Clark - thanks for your long outline. I don't, at the moment, have to time to
go through it. I understand you appreciate Derrida - while I, to be honest,
totally dislike him. I've read and re-read the three texts I have by him...but
I don't see him as understanding the Peircean semiosis, with its modal
categories and its triadic semiosis. And - you also seem to support Plato's
outlines - again, I can see them fitting in with Derrida but not with Peirce.
I also prefer: object-representamen-interpretant, as I consider that it's
confusing to call the representamen a 'sign'.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Clark Goble
To: Peirce-L
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 3:03 PM
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Derrida (was: Seeing things)
I just wanted to get to this since I’d forgotten Halloween is this weekend so
I may not have as much free time as I’d thought. I wanted to address some
points I’d raised with Edwina. I started this last week and it’s gotten a
little longer than I expected. My apologies but it seemed necessary for the
topic at hand. I’ll probably have to go silent until next week. So my apologies
if I don’t answer your comments or corrections.
On Oct 23, 2015, at 2:12 PM, Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]> wrote:
The way I read Derrida (and I admit, some time ago) in his 'Linguistics and
Grammatology' and 'The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing', they were
filled with Saussurian terms (signifer and signified; distinction between
language and speech) which he didn't seem to question. And his focus on Peirce
was only a few pages - he never examines the triadic semiosic action. He seems
more to focus on the symbol - but this is not the semiosic action. That is, for
Derrida, the focus is on rhetoric - which is all about 'signs' - but not the
triadic semiosic action. Derrida even calls the 'thing itself' (which i take to
be the Dynamic Object) as a 'representamen'!! (Of Grammatology, p 49).
Saussure is the ideal foil for Derrida due to the place his lectures came to
have in structuralism. Structuralism of course dominated a lot of philosophy
and analysis, especially in Europe, during the first half of the 20th century.
More importantly though Saussure’s theory of sign is a dualism of
object:interpretant rather than a trichotomy of object:sign:interpretant. (At
least in the form as used. I’ve had some people tell me this isn’t how Saussure
himself necessarily conceived of it.) This conception of sign in turn applies
for Derrida not just to Saussure and structuralism but also to Husserl and the
problem of the inside and out within that conception phenomenology. As such an
analysis of Saussure is the perfect for an understanding of an underlying
problem Derrida sees in philosophy. Not just Saussure or Husserl but also
Descartes and the logical positivists and more broadly.
This is often cast by Derrida as logocentrism which I’d define as a logic
that denies vagueness or a move towards determinism (semiosis).
I have identified logocentrism and the metaphysics of presence as the
exigent, powerful, systematic, and irrepressible desire for such as signified
(On Grammatology, 49)
That is there is a desire and logic for a complete and present sign we always
have access to. For Derrida the ideal example of this error is a certain way of
reading Plato such that the forms are always absolute and already complete
forms. A kind of stasis ala Parmenides rather than the flux of Heraclitus.
European structuralism and Saussure in particular are a manifestation of this
stasis in how they conceive of the sign.
Derrida’s using Saussurean terms not because he agrees with Saussure but
because he wants to show how they undermine themselves. Effectively the
critique is of Saussure from a more Peircean perspective but in terms of
Saussurean terminology. This can be confusing if one doesn’t keep straight what
is going on. (At least it can be for me as I tend to think in Peircean
terminology) While the explicit Peircean section is just a few pages the
analysis fundamentally runs through the entire first section of the book. (And
in some ways through the Rousseau section as well, although I’ll confess I
don’t like that part nearly as much)
One should keep in mind that in the 50’s Derrida came to Harvard with one of
his major projects studying Peirce for a full year. So we should be very
careful in dismissing Derrida’s use of Peirce. While Peircean scholarship in
the 50’s was clearly nothing like it is today, Derrida would have read all the
main papers of Peirce along with quite a few not widely dispersed in that era.
Whether we agree with Derrida or not, I don’t think we can say Derrida was
being casual with Peirce.
As for semiotic action and the symbol, there clearly are parts Derrida’s not
focusing on. However I think in particular “New Elements” is very important to
understand Derrida’s project. Again we can criticize how Derrida reads Peirce.
I recognize most dismiss Derrida’s reading. But I think we have to be careful
in our criticisms.
The thing itself should be considered in terms of Husserl's and Heidegger's
phenomenology where they saw the project as a return to the things themselves.
