Jacques Derrida and the Future

Cisney, Vernon W.

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5213-9_26

Vernon W. Cisney³

Part of the book series: Contributions to Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 66))

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Abstract

This chapter first explores the centrality of Husserl’s work in Jacques Derrida’s articulation of the project of deconstruction by highlighting the ‘irreducible complicity’ between Husserl’s sought-after ‘pre-expressive stratum of sense’ and his commitment to the expressibility of all conscious experience. It then addresses the question concerning the task of philosophy in Husserl’s wake, given the apparent fragmentation of the continental tradition, arguing that philosophy’s task is the active disruption of the doxa in pursuit of the fundamental. Finally, it argues, based upon a reading of Husserl’s living present and a critique of his primal impression, that the fundamental must be thought as productive relationality, the past and future dually brought forth in the present which is nothing more than the relation between the two.

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Notes

1.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Husserliana Band III (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950); Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, trans. Fred Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1983).
2.
Jacques Derrida, “‘Genèse et structure’ et la phénoménologie,” L’écriture et la différence (Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1967); “‘Genesis and Structure’ and Phenomenology,” Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 161.
3.
For instance, trace, différance, supplementarity, iterability, auto-affection, etc. See Leonard Lawlor, Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). The entirety of this text is dedicated to this complex question. I am deeply indebted, personally, professionally, and philosophically, to Leonard Lawlor.
4.
Jacques Derrida, “La Forme et le vouloir-dire: Note sur la phenomenology du langage,” Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1972); “Form and Meaning: A Note on the Phenomenology of Language,” Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 161. Nearly the whole of Derrida’s engagement with Husserl reflects such an urgency: “If the punctuality of the instant is a myth … then the principle of Husserl’s entire argumentation is threatened.” Jacques Derrida, La voix et le phénomène (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967); Voice and Phenomenon, trans. Leonard Lawlor (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011), 52.
5.
For instance, the priority of the form for Plato lies in the fact that it remains present, unchanging, through each present moment of time, the fluctuation of the material world notwithstanding. This is why only the form can serve as the basis of knowledge for Plato.
6.
Derrida consistently claims that philosophy requires the foundationalist value of presence. This is, in part, the reason for which metaphysics can never be “escaped” in any strong sense of the word: “supposing, which I do not believe, that someday it will be possible simply to escape metaphysics…” Jacques Derrida, “Sémiologie et grammatologie. Jacques Derrida,” Positions, (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1972); “Semiology and Gramatology: Interview with Julia Kristeva,” Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981), 17; also, “‘the founding value of presence’ is a pleonastic expression,” Derrida, Voice and Phenomenon, 6.
7.
Husserl, Ideen I, §24.
8.
Ideen I, §82.
9.
Of the epochē, Derrida claims that it “has been and still is a major indispensable gesture. In everything I try to say and write the epochē is implied,” Jacques Derrida, “Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility: A Dialogue with Jacques Derrida,” Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy, ed. Richard Kearney and Mark Dooley (London: Routledge, 1998), 81.
10.
Ideen I, §88.
11.
Ibid.
12.
Derrida, “Genesis and Structure,” 163.
13.
Ibid.
14.
Ibid.
15.
Ibid.
16.
Derrida, Voice and Phenomenon, 8.
17.
Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Riga: Hartknoch, 1787); Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer, Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), A 320/B 377.
18.
Derrida, “Genesis and Structure,” 167.
19.
Ibid., 162. Derrida prefers this term to “inexact” because their incapacity for exactness is through no fault of their own, but rather, derives from an essential fact about their nature.
20.
Ideen I, §74.
21.
Ideen I, §83.
22.
Ibid.
23.
Derrida, “Genesis and Structure,” 162.
24.
Derrida, Voice and Phenomenon, 13.
25.
Ideen I, §124.
26.
Derrida, “Form and Meaning,” 158.
27.
Ideen I, §124.
28.
Derrida, “Form and Meaning,” 162–63.
29.
Ideen I, §124.
30.
Ibid.
31.
Derrida, “Form and Meaning,” 164.
32.
Ideen I, §124, my emphases.
33.
Derrida, “Form and Meaning,” 165.
34.
Ibid.
35.
Ibid.
36.
For the sake of brevity, I shall not here go into the illuminating discussion of the voice as found in Voice and Phenomenon. Here, Derrida ties this discussion of silence and the phenomenological voice to his analysis of the other and of time in Husserl’s philosophy, in a much richer way than we are able to accomplish here. See also Lawlor’s book, Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology.
37.
See Jacques Derrida, Voyous: Deux essais sur la raison (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 2003); Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 134.
38.
Derrida, “Form and Meaning,” 171.
39.
Ibid., 173.
40.
Derrida, Voice and Phenomenon, 66.
41.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Le Philosophe et son ombre,” Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960); “The Philosopher and His Shadow,” Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 159–81.
42.
G.W.F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Berlin: Nicolai’schen Buchhandlung, 1821); “Preface,” Elements of the Philosophy of Right.
43.
In a future paper, I shall address this issue, the apparent Derrida-Deleuze disagreement, head-on.
44.
Gilles Deleuze, “Jean Hyppolie—Logique et existence,” L’île déserte et autres texts (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 2002); “Jean Hyppolite’s Logic and Existence,” Desert Islands and Other Texts (1953–1974), ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Michael Taormina (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2004), 15. Hyppolite defines philosophy as “the expression of being in concepts or in discourse.” See Jean Hyppolite, Logique et existence (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953); Logic and Existence, trans. Leonard Lawlor and Amit Sen (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), 10.
