The Letter and the Line: Discourse and Its Other in Lyotard (original) (raw)

Phenomenology, Logic, and Liberation From Grammar

Wittgenstein and Phenomenology, 2018

This chapter examines the rise and fall of 'Wittgenstein the phenomenologist', with a view to uncovering the role that this figure played in the transformation of the author of the Tractatus into that of the Philosophical Investigations. The story of his rise is that of an attempt to make good on commitments inherent to the early Wittgenstein's conception of language and logic. The story of his fall is that of an abandonment not only of those commitments but also of a conception of 'the task of philosophy' (NB, 2). 1 Wittgenstein's invocation of the notion of 'phenomenology' is striking: a figure from the canonical list of analytic philosophers seemingly aligning his work with that of a main strand in the Continental tradition. Philosophers are now much more open to the idea that figures from these two supposedly distinct traditions might have concerns in common. But the ultimate result of this good ecumenical work should surely be that we see not only the similarities between the thinkers in question but also their differences-the real differences now rather than those gestured at through the simplistic image of two distinct traditions; and my concern in the first half of this chapter is to point to a real difference, in the form of the distinctive motivation of 'Wittgenstein the phenomenologist'. If we are to understand the texts in which that figure has been sighted, we need to understand the specificity of that motivation-in particular, a concern to make good on logical commitments of the Tractatus. I will make my case by pointing to some connections with the concerns of another mysterious figure rumoured to inhabit the middle writings, 'Wittgenstein the verificationist'. Here too we find an interest in notions of 'immediate experience' and I will argue that the motivation of this figure and that of 'Wittgenstein the phenomenologist' is fundamentally alike; but this is first and foremost logical, a concern which a comparison with Husserl, Heidegger, or A. J. Ayer for that matter is unlikely to illuminate. 2 This reading may seem to confirm a particular vision of how the outlooks of figures like Wittgenstein and Heidegger differ and one with some basis in their texts. While the author of the Tractatus thought philosophical illumination required clarity about 'the logic of our language' (TLP preface), Heidegger declared that it was 'the destiny of the reign

Review of the Phenomenological Field and Derrida's Intervention

2014

In this survey of secondary sources on phenomenolog y I have located the problematic of an aporia that lies at its center. P henomenology has divided itself itself into transcendental idealism or empirical idealism and non-philosophy. In both these incarnations of p henomenology, Husserl’s transcendental idealism and the radical ein the philosophies of Heidegger, Levinas, Ricoeur, Blanch ot and MerleauPonty, lies a form of theoretical essentialism and blindness to the metacondition that structures phenomenology. It is diff erance, the space or interval between the transcendental and empirical w hich conditions and produces both the transcendental and empirical thro ugh the retrospective movement of the trace. Derrida’s cont ribution to phenomenology, as I will argue in this paper, is hi s discovery of the quasi-transcendental, or the interval between the t ranscendental and empirical which determines phenomenology.

Derrida on the history of phenomenology

In this paper, we have examined various aporias that afflict phenomenology-Husserl's phenomenological reduction cannot hold if the transcendental is separate from the empirical, indeed, nothing separates the transcendental and the empirical and thus they are essentially the same. We demonstrated that Heidegger's repeated attempts to inverse to negate metaphysics only reproduced metaphysics as a ghostly double that returned to haunt his anti-metaphysics which remained bound to its ontological structure and vocabulary. We showed through readings of Levinas, Ricoeur, Merleau-Ponty and Blanchot that their radical empiricisms and privilege of Other over the same repeated metaphysics like Heidegger, in negating it and reversing its structure, thus reproducing and affirming it paradoxically. In all these demonstrations we have shown that the impossibility of a text is precisely its site of possibility, deconstruction proceeds by exposing the limit of a text and then delimiting it towards the Other that it had repressed, its method is thus transgression and exceeding of limits imposed by a text towards its blindspots through exposing an aporia, and then proceeding to show the unthought of a text that needs to be thought in order to address this aporia.

