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> If Deconstruction were a meaningful thing Deconstruction is not a "thing". Neither is "empiricism". They are modes of enquiry. Both position you in a certain
by rmk2 13y ago
> If Deconstruction were a meaningful thing
Deconstruction is not a "thing". Neither is "empiricism". They are modes of enquiry. Both position you in a certain mode towards your surrounding environment, be it political, social or scientific. They both open certain modes of enquiry while excluding others. One conclusion that one can draw from deconstruction (if we "apply" it onto itself) is that no answer one can ever give will be without bias or will completely exclude any other option.
Jürgen Habermas coined, in his Systemtheorie, the notion of the nth grade observer, where every degree of observer may observe another onlooker and his specific bias and blind spot, yet each degree of observation always introduces its own, new blind spot.
When Derrida talks about archi-écriture, what he says is that if there was ever an all-encompassing entirety of meaning that only had one singly way of interpretation, then this unity is a mythical one which cannot be recovered. Every utterance, every decision has the inherent option of an opposition.
Derrida is Hegel upside down. If Hegel sees Geist as the unity of matter and spirit, then for Derrida, this unity might have existed in an archaic past but has since been lost and cannot be put back together. Hence, whatever we do will not empty out all possible interpretations and views of life, there will be no single answer to the meaning of life or some such. Instead, all that remains is the fundamental idea that every utterance and every positions carries within itself already the means to disprove it.
This is not fundamentally different to the scientific method. The atom was thought to be the smallest, inseperable unit (hence the name) before it could be found. However, in finding the atom, we realised that it is, indeed, made up of smaller parts, which in turn are again made up of smaller parts. What was taken as an absolute minimum was, in fact, only the temporary minimum before we could conceive smaller units. The same, just in reverse, goes for the solar system, galaxies etc.
- Mithaldu 13y ago> Deconstruction is not a "thing". Neither is "empiricism". They are modes of enquiry. In current times the term thing applies also to non-physical entities. As such, a mode of enquiry is a thing. Otherwise, i like the rest of your explanation.
- derleth 13y ago> Every utterance, every decision has the inherent option of an opposition. To the extent this is meaningful at all, it implies that it is not true in the slightest, which makes it difficult to take seriously. > This is not fundamentally different to the scientific method. The atom was thought to be the smallest, inseperable unit (hence the name) before it could be found. However, in finding the atom, we realised that it is, indeed, made up of smaller parts, which in turn are again made up of smaller parts. Until that process bottomed out, of course, and bottomed out based on evidence, not philosophy.
- rspeer 13y agoDon't say that your belief system is comparable to science. Only the gullible will believe you, and it makes you sound like you are preaching a religion.
- rmk2 13y agoWhere, exactly, have I talked about a "belief system"? Seeing deconstruction as part of a historical history of thought does not mean I subscribe to it as a quasi-religious belief system, so please stop pretending as much. In fact, I would argue that my belief system is quite a bit further removed from any form of religious thought than you might think, since I do not, in fact believe, in infallible systems; I'd rather look at the systems in their environment, the institutions establishing and supporting them and the structures underneath which power them and which stand to gain from them.