45.
Jacques Derrida, De la Grammatologie (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1967); Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 314.
46.
Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. Husserliana Band I (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960); Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (Dordrecht, Boston, and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999), 139.
47.
Henri Bergson, “Introduction à la métaphysique,” La pensée et le mouvant. Essais et conférences (Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France, 1934); “Introduction to Metaphysics,” The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Mabelle L. Andison (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2007), 133–69.
48.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1991); What is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 9.
49.
Jacques Derrida, “Violence et métaphysique: Essai sur la pensée d’Emmanuel Levinas,” L’écriture et la différence (Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1967); “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,” Writing and Difference, 81.
50.
Plato, The Republic, 480 a.
51.
Parmenides too, though he does not specifically use the term, “philosopher,” distinguishes explicitly between “the steadfast heart of persuasive truth” and the “opinions of mortals” [βροτῶν δόξας], Fragments, 1.29–30.
52.
Gilles Deleuze, Différence et Repetition, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968); Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 129.
53.
I use this term quite consciously aware of the complicated history that accompanies it in the twentieth century, specifically in the works of Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida. In 1927, Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit outlined a project of “fundamental ontology,” both terms of which Heidegger would later abandon (and Derrida would speak approvingly of this abandonment). See Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1953); Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 43–44; and Derrida, Of Grammatology, 22. See also Emmanuel Levinas, “L’ontologie est-elle fondamentale,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 56 (1951), 88–98; “Is Ontology Fundamental?,” trans. Peter Atterton, revised by Simon Critchley and Adriaan Peperzak, Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. Adriaan Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 1–10.
54.
Here I am thinking of Derrida. See, for instance, Of Grammatology, 35–37, 65, 74; and Jacques Derrida, Voice and Phenomenon, 5, 52, 59, 71, 79, 81.
55.
Miguel de Beistegui, Truth and Genesis: Philosophy as Differential Ontology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), ix.
56.
I am here using the word doxa in the sense outlined above, as opposed to the precise sense with which Husserl employs the term in later sections of Ideen I. See, for instance, §§103–127, §§146–148.
57.
Husserl, Ideen I, §27.
58.
Husserl, Ideen I, §39.
59.
Husserl, Ideen I, §42.
60.
Husserl, Ideen I, §24.
61.
Husserl, Ideen I, §32.
62.
Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Husserliana Band VI (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962); The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, §41. Most of my account of the epochē and the reduction are taken from The Crisis text, which differs from the account of the reduction(s) given in Ideen I, §§27–34. Husserl himself makes explicit his own criticisms of his earlier formulations (which he refers to as the “Cartesian way” in The Crisis, §43). Briefly, by not distinguishing between the epochē and the reduction, Husserl claims, we encounter the ego, but one that is apparently devoid of any content, as opposed to recognizing the sense-bestowing nature of the ego, which he claims is made possible only by the division between epochē and reduction, as explicated in The Crisis.
63.
Husserl, The Crisis, §41.
64.
Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 46.
65.
Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1973); Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), §34, 132–36.
66.
See Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917). Husserliana Band X (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1992); On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), trans. John Barnett Brough (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), §§7–31.
67.
Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, §11.
68.
Ibid., §§11–14.
69.
Incidentally, the failure to make this distinction is, according to Husserl, the error of Brentano. See Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, §§1–6.
70.
Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962); Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 48.
71.
Søren Kierkegaard, Begrebet Angest. En simpel psychologisk-paapegende Overveielse i Retning of det dogmatiske Problem om Arvesynden af Vigilius Haufniensis (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1844); The Concept of Anxiety, ed., trans. Reidar Thomte in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson, Kierkegaard’s Writings, Vol. VIII (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 85.
72.
I do not here deal with, but am very sensitive to, Derrida’s emphasis on the importance of the presence of the present for Husserl, as discussed extensively in Voice and Phenomenon, and in all of his Husserl writings. I shall deal with this in a future paper.
73.
See Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 76.
74.
Ibid.
75.
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, §60.

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Department of Philosophy, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA, USA
Vernon W. Cisney

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, Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Rd, Boca Raton, 33431, Florida, USA
Lester Embree
Dept. Philosophy, University of Memphis, Clement Hall 316, Memphis, 38152, Indiana, USA
Thomas Nenon

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Cisney, V.W. (2013). Jacques Derrida and the Future. In: Embree, L., Nenon, T. (eds) Husserl’s Ideen. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 66. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5213-9_26

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5213-9_26
Published: 12 September 2012
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