Way last year I put up a brief discussion of the ontological difference. I meant to come back to it to tie it into a discussion of Peirce and Heidegger. The ontological difference can be considered in different ways. Roughly the ontological difference is the difference between a being and its Being. One can see this in a way as the difference between the "thatness" of an entity and the "whatness" of an entity. Put an other way it is the thing itself and the meaning of the thing. As I argued in the above link, one can see this as a kind of divide between the sensory realm and the intelligible realm. Although since that's not the only kind of dichotomy one finds in philosophy, I don't think we should limit to simply sense/intellect. Derrida, coming to introduce his notions of trace and differance plays up the fact that there are many such oppositions. Thus we have the divide between the voice and writing, the sound and image, the form and body, and ultimately between any inside and outside however conceived. What is it that founds or enables this difference? It is the ontological difference - only recast in Derrida as differance.
On the one band, the phonic element, the term, the plenitude that is called sensible, would not appear as such without the difference or opposition which gives them form. Such is the most evident significance of the appeal to difference as the reduction of phonic substance. Here the appearing and functioning of difference presupposes an originary synthesis not preceded by any absolute simplicity. Such would be the originary trace. Without a retention in the minimal unit of temporal experience, without a trace retaining the other as other in the same, no difference would do its work and no meaning would appear. It is not the question of a constituted difference here, but rather, before all determination of the content, of the pure movement which produces difference. The (pure) trace is difference. It does not depend on any sensible plenitude, audible or visible, phonic or graphic. It is, on the contrary, the condition of such a plenitude. Although it does not exist, although it is never a being-present outside of all plenitude, its possibility is by rights anterior to all that one calls sign (signified/signifier, content/expression, etc.), concept or operation, motor or sensory. This difference is therefore not more sensible than intelligible and it permits the articulation of signs among themselves within the same abstract order — a phonic or graphic text for example — or between two orders of expression. It permits the articulation of speech and writing — in the colloquial sense — as it founds the metaphysical opposition between the sensible and the intelligible, then between signifier and signified, expression and content, etc. If language were not already, in that sense, a writing, no derived “notation” would be possible; and the classical problem of relationships between speech and writing could not arise. Of course, the positive sciences of signification can only describe the work and the fact of differance, the determined differences and the determined presences that they make possible. There cannot be a science of difference itself in its operation, as it is impossible to have a science of the origin of presence itself, that is to say of a certain non-origin.
Differance is therefore the formation of form. But it is on the other hand the being-imprinted of the imprint. It is well-known that Saussure distinguishes between the “sound-image” and the objective sound. He thus gives himself the right to “reduce,” in the phenomenological sense, the sciences of acoustics and physiology at the moment that he institutes the science of language. The sound-image is the structure of the appearing of the sound [l'apparaître du son] which is anything but the sound appearing [le son apparaissant]. It is the sound-image that be calls signifier, reserving the name signified not for the thing, to be sure (it is reduced by the act and the very ideality of language), but for the “concept,” undoubtedly an unhappy notion here; let us say for the ideality of the sense. “I propose to retain the word sign [signe] to designate the whole and to replace concept and sound-image respectively by signified [signifé] and signifier [signifiant].” The sound-image is what is heard; not the sound heard but the being-beard of the sound. Being-heard is structurally phenomenal and belongs to an order radically dissimilar to that of the real sound in the world. One can only divide this subtle but absolutely decisive heterogeneity by a phenomenological reduction. The latter is therefore indispensable to all analyses of being-heard, whether they be inspired by linguistic, psychoanalytic, or other preoccupations.
Now Derrida famously invokes Peirce here. Indeed it appears that his title of Grammatology actually comes from Peirce who got it from Scotus (well a pseudo-Scotus) as the grammatica speculative. Quoting Peirce.