As such their phenomenology projects can in certain ways be seen as a kind of
return to direct realism whether of the scholastic form or even of the Scottish
renaissance. Of course there are key differences from say the direct realism of
Reid and company. For both Peirce and Derrida the direct realism is mediated
whereas the classic medieval direct realism is unmediated as I recall. (I think
there were variants though) As for why Derrida uses representamen for thing
itself I think “New Elements” gets at this issue.
However beyond that in On Grammatology Derrida is concerned with the relation
of the thing itself and the sign.
The sign is usually said to be put in the place of the thing itself, the
present thing, “thing” here standing equally for meaning or referent. The sign
represents the present in its absence. It takes the place of the present. When
we cannot grasp or show the thing, state the present, the being-present, when
the present cannot be presented we signify, we go through the detour of the
sign. We signal. The sign, in this sense, is deferred presence….And this
structure presupposes that the sign which defers presence is conceivable only
on the basis of the presence that it defers and moving towards the deferred
presence that it aims to appropriate. (“Différance", 9)
Within the analysis of Saussure we’ll thus have Peirce’s final interpretant
(which is the completeness of the sign through a temporal process it is moving
towards as a limit) put up against Saussure’s transcendental signified (which
is the perfection of the sign as already present). The thing is both the object
as source of semiosis as well as the interpretant towards which semiosis leads.
Again this is made quite clear in a Peircean frameworks in “New Elements."
Allow me first to clarify one of my comments to you.
Quickly off the top of my head (so beware errors on my part) what Derrida
means by rhetoric is what Peirce calls speculative grammar. (I’ll see if I
can’t write more on this later)
I didn’t put that very well. I don’t mean Derrida reduces speculative grammar
to speculative rhetoric or vice versa. Quite the opposite. He’s after how they
are irreducible and produce a certain tension.
I’m not sure when Peirce first introduces these terms but I know the
distinction plays a key place in “Of Reasoning in General” (EP 2:20) The idea
is that the study of semiotics is split into speculative grammar, logic, and
speculative rhetoric. Speculative grammar arises out of some medieval texts
falsely attributed to Duns Scotus.
The typical argument against Derrida’s use of Peirce is that Peirce’s
semiotics is concerned with logic whereas Derrida rejects such logic. I think
this just gets Derrida wrong but I recognize it’s a common way of reading the
use of Peirce in On Grammatology. It’s true Derrida’s aim is to deconstruct the
sign. However we always have to keep in mind that the sign Derrida deconstructs
is Saussure’s sign which is a dualism not a trichotomy as in Peirce. By
extension this will also apply to phenomenology involved in dualisms (which is
how Derrida reads Husserl, although there are ways of reading him different
ways)
What Derrida does is replace the term “sign” with the term “gramme” and
semiotics" with “grammatology.” The criticism is that Derrida wants to avoid
all categories and that with this move he’s rejecting Peirce’s sign and
semiotics. I’m not quite sure this is accurate. Instead what I think he wants
to do is note how all categories are themselves based upon signs and are
symbols. (That is categories as signs - which can get confusing because we can
talk of the categories of signs) Thus the very notion of category itself
depends upon the play of signs. (Or if you don’t like the word play replace it
with process or semiosis) A sign is interpreted by making an other sign. This
means that stable categories (pure secondness) and undermined if they are in
fact thirdness. Derrida is then concerned with how this applies to signs
themselves. Further the shift in terminology is to break with Saussure, not
Peirce. The later terminology he adopts is that of trace as the Peircean sign
which he gets out of the Timaeus. In the Timaeus there’s a section dealing with
the creation of elements. The elements are made by the form and the receptical
(khora) producing the elements. Interestingly Peirce’s cosmology in various
places makes a similar move with potential becoming actualness via signs. I’m
convinced Peirce is also influenced by the Timaeus although that’s getting us a
bit afield.
Now Derrida’s move here poses no problem for Peirce since of course his
notions of mediation and continuity require this. Any sign can itself be broken
down into sub signs ad infinitum. Derrida then applies this in a more
Heideggarian realm. Being is within philosophy treated as a thing, as being
subject to the category. If it is a manifestation of this logic of thirdness
though (process) then how philosophy conceives of Being is just wrong. (See
below when I discuss Peirce’s “New Elements”) The problem is that Being as
Being (or thirdness as thirdness for that matter) can’t be understood only as
representation the way say analytic philosophy does. Analytic philosophy misses
the iconic and indexical parts. More importantly it misses signs as this
essential thirdness. Philosophers seem always to want to make signs a matter
just of object and interpretant and avoid what makes that relationship possible.
