For the better (102)

The drifter and the Alpine driver (2)

“Bradley’s goal was actually quite modest. I happen to have a copy handy in this saddle bag. Hold on while I get it. Can you put a little more of that mesquite on the fire?”

“Earth, air, fire and water.”

“Don’t forget the aether. Here’s my compadre Bradley:

I propose to consider the four principal tragedies of Shakespeare from a single point of view. Nothing will be said of Shakespeare's place in the history either of English literature or of the drama in general. No attempt will be made to compare him with other writers. I shall leave untouched, or merely glanced at, questions regarding his life and character, the development of his genius and art, the genuineness, sources, texts, interrelations of his various works. Even what may be called, in a restricted sense, the 'poetry' of the four tragedies -- the beauties of style, diction, versification -- shall pass by in silence. Our one object will be what, again in a restricted sense, may be called dramatic appreciation; to increase our understanding and enjoyment of these works as dramas, to learn to apprehend the action and some of the personages of each with a somewhat greater truth and intensity, so that they may assume in our imaginations a shape a little less unlike the shape they wore in the imagination of their creator.

Why would you ashcan him because he’s white and dead?”

For the better (102)

The drifter and the Alpine driver (1)

“You have an opposition to postmodern thought.”
“You didn’t exactly ‘halloo the camp’.”
“You have an opposition to postmodern thought.”
“Come on in anyway. Those fancy duds are going to get pretty foul by morning. Set yourself down by that fire, fella.
“You have an opposition to postmodern thought.”
“Whatever goes nowhere.”
“You think the postmodern university is worthless.”
“Science and engineering are ok.”
“But post structural liberal arts are without merit, as you see it.”
“The study of literature and history is ok. We used to study these without theory.”
“Signifying what?”
“A.C. Bradley was a hell of a Shakespearean critic. His views are not laced with theory, just clear English. He talks about the plays. He does not lead you away from them with interminable bullshit.”
“Signifying what?”
“About Bradley?”
“No, I know these dead white men; I expose them in their vocal inferiority.”
“So you’re a live one. Oh, you mean the bullshit. Well, you just gave me some. So you know that, too.”
“Signifying what?”
“You dismissed a great critic without quoting a word of him because you have a theory about dead white men.”

http://www.clicknotes.com/bradley/tr1.html

For the better (101)

I believe that Derrida should be the last of the philosophers in that he meant in his Of Grammatology to silence the last voice. If he succeeded, we shall have to become a great deal quieter over the coming generations.

But there is hope in the sure and certain failure of philosophy.

In The drifter and the Alpine driver I have a comic look at this issue.

For the next twelve posts I shall repeat it here, so you can see the oddity of the position in action. Better to do this than spend a lifetime chasing Derridean terms.

Then we shall return to Emerson the poet who puts his heart into each work, verse, essay or address and is worth listening to. We may look at more Plato in the process.

For the better (100)

“How do you kick the poet out of the poetry? "
“You talk about what he did not say.”
“What?”
“You might invent some thesis as to what is not in the work, pointing out that the poet as a member of social class, could or would not write was you say is not there.”
“That seems to leave open quite a lot.”
“Yes. An unheavenly host of theses.”
“Full time employment for literature departments.”
“Indeed.”

For the better (99)

The same applies to hearing ourselves speak.

The system of “hearing (understanding) -oneself-speak” through the phonic substance—which presents itself as the nonexterior, nonmundane, therefore nonempirical or noncontingent signifier—has neces­sarily dominated the history of the world during an entire epoch, and has even produced the idea of the world, the idea of world-origin, that arises from the difference between the worldly and the non-worldly, the outside and the inside, ideality and nonideality, universal and nonuniversal, trans­cendental and empirical, etc .

At this stage of history this notion of the phonic substance needs removal, as language becomes its essence, which is writing.

In all senses of the word, writing thus comprehends language.

This means writing is to be first, in principle. The historical primacy of voice must fade.

If Derrida can succeed in his project, he need never ask me what I mean when I say something. Unless I write a kind of new philosophy to him, I have nothing to say.

One does not have a heart-to-heart talk with a man like this; since one has to deconstruct his own heart, he never ends up giving it up; he never says his mind.

