Derrida's Philosophy of Philosophy: Saussure and Derrida

Copyright (C) by P. Bornedal

Saussure’s Notion of the Sign

• On the classical view of language, language is simply a naming process; words names things, as for example when weattach the word ‘tree’ to that actual tree. On this view, the world is made up of things, and language is made up of words,and there is a one-to-one relation between words and things. To a tree corresponds the word ‘tree’ ; to a bird correspondsthe word ‘bird’; etc. The classical model is represented in figure (c) below.• Saussure’s linguistics changes this view. The word is in itself a complex, which is described as a ‘sign’; and the sign doesnot unite a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image. The sign is therefore a psychological unit, because both theconcept and the sound-image are psychological units. The concept of a tree is not the actual tree, but the general idea of atree, and the sound-image is the mental imprint of the sound ‘tree’.• The ‘linguistic sign’ as a ‘two-sided psychological entity’, is represented in figure (a) below. The arrows indicate that thetwo parts are intimately related. It is difficult, even impossible, to think of the word ‘bird’ without thinking about theconcept bird. The word ‘bird’ immediately triggers the idea of a bird. And reverse, if you think of a bird, it is almostimpossible not also to think the corresponding sound-image ‘bird.’ So, the two parts are intimately related.

• •• This combination of concept and sound-image now makesup the sign. The sign is a psychological unity of the image of athing (the concept) and the image of a word (the sound-image). Saussure calls the concept for the signified (lesignifie), and the sound-image the signifier (la signifiant). Andhis final model of the sign looks like figure (b):


• We have the two ‘masses,’ sound and thought. Separately, none of the entities constitutes a linguistic unit. First in theirattachment, the two masses are divided into distinct units, representing meaningful and comprehensible signs.Saussure: “Thought, chaotic by nature, is made precise by this process of segmentation [de se préciser en se décomposant].But what happens is neither a transformation of thoughts into matter, nor a transformation of sounds into ideas [nimatérialisation des pensée, ni spiritualisation des sons]. What takes place is a somewhat mysterious process by which‘thought-sound’ evolves divisions, and language takes shape with its linguistic units in between those two amorphousmasses [entre deux masses amorphes].”• Supporting this idea, Saussure suggests two models representing the interaction of the two layers. The first modelunderscores their interaction: the signified and the signifier interact as air-pressure acts in the formation of waves in theocean. Between the two layers of air and water, there is an invisible interaction going on, represented in Saussure’s modelby vertical punctuated lines. The linguistic sign is an entity represented not by any of the layers, but by the fragile-looking,punctuated strings between them.• The second model underscores the inseparability of the layers: within language, signified and signifier are organized liketwo sides of the same sheet of paper. Cutting the paper means cutting front and back, recto and verso, signified andsignifier, simultaneously; changing one side implies changing the other. However, although there are infinite possibilities ofconfiguring the paper, recto and verso always stick together. No pair of scissors could separate the two sides from eachother. As Saussure states with yet another metaphor: as a unit, the sign is composed of sound-image and concept just aswater is composed of hydrogen and oxygen; “taken separately, neither element has the property of water.”• Derrida, in his criticism of Saussure’s sign-theory, disregards this emphasis on the interaction between, and inseparabilityof, signified and signifier. Derrida believes that insofar as Saussure suggests a structure according to which the sign on allappearances is a two-sided entity, he formally advocates a binary model of the sign, inseparable from metaphysics. ToDerrida, it is this formal notion of the sign that cannot be separated from the metaphysical tradition, and its allegedemphasis on ‘presence’: “The ‘formal essence’ of the sign [L’“essence formelle” du signe] can only be determined in termsof presence.”

