One Last One on Realism

Posted on August 16, 2010
Filed Under Derrida, Philosophy | Leave a Comment

One last post on realism. Graham has up a post on how everyone wants to be a realist. I think this really brushes under the rug what is the real bone of contention. (No pun intended) What kind of realism? I think some are shocked that people defend Derrida as a realist while never asking the fairly obvious question of what one means by realism. It may well be (and indeed likely is) that what an OOP proponent means by realism isn’t what others mean by realism.

I think Graham verges on this when he says,


Where are the deconstructionists defending the principle of a real world already carved in advance into autonomous districts? I seem to remember this being called “essentialism” and “naive realism.”

This to me really highlights the issue. It’s quite possible to be a realist yet attack certain positions as a kind of naive realism. Further, why are “autonomous districts” necessary for realism? If that’s necessary then I’m no realist.

I’ve mentioned it before but this reminds me of David Hildebrand’s excellent book on Dewey, Beyond Realism and Antirealism: John Dewey and the Neopragmatists . The beginning of that book is a discussion of Dewey’s and the pragmatist attempt to find a third way between the two dominant philosophies in early 20th century America: the New Realists and the Idealists (primarily Hegelians). Dewey was a realist of a sort but he definitely wasn’t a New Realist. The last part of the book shows how the neoPragmatists like Rorty get Dewey wrong and end up tracing the same steps his critics did.

I kind of feel in all this discussion of Derrida that there’s a bit of a similar false dichotomy going on. I’ve tried to be pretty clear and emphatic that while Derrida is a realist, he isn’t your typical realist. (Most realists do I think end up tied to a naive realism)

I’m going to stick to my promise and not talk about OOP. I do think that Derrida is similar to Dewey in that it’s very easy to read him as ones opponent. That is those tending towards realism read him as an anti-realist. Not as many anti-realists reading him as a realist in order to criticize him though. (Although I’m sure there are a few out there) Derrida himself tends to attack the anti-realist position more.

Once again (and this probably makes a thousand times I have had to repeat this, but when will it finally be heard, and why this resistance?): as I understand it (and I have explained why), the text is not the book, it is not confined in a volume itself confined to the library. It does not suspend reference– to history, to the world, to reality, to being, and especially not to the other, since to say of history, of the world, of reality, that they always appear in an experience, hence in a movement of interpretation which contextualizes them according to a network of differences and hence of referral to the other, is surely to recall that alterity (difference) is irreducible. (Derrida, Limited Inc, 146)

I’m sure were he to be writing that today he’d add objects into that litany.

Related posts:

  1. Harman on Derrida’s Realism
  2. Thoughts on Derrida and Realism
  3. Heidegger and OOO
  4. Realism and Naive Realism
  5. Beyond Realism and Idealism
  6. The Derrida Debate

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