such ineffectual connections would hardly satisfy a reader's belief in a convincing contextual 2. Derrida, Limited Inc. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), structural dependency. An interpretation, then, is valid if a reader is coaxed by 144-145, 148; hereafter Ll powerful and convincing word connections to the point where the reader cannot help but believe, yes, this does follow. An invalid interpretation, by the same token, 3. LI. 136, 137, 152. is signaled by a contradiction-where inconsistent and weak word connections lead the reader to assert, no, this does not follow. 4. U, 115-116, 145. Understanding contradiction to mean a lack offollowability (as opposed to perfonnative self-contradiction alone or, worse yet, a statement regarding falsity) 5. MP, 7, 11,23-24,26, and PS, 27, 33, 45. Derrida, OfGrammatology, trans. provides a benchmark for ascribing validity or invalidity to a range of interpreta Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1982), 6~1; hereafter OG. PS, tions. If we follow the recent trail of Derrida's writings, we see that reading and 40. The words in Derrida's texts, like any other writing, are "demarcated from interpreting are described as revolving around precisely the issue offollowability: other concepts to which they thus incessantly refer.... [T]hey are, moreover, caught "It follows, itself; it follows itself. It could say 'I am,' 'I follow,' 'I follow myself,' in systems and conceptual chains." (Rodolphe Gasche, "Infrastructures and 'I am (in following) myself.' ... That is the track I am following, the track I am Systematicity" in Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts ofJacques Derrida, ferreting out.... We are following, we follow ourselves.'>27 ed. John Sallis [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987],4) 1 have sketched only a preliminary blueprint for rethinking validity in a postrnodern world. Perhaps now we can move in the direction of a postrnodern 6. OG, 161. On the necessity of contextuality, Bernard Flynn notes: "the essentially structural science hinted at in Derrida's elliptical remark: "the production of iterable character of writing dis-joins it, not from all context, but from any specific differences, dijJerance, is not astructural: it produces systematic and regulated context or singular event." (Bernard Flynn, "Derrida and Foucault: Madness and transfonnations which are able, at a certain point, to leave room for a structural Writing" in Derrida and Deconstruction, ed. Hugh J. Silvennan [New York: science. ,,28 Routledge, 1989], 217)

7. OG, 75. For more on the logic of questions and answers, see Gary Madison, The Logic ofLiberty (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986),218. Presumably, this logic Notes is precisely what guides both Derrida's critique of Rousseau and ~lis comment: "What we have tried to show by following the guiding line of the 'dangerous 1. In deconstructing self-identity, and in emphasizing the iterability of every word, supplement' is that ... there has never been anything but writing." (OG, 159) In it is clear that Derrida has delivered a targeted blow to the metaphysical ideal of fact, we could not read Derrida's critique of western metaphysics as a critique if identity. The break with a unified self-presence is noted in the fact that the we did not assume this "guiding line." For more on how a critique rests upon an iterability of a word consists of its "possibility of being repeated in the absence not assumption that words affect, conceal, and reveal other words, see Gadarner, "Text only of its referent, which goes without saying, but of a detennined signified or and Interpretation" in Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida current intention of signification." Writing, as a series of iterable words, constitutes Encounter, eds. D. P. Michelfelder and R. E. Palmer (New York: State University only chains of differential marks rather than pure presence. Derrida's critique of of New York Press, 1989),39. presence shows that we never begin with a pure presence of meaning, for there is only an "essential drifting, due to writing as an iterative structure cut off from all 8. OG, 70, andU, 115, 136, 140, 144-145. As David Wood notes, even Derrida's absolute responsibility, from consciousness as the authority of the last analysis." deconstructive readings of traditional philosophy "do not license a wanton The idea of a detenninate meaning, founded upon an arkh , is destroyed by the disregard for the strategic dimension" of those writings. (David Wood, ed., 34 Contradiction and Confinnation Contradiction and Confinnation 35

"Reading Derrida: An Introduction" in Derrida: A Critical Reader [Cambridge: 20. See SE, 92, 199. Blackwell Publishers, 1992], 2) In situating his words around the words of others, Derrida "did not just drop out of a tree one day and start talking funny. He was led 21. SE, 85; also see SE, 75 for Apel's Hegelian bent. to what he had to say by Saussure, [and] Husserl." (John D. Caputo, "On The Quasi-Transcendental" in Working Through Derrida, ed. Gary Madison [Evanston: 22. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Reply to Karl-Otto Apel" in The Philosophy ofHans Northwestern University Press, 1993], 159) Georg Gadamer, The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. XXIV, ed. Lewis Edwin Hahn (Illinois: Open Court, 1997), 97, 96. 9. OG, 158, and MP, 62, 309. A deconstructive reading, for example, is generated by a "rigorous reading of metaphysics." (MP, 22) Derrida contends that "The 23. SE, 333. concept of iterability '" is not simply the concept of repeatability, as Searle repeats in the New York Review ofBooks, repeating the initial confusion that had kept him 24. Derrida, "What Is a 'Relevant' Translation?" Critical Inquiry, 27 (Winter from understanding anything." LI, 125, 127. 2001),177.

10. PS, 88. 25. Derrida, "An Interview with Jacques Derrida," The Literary Review, 14 (Edinburgh, April 18 to May 1, 1980),21. 11. LI, 113, 144. 26. Charles Altieri, "Life After Difference: The Positions of the Interpreter and the 12. OG, 162. Positionings of the Interpreted," Monist, 1990,73 (2), 269, 287.

13. LI, 131, 146-148, 150. 27. Derrida, "The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)," Critical Inquiry, 28 (Winter 2002),371,383,407. 14. See E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). Also rejected here is K. M. Newton's conception of validity since it 28. PS,28. mistakenly conceives of the "institution" in a realist light. (See K. M. Newton, "Validity in Interpretation and the Literary Institution," British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 25, No.3 [Summer 1985],218)

15. Madison, The Hermeneutics of Postmodernity: Figures and Themes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 3,20.

16. Karl-Otto Apel, "Regulative Ideas or Truth-Happening? An Attempt to Answer the Question of the Conditions of the Possibility of Valid Understanding" in The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. XXIV, ed. Lewis Edwin Hahn (Illinois: Open Court, 1997), 69, 71, 75, 77; hereafter RI.

17. RI, 77-79,84,85. Apel, Selected Essays, Vol. 2, ed. Eduardo Mendieta (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1994),316,319,320, 199; hereafter SE.

18.SE,82,80,93,94.

19. PS,63.