For the better (98)

Derrida is opposed to what he refers to as phonocentrism. He is actually true to the beginning of philosophy. Just as Socrates ignored the witness in principle, for Derrida, any voice-centered meaning must be deconstructed. He does much with the philosophical concept of presence which is founded on the voice. Here is a piece of Derrida from the link in the prior post:

We already have a foreboding that phonocentrism merges with the his­torical determination of the meaning of being in general as presence, with all the subdeterminations which depend on this general form and which organize within it their system and their historical sequence (presence of the thing to the sight as eidos, presence as substance/essence/existence [ousia], temporal presence as point [stigmè] of the now or of the moment [nun], the self-presence of the cogito, consciousness, subjectivity, the co-presence of the other and of the self, intersubjectivity as the intentional phenomenon of the ego, and so forth). Logocentrism would thus support the determination of the being of the entity as presence.

This is a mouthful of language. The logocentrism that Derrida proposes to deconstruct is what he takes to be a centrality of the voice in meaning. I am using Derrida's terms realizing that they are laden with philosophical assumptions which I think are ultimately meaningless. Nonetheless, the force of what he is saying and what he wants to do as a result of what he says is not meaningless.

For example, take voice in poetry. There is no reason to listen to Yeats deliver his “Lake Isle of Innisfree.” There is no reason for Yeats to have a presence in his poem. All that this means is that the poem needs to be rid of Yeats for a deconstructed analysis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Isle_of_Innisfree

Again, the poet’s voice needs deconstruction; it is what needs to be excised from the work. Yeats’ presence in his own poem needs removal, if you heed Derrida.

You kick the poet out of the poetry.

For the better (97)

Derrida takes exception to this passage in Aristotle:

Just as all men have not the same writing so all men have not the same speech sounds, but mental experiences, of which these are the primary symbols (semeia prôtos), are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images (De interpretatione, 1, 16a. Italics added) .

Derrida believes that the speech sounds(the voice) have been assumed in philosophy to be primary to what someone means in discourse. For Aristotle (and philosophy), to write is to do something secondary. Speech is what is closest to these mental experiences. Or at least it is supposed to be closer than writing.

A lot of work went into the philosophy of mind in the twentieth century, to wit, the work of Ryle and Austin and others who raise questions about the Aristotelean model, independently of Derrida and before he ever wrote anything.

None of this work raised the questions that Derrida suggests. Derrida’s questions and his project of deconstructionism are interesting, not for their conceptual clarity, but for what they reveal about philosophy.

Ironically, neither Aristotle nor Plato noticed that Socrates went about, in principle, ignoring the witness. That is how philosophy gets started. You can see that in The Euthyphro. What Derrida proposes with his project is the systematic excision of the witness from discourse.

Ironically, Aristotle takes the voice in his logic of statements(Of Interpretation) as primary, even though philosophy began on the track of its denial. Philosophy made the voice secondary for its method was Socratic, yet it argued through Aristotle and those who followed him that the voice was primary.

Derrida sees this, takes the voice as the central problem in western thought, and believes it does not belong. He is right. To a philosopher, following Socrates, the voice should not matter. Euthyphro’s voice is suppressed with the demand for the definition of piety.

Here is the pertinent part of the dialogue again:

Euth. Yes, Socrates; and, as I was saying, I can tell you, if you would like to hear them, many other things about the gods which would quite amaze you.

Soc. I dare say; and you shall tell me them at some other time when I have leisure. But just at present I would rather hear from you a more precise answer, which you have not as yet given, my friend, to the question, What is "piety"? When asked, you only replied, Doing as you do, charging your father with murder.

Euth. And what I said was true, Socrates.

Soc. No doubt, Euthyphro; but you would admit that there are many other pious acts?

Euth. There are. Soc. Remember that I did not ask you to give me two or three examples of piety, but to explain the general idea which makes all pious things to be pious. Do you not recollect that there was one idea which made the impious impious, and the pious pious?

Euth. I remember.

Soc. Tell me what is the nature of this idea, and then I shall have a standard to which I may look, and by which I may measure actions, whether yours or those of any one else, and then I shall be able to say that such and such an action is pious, such another impious.

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html

Euthyphro’s voice, that is, what he means by piety, to wit, all of the examples in Greek verse which he reveres, is put on hold in the name of a standard or principle. Note that what Euthyphro might say at trial as a witness is irrelevant. In Socrates’ world, issues of personal credibility are put aside. All the things that go to determine what kind of man is testifying and whether I should believe him are irrelevant. His voice is of no import.