The Inseparability of Signifier and Signified


• Saussure imagines that when two speakers talk, the dialogue starts out with theintroduction of a mental concept in the mind of one of the speakers, A, which is immediatelyassociated with a sound-image. In the concrete speech-act, the concept-sound association isactualized in the physical pronunciation of the word, and is in this actualization transmittedto the listener B, whose mind, in turn, deciphers the idea corresponding to the physicalsound-image. For example, the concept of dog in A is immediately translated to the sound-image ‘dog’ – and when transmitted to B, a decoding process equivalent but reverse to theencoding process takes place: the sound ‘dog’ in B is associated with the concept of dog.• This interaction, described as the ‘speech-circuit,’ constitutes Saussure’s initial analysis ofthe act of communication. According to the speech-circuit, there is an execution and areception side. In the communicative interaction, both speaker and auditor translateconcept into acoustic image, and acoustic image into concept: (c i) and (i c) [where c =concept, and i = image acoustique].• Derrida will criticize Saussure’s speech circuit, because If in the speech-act the conceptprecedes the sound-image (c i), the concept must consequently exist as something‘before’ the sign. The model presupposes that there are language-independent ideas orconcepts, which are prior to the linguistic expression. Secondly, the model suggests thatlanguage is a psychological fact located in and deriving from the brain of the individual. Bothof these ideas are at odds with what Saussure repeatedly and explicitly underscoreselsewhere in his work. Finally, the model illustrates the speech-circuit as symmetricalencoding and decoding. A encodes an idea, which B decodes, in this suggesting thatcommunication is distortion-free, that there is full symmetry between a speaker’stransmission of a message and a hearer’s understanding of the message.• Saussure’s model is preliminary, and it contradicts results Saussure arrives at later in hiswork. It is, however, this preliminary model that motivates Derrida’s deconstructivecriticisms of Saussure in his essays.• If there are ‘language-independent’ concepts/ideas before there are signs, Saussureconfirms the metaphysical tradition in the West, with its emphasis on ‘Presence,’ Derridabelieves.

Saussure’s Speech Circuit

Saussure:

“The starting point of the circuit isin the brain of one individual, forinstance A, where facts ofconsciousness which we shall callconcepts [que nous appelleronsconcepts] are associated withrepresentations of linguistic signsor sound patterns [des signeslinguistiques ou imagesacoustiques] by means of whichthey may be expressed.”Copyright (C) by P. Bornedal

• The entire sign unit refers to a thing outside its own unity, the unity of sound andconcept of a bird, refers to an actual bird, but the actual bird is not a part oflanguage. It is called the referent. We name first and foremost concepts; the sound‘bird’ is attached to the concept bird, but not to the real bird. The real thing has neverany sound attached.

• The attachment of a sound to a concept is arbitrary. There is nothing whatsoever in

the real bird that calls for the name ‘bird’; there is also nothing in the idea, bird, thatcalls for the name ‘bird.’ The sound-image could be whatever else, for example, theGerman ‘Vogel.’ In different languages sound-images change, while the concepttends to stay the same.

• This implies that the sign is arbitrary, and has the general implication that languageis arbitrary. The naming of this or that as this or that have no necessity whatsoever.There are no rational principles behind our choice of words, or more precisely, ofsignifiers.

• This insight Saussure also extends to other semiological systems. First, asemiological system is any sign-system. Language is our most important but not theonly one. The traffic lights is an example of a small semiological system: the red,yellow, and green lights have different meanings. One is supposed to ‘read’ and‘understand’ that meaning.

• Semiological systems are all arbitrary, exactly like language. The semiologicalsystem for greeting changes from culture to culture. In Western cultures you shakehands; in Russia you kiss; in China you bow; in Urban gang culture you knock yourclosed fist together. The signifiers are different, but they signify more or less thesame. There is no rational, no a priori, reason for choosing one over the other.

• So-called onomatopoeia and interjections are arbitrary. Onomatopoeia are word-images that have a likeness to the thing they signify; e.g., ‘boom’ for an explosion;‘cling-cling’ for the sound of glass against a hard object. Interjections are sounds suchas pain expressions, like ‘ouch,’ or animal sounds. The barking of a dog in English isexpressed as ‘woof, woof’; in other languages such expressions are different.