Words and Things: The Problem of Constituting Phenomenological Meaning

Presented by invitation to the Marquette University Seminar on Phenomenology and Hermeneutics (Milwaukee, WI), March 27, 2003

Some years ago, during my dissertation defense, I was asked why phenomenology would want to speak to the rest of the world. The details of my reply escape me, but I do remember that I wasn't especially articulate. I have finally formulated a more lucid response: Husserlian phenomenology seeks to constitute a more fundamental meaning of the world by temporarily "bracketing" the various presuppositions of the different realms of human activity for the purpose of intuiting the essential structures of experience that appear to a consciousness purified by the method of the epoché. However, according to Husserl, phenomenology's task is not only to intuit these structures and thereby constitute phenomenological meaning, but to communicate this meaning to the various regions of human activity which it claims to ground through its activity. In doing so, phenomenology invites all of humanity to return to "the things themselves" that underlie all of our various preconceptions of these things, so that it may have a deeper understanding of the lived world common to all. This is why phenomenology must speak to the world-to live up to its own claim as being a first philosophy that contacts life and does so directly, thereby allowing us the possibility of seeing it again, as if for the first time. This is often forgotten about phenomenology: it is not only about intuition, but also about expression.

Why Phenomenology Could Not Commit the Linguistic Turn?

Horizon. Fenomenologičeskie issledovaniâ, 2022

Frege and Husserl are traditionally regarded as the precursors of the linguistic turn; however, the importance of their ideas for this event still is not fully comprehended. This article contributes to such comprehension: the principles of the linguistic turn in its analytical interpretation provided by Rorty are applied as an indicator revealing the commonality and difference of Frege’s and Husserl’s positions regarding key issues of their concepts. The connection of the philosophers’ ideas with the linguistic turn is viewed in the context of their interpretation of predicativity, propositionality, contextuality of meaning, and ways of categorization. The analysis conducted gives rise to distinguishing between Frege’s and Husserl’s referential schemes. It is based on the differences in the characteristics of the connection between perception and predication. In conclusion, the arguments against Frege’s and Husserl’s involvement in the linguistic turn are emphasized. These arguments stem from the idea of the primacy of sense over language fundamental for both philosophers who proceed from the fact that certain a priori logical relations underlie utterances or other acts. There is a more solid argument which does not allow considering Frege’s and Husserl’s legacies as its source. This argument consists in the fact that they regard sense as an objective, communicable, and universal phenomenon independent of its carriers, not inherently linguistic, and pre-logical which is due to its intentional nature according to Husserl and logical “indecomposability” of concepts according to Frege.

Language versus reality. The case for phenomenology and the Deleuzian `heresy'

Philosophical Inquiries, 2024

This article is an inquiry into the relationship of language, as a phenomenon within the world, with the reality of the world as such and the ontological dimensions that underlie a conception of language in these terms. In doing this and in highlighting a kind of interiority of language with regard to reality naively thought, the author undertakes a discussion of the linguistic phenomenon in a broad phenomenological perspective, implying {\it ipso facto} a temporality factor, which except for an argumentation along this way deals also with the Deleuzian position on the matter in The Logic of Sense, as contrasted with the `orthodox' or mainstream phenomenological view. A major place in the article has the argumentation about the deficiency of language in epistemological terms, more specifically in the face of certain phenomena associated with quantum mechanical situations.

The Phenomenology of Language and the Metaphysicalizing of the Real

This essay joins Wilhelm Dilthey's conception of the metaphysical impulse as a flight from the tragedy of human finitude with Ludwig Wittgenstein's understanding of how language bewitches intelligence. We contend that there are features of the phenomenology of language that play a constitutive and pervasive role in the formation of metaphysical illusion.

Review of resources in phenomenology and outlining Derrida's response

In this survey of secondary sources on phenomenology I have located the problematic of an aporia that lies at its center. Phenomenology has divided itself itself into transcendental idealism or empirical idealism and non-philosophy. In both these incarnations of phenomenology, Husserl's transcendental idealism and the radical empiricism in the philosophies of Heidegger, Levinas, Ricoeur, Blanchot and Merleau-Ponty, lies a form of theoretical essentialism and blindness to the metacondition that structures phenomenology. It is differance, the space or interval between the transcendental and empirical which conditions and produces both the transcendental and empirical through the retrospective movement of the trace. Derrida's contribution to phenomenology, as I will argue in this paper, is his discovery of the quasi-transcendental, or the interval between the transcendental and empirical which determines phenomenology.

INQUIRIES INTO PHENOMENOLOGY AND

My aim is to discuss Hintikka's and Harvey's suggestion according to which we ought to "index" the direction of the phenomenological analysis in terms of a movement from the predicative level to a "rationally reconstructed" prepredicative one.