Introduction to Philosophy

Read to p. 398. Derrida, Irigaray.

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)

Critiques philosophy as being "logocentric." A strict application of Saussure's definition of the system of signs negative and appositional, i.e. as a pure play of difference, leads Derrida to view meaning as never positively present but always "deferred." (Note: the French verb différer means to differ, but also to defer. This may be viewed as a felicitous homonym, grist to the Derridian mill.) This critique of philosophy, then, as we have called it, is based on philosophy's failure to recognize that its meanings (and therefore its truth) are conditioned by the same conditions that underlie all the other uses of language--such as the poetic, the metaphorical, the literary in general.

It is not possible to do justice to the philosophical contributions of Jacques Derrida, in my opinion, at the undergraduate level. Nevertheless, Palmer is right in attempting to convey some sense of the style of philosophizing of this important thinker.

In my notes to the preceding class I mentioned my reservations concerning the notion of language being a system of differences with no positive terms. I said this because it seems illogical to posit difference without an prior term to be differentiated. It would be hard to think of large as differing from small in the absence of any prior notion of small. But on further reflection, is it possible to have a notion of small in the absence of its opposite large? Perhaps it is best to think of these terms as being correlative within a relation. That relation is one of difference. In this sense perhaps it does make sense to speak of a negative relation of opposition as fundamental to language, at least on the level of the signifier. (E.g., the sound "t" is the unvoiced version of he sound "d". They are both "dentals," but differentiated on the basis of lack or presence of vocal chord vibration. And this differentiation can make the distinction between two morphemes, namely the words "ten" and "den." But the formal opposition on the level of the signifier is not directly reflected on that of the signified, since the meanings of den and ten, though different, are not "opposites." It might be more difficult, though not impossible, to show the role of (negative) differences on the level of the signified. "Large" is the opposite of "small," but man is only in some respects the opposite of woman, and salt is only the opposite of pepper in a rather vague or figurative sense.) If we try to think of the relaton between negative and positive terms on the basis of the difference between terms and the relation (e.g. the two terms large and small are in a relation of difference), we are still left with the problem of whether the terms exist prior to the relation, or the relation prior to its terms. It seems that in fact we have a dead heat between the terms that are defined by a relationship and a relationship that is defined by its terms.

I have developed this line of thought merely to show that in order to arrive at a valid understanding of Derrida's thought, it would be necessary to read him in the context of the sorts of problems to which that thought responds.

Deconstruction is not to be confused with a process of "debunking" so much as of disassembling in order to appreciate the workings of a system of thought. The point at which the concepts within a system may be said to collapse is one of absence. What cannot be thought in a particular system is what makes the system workable.

In his last years, Derrida wrote about the question of friendship, hospitality and the meaning of his own Jewishness.

Luce Irigaray (1932-present)
Her background is psychoanalysis, but she is highly critical of some of aspects of Freud's work (e.g. his theory of female penis envy). She critiques phallocentrism, which she believes to dominate the symbolic order, and philosophy in particular. She wishes to destabilize the logos of partriarchal discourse and of misogynistic logic. She thematizes the mother-daughter relationship. She emphasizes the important of a different parler femme or "womanspeak." Women are alienated in a world in which the do not have "les mots pour le dire" ("Words to say it," the title of an important autobiographical novel by Marie Cardinal, 1975).