The Arbitrariness of LanguageRelation between sound-image ‘bird,’ the concept, bird, and the

real bird

The Semiological System


• If the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary, it is random, unmotivated, and established withoutconscious intention. No individual has decided that a specific word is to signify this concept or thing. The relationship musttherefore be accepted as given by each individual language user, and not something to be discussed. We do not get intodiscussion about why to call a bird a bird, because there is no higher reason why a bird should be called this or that.• Moreover, the individual language user has no freedom in choosing his language; he cannot privately decide that heprefers to call a bird a ‘burb.’ The individual has no power to change language.• In this sense language is immutable. When used in a community it is a fixed convention. It is also not something acommunity ‘agree’ upon, like a community can agree upon who is to become their mayor. Language is inherited frompreceding generations, and it has to be accepted as such. Thus, besides being arbitrary, language is conventional.Conventional in contrast to natural.• However, from a historical perspective, language is mutable. Historically languages do indeed change, and they dodevelop. Depending on whether we are talking about the individual language user or the historical process or development,language can be either immutable or mutable.• Change of language we can notice happens with the introduction of technological innovation. When the computerbecame more and more common about thirty-forty years ago, new terms started to enter the daily vocabulary signifyingdifferent aspects of computing. ‘Computer’ for one thing; ‘floppy-disc’; ‘hard-drive’; ‘operating system’; ‘software,’ etc.But language also changes by itself, like in Saussure’s example below:

Modern English Old English Transformation Modern

Singular Singular Plural Plural Plural

Foot Fot Foti Fet Feet

Tooth Tos Tosi Tes Teeth

Goose Gos Gosi Ges Geese

The Immutability and Mutability of Language


• Before Saussure one would study only the historical developments of language (e.g., how ‘feti’ changes into ‘fet’ into themodern ‘feet’). This type of study Saussure calls diachronic linguistics, it studies how language changes from one state intosome other state. However, Saussure noticed that one can also study language as a synchronic structure, implying that onestudies language in its present state; i.e., its grammar and sentence structure; how words relate to words, etc. The CD axisillustrates diachrony, the AB axis illustrates synchrony.• The speaker of a language is always confronted with the synchronic axis; to speak a language does not require anybody toknow its history. The two axes of language can also be compared to chess. A game of chess is a succession of states, it has ahistory, but every state make up a structure in itself, according to which the different pieces have different values accordingto the structure, not according to their given definition; a pawn can in some situations be more valuable than a tower. So,value is distributed according to the structure of different elements, not according to some given substance. Also like inchess, if one piece is moved it has repercussion for the entire system. The difference between chess and language ishowever that changes in a situation on the chess board is intended by the chess player, while changes in a languagestructure is never intended.• Saussure’s impact on structuralism is especially his emphasis on synchronic linguistics. That is, language is a system or astructure; it is unconscious to the human in its totality; it is arranged behind the back of the language user, or without hisintention;. Language therefore seem to control us in some way or other on which we are not aware.• Furthermore, since it is arbitrary, the relationship between the signifiers that are used to signify a certain concept is notgiven. The signifier do not correspond to a given reality. If for example our language has a distinction between gray andbrown, other languages may not have this distinction, and everything gray and brown may have only a single signifier.Whereas green and blue in our language are neighboring colors, some language may have a name for a distinctive colorbetween green and blue.• Since this is the case, we form, or at last, conceptualize our reality by means of language; language lets us see a distinctionbetween grey and brown; between an apple tree and a pear tree; between a dog and a cat.

C|

A------------B|D

SynchronicLanguage-system (Langue)

DiachronicHuman Language

Speech (Parole)