Those making the criticism of Derrida in terms of Peirce typically (although
not universally) make the mistake of treating thirdness as just this sort of
representation (especially representations as conceived of in analytic
philosophy from Descartes to the present) Again “New Elements” is crucial here.
Going back to Peirce’s categories in “Of Reasoning in General” we have the
following.
logic: reference of signs to objects
speculative grammar: general conditions of signification
speculative rhetoric: relation of signs to interpretants
By speculative grammar Peirce is concerned with how signs must function in
order to have a sense. The idea from the medieval era is that meaning is
independent of truth but is tied to signs. But note how Peirce’s speculative
grammar entails that notions of truth simply can’t function as they do
especially in the analytic tradition. (But also the earlier continental
tradition with Kant through Hegel up to Husserl) Peirce can deal with this
because of the way the final interpretant functions. But again, the final
interpretant as such is always absent. It is never something present as we have
with Descartes or the most popular interpretations of Plato. We may have a true
statement but it is true because it is the same kind of sign as the sign of the
final interpretant. But we don’t have an absolute certain way of having truth.
And this disruption between truth and sign is possible because signs are
thirdness and not secondness.
Going back to Derrida this aspect of Peirce means that speculative grammar
and speculate rhetoric can’t be collapsed into one an other. We then have the
connection between rhetoric or signs to interpretants and grammar or signs in
themselves. The issue is that because of grammar we have an indefinite form of
reference. (Signs signify their object with a guess; interpretants rise out of
this logic of guessing) It is this gap between sign and object that lets us
know we’re even dealing with signs. Yet with speculative rhetoric we have this
notion of interpretants and the very idea of a final interpretant.
This is why Derrida emphasizes that “the thing itself is a sign.” This gets
at categories and in particular the Saussurean sign where we only have the
object and interpretant in a dualism. This play of the sign is absent. Things
are never static. This also is the issue of inside/outside for Husserlian
phenomenology where we have this dualism rather than a thirdness. (Although
again there are some key places to read Husserl in a different way) It’s
precisely this issue of a problem in Husserl that is why Derrida turns to the
problem in Saussure and by extension all structuralism in the first half of the
20th century.
Now we get to the key place in On Grammatology for rhetoric. When Derrida
speaks of rhetoric he’s talking of the third category just as in “On Reasoning
in General.” He says it “has the task to ascertain the laws by which every
scientific intelligence one sign gives birth to another.” That is
interpretants. But note the subtle shift. The interpretant is itself an other
sign. So there’s this essential connection between speculative rhetoric
(interpretants) and speculative grammar (signs). To have a final interpretant
in the traditional (non-Pericean) sense is to have an absolute stop. But
Peirce’s final interpretant is not a final stop. It is a place of stability in
semiosis. It’s not a stop so much as a completeness. The final interpretant are
the interpretants semiosis arrives at given sufficient time. But it doesn’t
mean semiosis has stopped. (This is why in other places Derrida appeals to
Nietzsche’s use of the Eternal Round which is just the playing out in infinity
of all signs such that we can conceive of completeness)
There are some big places to critique Derrida here. However they simply
aren’t the places he usually gets critiqued. The big question I’d put up for
Derrida would be how to deal with Peirce’s conception of substance. However
even here, at least in the early Peirce, things get tricky. Early on as Peirce
is revising Kant he has five categories: Being, Quality, Relation,
Representation, Substance. (W 2:49-59) However he drops Being and Substance
because they are unthinkable limits and thus have no meaning in terms of how we
think. Kelly Parker does some great work on this — although we should be
careful to distinguish the early Peirce from the mature Peirce. The mature
Peirce in “New Elements” is a bit more cautious. Allow me an extended
quotation. (Sorry, quoting from my Kindle so I don’t have page numbers -
emphasis is mine.)
