WITTGENSTEIN AND
\nDECONSTRUCTION<\/b><\/p>\n
Nicholas F. Gier, Professor Emeritus
\nDepartment of Philosophy, University of Idaho
\nPresented at the Northwest Conference on Philosophy
\nLewis & Clark College, November, 1989<\/p>\n
published in Review of
\nContemporary Philosophy <\/i>6 (2007)<\/span><\/p>\n
"You could say of my work that it is
\nphenomenology." <\/p>\n
—<\/span>Wittgenstein
\nto M. O’C Drury<\/p>\n
\n<\/span> For over two decades scholars have been
\nwriting and debating about Wittgenstein’s relationship to phenomenology. During
\nhis so-called "middle" period (1929-33), Wittgenstein used the term
\n"phenomenology" in a positive sense, including an entire chapter entitled
\n"Phenomenology is Grammar" in the "Big Typescript" of 1933. Although some
\ncommentators believe that Wittgenstein was influenced by Husserl’s Logical
\nInvestigations<\/i> early on, it is clear that his later work, if it can be called
\nphenomenology, is very different from orthodox Husserlianism. In my book
\nWittgenstein and Phenomenology <\/span><\/i>
\n(1)<\/span>, I argue that there are significant parallels
\nbetween Wittgenstein and the so-called "existentialist" phenomenologists,
\nespecially Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Even in this context, I found important
\ndifferences, primarily due to Wittgenstein’s cultural solipsism. Both Heidegger
\nand Merleau-Ponty believe that, despite historical and cultural differences,
\nthere are basic forms of life that all human share. Ten years ago, my position
\nwas that Wittgenstein disagreed on this crucial point.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span> Wittgentstein’s rejection of a universal Weltbild<\/i>
\nand his semantic relativism make the thesis of a deconstructive Wittgenstein an
\nattractive proposition. Both Wittgenstein and Derrida could then be seen as
\nradical descendants of the phenomenological movement, starting with Husserl,
\nmoving through existentialism, and then beyond to deconstruction. Henry Staten
\nand Newton Garver are the major proponents of this view
\n<\/span> (2)<\/span>. In this paper I will
\nreview the evidence for this hypothesis. My response is not as favorable as it
\nwould have been earlier, because I have revised my understanding of
\nWittgenstein’s concept of Weltbild<\/i>. I now see that some forms of life–c<\/span>ertainty,
\nin particular—<\/span>are an integral part of any worldview,
\nand certainty in any form falls to Derrida’s deconstruction. I conclude that
\nthere is no ultimate contradiction between Wittgenstein’s deconstructive moments
\nand his reconstructive phenomenology of forms of life. Indeed, each of these
\ndimensions of Wittgenstein’s thought fruitfully serves the other, for
\ndeconstruction is one of his ways (as it is for Derrida) of performing the
\nphenomenological reductions. Finally, a melding of both elements of
\nWittgenstein’s philosophy protects him from the semantic nihilism of Derrida’s
\nposition. <\/p>\n
I<\/b><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>During his lifetime, Wittgenstein was witness to
\npersistent misinterpretation of his philosophy. He was downright rude to members
\nof the Vienna Circle who eagerly sought him out and enshrined the
\n<\/span>Tractatus<\/i> as
\nthe Bible of logical positivism. (Once, when invited to speak to them about his
\nfamous work, he whistled a piece from Schubert instead.) Vienna Circle
\nphilosophers would have been shocked to learn that in his first work in
\nreturning to Cambridge in 1929, Wittgenstein, breaking decisively with the
\nTractatus<\/i>, had resurrected the synthetic a priori. Wittgenstein’s comment to
\nDrury came at this time, more specifically when Moritz Schlick was asked to
\nspeak about phenomenology to the Moral Science Club. Wittgenstein’s full
\nresponse was: "You ought to make a point of going to hear this paper, but I
\nshan’t be there. You could say of my work that it is ‘phenomenology.’"(3)<\/span>\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>It is intriguing to speculate about the
\nimplications of these remarks. Was Schlick’s paper the famous "Is There a
\nFactual A priori?," which was indeed written about this time and was directed
\nagainst Edmund Husserl’s support of synthetic universals? There are at least
\nthree possible reasons why Wittgenstein declined to attend. (1) Wittgenstein had
\nstopped going to the club, because he had made a pest of himself by constantly
\ntaking issue with what was said at the meetings. (2) Wittgenstein had tired
\nquickly of the fawning attention of members of the Vienna Circle and had no
\ndesire to meet Schlick again. (3) Wittgenstein had definitely changed his mind
\non the synthetic a priori, was positively inclined to phenomenology in general,
\nand wanted to avoid an encounter with Schlick on these issues
\n<\/span> (4)<\/span>. <\/p>\n
\n<\/span>The proponents of ordinary language philosophy also
\nmisunderstood Wittgenstein’s philosophical intentions. These thinkers
\nconveniently overlooked explicit reservations about the reliability of ordinary
\ndiscourse. Commentators who read Wittgenstein as a deconstructionist capitalize
\non those famous passages in he says that ordinary language misleads, tempts,
\neven bewitches us. In so far as grammatical investigations "weaken the position
\nof certain fixed standards of our expression" (BB, p.