• Saussure emphasizes the arbitrary nature of the sign and the differential nature of the sign. These two characteristics areinseparable. There can be arbitrariness only because the system of signs is constituted solely by the differences betweenentities, and not by their substance or essence. The elements of signification function not due to the compact force of theirnuclei but rather due to the network of oppositions that distinguishes them and relates them one to another. “Arbitrary anddifferential,” says Saussure, “are two correlative characteristics.”• Reading the model above, we now understand that arbitrariness refers not only to the relationship between signifier andsignified; any sound can obviously represent any meaning, as this arbitrary relationship was well understood also beforeSaussure – for the obvious reason that people were acquainted with other languages, and knew that ideas and objects wereexpressed differently across national borders. More radically, if the unity of signified and signifier gains value in a context, itdoes not as unit have an already given meaning referring to an already given referent; the sign does not have an always-already fixed reference to the world. Consequently, there is a priori a motivated or natural connection neither betweensignifier and signified nor between sign and referent. Both of these relationships are now arbitrary, unmotivated, andconventional.• As value the word ‘warm’ applies differently in various contexts. For example, a beer is ‘warm’ around 20°C, but a cup ofcoffee is ‘cold’ at the same temperature; a ‘warm day’ in December may be a day where the temperature is just abovefreezing, while a ‘warm day’ in July is likely to be well above 20°C. Moreover, the word is used metaphorically, for exampleto describe personality: a person can be ‘warm,’ or have a ‘warm heart.’ ‘Warm’ has as such no a priori objective reference,but can refer to a whole range of different occurrences in our life-world. The concept is not fixed to a referent once and forall, and the concept’s meaning is not its reference. On the other hand, the sign is not arbitrary in the radical sense that ithas relinquished all reference to reality whatsoever, it still refers to the reality of temperatures. When the native language-user has internalized the idea that beer is warm at 20°C, then his complaints to the bartender over a warm beer describesfor all practical purposes the reality of a warm beer.

The Differential Nature of Language


• We see now expands his explanation of meaning. First, meaning resides in the interrelations of sound andconcept, signifier and signified, making up a psychological unit. Later, he emphasizes that meaning originatesthrough the differences between signs in the linguistic system itself. Now, it is a word’s contrast to other wordswithin the same system that determines meaning. In this latter case, Saussure produces a linear model where signsare conjoined like links in a chain, and where the specific locations in the chain determine the meanings of thesigns. Meaning is in this model described as value, while in the hierarchical model, it is described as signification.

• In an often-quoted passage, Saussure represents the linear model as a system of conceptual and phonicdifferences: “In a language there are only differences and no positive terms. Whether we take the signified or thesignifier, language includes neither ideas nor sounds existing prior to the linguistic system, but only conceptual andphonic differences arising out of that system [Dans la langue il n’y a que des différences sans termes positifs. Qu’onprenne le signifié ou le signifiant, la langue ne comporte ni des ideés ni des sons qui preexisteraient au systèmelinguistique, mais seulement des différences conceptuelles et des différences phonique issues de ce systeme].”

• We saw above, that according to the hierarchical model, the sign might appear to be an isolated and self-sufficientunit, and the model might give the misleading impression that meaning originates in the mind of the language-user.However, this reading stands corrected when signs, as values, are links in a chain, since meaning now originates as aproduct of a system that transcends the individual. In his new model, Saussure reconciles the two differentconceptions of meaning by depicting signs as units of signified and signifier following one another in a chain. AsParole, language has meaning; as Langue, language has value.

• It is Saussure’s linear model that inspires Derrida’s notions of Generalized Writing or Differance, as he argues thatsigns are first and foremost elements of a system, within which they have values before they have signification. InDerrida’s radicalized Saussurianism, there is ‘writing’ before there are ideas.

Saussure: “In Language there are only Differences without Positive Terms”


