Marjorie Grene
LIFE, DEATH, AND LANGUAGE:
Some Thoughts on Wittgenstein and Derrida
However diverse have been the styles of philosophizing of
the past half-century, the practitioners have agreed on one thing: we
need a new beginning. Even
if,
like Heidegger, they tell us to try
to
relive the
first
beginning of Western thought, that very repetition
would be a renewal, and so, new. In a number of these adjurations to
a fresh start, moreover, reflection on the traditional interpretation of
language has had a central place . I want here
to
compare two such
language-focused enterprises, which look-and are-very different,
yet feel-and are-somehow related ,
if
only in the glaring diversity
of their ways of dealing with one problem. What I'm trying
to
do, I
suppose, is to take Wittgenstein in his
Investigations
period as more
familiar
to
most of my readers (though he's long been, I must con–
fess, very puzzling to me),
to
consider some characteristics of his
method of letting the fly out of the fly bottle, and to compare these
with Derrida's techniques of showing that,
in
fact, the fly can never
get in . (It might seem more appropriate
if
one wants
to
interpret
Derrida by reference to someone in the British tradition, to take
Austin rather than Wittgenstein, since he himself has written an essay
on Austin, but the parallels with Wittgenstein, I find, are irresistible,
and certainly sufficient unto the day . So, except for the briefest allu–
sion, a comparison with other approaches to language will have
to
await another occasion.)
Well, then, what of Wittgenstein and Derrida on language?
They agree on their starting point: the traditional conception of lan–
guage , both insist, immobilizes thought . Somehow this rigidity , this
one-track thinking, must be overcome. But they differ both in their