\n<\/span>43), this can be seen as a
\nform of deconstruction. Wittgenstein’s attack on traditional essentialism also
\nparallels Derrida’s position. Recall Wittgenstein’s sympathy with Socrates’
\ninterlocutors, who give examples rather than clear definitions. <\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Another reading of the early Platonic dialogues is
\nthat it is Plato, not Socrates, who is the essentialist, and the latter would
\nhave refuted any thesis put him. The real goal, then, of Socratic dialectic, as
\nKierkegaard argued in The Concept of Irony<\/i>, is nothingness, an ironic
\ndead-end, a deconstructive aporia.<\/i> This means that Wittgenstein’s use of
\nfictitious natural histories is not eidetic in the sense of searching for
\nunivocal meanings; rather, it is intended to undermine all meaning in a welter
\nof diffuse equivocations. As early as the Blue and Brown Books <\/i>of 1933
\nWittgenstein, according to the deconstructive reading, departs radically from
\nHusserl’s eidetic reduction and instead of unchanging essences, Wittgenstein
\nwants to show that there are no essences at all. <\/p>\n
\n<\/span>One can say that as the errant child of
\nphenomenology, deconstruction involves, as Derrida phrases it, "a reduction of
\nthe reduction…[which] opens the way to an infinite discursiveness," i.e.,
\ninfinite "spacing" and unlimited equivocation
\n<\/span> (5)<\/span>. This notion of discursive spacing
\nis integral to Derrida’s central concept of differance<\/i>. Derrida’s
\ndiffereance<\/i> is apparently derived from Heidegger’s "ontological Differenz<\/i>,"
\nbut with a significant deviation. For Heidegger Being and beings were
\nontologically distinct and every being has its own mode of Being such that its
\nidentity is secured. This essentialist residue in Heidegger’s thought is
\nthoroughly purged in Derrida’s philosophy. Indeed, differance<\/i> can be
\ncalled Derrida’s "reduction of the reduction." Marjorie Grene discovers
\nDerridean spacing in Wittgenstein’s epigrammatic style, and she notes the irony
\nthat Derrida’s own polished prose is not sufficiently disjointed
\n(6).<\/span> Staten states:<\/span>
\n"Wittgenstein’s language invites being chopped up and carried away in pieces
\neven more than most writers’ language, because of the extent to which he has
\nopened up its articulatory spaces. His investigations are broken into discrete
\n‘remarks’ which, although they are woven into a sequence with the greatest care,
\nretain an integrity or autonomy that allows them easily to be detached from this
\nsequence." (7)<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>One of the chief hermeneutical obstacles to
\ninterpreting Wittgenstein’s work is that it is nearly impossible to read him in
\ncontext. Very rarely do preceding or succeeding paragraphs help us in
\nunderstanding the section at hand. It is well known that Wittgenstein made a
\nhabit of cutting pieces from his typescripts and rearranging them in different
\nways. It is assumed that the Investigations came into being from such a process.
\nHenry Staten implies that there is a right order for the many fragments, but a
\nconsistent deconstructive position should insist that there any number of
\nconfigurations are possible. The editing of the sections of Zettel<\/i> is the
\nbest example of my point. As most of these fragments were lying loose and
\nunorganized in a file box, a deconstructive Wittgenstein could not object to the
\neditor’s arrangement or any other order. For Derrida this would be best possible
\ndefense against incipient essentialism in philosophical writing. It would
\nprevent both authors and readers from seeking a comprehensive system or theory
\nand completely destroy the concept of authorial intention and the prerogatives
\nthat it bestows. <\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Instead of suspending the natural attitude so that it may
\nbe regained after unchanging essences have been found, Derrida’s reduction of
\nthe reduction undermines both the natural attitude and its essential ground.
