Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl's Phenomenology (Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) - Softcover

Derrida, Jacques

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810127652 ISBN 13: 9780810127654

Verlag: Northwestern University Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Published in 1967, when Derrida is 37 years old, Voice and Phenomenon appears at the same moment as Of Grammatology and Writing and Difference. All three books announce the new philosophical project called “deconstruction.” Although Derrida will later regret the fate of the term “deconstruction,” he will use it throughout his career to define his own thinking. While Writing and Difference collects essays written over a 10 year period on diverse figures and topics, and Of Grammatology aims its deconstruction at “the age of Rousseau,” Voice and Phenomenon shows deconstruction engaged with the most important philosophical movement of the last hundred years: phenomenology. 

Only in relation to phenomenology is it possible to measure the importance of deconstruction. Only in relation to Husserl’s philosophy is it possible to understand the novelty of Derrida’s thinking. Voice and Phenomenon therefore may be the best introduction to Derrida’s thought in general. To adapt Derrida’s comment on Husserl’s Logical Investigations, it contains “the germinal structure” of Derrida’s entire thought. Lawlor’s fresh translation of Voice and Phenomenon brings new life to Derrida’s most seminal work.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JACQUES DERRIDA was a professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne, the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and the University of California, Irvine, and the author of numerous books including Of Grammatology, Dissemination Of Spirit, and Limited Inc. (Northwestern University Press). 

LEONARD LAWLOR is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He previously translated Merleau-Ponty’s Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology and Institution and Passivity for Northwestern.

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Voice and Phenomenon

Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl's Phenomenology

By Jacques Derrida, Leonard Lawlor

Northwestern University Press

Copyright © 2011 Northwestern University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8101-2765-4

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
Translator's Introduction: The Germinal Structure of Derrida's Thought, 
Translator's Note, 
Introduction, 
1. Sign and Signs, 
2. The Reduction of Indication, 
3. Meaning as Soliloquy, 
4. Meaning and Representation, 
5. The Sign and the Blink of an Eye, 
6. The Voice That Keeps Silent, 
7. The Originative Supplement, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Sign and Signs

<17> Husserl begins by pointing out a confusion. Within the word "sign" (Zeichen), always in ordinary language and at times in philosophical language, are hidden two heterogeneous concepts: that of expression (Ausdruck), which we often mistakenly hold as being the synonym of the sign in general, and that of indication (Anzeichen). Now, according to Husserl, there are some signs that express nothing because these signs carry — we must still say this in German — nothing that we can call Bedeutung or Sinn. This is what indication is. Certainly, indication is a sign, like expression. But it is different from expression because it is, insofar as it is an indication, deprived of Bedeutung or Sinn: bedeutunglos, sinnlos. Nevertheless it is not a sign without signification. Essentially, there cannot be a sign without signification, a signifier without a signified. This is why the traditional translation of Bedeutung by "signification," although it is established and nearly inevitable, risks blurring Husserl's entire text, rendering it unintelligible in its axial intention, and consequently rendering unintelligible all of what will depend on these first "essential distinctions." One can say with Husserl in German, without absurdity, that a sign (Zeichen) is deprived of Bedeutung (is bedeutungslos, is not bedeutsam), but one cannot say in French, without contradiction, that un signe is deprived of signification. In German one can speak of expression (Ausdruck) as a bedeutsame Zeichen, which Husserl does. One cannot, without redundancy, <18> translate bedeutsame Zeichen into French as signe signifiant, which lets us imagine, against the evidence and against Husserl's intention, that we could have des signes non signifiants. While being suspicious of the established French translations, we must nevertheless confess that it will always be difficult to replace them. This is why our remarks are nothing less than criticisms aimed at the existing, valuable translations. We shall try nevertheless to propose some solutions which will keep to being halfway between commentary and translation. They will thus be valid only within the limits of Husserl's texts. Most often, when we are confronting a difficulty, we shall, according to a procedure whose value is at times contestable, retain the German word while attempting to clarify it by means of the analysis.

In this way, it will be very quickly confirmed that, for Husserl, the expressivity of the expression — which always assumes the ideality of a Bedeutung — has an irreducible link to the possibility of spoken discourse (Rede). Expression is a purely linguistic sign and, in the first analysis, this is precisely what distinguishes it from indication. Although spoken discourse is a very complex structure, involving always, in fact, an indicative layer which, as we shall see, we shall have the greatest trouble trying to hold within its limits, Husserl reserves for it the exclusivity of the right to expression and therefore the exclusivity of pure logicity. Without violating Husserl's intention, one could define, if not translate, "bedeuten" by "vouloir-dire" at once in the sense of a speaking subject that wants to say, "expressing himself," as Husserl says, "about something"— and in the sense of an expression that means. [g] We can then be assured that the Bedeutung is always what someone or a discourse means<veulent dire>: always a sense of discourse, a discursive content.

In contrast to Frege, Husserl, as we know, does not distinguish, in the Logical Investigations, between Sinn and Bedeutung:

Besides, for us, <19>Bedeutung means the same thing as Sinn [gilt als gleichbedeutend mit Sinn]. On the one hand, it is very convenient, especially in the case of this concept, to have at one's disposal parallel, interchangeable terms, particularly since the sense of the term Bedeutung is itself to be investigated. A further consideration is our ingrained habit to use the two words as meaning the same thing. In these conditions, it seems a rather dubious step if their Bedeutungen are differentiated, and if (as G. Frege has proposed) we use one for Bedeutung in our sense, and the other for the objects expressed.

In Ideas I, the dissociation that intervenes between the two terms does not at all have the same function as in Frege, and it confirms our reading: Bedeutung is reserved for the ideal sense content of verbal expression, of spoken discourse, while sense (Sinn) covers the whole noematic sphere, including its non-expressive stratum:

We begin with the familiar distinction between the sensuous, so to speak, corporeal side of expression, and its non-sensuous or "spiritual" side. We need not enter into a closer examination of the first side; likewise, we need not consider the manner of unifying both sides. Obviously, they too designate headings for not unimportant phenomenological problems. We shall restrict our regard exclusively to "signifying" [bedeuten] and "Bedeutung." Originally, these words concerned only the linguistic sphere [sprachliche Sphäre], that of "expressing" [des Ausdrückens]. But one can scarcely avoid and, at the same time, take an important cognitive step, extending the Bedeutung of these words and suitably modifying them so that they can find application of a certain kind to the whole noetico-noematic sphere: thus application to all acts, be they now interwoven [verflochten] with expressive acts or not. Thus we have continued to speak of "sense" [Sinn] in the case of all intentional lived-experience — a word which is used in general as an equivalent <20> to Bedeutung. For the sake of distinctness we shall prefer the term Bedeutung for the old concept, and, in particular, in the complex locution of "logical Bedeutung" or "expressive Bedeutung." We shall continue to use the word "sense" as before in the most all-inclusive range.

After having asserted, in a passage to which we shall have to return, that there exists a pre-expressive stratum of lived-experience or sense, and then that this stratum of sense could always receive expression and Bedeutung, Husserl proposes that "logical Bedeutung is an expression."

The difference between indication and expression appears very quickly, over the course of the description, as a difference that is more functional than substantial. Indication and expression are functions or signifying relations and not terms. One and the same phenomenon can be apprehended as...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Northwestern University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0810127652
• ISBN 13: 9780810127654
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 125
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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