• We can trace Derrida’s problem with Saussure’s ‘psychologism’ back to the distinction between langue and parole(language-system and speech). Derrida is criticizing Saussure’s notion of parole, and isolates it from langue. It is in theexecution-side that language is problematically individualized as phono-logocentric speech; while to Saussure theexecution-side is entirely unproblematic. He instead states the rather obvious, namely that execution is always individual:“Execution is always individual, and the individual is always master of it. This is what we shall designate by the termspeech.” Saussure’s langue is indeed defined in terms of parole: Since each member of a linguistic community executeslanguage in a roughly similar way, Langue can be defined is terms of Parole as the average product of the totality ofspeakers of a community. So, to Saussure, there is no sharp distinction between Langue and Parole.• However, in Derrida’s reading the emphasis on execution underpins Saussure’s psychologism understood as a ‘phono-logocentrism’ – i.e., the metaphysical assumption that a subject speaks in unbroken proximity to a fully self-present,intentional, and rational self; the assumption that Presence (with capital P) governs all meaning production. While speaking,Derrida’s says, the subject “understands/hears itself speaking (s’entendre parle)” in the instance of enunciation. It istherefore self-present to its innermost intentions.• In this critical analysis of Saussure’s reiteration of metaphysical assumptions, Derrida refers to Saussure’s discussion of a‘natural’ or ‘true’ bond between signified and signifier, sense and sound. Derrida: The natural bond, Saussure says, the onlytrue bond, the bond of sound. This natural bond of the signified (concept or sense) to the phonic signifier would conditionthe natural relationship subordinating writing (visible image) to speech. [ . . . ] [Saussure] speaks of the ‘natural bond’between thought and voice, meaning and sound. He even speaks of ‘thought-sound’ [Il parle même de la ‘pensée-son’]. Ihave attempted elsewhere to show what is traditional in such a gesture, and to what necessities it submits. In any event, itwinds up contradicting the most interesting critical motive of the Course. . . . The theme of the arbitrary, thus, is turnedaway from its most fruitful paths (formalization) toward a hierarchizing teleology.• In Saussure’s reference to a “natural bond,” Derrida sees a contradiction to Saussure’s emphasis on the sign as arbitraryand unmotivated. On Derrida’s reading, arbitrariness implies that there can be no ‘natural bond’ between signifier andsignified. If signs are arbitrary and unmotivated, there is only the differential system of language, and this must excludeSaussure’s psychological and hierarchical signifier-signified model. “Now from the moment that one considers the totality ofdetermined signs, spoken, and a fortiori written, as unmotivated institution, one must exclude any relationship of naturalsubordination, any natural hierarchy among signifiers or orders of signifiers.”

Derrida’s Criticism of Saussure’s ‘Phono-Logocentrism’


• We mentioned that Saussure has two different explanations of linguistic meaning. In the beginning of his seminars, hemostly refers to the model we call ‘psychological’ in order to illustrate that meaning resides in the association of sound andconcept, signifier and signified. However, this explanation changes when he later emphasizes meaning as originatingthrough the differences between signs in the linguistic system itself. Now, it is a word’s contrast to other words within asystem of differences that determines meaning.

• Is this now an inconsistency in Saussure? In the first case, we have a hierarchical model where signifier and signified isconjoined; in the latter case, a linear model where signs are conjoined like links in a chain, and where specific locations inthe chain determine the meanings of the signs. In the first case, we have a ‘natural bond’ between sound and thought; inthe latter case, a purely arbitrary relationship between sound and thought. It is this first case that bothers Derrida, the ideaof sounds and thoughts being joined as with a ‘natural bond,’ and he objects that in language there is no ‘natural bond’ –and that Saussure seems to admit this himself when he later emphasizes the arbitrary and differential nature of language.Saussure is in other words guilty in self-contradiction.

• However, when Saussure talks about the signifier-signified relationship, he talks about the activation of language by aspeaker, he talks about parole. As parole (speech), sounds are joined to thoughts with a necessity that is social andconventional – but not with any universal or absolute necessity. When a speaker has internalized language, there mustnecessarily exist a ‘bond’ between sound and thought; a bond that prevents the speaker from using language privately. Aprivate language is an arbitrary language from a social-conventional point of view, and such an arbitrary-private language isnot permitted, neither by Saussure nor Derrida.

• We can object to Derrida that a language can only become a social reality if individuals acquire an internal representationof it. Necessarily, a ‘social fact’ must have a reality ‘in the brain’ of the individual language-user, implying that the individualspeaker, in both the execution- and reception-side of language, is compelled to reproduce a ‘bond’ between signifier andsignified – a bond fundamentally and a priory arbitrary, although, from the speaker’s empirical point of view, a bond thatmust appear as necessary. The sign is arbitrary, but not to the individual language-user, who has no power over thelinguistic sign, and cannot change it according to his or her personal whims.