\nThis might be described as a "Second Fall" away from traditional metaphysics. In
\nreligious terms the "First Fall" is the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, whose
\ndescendants have an opportunity to reverse that First Fall by accepting God’s
\nplan for redemption. A Second Fall would be defined as that point in which human
\nbeings, following, for example, the lead of Sartre’s attack on Christian
\nessentialism, refuse a soteriology of any sort.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>The notion of a Second Fall allows us to see the
\ndifference between deconstruction and Cartesian doubt on the one hand and Humean
\nskepticism on the other. The systematic doubt of the Cartesian meditations, like
\nmost modern philosophy which follows it, never leaves the assumptions of
\ntraditional metaphysics, viz., that the truth can be found and it can be
\nexpressed in univocal meanings. Even Humean skepticism, as I understand it, is
\nnot deconstruction, for Hume was content, after his philosophical reflections,
\nto return to the natural attitude of custom and habit and the ordinary certainty
\nthat it provided. In either case philosophy is "redeemed," either by a return to
\ntrue essences or to the common ground of human experience. I contend that
\nWittgenstein belongs to the latter school of philosophical soteriology.\n<\/p>\n
II<\/b><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>As his discussion advances, Staten is forced to
\nqualify his thesis: "The deconstructive moment of Wittgenstein’s writing is not
\nthe whole story, but we have heard too much about the other communitarian
\nmoment, and not enough about this one."(8)<\/span> "Communitarian" is the word Staten uses
\nto describe those interpretations of Wittgenstein (such as mine) which focus on
\nLebensformen<\/i> as shared ways of acting and understanding. This could be called
\nthe conservative, even reactionary, Wittgenstein, whose Afrikaner disciple might
\nrespond to critics of apartheid with the defense: "This is the way we do it down
\nhere." This position seeks the inerrancy of shared ideologies and world-views
\nwhich are for the most part uncritical, unreflective, and essentially
\nuncreative. On the other hand, there is revolutionary and destablizing
\nWittgenstein of imaginative variation and fictitious natural histories, who
\nseeks errancy in all world-views and cultural styles. This is the Wittgenstein
\nwho joins Heidegger in a systematic attack on das man<\/i> and his "idle talk" (Gerede<\/i>)
\nand who holds that the only limit of new language games and new perceptual
\naspects is the limit of our imagination. <\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Wittgenstein’s cultural solipsism can be used to
\nsupport both interpretations above. On the one hand, it explains how specific
\ncultures become ethnocentric, codifying and enforcing their cultural mores as
\nuniversal norms. On the other hand, a thoroughgoing cultural solipsism reveals
\nthe operation of deconstructive spacing and differance<\/i>. In many passages
\nWittgenstein appears to commit himself to a pluralism as radical as Derrida’s.
\nThe idea of any common ground at all seems to disappear when Wittgenstein thinks
\nof a tribe which has "no expression of feeling "of any kind (Z, \ufffd383); or when
\nhe imagines "a language in which our "concept of ‘knowledge’ does not exist"(OC,
\n\ufffd562). Wittgenstein’s cultural "spacing" is especially radical when he agrees
\nwith Spengler that Jewish thinkers like such as Otto Weininger should not be
\nconsidered part of Western culture (CN, p. 16); or that Mahler’s art is "of a
\ntotally different sort" than Bruckner’s (CN, p. 20). In 1950 Wittgenstein
\nexpressed his cultural solipsism most vigorously: "One age misunderstands
\nanother; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own nasty way" (CN,
\np. 86). This is Wittgenstein at his deconstructive best–or worst, depending on
\nyour view. <\/p>\n
\n<\/span>There is, however, another way to interpret these
\npassages. We must assume that Wittgenstein’s unfeeling tribe still has feelings;
\nit simply lacks ways to express them. Wittgenstein appears to contradict this
\npoint in this passage from Zettel<\/i>: "Believing that someone else is in
\npain, doubting whether he is, and so on, are so many natural, instinctive, kinds
\nof behaviour towards other human beings. . . . Our language is an extension of
\nprimitive behaviour" (Z, 545). This seems to imply that there are universal
\nforms of life which necessarily go with basic sensations and primitive behavior.
