[D66] The problems of presence

[A.O.]

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On 20-03-19 12:51, A.O. wrote:
> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/jacques-derrida-problems-presence/
>
> Footnotes to Plato
> November 9, 2018
> © Giovanni Giovannetti/Effigie/Writer Pictures
> Jacques Derrida: The problems of presence
> Derek Attridge explores différance, deconstruction and the role of the
> impossible in the work of the divisive philosopher
> DEREK ATTRIDGE
>
> Footnotes to Plato is a TLS Online series appraising the works and
> legacies of the great thinkers and philosophers
>
> [...]
> The set of assumptions at which much of Derrida's work takes aim ­–
> assumptions at the heart of both the Western philosophical
> tradition and of what goes for “common sense” – can be labelled
> presence. When I reflect on my own consciousness what I experience is
> self-presence: there seems to be no intervening medium between my sense
> of myself and that self. Similarly, the world I see and hear is present
> to me without mediation. The meanings I constantly encounter seem
> immediately present; it’s hard to see how the apparently simple
> (spatial) here and (temporal) now of being in the world could be divided
> or complicated.
>
> Presence is implicit in Western philosophy’s reliance on reason, which
> distinguishes sharply between what is present (now, here) and what is
> absent (past or future, somewhere else), and searches for a pure origin
> and secure ground for thought, summed up in the Greek word logos – hence
> Derrida’s name for this way of thinking, logocentrism. If presence is
> fundamental and inalienable, anything that threatens to complicate or
> sully it must be regarded as secondary, derivative and regrettable. For
> presence is a value; it is what is proper, proper to meaning, to
> consciousness, to existence, but also good and correct (the French
> propre carries a suggestion of cleanliness and purity). Derrida defines
> the “metaphysics of presence” as “the enterprise of returning
> ‘strategically’, ‘ideally’, to an origin or to a priority thought to be
> simple, intact, normal, pure, standard, self-identical, in order then to
> think in terms of derivation, complication, deterioration, accident, etc”.
>
> But what if presence were a fantasy, a product of our desires rather
> than the way things are?
> [...]
>
> Derek Attridge is a Professor in the Department of English and Related
> Literature at the University of York
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