[atreestump]

Yeah, I’m looking at it as my first Wittgenstein guide more than anything. I will look for more on Derrida elsewhere to contrast with this book. Do you have any recommendations for understanding Derrida more comprehensively, now that I get the basics?

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[thetrizzard]

Yeah, I’m looking at it as my first Wittgenstein guide more than anything. I will look for more on Derrida elsewhere to contrast with this book. Do you have any recommendations for understanding Derrida more comprehensively, now that I get the basics?

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Deconstruction engages key philosophical texts, these texts are strategically targeted as they have been instrumental in perpetuating specific themes / claims in Western Philosophy, his method of Deconstruction (which draws from many thinkers especially Nietzsche, Heidegger & Lacan) is a method which unpicks these texts and exposes their unconscious logic….Given the many influences in his work and Derrida’s style, he is notoriously difficult to pin down, this is partly intentional…having a good knowledge of these influences / thinkers is essential really….but secondary sources are a good way in, it would be prudent to read a few of these to get a feel for him rather than taking the first person you read ‘as gospel’….I found this book useful

Derrida (Fontana Modern Masters) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0006860575/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_pJuEybP03P3AE

After that I’d recommend Derrida: A Critical Reader by David Wood

[Socrates]

Great, I will definitely check that out after The Foucault Reader.

[thetrizzard]

Great, I will definitely check that out after The Foucault Reader.

The Foucault Reader is Quality

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[atreestump]

I just bought both of those books.

[Burk]

Words and remarks are always upon something, and by some specific perspective. So not just signified and signifier, but the specific form which two unifies within a text. Which only can be understood by implement of a person, existing in between things and other people and their words and remarks. Text without a writer may seem objective because, if you get rid of subject of existence you would end with categories of possible existences, or history of text thus everything would be within a text (without a context). To get to objective world, you have to get rid of phenomenological, actual world which we live and talk in. This is just idealism. There’s always a material reason in non-material, abstract cultural changes. Culture doesn’t rule nature, flesh and blood man does, and man can not be reduced to culture or language. If anything signfiier is the one which is non-existent. Letters exist, language doesn’t. It’s one of possible functions of one form of technology, which can not be understood without both subject and existence. it doesn’t matter if signified and signfier are connected, mere existence of signifier implies something other than itself and someone other than subject, it’s existence can’t be reduced to it’s ”outlook” because reading itself is an action. Just by reading you experience something other than signifier, you imagine. Life isn’t a dream, language may be but again, experience or human can not be reduced to language. Derrida plays a fundementalist trick here, he can’t analyse human existence as it is, but he can analyse language, written preferably. As wittgestein before himself, his idealism isn’t very different than regular, logos based philosophy. he just instead of reducing existence to logos, expands logos (word) to existence. His atom is letter. Calling this any kind of materialism is a joke in itself. Objects aren’t packs of data, nor our experience of objects is. Only in language objects turns into packs of data, as if they would in a computer analyse. And any kind of self-structring form of system is idealist, and non-existent. We don’t experience derrida’s signify more than we experience plato’s realm of ideas. A word which doesn’t signify anything, isn’t a word. it’s a typo. A word can only be understood within a language. A language can only be understood within a society and material world. Without existing, signified, material world, we can’t even understand concept of diference since difference is in itself isn’t something that exists between braches of datas but something precedes data and knowledge. Difference would still exist if we couldn’t know anything, as long as we would exist as a body, or experience anything in any form. But without experience, knowledge itself knows no difference because knows no standarts or have no ”gaze”.

[atreestump]

Text without a writer may seem objective because, if you get rid of subject of existence you would end with categories of possible existences, or history of text thus everything would be within a text (without a context). To get to objective world, you have to get rid of phenomenological, actual world which we live and talk in. This is just idealism.

I’m pretty sure that Derrida is only saying that Writing is what speech aspires to, it’s not an exclusion of phenomenal experience. His position builds on top of the structuralist position, it carries the same logic even further in the same direction. Post-Strructuralists define two types of sign- the conventional and predictive on the one hand and an unconventional and anarchic sign on the other. It’s not a priority of the Sign over Objective Things and the Subjective Mind, but a priority of the Anti-Social Sign over the Social Sign.

The Signs move, multiply and are material. This discards all notion of objective ideas and it finally cuts off all connection with metaphysical philosophy. It’s material in an unusual sense.

There’s always a material reason in non-material, abstract cultural changes. Culture doesn’t rule nature, flesh and blood man does, and man can not be reduced to culture or language.

Let’s not say that language is all there is, rather what there is is structured like a language. Derrida is homing in on a position that is a center outside of the center, which of course will displace the anthropocentric point of view of humanism. I think it’s a question of valuing, as he is post-Nietzschean, that culture and history do not have priority over nature and vice versa, it’s just that culture can predominate over the nature which preceeded it through supplements. To me, how I have read him, he’s not excluding nature or culture, just revaluing the way we interpret.