\n"Pleasure does at any rate go with a facial expression. . . . Just try to think
\nover something very sad with an expression of radiant joy" (Z, \ufffd508). Indeed,
\nthe idea of raw sensations without an expressive form represents a kind of
\nbehaviorism which Wittgenstein definitely rejects. As I have argued in my book,
\nWittgenstein may be called a social behaviorist along the lines of George
\nHerbert Mead and Merleau-Ponty. This is a behaviorism which holds that
\nsocio-linguistic activities are guided by rules, reasons, and intentions
\n(instead of causes). Wittgenstein’s view represents a synthesis of the inner and
\nthe outer, a combination of both phenomenology and behaviorism. As I say in my
\nbook: "Anger is neither merely what I feel when I am angry nor merely what I do
\nwhen I am angry, but a fusion of the inner and the outer in a Lebensform<\/i>."(9)<\/span>\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Let us now look at the example of a culture that
\nhas a language without our concept of knowledge. This is hardly fictitious
\nnatural history, for we can think of the Chinese as people whose concept of
\nknowledge is significantly different from Western epistemology. It is with
\nregard to grounds for knowledge and certainty that one finds the strongest
\nuniversal claims in Wittgenstein’s later writings. In On Certainty<\/i> he
\nspeaks of a form of certainty (it is a Lebensform <\/i>[OC, \ufffd358]) which is
\npreepistemological; it is so basic that it comes before the idea of knowledge
\nper se or any act of doubting. This "ordinary" certainty can be expressed in
\nterms of "hard" propositions which are simultaneously factual and necessary:
\n"The world exists," "I have two hands," etc. (Wittgenstein remains committed to
\na form of synthetic a priori from 1929 to the end of this life.) One might say
\nthat this kind of certainty comes with life itself, and that without this
\ncertainty, life could not go on. This certainty is part of the bedrock of the
\nriver of our Weltbild<\/i> which is the "inherited background against which I
\ndistinguish between true and false" and which is "subject to no alteration" (OC,
\n\ufffd\ufffd94, 99). Even though it is probable that Wittgenstein took the idea of
\nWeltbild<\/i> from Spengler, here it is clear that he breaks with Spengler’s
\nradical cultural solipsism. Being certain is a form of life that all human
\nbeings will share, although it will be expressed in many different ways.\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>When Wittgenstein speaks of language expressing
\nprimitive behavior and contends that ordinary certainty is "something animal" (OC,
\n\ufffd359), we are reminded of how much "nature has to say" in the later philosophy.
\nIn contrast to Heidegger’s Existenzialen<\/i>, Wittgenstein’s Lebensformen<\/i>
\ndefinitely have a biological basis. This primitive behavior is fused with
\nspecific forms of expression like joy, anger, pretense, hope, prayer, etc. which
\nin turn are expressed in board cultural forms of life such as religion, art,
\npolitics, and economics. As I have argued <\/span>
\n(10)<\/span>, it is cultural styles, not specific
\nLebensformen<\/i>, which differentiate among people. This I believe is the
\nmeaning of Wittgenstein’s enigmatic comment that "someone could hope in German
\nand fear in English or vice versa" (PR, p. 69). Praying and being certain are
\nspecific forms of life common to all religious people, but it is the culture
\nthat dictates the Muslim’s impersonal, nonpetitionary prayer and the American
\nevangelicals highly personal, supremely confident style of divine petitioning.\n<\/p>\n
III<\/b><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>We are now prepared to see some important
\ndifferences between Wittgenstein and Derrida. In former’s work there is appears
\nto be some confusion between the roles of culture and nature. When Wittgenstein
\nsays that hope is a "general phenomenon of natural history," he must mean that
\nsuch a history constitutes a fusion of culture and nature. If specific forms of
\nlife are as natural to us as eating and walking, then these activities are just
\nas much a part of our natural history as the latter are. While Wittgenstein
\ntakes Pascal’s motto that "custom is our nature," Derrida sides with Montaigne
\nwho believed that nature was our first custom. For Wittgenstein nature does
\ndefinitely play a role, shaping the customs that flow from our nature, but
\nDerrida believes that nature plays no role at all. For him inscription is
\neverything and inscription is artificial and conventional. As Majorie Grene
\nphrases it: "Where Wittgenstein wants to restore the artifacts of language to
\ntheir natural unreflective roles, . . . Derrida wants to show us that hope for a