A Problem with Derrida’s Criticism of Saussure’s ‘Natural Bond’


• So, arguing contrary to Derrida, there can be nothing in Saussure’s initial model that contradicts his later notion of thearbitrariness and conventionality of the sign. When communicating, we articulate a system that we are not, and do notneed to be aware of in the instance of enunciation, but the system is still there with all its relevant characteristics. If inSaussure’s model of communication, the speech-circuit describes an event in which the speaker is unaware of linguisticrules, these rules are activated, not suspended, in the speech-act event. Furthermore, the fact that every unit within alinguistic system must be defined negatively through its contrast to other terms in the system does not rule out that unitswithin the system have meaning to the individual. If a sound-image automatically unlocks its corresponding concept in alistener, this is true only if the listener has already learned the language and its relevant associations between signifier andsignified, as these associations have emerged and developed in distinction to other sign-units.

• It is as if in Derrida, speech in itself constitutes a lapse into metaphysics. It is in speech, Derrida finds ‘phono-logocentrism’– i.e., a spontaneous commitment in the speaker to consolidate his utterances in a notion of Presence inherited from themetaphysical tradition. However, this seems an indefensible assertion; especially if we consider it from an evolutionary-biological perspective, where speech evolved as one of our means of survival. Consequently, the fact that humans speak isconditional upon survival, and must have about as little to do with metaphysics as our immune-systems.

• Instead of speech, Derrida believes in the play of differences. This play of such – the playing of the play – he labelsdifférance, as something more abstract than any particular binary difference (e.g., night-day, black-white, man-woman,etc.). Derrida’s différance becomes rather the condition of the possibility of oppositions and conceptuality. For the samereason, différance is not understood as simply a word or a sign, because then we are back to that unity of sound andthought, signifier and signified, that he wants to think beyond. Writing, or rather the text as such, becomes his preferredillustration of différance; the text appears as such a system of differences; it appears to be the best example of Saussure’sidea as signs conjoined as links in a chain. Derrida generalizes: meaning is not something emerging from somewhere inparticular, but is merely a chain of components. Meaning is merely texts, and for these texts, there are always more texts.Finally, as Derrida put it in a remark that provoked many philosophical readers, ‘there is nothing outside the text.’

Text Versus Language; Text versus World


• As another label of differance or text, Derrida invents his notion of writing or more precisely, generalized writing. Instead ofmeaning (whether it is seen as emerging in Plato’s forms, in the mind, or in the empirical reality of experiences), there is to Derridaalways only writing – not simply as the activity that we engages ourselves in everyday when we write an email, but as the generalterm for a system of differences – ergo: generalized writing. That idea certainly has strong family resemblances with Saussure’s ideaof language as a “system of differences without positive terms”; so strong that it is impossible not to see it as a variation of the same.• Still, when Saussure In the brief chapter in his Cours, “Graphic Representation of Language,” discards writing, this becomes inDerrida’s opinion a moment that conclusively establishes Saussure as phono-logocentric. Saussure’s motive for discarding writing isthat he regards it as insignificant and irrelevant to the study of linguistics. Writing is regarded as a mere technical addition tolanguage, insignificant on its own account. However, to Derrida, Saussure is discriminating against writing, repressing writing, whilefavoring sound, the phonic signifier. Saussure, in his ‘repression’ of writing, confirms his partiality for the phono-logocentricassociation between phoneme and logos, sound and thought.• In Saussure, the rejection of writing is related to his discussions of the psychological and hierarchical side of the sign, theconcept/sound relationship. Writing is not part of this relationship since it exists for the sole purpose of representation, as he says.Since representation is a mechanical activity, Saussure argues that writing does not deserve a place in the general study of language.Only spoken language deserves study; however, writing has managed to ‘usurp’ a main role, for a particular reason we will comeback to in just a moment.• However, if we carefully read Saussure’s text, Derrida’s discrimination-charge is rather dubious. Derrida overlooks that Saussurealso discards sound, the phonic signifier. A purely graphic signifier is as insignificant for the production of meaning as is a purelyphonetic, and neither graphical writing nor phonetic sound can be part of the essence of language. These two physical aspects areinsignificant. This must imply that Saussure cannot be seen as discriminating between sound and writing, since they are equallyinsignificant in the production of meaning. If he does not only ‘repress’ writing, but sound too, we cannot conclude that hesubconsciously inherits a metaphysical tradition pursuing the promotion of speech while demoting writing.• Derrida may be right in saying that Saussure argues for a ‘natural bond’ between sound and sense, in order to emphasize theunnatural bond between writing and sense. However, there is a reason for and an argument behind this position that must beunderstood before we embark on a crusade against linguistics when it espouses the spoken word. Firstly, as a linguist, Saussurecannot simply deny the relevance of languages with only an oral tradition, or deny them a place in linguistic study – the compellingreason to reject writing for Saussure is ironically not to discriminate against all the native languages that have not developed awriting-system. Secondly, it is surely important to notice that Saussure regards writing solely as graphical writing, and only as such isit secondary to spoken language. When it has managed to ‘usurp’ a main role, it is because it offers a more palpable and corporealrepresentation of the sign than does sound, and because it is easier for humans to understand the visual than the audibleimpression.