The science of semiotic has three branches. The first is called by Duns Scotus grammatica speculative. We may term it pure grammar. It has for its task to ascertain what must be true of the representamen used by every scientific intelligence in order that they may embody any meaning. The second is logic proper. It is the science of what is quasi-necessarily true of the representamina of any scientific intelligence in order that they may hold good of any object, that is, may be true. Or say, logic proper is the formal science of the conditions of the truth of representations, The third, in imitation of Kant's fashion of preserving old associations of words in finding nomenclature for new conceptions, I call pure rhetoric. Its task is to ascertain the laws by which in every scientific intelligence one sign gives birth to another, and especially one thought brings forth another.
While not quoted by Derrida, the following is more helpful in seeing the connection with Heidegger.
My formal logic was marked by triads in all its principal parts. There are three types of inference -- Induction, Deduction, and Retroduction -- each having three propositions and three terms. There are three types of logical forms, the term, the proposition, and the inference.
Logic is itself a study of signs. Now a sign is a thing which represents a second thing to a third thing, the interpreting thought. There are three ways in which signs can be studied, first as to the general conditions of their having any meaning, which is the Grammatica Speculativa of Duns Scotus, second as to the conditions of their truth, which is logic, and thirdly, as to the conditions of their transferring their meaning to other signs. The Sign, in general, is the third member of a triad; first a thing as thing, second a thing as reacting with another thing; and third a thing as representing another to a third. Upon a careful analysis, I found that all these triads embody the same three conceptions, which I call after Kant, my Categories. I first named them Quality, Relation, and Representation. I cannot tell you with what earnest and long continued toil I have repeatedly endeavored to convince myself that my notion that these three ideas are of fundamental importance in philosophy was a mere deformity of my individual mind. It is impossible; the truth of the principle has ever reappeared clearer and clearer. In using the word "relation", I was not aware that there are relations which cannot be analyzed into relations between pairs of objects. Had I been aware of it, I should have preferred the word "Reaction". It was also perhaps injudicious to stretch the meaning of the word "Representation" so far beyond all recognition as I did. However, the words "Quality", "Reaction", "Representation" might well enough serve to name the conceptions. The names are of little consequence; the point is to apprehend the conceptions. And in order to avoid all false associations, I think it far the best plan to form entirely new scientific names for them. I therefore prefer to designate them as Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. I will endeavour to convey to you some idea of these conceptions. (MS 439 (1898))
Heidegger (who was, like Peirce, also highly influenced by both Kant and Scotus) can be see as doing with his ontological analysis in Being and Time this Grammatica Speculativa. That is the conditions of entities having any meaning. An inquiry into their Being. One can quickly see from the above that Peirce sees this analysis as requiring what he terms thirdness. Derrida's On Grammatology can easily be read as an extended analysis of the problem of attempting to think these things without thirdness. Peirce's firstness relates to the qualities we intellectually understand - the properties of a thing. Peirce's secondness are the brute facts, events and reactions. Roughly the ontic realm. Peirce's thirdness is the place of habits and signs and this is where Derrida takes things up since Heidegger doesn't focus on signs much. Derrida explicitly attacks Husserl's phenomenology as avoiding this analysis in terms of thirdness this while praising Peirce's phenomenology.
The difference between Husserl's and Peirce's phenomenologies is fundamental since it concerns the concept of the sign and of the manifestation of presence, the relationships between the re-presentation and the originary presentation of the thing itself (truth). On this point Peirce is undoubtedly closer to the inventor of the word phenomenology: Lambert proposed in fact to “reduce the theory of things to the theory of signs.” According to the “phaneoroscopy” or “Phenomenology” of Peirce, manifestation itself does not reveal a presence, it makes a sign. One may read in the Principle of Phenomenology that “the idea of manifestation is the idea of a sign.” There is thus no phenomenality reducing the sign or the representer so that the thing signified may be allowed to glow finally in the luminosity of its presence. The so-called “thing itself” is always already a representamen shielded from the simplicity of intuitive evidence.
