On Language and its Endless Deferral of Meaning

No...this is not Derrida; it is Michel de Montaigne:

Our disputes are about words. I ask what is Nature, Pleasure, a Circle, and Substitution. The question is couched in words, and is answered in the same coin. A stone is a body. But if you press the point: And what is a body? -A substance.- And what is a substance? and so on, you will end by driving the answerer to exhaust his dictionary. One substitutes one word for another that is often less well understood. (Michel de Montaigne, "On Experience," Essays 3.13; trans. J.M Cohen)


Words refer only to other words, which refer to other words. Meaning is always deferred, even diminished, and never stable. It is the endless field of signifiers, a signum of a signum of a signum ad infinitum with no res.

Comments

Angie Van De Merwe said…
I just read my comment to your last post, and it didn't make sense. I know what I meant when I wrote it but taking a step back and re-reading it later only illustrated that words do have meaning within the context of a mind and what that mind is thinking at the time. So, it is not just about a person's worldview, especially if the person is shuffling and shifting and sifting his opinions, convictions,,,,in the process of learning and coming to terms...

So, we can never always be sure of how something is meant, especially when it is written. And thus, we have the problems of the Scriptures...
February 28, 2009 at 9:07 PM
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