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Itzkowitz 1978
Itzkowitz 1978
Itzkowitz 1978
KENNETH ITZKOWITZ
State University of New York at Stony Brook
I JacquesDerrida, "Differance"in
Speechand Phertomena(Evanston:Northwestern
UniversityPress, 1973),p. 129.
I Ibid., p. 137.
' Ibid., p. 129.
127
equivalence. Identity is usually represented by a relation called the principle of
identity, A = A. What this so-called identity in fact expresses, however, are two -
different albeit equivalent A's, not one identical A which is the same as itself.
Heidegger concludes here that "The common formulation of the principle of
identity thus conceals precisely what the principle is trying to say; A is A, that is,
every A is the same. "4
To construe identity as equality is hence to construe it not as sameness but as a
kind of difference. Equality implies two elements which differ insofar as they are
separate. The formula A = A acknowledges two spatially distinct elements, one
on each side of the equation. These elements are separated by an interval, the
equal sign, and hence differ in their Being although we do say that they can be
made to coincide. The two equal elements are separated spatially by the interval
of the equal sign and temporally by their congruence, i.e. the promise that they
can be made to coincide, will coincide in their Being at some future time.
We are at this point led back to Derrida's twofold articulation of the verb "to
differ" which refers to either passive difference as nonidentity or active differing
as the spacing/temporalizing order of the same. These meanings, according to
Derrida, are distinct. Difference cannot indicate an active differing of the same
and vice versa. Yet in our discussion of Heidegger, equality has been represented
as both passive difference qua the spatial distinctness of two elements and active
differing qua the promise that spatial difference is a mere detour through con-
gruence in the articulation of the identity or sameness of A. The latter promise is
no more than the empty promise of sameness, and the equality relation ex-
presses, strictly speaking, an inequality- the relation of two elements which are
not the same in their Being. From this we conclude that the equality relation is
indeed an expression, although covert, of both senses of the verb "to differ.""
Equality expresses "to differ" as both "distinction, inequality, or discernibility"
and as the "interposition of delay, the interval of a spacing and temporah:ring
that puts off until 'later' what is presently denied, the possible that is presently
impossible." Unlike "to differ," equality signifies both nonidentity and sameness
simultaneously, yet does so beneath a promise of identity. Equality is hence a
covert representation of what Derrida calls dif'f'erance(with an a)-a term he
coins to express overtly the two senses of the verb "to differ" in a single "root"
word.
128
We provisionallygive the name differance to this sameness which is
not identical : by the silent writing of its a, it has the desired advan-
tage of referring to differing, both as spacing/temporalizing and as .
the movement that structures every dissociation.5
129
and the same. Differance signifies the impossibilityof identity as pure sameness
without difference. In the strictest sense, there is no identity. There is only dif-
, ferance as the (pure) trace of identity which compels thought to move endlessly
toward new and different expressions of sameness. Identity, which at first
signifiessameness, in the end represents the self-differentiation within thought,
and is but the trace of the (pure) movement of the differance prior to all identity
and difference: "It is not the question of a constituted difference here, but
rather, before all determination of the content, of the pure movement which
"7
produces difference. The (pure) trace is differance.
We have moved with Derrida from equality as differance to identity as dif-
ferance. We now step backwards in order to fill out the notion of identity
through Heidegger's essay "The Principle of Identity" which seeks identity in 1)
equality, 2) sameness, and 3) the ontological difference. We follow a path on
which identity eventually finds itself grounded in difference and, perhaps, Der-
ridean differance. At the beginning of this path is the most common formula-
tion of identity, A = A, to which we now return.
Heidegger's argument here is simply that two elements do not represent identity,
the sameness of one. A close look at equality shows it to be an abstraction which
simply asserts that two elements can and do represent sameness. Equality
represents the impossible promise that difference as separation is an inessential
function of space and time that must be overlooked in lieu of the prevailing in-
tent to represent the sameness of identity. Yet equality does not express this
sameness; the equality relation merely intends to articulate sameness.
Heidegger's rejection of equality as an expression of identity is hence the con-
tention that the moment of difference is essential, inherent to the equality rela-
tion, and irreducible. Equality is difference hidden. by the promise of sameness,
reiterated through repetition and replication of an element. The relation A = A
is a meaningless tautology and illegitimate reduction of the non-sameness of two
A's in their Being. Identity is better represented by the logical contradiction
A = B which preserves the thought that identity cannot be conceived of as an
I Ibid., p. 62..
I Heidegger,"The Principleof Identity,"
p. 23.
130
abstract, two term relation, a simple equality, no matter what A might repre-
sent.