So I think that Peirce's thirdness, Heidegger's ontological difference and Derrida's differance are all closely related. But are they the same "thing?" I don't think so. But that's a more complex issue I wish to take up next. I'll just note that in "Différance" Derrida himself says, "There is no simple answer to such a question." He continues.
In a certain aspect of itself, différance is certainly but the historical and epochal unfolding of Being or of the ontological difference. The a of différance marks the movement of this unfolding.
And yet, are not the thought of the meaning or truth of Being, the determination of différance as the ontico-ontological difference, difference thought within the horizon of the question of Being, still intrametaphysical effects of differance? The unfolding of différance is perhaps not solely the truth of Being, or of the epochality of Being.
Which I take to imply that differance is more general than the ontological difference.
BTW - those interested in Derrida's critique of Husserl's phenomenology in terms of Peircean phenomenology might wish to read Joseph Ransdell's "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?" Unfortunately his discussion is primarily focused on Husserl and ignores the issues brought up by Heidegger and Derrida.
"Which I take to imply that differance is more general than the ontological difference."
I would think it has to be. Practically speaking, he "reads closely" other kinds of texts outside philosophy, and even sees a binary between philosophy and literature. So differance would have to certainly be more general than ontology since it's even more general than any philosophical discourse itself. Theoretically, he admits differance isn't stable and there will be an infinite chain of concepts to replace it (from his essay "differance"). Heidegger, within differance, could only think Being in terms of "the highest being present" so now he's not going to make the same mistake (which he might have done later with his concept of Justice) by making differance the "real" issue and just naively have it supercede Being as the "transcendental signified."
I think it's important to bring saussure in at this point in addition to Pierce since Derrida's contention with Saussure illustrates the "infinite chain" of which differance is yet just another signified. The signifieds are not stable like Saussure thought they were, but unstable as Saussure could only ultimately think them in metaphors of signifieds.
The commentary seems to be directed towards the failure of language which is always necessarily speaking as if it were outside the "text". If we look at it from the perspective that language "speaks us", then it would tell us that the content of our minds -- without arguing over the direction of the causal arrows -- must structure the world(or be structured by the world) along the lines of creating these binary oppositions within unstable signifieds. Christopher Norris believes differance is a priori, a way the mind structures the world (like Kant). I agree that might be what Derrida thought except noting my above expansion of that idea. Now one might consider such a definition to be just another project in ontology, but it's also at the same time what makes a stable ontology impossible and demands differance to be more general than ontology, being simultaneously a commentary on the instability of the diachronic construct -- ontology -- as well as the instibility of the diachronic construction of the instability of ontology....
and this sentence...
this one too...
and whatever else I say times 100. zzzzt! shh!
While I really like some of Norris' commentaries on Derrida, I'm not sure I agree with him here. I have a few of his books at home. When I get a chance I comment on some of them.
I think the issue of Kant that you bring up is important. Clearly this is tied to both what Peirce is doing and what Heidegger is doing. What are the conditions that allow knowledge to be possible. Peirce moves away from talking about knowledge to talking about signs and belief roughly as a stability in signs. (What he terms habits) Heidegger makes an interesting move after his "turn" to thinking the problem from the inverse of what he does in Being and Time. (Perhaps due to failures in that proces - although that's debatable) Derrida, as I understand him, questions the entire Kantian approach of an inside and outside. I think Derrida intends this as a critique of Heidgger as well. In effect, especially in "Differance" I see him arguing that differance is what makes the ontological difference possible. So by general it doesn't just mean of more wide application but also general as what grounds the ontological difference. This gets into his discussion of how it is older.
Eventually, perhaps following on Heidegger's turn, Derrida takes up Levinas as the question of what is more primordial: the Question or the Promise.
Clark,
"In effect, especially in "Differance" I see him arguing that differance is what makes the ontological difference possible."
I agree, which is why I said, "Heidegger, within differance, could only think Being in terms..."
Now, D says,
"I wish to underline that the efficacy of the thematic of differance may very well, indeed must, one day be superseded, lending itself if not to its own replacement, at least to enmeshing itself in a chain that in truth it never will have governed."
