Preliminary Thoughts on Differánce

"We discover as a common circumstance the fact that certain objects (Gegenstand) or states of affairs (Sachverhalt) of whose reality (Bestand) someone has actual knowledge indicate (anzeigen) to one the reality of certain other objects or states of affairs, in the sense that one's belief in the being (Sein) of the one is experienced as a motivating belief or surmise in the being of the other."

Husserl's Logical Investigations

He is talking about how the unifying character of the sign (which is characterized by two heterogeneous concepts, Ausdruck and Anzeichen) is a certain motivation, "which moves something such as a 'thinking being' to pass by thought from something to something else" (I once looked briefly at Husserl's intersubjectivity approach to the problem of "other minds" in his monadic approach). The sign itself is not a being whose Being is to be interrogated, it has no truth in itself, rather it "conditions the movement and concept of truth." (Note: the sign's lack of Being is what Derrida insists Husserl is saying, which makes it similar to Derrida's concept of differánce...causing me to wonder whether or not he is somehow "motivated" to pass from something Husserl actually intends into something else! Its interesting nevertheless.)

Nietzsche (if I remember correctly) argues, not in these words, that it is a word's metaphoracity that allows it to be a sign, and words are metaphors on at least two levels. 1) carrying the thought into language and 2) communicating language (language carrying itself, I would say) to the mind of the recipient. μεταφέρειν meta- "over, across" +pherein- "to bear or carry." Derrida's word differánce expressly refers back to the Greek διαφέρειν with the same root but the prefix "dia" which we understand as "across" (as in the Greek set διαλογος, διαλογεσθαι, δια-λεγειν; dia- "across" +legein- "to speak"). The transformative aspect of meta- should be emphasized, the "over" or "across" in the sense of from one realm to the other; whereas in διαφέρειν (diaphérein) the "across" is like a retention until a later arrived at point. In Latin difference, differre "to set apart, differ," from dis- "away from" + ferre "carry," carried two senses: to defer and to differ. The sense of deferral was lost at some point to English, but in differánce, Derrida wants to stress the two senses...the defer, I believe, relates of Levinas's concept of the "trace" and the differ to Heidegger's concept of the "ontological difference." I guess the sign does both the μεταφέρειν and the διαφέρειν. Considering what this space is that the bearing must a-cross gets really interesting if you start thinking that the messenger (here I directly call Hermes) has no being but hints at the relating/differing of two beings.