On Derridology

THE DEATH OF deconstructionist Jacques Derrida reminds us that philosophy is more than a series of footnotes to Plato. In the modern era philosophy has become a series of footnotes to Kant.

Kant resolved the contradiction between Newton and Hume. In Newton, mankind showed that the things of nature were predictable and reasonable; in Hume, we learned that you couldn’t prove anything. Kant resolved all this in a strategic retreat. He said that we couldn’t know true reality, the things-in-themselves; we could only know things as they appear to us. But that is still a lot.

We now accept, sort of, that knowledge is like an automobile, good until replaced with a newer model. And like the automobile this has set us free. When the greatest generation of German professors was replacing Newtonian mechanics with quantum mechanics a century ago, they didn’t have to bother with rebuilding reality from scratch. All they had to do was show that their theories worked. And did they ever!

But what about us, the professors of arts and humanities whined? How did we fit into all this? It was the great achievement of Jacques Derrida to come up with the answer for them. They don’t. In a lifetime of strenuous work and self-promotion, he proved conclusively that applying the ideas of Kant and his footnoters to the arts results in a big fat zero. That’s because the elements of language are interesting, but not important. The elements of the universe, on the other hand, are crucial.

In physics, as Heisenberg showed in Physics and Philosophy, there is no way to determine what “really” happens in an atomic event. If we blast a single quantum of light at an atom, we will be able to measure an electron streaking away from the atom. But we cannot “see” inside the atom and “track” the “orbit” of the electron before and after its “collision” with the quantum of light. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter. We humans can deal perfectly well with the billions of light quanta entering our eyes and knocking electrons about on our retinas. The proof is that we move about in the world, we kill plants and animals for food, and we regenerate ourselves in our children—relying all the time on the faith that the sensations we experience are real.

You can apply the same principle applies in the world of language. Take the words “and” and “the.” By themselves, they mean nothing. But if we put them in quotes thus: “’and’ and ‘the’” then we begin to have an inkling of meaning. Something is afoot. If we draw the curtain some more with the tagline: “Everything she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’,” we immediately understand that, almost certainly, we are dealing with the famous line by the famous mid-century writer Mary McCarthy about the famous mid-century writer and playwright Lillian Hellman.

But what did Mary McCarthy really mean when she said that? A quick Google serves up a New Yorker article by TV host Dick Cavett. It was on his show on PBS in 1979 that Mary McCarthy delivered her famous line, and he is still wondering what it was all about. Had McCarthy planned the insult, as Nora Ephron assumed in her play “Imaginary Friends?” Was she just trying to generate some publicity to gin up her fading career? Who knows? Who will ever know?

In his life Jacques Derrida thoughtfully reminded us of all this, by refusing to define “deconstruction,” by building around himself a cult of celebrity, by hiding his ideas in a maze of jargon and contradiction. Maybe the elements of language, its grammatology, were just as mysterious and compelling as the elements of atoms. Or maybe not.

A few years ago they showed on TV an astronomical telescope that could detect and display each individual quantum of light that fell on its light detector. Initially, all you can see are individual, random sparks of light. But as the sparks accumulate by the thousands and the millions, they start to form into a continuous image, an image we can interpret as a map of the heavens.

It’s the same way with words. A couple of words, like “and” and “the” don’t mean much of anything. But as you assemble them into their ranks of thousands and tens of thousands they become, you might say, “news you can use.” You still can’t tell if they “really” mean something, but you can certainly act as though they do.

To this day, nobody knows what quantum mechanics “really” means either, but lots of people have believed that they could use it to blow things up and make computers and cell phones. They have been amply rewarded for their faith.

Nobody knows what language means either. But we can still be pretty sure that Lillian Hellman was a liar.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

print view

To comment on this article at American Thinker click here.

To email the author, click here.

TAGS

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

mysql close