The Problem of Bedeutung in Derrida and Husserl

Abstract

Final Version of a Paper delivered at the 1994 Meeting of The Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy June 1996 This paper centers on Derrida's interpretation of Ideas 124, the role that interpretation plays in Speech and Phenomena, as well as Professor Evans' construal of these matters in Strategies of Deconstruction. What is initially at stake is Derrida's understanding of particularly spoken language, in Husserl's work, and its relation thought. Clarifying this topic, my discussion should in addition facilitate our understanding of the voice, its privilege, and a certain notion of phonocentrism. The overarching aim of this talk is respond certain criticisms put forward by Professor Evans. In particular, Professor Evans questions: 1 ) Derrida's translation of Husserl's verb bedeuten, to mean, with the French idiom vouloirdire, to mean, literally to want say; and 2) the interpretation of Ideas 124 which Derrida in part assumes, in part sketches, as ajustification of that translation. My argument begins, however, in a slightly different place: with Speech and Phenomena but with a concurrent essay by Derrida wholly devoted Ideas 124, Form and Meaning. A look at Form and Meaning will allow us remove a major stumbling block in the way of understanding Derrida's Husserl work: namely the belief that Derrida assimilates the realm of concepts, Bedeutungen, in Husserl, that of Not only Professor Evans, but Alan White and others have laid this charge: that thought for Husserl, according Derrida, moves in the medium of language. As Professor Evans trenchantly puts it in the form of a denial: not only does Husserl reserve the power of expression and thus logicality for spoken language, but logicality is reserved for language at (p. 31). Now, an investigation ofForm and Meaning makes clear that Derrida by no means identifies logicality, Bedeutungen and bedeuten, with language, even spoken language, in the of wordsounds, wordshapes, or even what Professor Evans calls linguistic expression. Near the beginning of this essay Derrida is discussing the distinction Sinn/Bedeutung and how Husserl's usage relates Frege's. This is the very same passage of Ideas 124 that will be in question in Professor Evans' discussion of the opening pages of Speech and Phenomena. Derrida, here, in Form and Meaning, noting that Husserl finds it convenient reserve the bedeuten-Bedeutung terms for the order of expressive meaning, for speech in the strict sense is careful add a footnote defining what this last phrase means. It goes without saying that, by speech in `the strict sense,' we do understand the effectively and physically uttered speech, but following Husserl's intentions, the animation of a verbal expression by a meaning, by an intention,' that, without thereby being essentially affected, can remain physically (p. 114). And lest this passage still seem some too equivocal, we will return it in a moment, let me quote the following one a few pages later. Production and revelation are unified in the impression-expression proper speech. And since what Husserl is considering here is the verbal order, with all its interwoven (physical and intentional) complexity, but the still silent meaning-intention (p.117). Here it should be abundantly clear that Derrida by no means fails distinguish between bedeuten, the still silent meaning intention and the verbal order, which here is put aside only in its physical but even in its specifically intentional component (I take this last mean the act whereby speech specifically comes be infused with meanings, with Bedeutungen). Indeed the entire problem that Form and Meaning investigates is the relation of meaning, the order of concepts, a supposedly pre-expressive sphere of sense. This whole discussion would be impossible if Derrida failed recognize the specificity ofthe concept beyond that of actually spoken language or actually existing historical …