That the equality relation A = A does not articulate identity, that the princi- .
ple of identity is better represented by the logical contradiction A = B # A, is
worthy of note. Heidegger rejects equality as representative of identity for iden-
tity so conceived is in fact conceived as non-selfsameness and pure self dif-
ferance : A = B and A or A = B #A. Equality mouths the barren promise of
sameness but is only able to articulate identity as the pure self difference ,
A = B # A. Identity can best be represented by symbolic logic as a contradiction
since sameness, which is what we take identity to mean, cannot be represented
by a two term equation. By its very nature an equation, even A = A, necessarily
generates difference, and identity qua sameness is a logical contradiction.
Heidegger'sprocedure at this point is to look beyond the symbolsof logic toward
sameness itself as that which we mean by identity.
The equality relation cannot articulate identity or samenesswithout introduc-
ing an irreducible moment of difference within the element, the A, taken to be
the same. How can sameness be adequately voiced without the introduction of
irreducible difference? How should we conceiveof sameness?Heidegger'sanswer
to these questions is that it is impossible to conceive of sameness without dif-
ference-impossible to conceive of a simple unmediated sameness or identity.
He alludes to the speculative idealists, especiallyHegel, who had already, in this
regard, concluded that identity is not to be characterized as simple selfsameness:
Since the era of speculative Idealism, it is no longer possible for
thinking to represent the unity of identity as mere sameness, and to
disregard the mediation that prevails in unity. Wherever this is
done, identity is represented only in an abstract manner.'
131
the relation of "with," that is, a mediation, a connection, a syn-
thesis :the unification into a unity.'° '
It would perhaps be useful to backtrack a bit. Until now, I have tried to clarify
Heidegger's concern with the principle of identity, a principle ordinarily taken
to mean that any given element or being is itself, is itself the same, is not different
from itself. The equality relation is often given as an expression of the principle
of identity, but it turns out that equality is unable to verbalize sameness without
introducing an ineradicable difference, a second equivalent element from which
the first differs. We thus look beyond equality to the more fundamental expres-
sion of identity, that of simple sameness: A is A. It is Heidegger's present conten-
tion that this more fundamental expression is also inadequate- an abstraction
that merely "presupposes what identity means and where it belongs."" Hence
identity is neither equality nor simple sameness, but rather a "mediation, a con-
nection, a synthesis: unification into a unity.""
What does it mean to call identity a mediation? An initial response to this.
question, taken up but not explicated by Heidegger, is found in Hegel to whom
Heidegger refers as having, together with Fichte and Schelling, "established an
abode for the essence, in itself synthetic, of identity."12 Hence we turn to the
Phenomenology of Mind and the explication of Spirit or Mind, i. e. pure think-
ing, as the paradigm example of identity, indeed the only pure or absolute iden-
tity. This identity is such that Spirit, as all reality, is the same with itself.
Spirit is alone Reality. It is the inner being of the world, that which
essentiallyis, and is per se: it assumes objective, determinate form,
and enters into relations with itself-it is self contained and self
complete, in itself and for itself at once.'a
Identity for Hegel can only mean the identity of Spirit. Reality, the inner being
of the world, that which is and is per se, is only Spirit. Since there is no reality or
being apart from Spirit, the principle of identity A is A is senselessunless it refers
above all to the sameness of Spirit. Yet we read that Spirit is externality and
otherness inasmuch as "it assumes objective, determinate form." In fact, Spirit is
itself, is identical with itself, only in relating to itself in its objective forms, its
moments of otherness. Hence to say that "Spirit is alone Reality" is not to deny
diversity and otherness, but rather to include these as essentialmoments of Spirit
132
as reality. There is nothing other than Spirit, yet diversity and otherness qua
Spirit are the life of Spirit. To speak of the sameness of Spirit is therefore
misleading if by sameness we mean lack of difference. Spirit thrives on dif-
ference, even the extreme difference of non-being or death; and only when we
abstract from concrete existence do we even think of Spirit as simple sameness.
, The life of mind [Spirit] is not one that shuns death, and keeps
clear of destruction ; it endures death and in death maintains its be-
ing. It only zoituto its truth when it finds itself utterly torn asunder
[italics mine] . 1' z
The identity of Spirit encompasses all differences. To be Spirit means to be "ut-
terly torn asunder." According to Hegel, Spirit does not reject difference or op-
position within itself, does not turn away from the negative, but "by looking the
negative in the face, and dwelling with it ... converts the negative into
being. "15
That Spirit encompasses the negativity of otherness is one way of stating
Hegel's rejection of the principle of pure, unmediated identity-for him
abstract identity. All things in their determinate otherness are indeed Spirit yet
are not reduced to equivalence in this relation with Spirit. Things are maintain-
ed in their dissimilarityby Spirit which cannot be construed without reference to
all moments of otherness. All reality is Spirit and is, in the abstract sense, iden-
tical, but at the same time Spirit is all reality, i.e. all beings-Spirit is entirely
diverse. Reality which is Spirit is hence maintained in its diversity by Spirit.
