Derrida: Philosophy is to ask "what is", but it's suspicious!

(Based on an interview with Derrida, translated as Chinese with an explanation)

Derrida: "Usually, when a philosophy professor starts taking a philosophy class, he starts with the question, 'What is philosophy?'" That is, asking 'what', which is asking what is. This is a question about is, in an abstract sense, a question of Being. This is a problem that only philosophy has created."

(P.S. Asking "what is a thing" also includes asking "what a thing is not", because it is a question attached to the pinyin script being, it is a language problem, but not a hieroglyphic or ideographic script like Chinese.) Pinyin script is a highly formalized language, and it is clear that it is closely related to the formal logic from the West. The ideas discussed on the basis of Western language and logic are called philosophies, and according to Derrida's above view, in ancient China or traditional Chinese culture, there are only ideas, not philosophy)

Derrida: "Philosophy began in ancient Greece, and at this time the philosopher asked himself, 'What does this or that really mean?'" So what exactly does the word Being mean? Fundamentally, the most important thing about this question, I think... It's not from my invention, it comes from my reading. The first question is divided into two parts. The first question, as is often said, is Heidegger's way of thinking, which is to question the privileged way of asking questions in the history of philosophy, 'what is'. Does thought really just ask questions like that? Before asking what is, there was some kind of more ancient, deep, as-is movement of thought that did not ask 'what', but only some kind of affirmation statement. This is the first question, the first question about 'what'.

If you continue to think on the basis of the above questioning, you will find that asking 'what' is is, here is also to be. To ask 'what' is to ask what is the meaning of this or that, or what does the word Being mean? Isn't there already some precondition in advance as a way of thinking that leads us to understand 'yes'? This questioning is not my invention, but more or less from the inheritance of Heidegger's ideas, which I have only reinterpreted in some way. Heidegger doubted the ancient Greek philosophers, doubted the tradition of asking 'what', doubted the now participle of Being. ”

(P.S. Heidegger's question may seem subtle, but in terms of thinking, it is a fundamental change.) That is, he transformed the problem of 'existence' in philosophical concepts into a problem of the form of words, that is, a problem of general linguistics. This prompted Derrida to think further about what Heidegger did not say: words have phonetics, and therefore question 'speech-centrism', which is the embodiment of the topic of 'Logos-centrism'. Words have not only speech, but also shapes, that is, words.

Then, continuing to think deeply along this question, between the words (think) - (speak) - (text) is not the same relationship as Aristotle said, when Yasch said, 'Speaking is the symbol of the mind, The symbolic of the speech of the word assumes a certain complete interchangeability, while ignoring the difference in this process, that is, when man speaks, it is impossible to fully express his inner feelings, while in the text, he can write the meaning that cannot be said, and man cannot fully say what he sees, that is, such a line of thought meets Freud's psychoanalysis unexpectedly.

The above shows that the text itself has independence, so Derrida wrote the book "Thesis Of Typology": 'is' or Being, the current participle form, derrida gave a name, called 'presence', that is, anticipation, which can summarize all traditional philosophical concepts, which are so present, and therefore also called 'metaphysics of presence', and this traditional philosophy based on identity as the basis of thought ignores 'absence', that is, the difference that identity cannot control.

In order to distinguish between the differences within Hegel's so-called identity, Derrida said that the 'difference' was 'extended', that is, the diférence was written as diférance, and the letter e was replaced by a to indicate that the words pronounced the same, with the meaning of the invisible, can not replace the visible, which is a spatial (position) effect. In addition, 'extended' delays the realization of the meaning of 'difference' and makes the difference go astray, which is another temporal effect, so the effect of 'deferred' is both spatial and temporal.

So, is it possible to say that Derrida invented a 'missing metaphysics' on the basis of reading the works of 'metaphysics in the presence'? He argues that because Heidegger remained obsessed with 'being', he did not completely emerge from the metaphysics of presence. People in the Chinese context can continue to think. Calligraphy, for example, deviates from orthodox Western philosophy)

Derrida: Being, as a present participle, provides a certain mode of thinking about time, that is, 'now', and the present present, or the presence of the present (the English tense is composed of the deformation of Being). 'Now' is another way of saying anticipation. The metaphysics of presence is to maintain the eternal present: the 'past' is the present that has disappeared, and the future is the present that has not yet come. When Nietzsche said 'eternal reincarnation', at least literally, belonged to traditional philosophy, but what Nietzsche wanted to say was something else)

Derrida: As long as we question this presentness, the presence of presence, the interpretation of Being in this way, then there is this serious result: Isn't Being present (the paranoia of traditional philosophy) a wish? This is the question that Heidegger has asked in his own way, and I have tried to replace his question and give it new meaning in different areas and their literature that Heidegger does not deal with. Everything I have written about the traces of writing is the absence of presence.

Derrida: In order to be present, you have to first have the experience of being missing or trace, you have to be with something else, with the other, with the exotic (and depressed?). To connect, sometimes to something different from Being, to connect with the past of the other, with the future of the other (the other here can also be understood as absolute strangeness). These others have never appeared in the same way as the 'presence of presence' above, so the mind asks questions in missing forms, which I have repeatedly stated in my writings, and this is the crux of my argument with other philosophers. To ask a question is to deconstruct the problem, that is, to criticize. That is, I'm trying to understand what happened before the problem? What are the preconditions for a certain question to be true in itself?

Derrida: To ask questions, I have to answer them to someone, and even naïve questions are premised on some kind of affirmation. I myself answer questions to others. I said to myself, 'It's better for us to talk than to say nothing.' It's better for me to dabble in the strange than to be familiar. So I'm sure there's some kind of yes 'before' problem. I'm going to put quotes on this 'before', because here I don't mean something that precedes time, but something that precedes the question, which has to do with the order of thinking. Once the question itself is asked in this way, then there is the questioning of 'presence', and there is what I call the 'traces' of writing.

Derrida: What I call the traces of writing is not only in the sense of what is written on paper or on a computer, but in all things, the experience of leaving traces, returning to something else, like from the present that can connect us to another past and the future, all of which have different types of time, as if they were older than the past (this truth, which Derrida has already said above when he spoke of the question of 'presence'), like the future, beyond (all we can think of) the future. The past and the future that I think of are not just the changed present form, not the future present, not the past present (because none of these have achieved a break with the present), but different experiences of the past or the future. This happens at the moment of establishing a connection with the other or other. ”