\nnatural human life is vain: the artificial dominates the natural. . . ."(11)
\n<\/span> In a
\nletter to me Staten takes issue with this point as well as many others that I
\nand others make about Derrida in this section. On this specific point, Staten
\ncontends that Grene cannot say that Derrida privileges the artificial and the
\nconventional because these very terms depend on an antiquated metaphysics of
\nnature and the natural. Staten has taken on the courageous task of defending
\nDerrida against his critics and protecting him from his "vulgar" disciples. I
\nhave the utmost respect for Staten as a scholar, but at this early point in my
\nstudy of deconstruction I am inclined to side with Grene. <\/p>\n
\n<\/span>The return to life itself was the watchword of all
\nthe Lebensphilosophen<\/i>, and most certainly Wittgenstein, but Derrida,
\nhaving his roots both in life-philosophy and phenomenology, transcends both in a
\nradical way. For Derrida there is no fusion of the inner and the outer, of
\nculture and nature, but an emphatic differance<\/i>. For Wittgenstein a living
\nlanguage grows up as a natural extension of primitive behavior, and we can count
\non it most of the time, not for the univocal meanings that philosophers demand,
\nbut for ordinary certainty and communication. For Derrida, however, language is
\nmostly bewitchment and equivocation. Instead of Wittgenstein’s organic
\n"coalescence of rule and operation," Derrida leaves us, as Grene says, with
\n"traces of traces, inscriptions separable and indeed separated from their
\nimport."(12)<\/span> Wittgenstein’s commitment to holism and internal relations comes out
\nclearly in his emphasis on the context (Umgebung<\/i>) of meaning and the
\nimportance of an "overview" (\ufffdbersicht<\/i>), but Derrida breaks with these
\nlast vestiges of philosophical coherence. Wittgenstein’s general project is to
\nreconstruct language at work, but Derrida’s strategy is to deconstruct the
\nalleged workings of any language.<\/p>\n
IV<\/b> <\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Returning to Staten’s thesis on the deconstructive
\nWittgenstein, we can now see that he has presented us with a false dilemma. We
\nare not compelled to choose between two competing Wittgensteins; we are not
\nforced to declare that the later Wittgenstein was essentially at cross purposes
\nwith himself. There is no ultimate contradiction between exhortations to stroll
\nthe streets of the old town, to drive briskly along the straight new arteries to
\nthe suburbs, or to come to rest (or get lost) in the maze of suburban cul de
\nsacs. (If the meaning of my poetic flourish is not clear, I am trying to give
\nfigurative expression to established languages-games and cultural styles, new
\nformal mathematical, logical, and geometrical systems, and then the more
\nanarchical language-games.) It is true that the suburbanites may be unfamiliar
\nwith the old town and may need a guide, just as the inner city people might find
\nthe freeways cold and indifferent and the cul de sacs perplexing. Most everyone
\nwill definitely need instruction in the formal language games. Of course there
\nwill be misunderstanding, even some of the petty and nasty sort that
\nWittgenstein mentions above. Nevertheless, there will be common ground, the
\nbedrock of a shared world–<\/span>picture that makes
\ncommunication among these cultural worlds possible. Reflective people will have
\nthe choice of living within established forms of life with das man<\/i>, or stepping
\noutside the norms and becoming more innovative and creative. Deconstruction, on
\nthe other hand, requires us to make the "outside" a permanent way of life,
\nforeswearing the stability and reliability of any living "within." But
\nWittgenstein sets up a dialectic between ordinary and nonordinary language, the
\neach being used to critique and understand the other. Sometimes fictitious
\nnatural histories can help us avoid the traps of the natural attitude, but just
\nas often ordinary language can convince us about how odd and unworkable some
\ntheoretical language games are. <\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Derrida is interested in only one moment of this
\ndialectic: the anarchic languages that make everything thoroughly peculiar and
\nmeaningless. But Wittgenstein’s deconstruction has a constructive purpose: it
\nallows us to step back momentarily and, then, reconstructing, it permits us, as
\nT. S. Eliot says, to "arrive where we started and know the place for the first
\ntime" ("Little Gidding," V). Instead of going beyond phenomenology to
\ndeconstruction, the later Wittgenstein remains in an intermediate stage, a
\nlife-world phenomenology much like Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s.
