August 2021 – Philosophical Ostrogoth

As those who follow my blog know, one of my interests is philosophy and also, in particular, phenomenology. Meanwhile, I have also tried to attempt to engage with Jacques Derrida on multiple occasions, applying his early ideas to several contexts, like emotions and most recently Late Antique thinking. Reading Derrida is challenging, but rewarding, and this is particular evident in his engagement with Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology in ‘his 1967 work ‘Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl’s Phenomenology.’ This post will discuss my experience (no pun intended) of engaging with this text and my thoughts about it.

One of the things I noticed about this text is that serves a good introduction to some of Derrida’s early ideas (although admittedly the discussion reveals these throughout and not all at the beginning). One of these is his criticism of the metaphysics of presence. This is essentially the idea that the history of philosophy has always emphasised presence over absence. Derrida does not argue that absence is more important than presence, rather he suggests that one is no more important than the other in their play with each other. One criticism of Derrida could be his characterisation of the history of philosophy as mostly surrounding this metaphysics of presence, surely the philosophical traditional cannot be subsumed under one label? From what I am reading of Gregory the Great for my MA dissertation at the moment (and also Straw’s work on that Pope) this idea seems futile at best. Interestingly (though I will not go in depth here) the binary of spirituality and carnality is found in these works and one wonders how Derrida’s critique of the metaphysics of presence would influence how these texts reflect experience. On the other hand, Derrida’s ideas are more nuanced than a simple categorisation of all of philosophy under one banner. His treatment of Husserl is far from a simple polemic and is a carefully constructed examination of his texts. He labels Husserl’s analysis using words like ‘rigor’ and ‘subtlety’. Furthermore, Derrida highlights how phenomenology, in some ways, challenges traditional metaphysics.

However, what marks ‘Voice and Phenomenon’ apart is that its criticism of presence is directly related to consciousness and experience, which naturally interests me a lot. Derrida writes how Husserlian analysis continues ‘the Greek metaphysics of presence into the “modern” metaphysics of presence as self-conciousness’. Furthermore, he states ‘If the punctuality of the instant is a myth, a spatial or mechanical metaphor, a metaphysical concept inherited’ and also ‘if the present of the presence to the self is not simple’ then ‘the principle of Husserl’s entire argumentation is threatened.’ It seems Derrida is critquing the idea that consciousness can be fully present. This would certainly raise questions of the possibility of phenomenology. This threat is highlighted again when Derrida writes:

‘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 protension). These non-perceptions are not added on, do not accompany contingently the actually perceived now, indispensably and essentially they participate in its possibility.’

The idea behind this statement is that memory and anticipation create a non-presence, a moment in time is never fixed and is always open to the past and present. This means, consciousness, is never fully in the present. This idea makes me think quite a lot about the possibility of phenomenology. However, I think it is still is a realisable approach. Phenomenology often directly confronts the issue of time. In my studies, for example, prophecy plays an important role because it is a statement that blends time together, it can be about the future but be spoken in the present, or it can be about a moment in the past and yet also direct the attention to future possibilities. To clarify, I do not think Derrida’s critique of presence undermines phenomenology, rather I think it only raises the need to consider the historical dimension of any study of consciousness and experience.

My other favourite part of ‘Voice and Phenomenon’ is when Derrida talks the ‘voice’ aspect of the title. Here he covers his take on logocentrism, arguing that writing has often been subordinated to speech. When reading Of Grammatology, I remember this idea coming up quite a lot, so it was interesting to see how Derrida addresses it in the context of consciousness and phenomenology. Traditionally, it has been assumed, according to Derrida, that the voice represents consciousness. This presumption is again based on the idea that the voice summons something that is present in the mind. When reading this, I had a thought. Sometimes our voice does reflect what is present in our mind almost instantly, but we also often encounter scenarios where we have to think before we speak. Therefore, consciousness can precede speech. It can also follow speech, for example, when we reflect and analyse what we have said and what reaction it might have caused. Therefore, in my opinion, we cannot say speech summons the conciousness.

Another running theme in ‘Voice and Phenomenon’ is the relationship between expression and indication. This was the most challenging idea for me. In particular, Husserl analyses these signs and the role they play in life. The difference between indication and expression was initially not clear for me.

The final subject I want to cover is Derrida’s coverage of différance in this text. In particular, its relation to another Derridean idea about supplementary. Derrida connects these two terms together when he writes ‘supplementarity is really differance, the operation of differing that. at once, splits and delays presence.’ He also states ‘the structure of supplementarity is very complicated’. The signifier apparently does not just represent the absent signified, it substitutes it and carries on its relation with the missing presence. Therefore, the relationship between supplementarity and différance is clear, the second delays presence, whereas the first maintains a relationship with it. This results in a joint attack against the metaphysics of presence.

To conclude, I believe ‘Voice and Phenomenon’ not only offers a good introduction to Derridean ideas, but that it also offers some interesting insights into phenomenology. I particularly like his criticisms of the metaphysics of presence and I think, going forward, I will need to consider his phenomenological views.

