Derrida, Postmodernism and Non-Duality Summary

[Juan Cruz Giusto]

“If I were to advance any thesis whatsoever, that in itself would be a fault; but I advance no thesis and so cannot be faulted.” Nagarjuna

Derrida

He criticized modern philosophy and intellectual tradition.

Post-structuralism inspired Derrida. They say that all symbols and words are arbitrary. Any word that has any kind of meaning is a label that was completely arbitrary selected. It says that all meanings are structurally determined from the difference with other symbols. A word isn’t merely pointing to a physical object, but it gets its meaning by its association with another signal. To really understand a word, you need to understand all the other related words.

Derrida was interested in how language shapes how we think. Language is not just words, it also includes logic, science, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and even all human thinking.

For Derrida, the meaning of a symbol comes from:

-          All its historical uses

-          The network of all the current symbols in the entire web of the language

 For example, to understand science you will need to know what knowledge, truth, experiment, contradiction, element, etc. But his says that in order to fully understand a word you will need to understand each word in the language. Because this word is only one node of an infinite graph.

Meaning is composed by present and absent symbols.

Language is ultimately a set of symbols that are ultimately grounded on nothing! And every symbol has an infinite potential of meanings and it is constantly evolving.

For Derrida, there is no such a thing as an ultimate meaning and that we are very sloppy thinkers and philosophers as if there is a factual definition of a word.

A belief doesn’t exist on its own… you have a vast field of knowledge colors your interpretations and beliefs. There is always an interpretation.

What Derrida wants to say is that there is no correct objective way to read a text – any kind of psychological or philosophical position. Because meaning is so sleepy and complicated, even the author who wrote the text, even he doesn’t understand what he means when he wrote it. There is no correct interpretation to any event or text.

The essence of something is its structure – a table is a table and it is nothing. By creating the distinction, you are creating the object. The essence of something it is its distinction.

Everything is relative for Derrida and there is no best description or interpretation.

Western tradition is logocentric, Derrida says. There is an absolute faith that you can describe Truth and Reality with words, logic, and language.

Deconstruction means that you can deconstruct every concept and idea.

All thought is dualistic and happen between binary opposites. Mind vs body, nature vs culture, inner vs outer, me vs them, scientific vs spiritual, first vs second, existence vs non-existence. In order for the mind to work at all, it needs to create all of these distinctions. But as soon as you try to press the distinction further, it collapses because they are grounded.

Since everything is interconnected and interbeing, nothing can be isolated – not even language.

With Deconstructionism, Derrida illuminates the dark part of the equation: like emotions and logic.

Reality is neither real nor illusion – it is undefined.

Science tries to have a definite narrative for everything. Like history with Columbus. Derrida says that it is just a narrative and it is actually more complicated than that. A post-modern would criticize all of these narratives.

Derrida says that you cannot find Truth with words because they are all relative and ultimately groundless.

What is Deconstruction? You take any logocentric argument and you start to question its conceptual distinction until you break them all down. All conceptual distinctions in a text are unstable – and this is because Reality is nondual. Every distinction must collapse.

The result of deconstructionism is that the essence of concepts is that they have no essence. It results that no argument or thesis can be advanced because deconstruction is the exhaustion of all views, hierarchies, power structures, privilege, justification. It results on an endless playfulness of reality – everything just flows. Reality just is, without any preference.

Every philosophy is a house of cards – there is no preferred point of view of reality, everything is groundless and relative.

The impact of Derrida in culture at large was nihilism and relativity.

The problem with Derrida is that it doesn’t go far enough. Yes, language and concepts are logocentric and dualistic, but there is a deeper layer – Derrida kept stuck on the level of concept. Derrida doesn’t know that he can know reality without logic. You can do it with nonduality.

The nature of reality is distinctions.

 

Derrida criticizes institutions, politics, and ideologies.

Institutions are based on philosophies (Communism and Marxism, or Capitalism and Adam Smith). Derrida was raised on these ages.

In the dictionary, when you look at a word, you will find more words.

Language is ultimately subjective, words mean different from person to person and from time to time, so it cannot be that language has a way of reaching the truth.