If anything signfiier is the one which is non-existent. Letters exist, language doesn’t.

I don’t know how language could not exist if letters exist – just like how you can’t have light without dark, or raw without cooked.

It’s one of possible functions of one form of technology, which can not be understood without both subject and existence. it doesn’t matter if signified and signfier are connected, mere existence of signifier implies something other than itself and someone other than subject, it’s existence can’t be reduced to it’s ”outlook” because reading itself is an action.

As I have already mentioned, subject existence isn’t being excluded and language isn’t all there is. He’s saying there is a proliferation of forms over and above our deliberate intentions.

Just by reading you experience something other than signifier, you imagine.

Yes, which is why I don’t see any separation between subject and object here, they stand side by side. He’s saying a prerequisite exists with meaning – it presents itself simultaneously as written and read.

Life isn’t a dream, language may be but again, experience or human can not be reduced to language.

I said a ‘kind’ of dream and I also never said experience is a language, but rather it is structured like a language.

Derrida plays a fundementalist trick here, he can’t analyse human existence as it is, but he can analyse language, written preferably.

Yes, that sounds about right. I don’t know about you use fo the term ‘existence’ here though, maybe experience is more fitting.

As wittgestein before himself, his idealism isn’t very different than regular, logos based philosophy.

I’m not familar with Wittgenstein enough to comment here, nor am I Derrida for the most part, I am only relating back to what I have previously said.

he just instead of reducing existence to logos, expands logos (word) to existence. His atom is letter. Calling this any kind of materialism is a joke in itself. Objects aren’t packs of data, nor our experience of objects is. Only in language objects turns into packs of data, as if they would in a computer analyse. And any kind of self-structring form of system is idealist, and non-existent. We don’t experience derrida’s signify more than we experience plato’s realm of ideas. A word which doesn’t signify anything, isn’t a word. it’s a typo. A word can only be understood within a language. A language can only be understood within a society and material world. Without existing, signified, material world, we can’t even understand concept of diference since difference is in itself isn’t something that exists between braches of datas but something precedes data and knowledge. Difference would still exist if we couldn’t know anything, as long as we would exist as a body, or experience anything in any form. But without experience, knowledge itself knows no difference because knows no standarts or have no ”gaze”.

Derrida is explaining force and meaning. The process of signifying does not take place simply inside or outside of the brain, it takes place in a realm where inside and outside become irrelevant. As I have read, it is not idealism, it’s probably dualist monism if anything.

I think valuation in the explanations is important too, that signifiers are nothing more or less than the natural world, objects or subjects. So it’s not a self-structuring system, it’s a structure where subject and object are of the same value, whole, yet necessarily separate.

@”thetrizzard”

Maybe you have something to add here?

[thetrizzard]

Interesting essay

https://maritain.nd.edu/ama/Ciapalo/Ciapalo16.pdf

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[thetrizzard]

I’d be cautious about labelling Derrida as anything, to call him a metaphysical materialist assumes a fixed position in a system of thought, Derrida deconstruction would undermine such a notion….The deconstructive act involves 1) a vigilant opposition to any system that would grant absolute or primary status to any term whatsoever, be it speech, writing, structure, history, sign, logos, text, being, meaning, self, and so forth, and 2) an equally vigilant insistence on the need to re-utilize these very terms of untenable ontology, theology, and metaphysics in order to generate new discourse . One recognizes that the “reinscribed” terms are at perpetual risk of relapsing into metaphysics, but are indispensable if critical discourse is to continue its activity.

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[atreestump]

Thanks for the PDF, it will be useful to compare the ‘method’ of deconstruction with a more conventional reading- what I’ve read so far is very down to earth.

Thanks also for the ‘rules’ of deconstruction.

I was thinking of Metaphysical Materialism in the Wittgensteinian sense of using a ladder that is then thrown away. I find Nietzsche is like this too.

I have added the PDF you shared by uploading it to the forum itself, that way threads will not have holes in them due to dead links. Whereever possible, please upload PDFs directly to the site, but don’t worry if you can’t (I can’t figure out how on iPhone) I will, whenever I can, upload any PDFs shared myself.

[thetrizzard]

Ok brill I appreciate you facilitating uploads as I only tend to use either my iPad or iPhone

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[atreestump]

I think it’s possible to upload pdfs via Tapatalk too.

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[thetrizzard]

Here is a copy on Derrida from the Routledge Critical Thinkers Series, I haven’t read it myself, but it’s supposed to be an excellent introduction for those new to Derrida. Who wants to read it with me?

http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/Burt%20Glossator/Jacques%20Derrida%20-%20Nicholas%20Royle.pdf

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[atreestump]

We could open a thread for that specifically. I will read it with you.
[hr]
Reading group: https://ontic-philosophy.com/Thread-Jacques-Derrida-Nicholas-Royle

[thetrizzard]

[emoji1303]

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