\nWittgenstein’s grammatical (=phenomenological) analyses of the Lebenswelt<\/i> allows
\nus to return to the natural attitude with new eyes and ears. <\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Charles Altieri, a literary theorist who uses
\nWittgenstein to counter deconstruction in his discipline, shows the advantages
\nof Wittgenstein’s more constructive alternative. He observes that, even before
\nthe advent of deconstruction, major literary theorists explained irony as
\nsomething "cancerous" on the body of language and as an ultimate threat to
\nmeaningful and trustworthy communication. But Wittgenstein’s balanced dialectic
\nof ordinary and nonordinary language, as Altieri phrases it, "does not make
\nordinary existence unstable; rather, it makes it more secure by forcing us back
\non our natural history as a means to see the ironic contradictions in
\nsecond-order statements about these processes."(13)<\/span> Altieri contends that Derrida
\ngoes too far in undermining personal identity and the possibility of
\nself-knowledge. Indeed, in their clamor for complete liberation Derrida and his
\ndisciples have made true freedom impossible. The freedom of the complete
\niconoclast or nihilist is a Pyrrhic victory; it does not recognize the
\nimportance of community and tradition, viz., the praxis of responsible freedom.\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Deconstructive freedom appears to make the same
\nmistake as Epicurus, who offers his Doctrine of the Swerve as sufficient ground
\nfor personal deliberation. True freedom requires some determinism: deliberating
\nagents need to operate in a world that is intelligible and predictable. Communal
\nforms of life and common natural histories are what Wittgenstein offers as this
\nnecessary ground for human agency. As Altieri states: "Wittgenstein’s way of
\ninvestigating experiences in terms of established procedures and language games
\nprovides a basic source for enhancing human freedom by showing us what our
\ncommitments really are. Through these investigations we learn what we depend on
\nin order to carry out the activities that give meaning and purpose to our lives,
\nand, more important, we come to recognize that what is deeply personal is not
\ntherefore subjective and arbitrary."(14)<\/span> <\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Henry Staten gives the mistaken impression that
\nWittgenstein and Derrida are the first philosophers who refuse to subordinate
\naccident to essence and the empirical to the logical. American pragmatism
\ncertainly had this as its agenda and Merleau-Ponty’s definitely joins Derrida
\nwith his famous declaration that "every factual truth is a rational truth, and
\nvice versa."(15)<\/span> Even a speculative metaphysician such as Whitehead makes it clear
\nthat "eternal objects" are subordinate to "actual occasions." The deconstructivists seem to ignore the possibility of intermediate positions
\nbetween the essentialist tradition which claims too much and their own position
\nwhich denies too much. (When Derrida’s disciple Mark Taylor declares that God is
\ndead, that the self is vacuous, that authors do not actually write books, and
\nthat history is an illusion, he does not sufficiently acknowledge the
\npossibility that new ideas about God, history, and the self could perhaps rescue
\ntheological language.) My conclusion is that Wittgenstein’s life-world
\nphenomenology is such an intermediate position; and that, while Wittgenstein has
\nhis deconstructive moments, they are ultimately for a constructive end.\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>As a way of summing up the difference between
\nWittgenstein and Derrida, I offer the following water metaphors. For
\nWittgenstein human cultures develop and flow in a multitude of rivers with the
\nsame hardrock beds. Shifting sand and silt would symbolize the contingent and
\nthe accidental features of these cultures and the distinctive ways in which they
\nexpress the same forms of life. Chinese and Germans would, for example, express
\nknowledge and their certainty of it in very different ways. The open sea would
\nseem the best symbol for deconstruction: there is no firm ground underneath the
\nmyriad of waves, none of which ever crest again in the same time and place. The
\nwaves do not have the same direction as river currents, but are completely at
\nthe mercy of the great storms of the open sea. But alas, it seems my metaphors
\ndo imply a victory of sorts for deconstruction: all rivers eventually return to
\nthe sea! <\/p>\n
ENDNOTES<\/b> <\/p>\n
7. <\/a>Staten, op. cit.,
\npp. 65-66. <\/p>\n
9. <\/a>Gier, op. cit, p.
\n153.<\/p>\n
10. <\/a>Ibid., chapter
\n2, especially p. 27.<\/p>\n
11. <\/a>Grene, op. cit.,
\np. 275.<\/p>\n