some thoughts on Derrida and Heidegger

Hm, I just finished a paper on Derrida where I end up being a bit critical. And I'm afraid of doing that because (a) I really don't feel confident enough with Derrida to be certain I know what he's saying, and (b) he's far too slippery to be able to get a solid grip on, and whatever I say about him is almost guaranteed to mischaracterize him. I think I might send you a copy of the paper, but I'll say a few words here because this is where we get to share our thoughts and because I can't really expect you to read a long paper now or anytime soon, especially considering how negligent I've been in replying to you.

So the short version of my concern with Derrida is, effectively, that he seems to assume that ordinary language is inescapably metaphysical, and I don't buy that. And his own language seems only to engage with a metaphysical tradition. For instance, for Derrida, a proper name is an impossible ideal of univocity, a word that takes up its meaning into itself, and this ideal is impossible because the iterable structure of language means that every word can be repeated in ever new contexts, and so can never be fully "proper." Sure, good point, and I think that the iterability of language is something that's worth exploring and insufficiently explored in the analytic tradition. But for all that, we still have proper names. "David" is one. "Kevin" is another. In calling "David" a proper name, I'm not latching myself on to some sort of metaphysics of presence, I'm just distinguishing the way this word is used from the way a word like "horse" is used. That distinction has its ordinary uses, and I'm not sure I see how it's ineluctably metaphysical.

I guess what I'm saying is that ordinary language isn't always already caught up in metaphysics, but rather that metaphysics arises naturally from ordinary language. If a Socratic questioner were to push an ordinary person to explain just what he meant by a "proper name," that questioner might push our ordinary person into a position of making claims about univocity and all the rest. But that's not the same thing as saying that those claims about univocity were always already implicit in the way that person was using language.

Sorry, I'm short on time as usual, and I don't think I'm going to be able to flesh these thoughts out in detail. But maybe I will send you my paper, and you can feel free to respond to either the long paper or these shorter thoughts.

In other news, I just yesterday read Heidegger's "What Are Poets For?" I have to confess to having limited patience for later Heidegger, all the while knowing that I should be finding this stuff more interesting and that lots of people I respect (Derrida not least of all) think it's terrific stuff. I think part of the barrier for me is that Heidegger's writings are like these vacuum tubes that suck even the slightest breath of humour from the air, and I can't help but think, if this guy is trying to get at the meaning of life, how can he approach it without a sense of humour? Despite the difficulties I find with Derrida's writing, I'm able to persevere because he makes me smile.

But that's maybe beside the point. The thing that I found most astonishing was the context for the piece. He first wrote it in 1946, and opens by characterizing ours as a "destitute time." In what way is 1946 Europe destitute? Could it have anything to do with a genocidal fascist German regime that devastated the continent through war and slaughtered millions in unspeakably cruel ways? Well, not in so many words. The real problem, it seems, is technology. And while of course a few million dead isn't a great thing, the underlying root cause is a technological mindset that's most closely linked to the bourgeois capitalists who defeated this genocidal fascist German regime that Heidegger was uncomfortably closely allied with. And the solution to all our problems, it seems, is to get rid of these bourgeois capitalists and get back in touch with our roots the way that Heidegger is trying to.

He wrote all this in 1946. The gall!

Besides which, I think this techno-phobia that a lot of European intellectuals of Heidegger's generation share (Wittgenstein not least of all) is a bit short-sighted. It feels like grandparents complaining about how they didn't need iPods back in their day, and that vinyl worked just fine. I mean, I grant that there are a lot of things about the modern world that concern me, but I also feel a clear-headed critique of the modern world can't come from a place of totally not understanding it, and not wanting to. It reminds me of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, in which he launches an ill-advised and somewhat comical rant about Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson that shows that he's really unable to find anything interesting about pop culture, and so is unable to find anything interesting or intelligent to say about it.