32 ideas
| 21887 | Derrida focuses on other philosophers, rather than on science [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: We should focus on other philosophers, and not on science. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21888 | Philosophy is just a linguistic display [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is entirely linguistic, and is a display. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21896 | Philosophy aims to build foundations for thought [Derrida, by May] |
| Full Idea: Derrida points out that the project of philosophy consists largely in attempting to build foundations for thought. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 1.04 | |
| A reaction: You would first need to be convinced that there could be such a thing as foundations for thinking. Derrida thinks the project is hopeless. I think of it more as building an ideal framework for thought. |
| 21893 | Philosophy is necessarily metaphorical, and its writing is aesthetic [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: All of philosophy is necessarily metaphorical, and hence aesthetic. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21892 | Interpretations can be interpreted, so there is no original 'meaning' available [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Because interpretations of texts can be interpreted, they can therefore have no 'original meaning'. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 20925 | Hermeneutics blunts truth, by conforming it to the interpreter [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
| Full Idea: Derrida worried that hermeneutics blunts the disruptive power of truth by forcing it conform to the interpreter's mental horizon. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction 3 'The heart' | |
| A reaction: Good heavens - I agree with Derrida. Very French, though, to see the value of truth in its disruptiveness. I tend to find the truth reassuring, but then I'm English. |
| 20934 | Hermeneutics is hostile, trying to overcome the other person's difference [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
| Full Idea: Derrida described the hermeneutic impulse to understand another as a form of violence that seeks to overcome the other's particularity and unique difference. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction App 'Derrida' | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about 'violence', but Derrida was on to somethng here. The 'hermeneutic circle' sounds like a creepy process of absorption, where the original writer disappears in a whirlpool of interpretation. |
| 21895 | Structuralism destroys awareness of dynamic meaning [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Structuralism destroys awareness of dynamic meaning. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21934 | The idea of being as persistent presence, and meaning as conscious intelligibility, are self-destructive [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: The tradition of conceiving being in terms of persisting presence, and meaning in terms of pure intelligibility or logos potentially present to the mind, finds itself dismantled by resources internal to its own construction. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Glendinning says this is the basic meaning of de-construction. My personal reading of this is that Aristotle is right, and grand talk of Being is hopeless, so we should just aim to understand objects. I also believe in propositions. |
| 21883 | Sincerity can't be verified, so fiction infuses speech, and hence reality also [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Sincerity can never be verified, so fiction infuses all speech, which means that reality is also fictional. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21882 | Sentences are contradictory, as they have opposite meanings in some contexts [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Sentences are implicitly contradictory, because they can be used differently in different contexts (most obviously in 'I am ill'). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21881 | We aim to explore the limits of expression (as in Mallarmé's poetry) [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The aim is to explore the limits of expression (which is what makes the poetry of Mallarmé so important). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 4756 | Derrida says that all truth-talk is merely metaphor [Derrida, by Engel] |
| Full Idea: Derrida's view is that every discourse is metaphorical, and there is no difference between truth-talk and metaphor. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Pascal Engel - Truth §2.5 | |
| A reaction: Right. Note that this is a Frenchman's summary. How would one define metaphor, without mentioning that it is parasitic on truth? Certainly some language tries to be metaphor, and other language tries not to be. |
| 21877 | True thoughts are inaccessible, in the subconscious, prior to speech or writing [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: 'True' thoughts are inaccessible, buried in the subconscious, long before they get to speech or writing. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction | |
| A reaction: [My reading of some Derrida produced no quotations. I've read two commentaries, which were obscure. The Derrida ideas in this db are my simplistic tertiary summaries. Experts can chuckle over my failure] |
| 19053 | Logic would be more natural if negation only referred to predicates [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: A better proposal for a formal logic closer to natural language would be one that had a negation-operator only for (simple) predicates. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Presupposition [1960], p.27) | |
| A reaction: Dummett observes that classical formal logic was never intended to be close to natural language. Term logic does have that aim, but the meta-question is whether that end is desirable, and why. |
| 19052 | Natural language 'not' doesn't apply to sentences [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Natural language does not possess a sentential negation-operator. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Presupposition [1960], p.27) | |
| A reaction: This is a criticism of Strawson, who criticises logic for not following natural language, but does it himself with negation. In the question of how language and logic connect, this idea seems important. Term Logic aims to get closer to natural language. |