Every sign that is sufficiently complete refers to sundry real objects. All
these objects, even if we are talking of Hamlet’s madness, are parts of one and
the same Universe of being, the “Truth.” But so far as the “Truth” is merely
the object of a sign, it is merely the Aristotelian Matter of it that is so. In
addition however to denoting objects, every sign sufficiently complete
signifies characters, or qualities. We have a direct knowledge of real objects
in every experiential reaction, whether of Perception or of Exertion (the one
theoretical, the other practical). These are directly hie et nunc. But we
extend the category, and speak of numberless real objects with which we are not
in direct reaction. We have also direct knowledge of qualities in feeling,
peripheral and visceral. But we extend this category to numberless characters
of which we have no immediate consciousness. All these characters are elements
of the “Truth.” Every sign signifies the “Truth.” But it is only the
Aristotelian Form of the universe that it signifies. The logician is not
concerned with any metaphysical theory; still less, if possible, is the
mathematician. But it is highly convenient to express ourselves in terms of a
metaphysical theory; and we no more bind ourselves to an acceptance of it than
we do when we use substantives such as “humanity,” “variety,” etc., and speak
of them as if they were substances, in the metaphysical sense. But, in the
third place, every sign is intended to determine a sign of the same object with
the same signification or meaning. Any sign, B, which a sign, A, is fitted so
to determine, without violation of its, A’s, purpose, that is, in accordance
with the “Truth,” even though it, B, denotes but a part of the objects of the
sign, A, and signifies but a part of its, A’s, characters, I call an
interpretant of A. What we call a “fact” is something having the structure of a
proposition, but supposed to be an element of the very universe itself. The
purpose of every sign is to express “fact,” and by being joined with other
signs, to approach as nearly as possible to determining an interpretant which
would be the perfect Truth, the absolute Truth, and as such (at least, we may
use this language) would be the very Universe. Aristotle gropes for a
conception of perfection, or entelechy, which he never succeeds in making
clear. We may adopt the word to mean the very fact, that is, the ideal sign
which should be quite perfect, and so identical,— in such identity as a sign
may have,— with the very matter denoted united with the very form signified by
it. The entelechy of the Universe of being, then, the Universe qua fact, will
be that Universe in its aspect as a sign, the “Truth” of being. The “Truth,”
the fact that is not abstracted but complete, is the ultimate interpretant of
every sign.
There’s a lot in this paragraph. Peirce has shifted from his earlier phase.
He’s willing to use metaphysical language. Particularly Aristotle conceive of
in a more neoplatonic way. However he doesn’t feel committed to it. The key
though is conceive the universe in its aspect as a sign. Second there’s a type
of direct realism which I think is what Heidegger’s externalism commits him to
and that by extension the realist interpretation of Derrida commits him to.
(Remember though for Derrida the things themselves that Heidegger is committed
to are signs because we can only think in signs) So what Derrida says rhetoric
gets us to is this universe in its aspect as a sign. Speculative rhetoric can’t
fully be separated from speculative grammar. The final interpretant is not
something abstracted and present but is the completeness of semiosis. This is
that unthinkable limit that Peirce refers to early on. (It’s just that now
Peirce is willing to use metaphysical language while being explicit he’s not
committed to it)
I should add that “New Elements” has some analysis of Being that is just
amazingly profound and I don’t think gets commented on enough. In particular
how he discusses the copula. He makes an interesting note about Greek permits
the copula to be admitted and it’s not until Abelard when logic is done in
Latin that the copula is seen as constituent of logic. He then notes how
logicians have treated the copula. Yet he notes that logically the mark of the
junction, where the copula goes, is an index. Then he notes, "the only way in
which any index can ever signify anything; by involving an icon. The sign
itself is a connection.” Heidegger and Derrida’s work placing being under
erasure (often the copula in various forms with a big X through it always
reminds me of this part of “New Elements."
Peirce next condemns the German practice of tying all this to judgment in
place of propositions (which are these signs with the index by icon). Finally
he makes a masterful analysis in terms of feelings of how iconicity of symbols
functions and enables indices. He then makes a comment that could have been an
aporia written by Derrida. (And it appears this underlies a lot of the analysis
Derrida does in On Grammatology)
It is quite certain therefore that in this feeling we have a definite
instance of a symbol which, in a certain sense, necessarily signifies what it
does. We have already seen that it can only be by an accident, and not by
inherent necessity, that a symbol signifies what it does. The two results are
reconciled by the consideration that the accident in this case is that we are
so constituted that that feeling shall be so interpreted by us.