1) Do you agree with me, that this statement means the "non-concept" of differance itself may be more primordial, but it is not, ultimately primordial?
2) Do you agree with me, that the reason why differance makes being possible is the same reason differance will be superseded?
3) Do you agree with me, that Derrida believes signifiers are not tied to their signifieds?
4) Do you agree that 3) gets to the heart of the matter of Heidegger's ontology, what makes it possible, but also is ultimately what undoes it?
He follows Heidegger, that the key to understanding Being lies in the difference between Being and beings, and in particular, the forgotten distincion between the two. So Being is understood in the binary Being/being and presence/presencing. The illusion of what is present being made possible by these collapsed distinctions. Analogously, in the familiarity of our home langauge, the difference between the signifier, or actual trivial phonemes, and the signified, the "concepts" is forgotten. The very sound of a naughty word SEEMS to contain the essence of that word. So Heidegger is very close to discovering "differance." But he's not quite there, because as Derrida tries to show, presence as the final signified becomes a signifier, the signifier of the signifier (or trace of the trace), or it traces the collapse of the distinction between what is present and presencing. (i think i got that right at least) That all hinges on signifieds not being fixed, and Heidegger not quite grasping it -- or at least that's what it seems to me. Hence, that's why I say it's important for Derrida to cover himself with 2)
Gad, that's getting a bit ahead of where I'm prepared to argue. I'll simply say that I think there is a fruitful approach of thinking through this in terms of neoPlatonism. More specific discussions to come over the coming weeks.
To your specific claims.
1. I think that differance fulfills a role similar to the role matter does in Plotinus as opposed to Being. This gets into the big debate over whether/how Derrida is a mystic and the distinction between differance and Being. But ultimately I'd agree with your comments.
2. I'm not sure by what you mean by "differance makes being possible." I take both Derrida and Heidegger as ontic realists. That is the objects are real and mind independent but that the objects to us have to be constituted which brings us back to the Kantian issue.
3. I think Derrida doesn't believe that signifiers/signified are tied together in a fixed fashion. That is, he adopts a more Peircean view.
4. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "undoes."
One quick additional point. Is the question of Being understanding Being or understanding the relationship of beings to Being? It seems they are different questions.
One last thought as I sit here. I think it's a good question. I think Heidegger focuses in on the positive aspects in his Destruktion and perhaps even in his ontological difference whereas Derrida focuses in on the negative with Deconstruction and with differance. But it's a good question and I'm still thinking about it.
As I said, I think Derrida in neoPlatonic terms is focused on "the Other" as Matter or ultimate differencing whereas Heidegger is focused on "the Other" as Being or ultimate source. So it may well be that both need to be combined.
But you've reached exactly the point where my own belief becomes quite unsure.
BTW - if you are interested in this question, you might wish to check out some of Matthew Halteman's writings. I found his stuff by accident and he's kindly sent me some of his drafts since I guess not to many people around are studying this issue. I think he's largely right. He's got a monograph coming out sometime that's an expansion of his thesis from Notre Dame which directly engages these issues.
The question of Being as positive is wrapped up in Heidegger's later work and is wrapped up in what is usually translated as Enowning (Ereignis in the German).
I think Derrida and Heidegger, as I said, are doing the same thing, but I think there is simultaneously a misunderstanding going on with regards to what Derrida is critiquing. As I said, I think Heidegger largely ends up retracing much of the logic and argument of Plotinus. (There's an excellent thesis on this as well as Sikka's Forms of Transcendence although Sikka focuses in on medieval neoPlatonists)
Derrida's focus isn't on what flows in to allow us to see beings as beings. That is the no or negation within nothing as something positive. Rather he wants to see the no as place. Thus his ruminations on the khora or receptical of the Timaeus. This ends up getting into semiotics and what allows us to think through these.
