Contemporary Perspectives and the Functioning of Trace

Abstract

The notion of trace has taken on a central role in contemporary philosophy and religious thought, bringing it to the fore in the understanding of both the living present and language. Traces are constitutive of signs in the same way that the protentions and retentions as traces are constitutive of the living present. And the different understandings by various thinkers of the role of traces in the living present demand different understandings of the role of trace in signs. Thus Derrida’s view of trace in relation to the living present and to sign will be found to differ essentially from the shared view presented by Mead’s pragmatic and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perspective, in accordance with their different understandings of the constitution of the living present. In clarifying this relation, however, it will prove beneficial for the sake of clarity to procede, at least initially, from trace in signs to trace in the living present which governs the former.