The nature of the constitution is revealed in the climax of “New Elements”
found in its final paragraph. It’s the idea of the human as symbol and thus
part of semiosis. That is our judgments aren’t judgments in the German sense
Peirce condemns (and that we find in America as the Vienna Circle comes to
dominate analytic philosophy for a time) Rather they (and we) are merely the
selection of greater powers in this process of semiosis. A remarkably radical
claim constitutive of his semiotic realism.
Peirce then next return to a cosmology fairly similar to his early thought.
Now it is of the essential nature of a symbol that it determines an
interpretant, which is itself a symbol. A symbol, therefore, produces an
endless series of interpretants. Does anybody suspect all this of being sheer
nonsense? Distinguo. There can, it is true, be no positive information about
what antedated the entire Universe of being; because, to begin with, there was
nothing to have information about. But the universe is intelligible; and
therefore it is possible to give a general account of it and its origin. This
general account is a symbol; and from the nature of a symbol, it must begin
with the formal assertion that there was an indeterminate nothing of the nature
of a symbol. This would be false if it conveyed any information. But it is the
correct and logical manner of beginning an account of the universe. As a symbol
it produced its infinite series of interpretants, which in the beginning were
absolutely vague like itself. But the direct interpretant of any symbol must in
the first stage of it be merely the tabula rasa for an interpretant. Hence the
immediate interpretant of this vague Nothing was not even determinately vague,
but only vaguely hovering between determinacy and vagueness; and its immediate
interpretant was vaguely hovering between vaguely hovering between vagueness
and determinacy and determinate vagueness or determinacy, and so on, ad
infinitum. But every endless series must logically have a limit.
Leaving that line of thought unfinished for the present owing to the
feeling of insecurity it provokes, let us note, first, that it is of the nature
of a symbol to create a tabula rasa and therefore an endless series of tabulae
rasae, since such creation is merely representation, the tabulae rasae being
entirely indeterminate except to be representative.
[...]
In so far as the interpretant is the symbol, as it is in some measure, the
determination agrees with that of the symbol. But in so far as it fails to be
its better self, it is liable to depart from the meaning of the symbol. Its
purpose, however, is to represent the symbol in its representation of its
object; and therefore, the determination is followed by a further development,
in which it becomes corrected. It is of the nature of a sign to be an
individual replica and to be in that replica a living general. By virtue of
this, the interpretant is animated by the original replica, or by the sign it
contains, with the power of representing the true character of the object. That
the object has at all a character can only consist in a representation that it
has so,— a representation having power to live down all opposition. In these
two steps, of determination and of correction, the interpretant aims at the
object more than at the original replica and may be truer and fuller than the
latter. The very entelechy of being lies in being representable. A sign cannot
even be false without being a sign and so far as it is a sign it must be true.
A symbol is an embryonic reality endowed with power of growth into the very
truth, the very entelechy of reality. This appears mystical and mysterious
simply because we insist on remaining blind to what is plain, that there can be
no reality which has not the life of a symbol.
[...]
A chaos of reactions utterly without any approach to law is absolutely
nothing; and therefore pure nothing was such a chaos. Then pure indeterminacy
having developed determinate possibilities, creation consisted in mediating
between the lawless reactions and the general possibilities by the influx of a
symbol. This symbol was the purpose of creation. Its object was the entelechy
of being which is the ultimate representation.
The importance of “New Elements” when considering Derrida just can’t be
underestimated. It’s here that we understand the relationship of icon and index
in feeling so as to enable symbols to function the way they do. The other place
of attack on Derrida relative Perice is usually that Derrida neglects the icon
and especially index. I think reading “New Elements” carefully shows why
Derrida’s use of symbol doesn’t fall prey to this attack.
The final interpretant really should be thought of in terms of mathematical
limits such as we find in calculus.
Finally quite from denying logic Derrida’s whole point is to show how logic,
rhetoric and grammar are irreducible. It’s only by examining them carefully
that we realize this and thereby see how logic has to proceed. Peirce is pretty
clear on this, especially in key papers like “New Elements.” Those who take
Derrida as rejecting or undermining logic just miss that what he is taking
seriously is the relationship of logic (or how signs relate to objects) with
signs in themselves and how signs relate to interpretants. The problem is that
philosophers want to deny in various ways this irreducible nature. Or, as
Peirce typically puts it, they are committed to nominalism: the idea of
object:name rather than object:sign:interpretant.
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