Derrida: Saussure Represses Writing


• It is in assuming this superficial sense of writing Saussure argues that if one studies the development and evolution of alanguage, one ought not study this development from its written manifestation. Historically, people first speak, then writein order solidify the spoken word. A strong indication that this is the natural order to things is of course that we find cultureswhere writing never developed, but no cultures where a people only write, but never developed speech. This is thehistorical-empirical given order, and it is only possible for Derrida reverse this ‘hierarchy’ if changing the meaning of theconcept of writing.• This is obviously what he does, and it is in this he produces a so-called paralogism; and it is as such his argument for therepression of writing turns ‘paralogistic.’• What is ‘paralogism’? We know the notion from Kant, where it is explained as a false syllogism. Let us recapitulate somerudimentary logic: when one constructs a syllogism, the first and second premise has to share a predicate, the so-called‘middle’ term. The middle term must apply to and be specific for both premises; if it is not, no conclusion can be drawn.Kant contends that the first and second premises of Descartes’ syllogism of substance share no middle term, thus turningthe syllogism into a paralogism. Therefore, a syllogism, which on appearances has logically valid form, has, under scrutiny, infact an invalid para-logical form:

The Paralogism

SYLLOGISM VERSUS PARALOGISM

p is qr is pTherefore, r is q

p is qr is p’Therefore r is q

In the paralogism, p’ indicates a term, which on appearances is identical to p,but disguises a fundamental difference. The paralogism disguises itself as asyllogism, but the ‘p’s it discusses in the first and the second premise are twodifferent things, described here as p and p’.Copyright (C) by P. Bornedal

• We see Derrida employing the same false reasoning when he objects to the alleged ‘repression’ of writing he believes hedetects in Saussure and in Western Thinking in general.

• Derrida cannot allow himself to make the absurd claim that language primarily evolved from written symbols, then wasinterrupted in this development, and forced to continue along the path of a vocal language. Derrida therefore changes thetrivial notion of ‘writing’ into his generalized notion. To make his argument palpable, Derrida in other words produces aparalogism, i.e., drawing a conclusion from a syllogism where the middle term in the minor and the major have twodifferent meanings. We will in the table below call the trivial notion of writing gw (graphical writing) and the generalizednotion GW (Generalized Writing):

DERRIDA’S PARALOGISMS OF WRITING

DERRIDA’S PARALOGISM OF WRITING, FIRST VERSION

p (GW) is qr is p’ (gw)-------------------Therefore, r is q

(Generalized) Writing is the differential-arbitrary system of linguistic values.Saussure is ‘repressing’ (graphical) writing.------------------------------------------------------------------------------Therefore, Saussure is repressing the differential-arbitrary system of linguistic values.

Derrida replaces graphical writing – which is what Saussure specifically warnsabout – with Generalized Writing, which is an entirely different notion,involving all meaning-production.


Saussure: “Language is a system of differences without positive terms”

Derrida: There is only Difference; you believe in a sign with meaning, that escapes your own

law. There is only differences; differences as such, that is, Differance .


Derrida's Philosophy of Philosophy: Saussure and Derrida

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