The issue of differance and ontological difference can perhaps be seen as two sides of the same movement. This double is also found in Plotinus and to a lesser extent in the later neoPlatonists. One can look towards Being and the dialog/inquiry along those lines or look away from Being towards privation or matter with the equivalent inquiry.
I thus think that ultimately both are necessary.
Derrida fought against this, by the way. Thus his critique of negative theology. I don't think he's really successful for a variety of reasons that tend to get complex.
Ok, I'll stop derailing this discussion and watch for your upcoming stuff on Plato. But a quick response to a couple points.
"I take both Derrida and Heidegger as ontic realists"
Yeah, I asked the question wrong, I didn't mean being, but the ontology of being.
"I'm not quite sure what you mean by "undoes.""
I thought that was one of D's words. ;) I meant that the opposition between Being and beings, and the erasure of the distinction between the two is fundamental to what Being is. Heidegger I take it, is trying to looking beyond western metaphysics in that inquiry. But in that stretch, he asks about the "unique name" for Being and instead of in the end, escaping western metaphysics, he's given us the poster child example of logocentricism. Being would be "undone" (unbuilt or deconstructed -- I thought it was a Derridian term but could be mistaken) in the reversal of showing it to be a free-floating signifier rather than a "transcendental signified."
"It seems they are different questions."
You got me, it's above my head. But if I had to take a wild stab in the dark, I'd say that from Derrida's view, the question might be what Being "is", but what being "is" is necessarily tied to the distinction between Being and beings -- understanding Being in itself is impossible.
I'll definitely read your link.
I'm not convinced Derrida is completely correct with his criticisms of Heidegger. As I said, you've touched directly upon what I've been studying the last year. But unfortunately I've been so busy I haven't studied it as much as I wished.
My inclination is that Heidegger still has a dialog of absence and so can't be said to be focused in an analysis that falls prey to presence the way traditional philosophy does. Yet, at the same time, clearly many of Derrida's critique are correct. Heidegger still invokes presences. Derrida's book, Voice and Phenomena, actually has some of the best essays on this topic in my opinion. There's one, whose name escapes me, that is purportedly about Husserl's semiotics but is really an extended discussion of Plotinus, albeit indirectly.
Anyway, I mentioned way back that my one big question with Derrida is over the type-token distinction and that this is also where some have critiqued his use of Peirce. I think you can see that this is tied to the above.
So I'll probably focus in on the Derrida - Peirce issue but I think it ends up being a discussion of the Derrida - Heidegger issue as well.
One last comment, then I promise to shut up on a topic that is clearly very, very esoteric. (So far as I can find, only a few philosophers in the world are even examining these issues)
In neoPlatonism proper there are two kinds of matter. One is called intelligible matter and is a difference between the intelligible realm and the realm of soul or life. Then there is matter proper which is absolutely Other and absolute privation. I suspect, although I've not examined Plotinus' arguments here carefully enough, that this distinction of the two matters in Plotinus may well correspond to the ontological difference and Derrida's differance. Once again, this is just pure speculation at this point.
OK, one last comment. This discussion of Kant's second edition of the Critique by Peirce seems relevant. I especially like this analogy:
A thing may be said to be wherever it acts; but the notion that a particle is absolutely present in one part of space and absolutely absent from all the rest of space is devoid of all foundation. In like manner, the idea that we can immediately perceive only what is present seems to be founded on our ordinary experience that we cannot recall and reexamine the events of yesterday nor know otherwise than by inference what is to happen tomorrow. Obviously, then, the first move toward beating idealism at its own game is to remark that we apprehend our own ideas only as flowing in time, and since neither the future nor the past, however near they may be, is present, there is as much difficulty in conceiving our perception of what passes within us as in conceiving external perception.
The parallel to both Heidegger and Derrida should be obvious.
Thanks for the additional comments. I'll make it easier for you and not respond. I assume you're going to have upcoming posts fleshing out the "neoPlatonis" idea.
To a degree. That was what I was studying this year, only I've just not had the time to dedicate to it like I wanted. C'est la vie I guess.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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