by Simon Smith
The last time we foregathered I was thumping on about
intentionality and the presuppositional logic that underpins it. This, in an
effort to provide the set up to something that, one day perhaps, will turn out
to be a moderately cogent thought about Derrida.
The discussion, as I recall,
drew to a rather dramatic halt as I tried to serve up a curry that wasn’t just
unpalatable, it was utterly indigestible. Then, because I couldn’t think of a sensible
way to put a pause on proceedings, I faked my own death.
A writer has to be prepared to
do these things when the chips are down and the devil is at the kerb, engine
revving and the hunger on him for an onion bhaji.
Nevertheless, the point I was
trying to make was that I had no desire whatsoever to call my creation of that
weird mess – that weird, over-spiced, vinegary mess – I had no desire to call
it an intentional action and not just because it’s a bit embarrassing. In a
sense, nobody intentionally made the weird mess. That’s not just an excuse, either. In
reality, it just sort of happened. Yes, it was very much a result of all the
things I did (and a few things I didn’t do), but it wasn’t something I actually
did. What I did was essay to make a curry and
fail. Draw the inference from act back to agent too tight, however, and it
becomes very difficult to explain what
actually happened. The weird mess certainly bears all the hallmarks of an
action; therefore, it must entail an agent: i.e. me. See? No room for error, or
accident, or even a bad curry.
Entailment
relations don’t allow for mistakes, for those many and inevitable instances
when our intended actions go awry. If something looks like an action, then that is what it is; and if it is, then it entails the existence
of the agent what done it.
And now we get to the bit about Derrida.
Well, we do in just one minute
now. First, another thought about why necessity and entailment are no good for
thinking about action in the proper, personal sense: not only do we sometimes
(quite often, in some cases) end up not doing what we really mean to do, it’s
not even particularly difficult to set out to do something without really
knowing what we’re doing. I don’t
mean those (altogether far too common) instances where someone will set out to
do something that they don’t know how
to do. Things like, oh I don’t know, building a catio, for example (that’s a
real thing, Google it). Neither do I mean those instances where we might do
something without considering, even for a moment, the consequences, no matter
how politically and economically devastating they may turn out to be in the
medium to long term. More simply, it just is remarkably easy to say much, much
more than we mean to say; sometimes it takes someone else to fully understand
what we’re on about. And if that wasn’t true, hermeneutics wouldn’t be a real
job.
So now we get to the bit about Derrida.
Nearly, just
one final thought on intending. Another reason the keep the inferential
relation between acts and agents a little bit loose is because it permits us to
remain just that little bit humil. It means that, rather than saying, ‘I know,
absolutely, positively, necessarily, and for certain that X must be the case!’ – a statement which,
according to narrative convention immediately blows up in the speaker’s face –
we can, instead, say, with just a touch of humility, ‘Well, I’m pretty sure
that X is the case; in fact I can’t think of any other way for X to work. So,
I’m quite confident about this one but, you know, I could always be wrong.’
That seems like a much more sensible philosophical position to adopt.
And now, finally, we get to
the bit about Derrida.
Let me say to
start with, that this in no way purports to be anything other than an initial,
deeply puzzled, and no doubt fumbling attempt to get to grips with the Man in
the Black Hat. It’s a thought in progress and the progress is slow. Excuses
made, I think Derrida offers something very interesting and possibly rather
important when it comes to thinking about relations and what they relate.
First of all,
as everyone knows, Derrida was interested in writing. I gather, he regarded
writing as, in some sense which I don’t fully understand, more basic or
possibly more authentic than speech. One reason – and, again, I’m not for a
second suggesting that it’s Derrida’s reason – might be that, when it’s written
down, language becomes ‘self-conscious,’ ‘wakes up,’ in a sort of Feuerbachian
sense. But that’s another story for another day; for now, let’s just stick with
the writing thing. And on that subject, as I understand it, he says something
like this:
Let’s suppose
I write you a message. It doesn’t have to be anything complicated or profound,
like a recipe for lamb madras, it could just be something trivial and simple,
like outlining a cogent philosophical theology grounded in an anti-metaphysical
metaphysics of action. (It’s amazing how, in my imagination, his examples are
exactly the ones I would have thought of.) For that message to be a message, it
has to be able to function without both
the sender and the recipient.
It might help
to understand this rather peculiar suggestion if we think about the alternative
for a moment. Let’s say that this message, such as it is, could only be a
message, ontologically speaking, on the condition that I wrote it and you read
it. Wouldn’t that be very odd? Evidently, you and I both know that you and I are
both here right now, but how does the
message know? Is it a conspiracy that goes to the heart of government or is
it just a case of wilful misunderstanding? Who can tell? Wake up sheeple! The
truth is out there! The lies are in your head!
Deep State conspiracies,
aside, the point is—
Wait, what’s that banging at the
door? Hell’s teeth! It’s the Illuminati! They’re on to us! Flush everything and
head for the fire escape!
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