I promise to get back to the other discussions. Hopefully tonight. But I got in the mail Leonard Lawlor's Imagination and Chance: The Difference Between the Thought of Ricoeur and Derrida. There was a great little section on Derrida and metaphor that I thought was good as an introduction. I've not had a chance to read the book yet. (Lots of books in the reading list before it) But I've come the last while to really like Lawlor's writings. I find that he's very good at finding little subtle but important aspects of thinkers I've missed. Most enjoyably he's excellent at putting fairly difficult figures into larger context. Given that Derrida studied under Ricouer and also given how much I've enjoyed Ricouer's own writings, I'm really looking forward to this book.
This first quote is from a discussion of one of Derrida's early and more important works, "White Mythology." It is interesting for understanding the difference between Derrida and Ricouer since Ricouer discusses it in his The Rule of Metaphor. Derrida then responded in "The Retrait of Metaphor" (which I've not read).
The reason I bring up the quote is because I really think it explains well a key facet of Derrida's thought. I've discussed it before relative to Godel's theorem. But here it is conceived of relative to the problem of metaphor.
The basic argument is the following (All page numbers to Lawlor's text):
Premise 1. Metaphor is a metaphysical concept. It is not a tool designed for a philosophical project. It is not an arbitrary X. It is "a remainder (reste) from metaphysical discourse, a discourse from which it cannot be entirely separated." (12)
Premise 2. The terms that are philosophy's system of operative terms have a metaphoric aspect. They arise from a common or unspecialized language. In philosophical discourse they acquire metaphoric sense and then eventually a conceptual determination. Discourse then assumes the conceptual determination but the metaphor remains. (12-13)
The basic idea is that to give a determinate definition that can class elements for a set one has to define in terms of other terms. Yet any of those terms is partially metaphoric due to their place in common language. To avoid that problem and use clearly defined terms one has the same problem. So there is always the vicious infinite regress.
This is an argument hardly unique to Derrida, of course. It's basically the old argument against Plato's forms and thus is thousands of years old. My personal feeling, however, is that the approach Derrida takes has an echo of Plotinus and the neoPlatonists. (Lawlor doesn't discuss that aspect, of course.)
Derrida calls the essential impossibility of dominating metaphor "the law of supplementarity." The law implies that the definition of philosophical metaphor possesses too much metaphor and the field [set of entities meeting the definition] too little. Because the field of philosophical metaphor lacks the metaphor that makes te definition of philosophical metaphor possible, the field always needs a supplement. Because the definition participates in the field, it always possesses too much metaphor. . . . (14)
In other words there is always a supplement. Something that escapes our attempts to dominate. For the neoPlatonist this supplement to the intelligible ideals was the One. Derrida, now pursuing Hegel, arrives at a similar argument. Once again analyzing Hegel's attempts at idealization we follow the same argument only with idealization being a metaphorization. Hegelianism becomes an attempt at the intellectual forms without the One of neoPlatonism which exists as the supplement. (Others have made this critique of Hegel - I found this paper by accident earlier today analyzing a philosopher from my Alma Mater at Dalhousie University.)
Speech and Phenomena, arguably one of Derrida's most important texts, follows "White Mythology," only moving the same argument to the level of an analysis of the self and of language. I'll skip the discussion of self, although it's very interesting and arrives at a position similar to Heidegger's notion of Daesin's essential temporality. When one moves to language though we arrive at the common position we recognize in Derrida.
The irreducible "intertwining" of language with vidual (and thus silent) auto-affect. . .makes the transition. . . to [Derrida's discussion of] language. Because language, for Husserl, is iterable (meanings as well as phonemes and graphemes), language, too, is infinite or indefinite. Language transcends any singular use of it; after my death language remains. Thus, each attempt (by me or by any finite subject) to understand the totality of language will be incomplete. Language is always more that itself; language, however, is always less than itself. Each time I hear or speak, read, or write, I produce a new language which the past linguistic system lacks. This other language needs to be understood as well, and so on. . . language is always more and less than itself. A certain indecision (more and/or less) always remains. The relation can never saturate itself; it metaphorizes the self and language without end. (16)
Looks like a great book-- I'll have to pick it up. I, too, have enjoyed Lawlor's works on Derrida and Husserl.
Thanks for the heads-up.
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