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PARTISAN REVIEW
The quest for presence, then , is doomed to unsuccess, whether that
supposed absolute is the presence of his meaning to the consciousness
of the speaker at the instant of hi s utterance; or Pla toni c essences tha t
underwrite the significati ons of verbal names; or a fi xed and simpl e
referent, " the thing itself," in the world "outside of language"; or
Heidegger's "Being" as the ultima te ground of signifi ca ti on and
understanding. But having, in the criti cal asp ect of hi s reading of texts,
dismantl ed the traditional absolutes, Derrida remains committed to
absolutism; for he shares the presupposition of the views h e decon–
structs that to be determinately understandabl e, language requires an
absolute foundation , and that, since there is no such ground, th ere is
no stop to the pl ay of undecidabl e meanings: "The absence of a
transcendental signified extends the realm and the pl ay of signifi ca ti on
to infinity." In thi s aspect of his dea lings with language, Derrida's
writings present vari a ti ons on a Ni etzschean theme: Absolutes, though
necessary, are dead, therefore free pl ay is permitted.
It should be remarked, however, that the phil osophy of language
offers an alternative to the supposition tha t language requires an
absolute foundati on in order to be determina tely meaningful. T his
alterna ti ve sets ou t from the o bservation tha t in practi ce Ianguage often
works, that it gets its job done. We live a life in whi ch we have
assurance that we are able to mean what we say and know wha t we
mean , and in whi ch our auditors o r readers show us by their verbal and
acti onal responses whether or no t they have understood us correctl y.
This alterna tive stance takes as its task no t
to
expl ain away these
workings of langu age, but to expl ain how it is that they happen , and in
instances of failure,
to
inquire wha t it is tha t has gone wrong. A
prominent recent exempl ar of thi s stan ce is the
Ph ilosophicallnvesti–
gations
of Ludwig Wittgen stein . T here are simil ariti es between Wiu–
gen stein 's vi ews of langu age and Derrida's, in the criti cal aspect of
Derrida's reading of phil osophi cal texts. Like Derrida, for exampl e,
Wittgenstein insists tha t it is not possibl e to use lan guage to get outside
" the limits of language"; he holds tha t the concept tha t language
directl y represents reality is simpl y "a pi cture tha t holds us captive"; he
rejects the account of the meaning of an ulleran ce in terms of the
obj ects or processes
to
whi ch its words refer, or as equi va lent
to
the
conscious sta te of th e speaker of the Ullerance; and , in hi s own way, he
too deconstructs the traditi onal absolutes, or "essences," of Wes tern
metaphysics. He also rejects as futil e the ques t for an ultima te founda–
tion for language. Philosophy, he says, "can in the end onl y describe"
the "actual use of language," for it "canno t give it any founda ti on "; in
