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cal and most critical restoration of the metaphysics of presence. The difference between Husserl's and Peirce's phenomenologies is fundamental since it concerns the concept of the sign and of the manifestation of presence, the relationship between the re-presentation and the originary presentation of the thing itself (truth). On this point Peirce is undoubtedly closer to the inventor of the word phenomenology: Lambert proposed in fact to "reduce the theory of things to the theory of signs." According to the "phanaeroscopy" or "phenomenology" of Peirce, manifestation itself does not reveal a presence, it makes a sign. One may read in the Principle of Phenomenology that "the idea of manifestation is the idea of a sign." There is thus no phenomenality reducing the sign or the representer so that the thing signified may be allowed to glow finally in the luminosity of its presence. The so-called "thing itself'' is always already a representamen shielded from the simplicity of intuitive evidence. The representamen functions only by giving rise to an interpretant that itself becomes a sign and so on to infinity. The self-identity of the signified conceals itself unceasingly and is always on the move. The property of the representamen is to be itself and another, to be produced as a structure of reference, to be separated from itself. The property of the representamen is not to be proper (propre), that is to say absolutely proximate to itself (prope, proprius). The represented is always already a representamen. . . . From the moment that there is meaning there are nothing but signs. We think only in signs. (4950) |
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Thus it seems that the whole Peircean theory of unlimited semiosis supports the position of Derrida by which |
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if reading must not be content with doubling the text, it cannot legitimately transgress the text toward something other than it, toward a referent (a reality that is metaphysical, historical, psychobiographical, etc.) or toward a signified object outside the text whose content could take place, could have taken place, outside language. . . . There is nothing outside the text (il n'y a pas de hors-texte). (158) |
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Is this interpretation of Peirce philologically, and philosophically, correct? I understand how ironic my question can sound. If Derrida assumed that his interpretation is the good one, he should also assume that Peirce's text had a privileged meaning to be isolated, recognized as such and spelled out unambiguously. Derrida would be the first to say that his reading makes Peirce's text move forward, beyond the alleged intentions of its author. But if we are not entitled, from the Derridian point of view, to ask if Derrida read Peirce well, we are fully entitled to ask, from the point of view of Peirce, if he would have been satisfied with Derrida's interpretation. |
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Certainly Peirce supports the idea of unlimited semiosis: a sign is "anything which determines something else (its interpretant) to refer to an object to which itself refers (its object) in the same way, this interpre- |
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