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musclebrains
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Groovy thread.
The solipsistic position -- that we can only know the self -- has been pretty much abandoned, even beginning with Hume and Kant.
Most philosophical systems before Saussure and the pomo-types to which he gave rise (including Derrida) assumed that there was some absolute reality to be gleaned -- whether the self (in the Cartesian systems), nature in Rousseau's, or the absoluteness of the present in the existential phenomenological positions. NYC is correct in saying that Descarte's effort was to prove some unifying structure (thus we speak of "structuralism"), as did Jung in his own concept of the Self, symbolized in the mandala (or the flying saucer!).
All of these represent a metaphysics of presence, of absolute origins, which Derrida, by radicalizing Saussure, attacks (as smallmoves indicates). Simplifying: Saussure's idea was that meaning dervives from the differences in linguistic forms, signs, rather than from similarities. No sign has a meaning apart from the context of other signs. Thus the idea of a stable self, archetype, etc., is fradulent.
Derrida wants to go further and demonstrate by use of the neologism "differance," that ANY meaning derived through difference is itself inevitably undermined by the same weaknesses it discovers, since, of course, all "meaning" is languaged. Therefore, any meaning implies a deferred meaning. Since language itself forms the thought which perceives the self and since language is inevitably a deferral of meaning, the self cannot be said to be "known" except as a fleeting thought as likely to reverse itself a moment later.
This position -- the poststructural one -- that there is no unifying structure (no self, no god, no nature) is disconcerting to most people. In fact, it enrages most Americans, though it is quite integrated in the French culture from which it arose.
I love what Derriday gives us instead of the search for the Truth. He gives us "play" -- the urge to reverse, to pun, to experiment, to deconstruct. I wonder why that is not satisfying enough for most people.
The solipsistic position -- that we can only know the self -- has been pretty much abandoned, even beginning with Hume and Kant.
Most philosophical systems before Saussure and the pomo-types to which he gave rise (including Derrida) assumed that there was some absolute reality to be gleaned -- whether the self (in the Cartesian systems), nature in Rousseau's, or the absoluteness of the present in the existential phenomenological positions. NYC is correct in saying that Descarte's effort was to prove some unifying structure (thus we speak of "structuralism"), as did Jung in his own concept of the Self, symbolized in the mandala (or the flying saucer!).
All of these represent a metaphysics of presence, of absolute origins, which Derrida, by radicalizing Saussure, attacks (as smallmoves indicates). Simplifying: Saussure's idea was that meaning dervives from the differences in linguistic forms, signs, rather than from similarities. No sign has a meaning apart from the context of other signs. Thus the idea of a stable self, archetype, etc., is fradulent.
Derrida wants to go further and demonstrate by use of the neologism "differance," that ANY meaning derived through difference is itself inevitably undermined by the same weaknesses it discovers, since, of course, all "meaning" is languaged. Therefore, any meaning implies a deferred meaning. Since language itself forms the thought which perceives the self and since language is inevitably a deferral of meaning, the self cannot be said to be "known" except as a fleeting thought as likely to reverse itself a moment later.
This position -- the poststructural one -- that there is no unifying structure (no self, no god, no nature) is disconcerting to most people. In fact, it enrages most Americans, though it is quite integrated in the French culture from which it arose.
I love what Derriday gives us instead of the search for the Truth. He gives us "play" -- the urge to reverse, to pun, to experiment, to deconstruct. I wonder why that is not satisfying enough for most people.