| 21878 | Names have a subjective aspect, especially the role of our own name [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: We can give a subjective account of names, by considering our own name. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21889 | 'I' is the perfect name, because it denotes without description [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: 'I' is the perfect name, because it denotes without description. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21879 | Even Kripke can't explain names; the word is the thing, and the thing is the word [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Even Kripke can't explain names, because the word is the thing, and also the thing is the word. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 14742 | It can't be indeterminate whether x and y are identical; if x,y is indeterminate, then it isn't x,x [Salmon,N] |
| Full Idea: Insofar as identity seems vague, it is provably mistaken. If it is vague whether x and y are identical (as in the Ship of Theseus), then x,y is definitely not the same as x,x, since the first pair is indeterminate and the second pair isn't. | |
| From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence: seven appendices [2005], App I) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; Gareth Evans 1978 made a similar point] This strikes me as begging the question in the Ship case, since we are shoehorning the new ship into either the slot for x or the slot for y, but that was what we couldn’t decide. No rough identity? |
| 21890 | Heidegger showed that passing time is the key to consciousness [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger showed us the importance of transient time for consciousness. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21880 | 'Tacit theory' controls our thinking (which is why Freud is important) [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: All thought is controlled by tacit theory (which is why Freud is so important). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction | |
| A reaction: This idea is said to be the essential thought of Derrida's Deconstruction. The aim is liberation of thought, by identifying and bypassing these tacit metaphysical schemas. |
| 21884 | Capacity for repetitions is the hallmark of language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The capacity for repetitions is the hallmark of language. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21935 | The sign is only conceivable as a movement between elusive presences [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The sign is conceivable only on the basis of the presence that it defers, and moving toward the deferred presence that it aims to reappropriate. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
| A reaction: [Glendinning gives no source for this] I take the fundamental idea to be that meanings are dynamic, when they are traditionally understood as static (and specifiable in dictionaries). |
| 21930 | For Aristotle all proper nouns must have a single sense, which is the purpose of language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: A noun [for Aristotle] is proper when it has but a single sense. Better, it is only in this case that it is properly a noun. Univocity is the essence, or better, the telos of language. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 5 | |
| A reaction: [no ref given] His target seem to be Aristotelian definition, and also formal logic, which usually needs unambiguous meanings. {I'm puzzled that he thinks 'telos' is simply better than 'essence', since it is quite different]. |
| 21933 | Writing functions even if the sender or the receiver are absent [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: Writing can and must be able to do without the presence of the sender. ...Also writing can and must he able to do without the presence of the receiver. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
| A reaction: In simple terms, one of them could die during the transmission. This is the grounds for the assertion of the primacy of writing. It opposes orthodox views which define language in terms of sender and receiver. |
| 21894 | Madness and instability ('the demonic hyperbole') lurks in all language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Madness and instability ('the demonic hyperbole') lurks behind all language. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21886 | Meanings depend on differences and contrasts [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Meaning depends on 'differences' (contrasts). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21931 | 'Dissemination' is opposed to polysemia, since that is irreducible, because of multiple understandings [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: The intention to oppose polysemia with dissemination does not aim to affirm that everything we say is ambiguous, but that polysemia is irreducible in the sense that each and every 'meaning' is itself subject to more than one understanding. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 5 | |
| A reaction: The key point, I think, is that ambiguity and polysemia are not failures of language (which is the way most logicians see it), but part of the essential and irreducible nature of language. Nietzsche started this line of thought. |
| 21885 | Words exist in 'spacing', so meanings are never synchronic except in writing [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Words only exist is 'spacings' (of time and space), so there are no synchronic meanings (except perhaps in writing). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 18885 | Kripke and Putnam made false claims that direct reference implies essentialism [Salmon,N] |
| Full Idea: Kripke and Putnam made unsubstantiated claims, indeed false claims, to the effect that the theory of direct reference has nontrivial essentialist import. | |
| From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence: seven appendices [2005], Pref to Exp Ed) | |
| A reaction: Kripke made very few claims, and is probably innocent of the charge. Most people agree with Salmon that you can't derive metaphysics from a theory of reference. |
| 21891 | The good is implicitly violent (against evil), so there is no pure good [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Even the good is implicitly violent (against evil), so there can be no 'pure' good. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction | |
| A reaction: Is good implicitly non-violent? Appropriate anger seems to be good behaviour, and I can't see why it is impure. Maybe anger and violence lack the control needed for pure goodness. |