In this post, I will expand on some thoughts I have had while doing my dissertation, which nevertheless cannot fit in my thesis. You may know that I am interested in whether theories can be grounded in evidence. After all, one of my dissertation’s aims is to see if Paul Ricoeur’s ideas can be compared to Gregory the Great’s. In this post, I will explore the controversial and radical idea that the ideas of Jacques Derrida are not only sound but can also be applied in a historical context within an empirical basis. Admittedly, much more research needs to be done to verify my argument, but I am using this post as an opportunity and tangent to investigate the idea’s potential.

The first comparison between Derrida and Late Antique thinking centres around semiotics and language. But first, I want to highlight how semiotics again plays a pivotal role. In my previous post, I talked about the importance of semiotics to connecting the world and text. However, I am now becoming aware, as my dissertation progresses, that signs and language are crucial topics in philosophy, many ideas cannot be addressed without dealing with the relevant issues.

One Derridean theory that might be applicable to Late Antiquity is différance. This idea has its origins in Ferdinand de Saussure’s conception that words receive their meaning through their relationship with others. Derrida, building on this, suggests that words can never fully summon their meaning because of their interdependence. However, why is this idea potentially useful for Late Antique studies? Moorhead, in his introduction to Gregory the Great, writes ‘the need to interpret the Bible allegorically, and the possibility that that something could have more than one meaning, allowed Gregory to see words as unstable in what they signified. Furthermore, Markus, in Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity, describes signs as ‘ambivalent’ and that ‘their meaning has to be struggled for.’ Both these two authors are using evidence for these points, Markus is using Augustine’s works, while Moorhead is using Gregory the Great’s. In the Late Antique conception, signs were seen as complicated and unstable. Naturally, we have to appreciate the fact that Augustine’s ideas vary from source to source and that Gregory never wrote a full treatise on semiotics, but it appears différance may have a historical basis when talking about Late Antiquity.

What are the implications of this? Well for one thing it means that the meaning of a text is never quite fully realised. The Bible, because of the ambivalently of its language, is open to different interpretations. Moorhead recognises this while discussing Gregory the Great, he writes ‘the deepest books are those which are most open to different readings and, in a sense, allow themselves to be perpetually remade as people read them in various ways’. He also adds ‘The Bible positively invites different kinds of interpretation, for it has a kind of flexibility which enables it to adjust itself to the capacities of its reader and grow with them’ This sounds a bit like Derridean Deconstruction- the Bible is not internally coherent and its contradictions can be exposed. Different readers have different readings. However, this only describes one sense of what Deconstruction actually is and not its other senses (the word, intentionally, is very hard to decipher).

The other meaning of Deconstruction, as explored in Of Grammatology, is that it attempts to reveal the that oppositions, like those of speech/writing and nature/society can be undermined. Historically, such binaries have dominated philosophical thinking. Moorhead, for example, comments ‘one of the key structures in Gregory’s thought is the distinction between the inward and the outward, and his invariable tendency to see the former as being the most important.’ It would appear initially that the Derridean examination of binaries does not apply to Gregory the Great. However, Straw, in Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection, reveals that this sense of deconstruction is in fact applicable to how Gregory viewed the world. Straw’s approach is almost Derridean and the binary she examines in most depth is the spiritual/carnal one, which is of course very important for the phenomenological dimension of my dissertation. She writes, on this topic, ‘Gregory sees the carnal and spiritual realms as interrelated, as connected as endpoints of a continuum.’ Carnal signs also point to ‘the spiritual world beyond’ and ‘the visible world of flesh and blood and mere human experience reveals a variety of mysteries links with the transcedent, invisible world of the spirit’. However, one can go even further in making the link between Derrida and Straw. A large part Of Grammatology is dedicated to analysing the works of the philosopher Jean Jacques-Rosseau. Derrida looks at the binary of north/south in his work. Straw similarly attempts to examine north/south in the writings of Gregory the Great, she writes ‘the cold north wind is the raw numbness of the evil spirit, while the south wind warms and thaws the Holy Spirit.’ However, simultaneously the role of north/south and cold/warm is reversed, as Straw states that Gregory writes that one may burn with carnal desires and be cooled by holy thoughts. Thus, in Gregory’s thought, binaries such as the ones discussed can be examined, inverted and analysed.

To summarise, some of Derrida’s ideas seem to not only be present in the scholarship on Gregory the Great, but are also found in the evidence used by the discussed writers. What does this mean for how we should approach Late Antiquity? Well, for me, it proves modern theory can have a basis in the evidence. There does not need to be contradiction between the theoretical and the empirical. Now of course this post is only a brief elaboration of one of my thoughts while doing reading for my dissertation, but it opens up a whole new area of research. What else can Derridean theory do to change our understanding of Late Antiquity?

Bibliography

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press 1977.

de Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Wade Baskin. New York City: McGraw-Hill Paperbacks, 1966.

Markus, Robert A. Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996.

Moorhead, John. Gregory the Great. Abingdon: Routledge, 2005.

Straw, Carole. Gregory The Great: Perfection in Imperfection. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Month: August 2021

Reading Derrida’s ‘Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl’s Phenomenology’

MA Dissertation Journal #3: Can Derrida Be Applied Historically?