A Question of Origin: Hegel's Privileging of Spoken Over Written Language

Abstract

In ‘Le puits et la pyramide’, Jacques Derrida critiques the way in which Hegel privileges speech over writing at Encyclopedia §459. He traces that privileging back to Hegel's teleologically motivated view of time as the sublation of space, which he takes in turn to be motivated by Hegel's concern, as a metaphysical thinker, for validating and securing the philosophical dream of “full presence”. This, on Hegelian terms, involves subjecting the “materiality” of space to the “ideality” of time.Perhaps surprisingly, Hegel himself openly concedes Derrida's first two points. By limiting his discussion of language in the Encyclopedia to consideration of its function as a vehicle for the expression of representations, Hegel requires himself to discuss the relative merits of spoken and written utterances, an issue which he then argues out in favour of the former. Within the written domain, alphabetic and hieroglyphic writing must also be compared, and it is hardly astonishing that Hegel should view the key contrast between the two as that of the temporality inherent in alphabetic speech, which captures sound, as opposed to the spatiality of hieroglyphics, which exist only as inscriptions.Hegel's privileging of speech over writing is thus no mere slip; it is a whole set of consciously elaborated arguments, undertaken for specifically stated reasons. This casts doubt on the third of Derrida's points above: is Derrida mistaking the purpose of a specific discussion for the motivating force of teleology in general? Is Hegel's openly conceded privileging of spoken over written language justified by something other than a teleology dictated by an unexamined metaphysical preference for “full presence”?