Spirit which is reality is referred back (by reality which is Spirit) to an identity
called "Spirit," but an identity which is now seen to stand only in the diversityof
the world of concrete experience. To conceive of Spirit otherwise, as an abstract
identity, would be tantamount to reducing all specificity of facts to the
monotony of equality and repetition. Spirit construed as a pure identity which
does not include otherness would obliterate specificity and otherness or at least
exclude such from the realm of essence or Spirit where everything is said to be
One. It is along these lines that Hegel constructs his well known analogy, in the .
Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind, comparing Schelling's absolute to "the
night in which, as we say, all cows are black. "16The point here is that dif-
ferences (cows) persist in the absolute even if we are foolhardy enough to try to
disavow them in favor of some abstract notion of spiritual identity as Oneness.
14Ibid., p. 93.
16Ibid., p. 93.
" Ibid., p. 79.
1
133
Hegel's rejection of the principle of pure identity, Oneness, is thus the accep-
tance of difference into that which is, i.e. the absolute or Spirit. We recall now
Heidegger's rejection of simple sameness as an inadequate, abstract, representa-
tion of identity in favor of a "concrete" conception of identity as mediation and
unification into a uniry-much the Hegelian conception. For Hegel, the identity
of Spirit is its unification into a unity in which diversity persists. Spirit is the pro.
cess of Spiritualization, i.e. unification through the mediation of differences. To
speak of the identity of Spirit is hence to necessarily speak of differences and
mediation through the process of differentiation. And since, for Hegel, there is
no reality apart from Spirit, to speak of the identity of that which is has meaning
primarily in terms of Spirit as the absolute unity. Strictly speaking, only Spirit
belongs to itself and therefore only SPirit quaufies as an identity.
From Hegel's notion of identity as Spirit comes Heidegger'smodified state-
ment of the principle of identity: "A is itself the same with itself."17As we have
already seen, the more common conception of identity, that "every A is itself the
same" is inadequate in that it implies immediacy (simple sameness rather than
the mediated "same with itself'), thereby excluding difference from identity.
The conclusion of both Hegel and Heidegger is hence that the ordinary view of
identity is based on an abstraction which is never borne out during the course of
concrete experience. If we wish to preserve the principle of identity, it is
therefore necessary to revise the common misconception of identity. Heidegger
attempts this with his contention, derived from Hegel's concept of Spirit, that
identity is a mediation.
The detour to Hegel has been useful in helping us to ascertain what it means
to say that identity is mediated. For Hegel, the absolute identity is Spirit which is
absolute thought, i.e. thought thinking itself. Heidegger relies greatly on this
conception of identity yet differs greatly as well. Heidegger depends on Hegel in-
sofar as he thinks of identity as a mediation. He differs from Hegel in that he
thinks of identity as more than one kind of mediation, i.e. the mediated
otherness of thought thinking itself. Heidegger thinks of identity as the belong-
ing together of two kinds of mediation. These two mediations involve man (qua
thinking, the determinative characteristic of man) and Being. Man appropriates
Being and Being appropriates man. Man's appropriation of Being reflects man
as a being; Being's appropriation of man reflects the Being of man. Yet neither
appropriation is in itself complete; both are haunted by a trace of the other as
unappropriated. Being escapes man'sappropriation and itself appropriates
man; man escapes the appropriation to Being to himself appropriate Being. In
this way neither appropriation can be considered decisive. This contrasts with
Hegel for whom thought is decisive qua Spirit, the absolute identity. For
Heidegger, identity is more complex and its determination cannot be said to lie
1' Heidegger,"The
Principleof Idendty,"p. 25.
134
in the movement of either thought or Being alone, since neither thinking nor
Being appropriates the other qua appropriator. Identity can reflect both Being
and man as such only if determined in the appropriative movements of Being
and thinking together. Identity as a unity is hence made possible only through
the belonging together of the two appropriative movements. Identity is a proper-
ty of the two movements, and the togetherness or sameness of identity is ground-
ed in the reciprocal belonging of the two movements. To represent identity sole-
ly in terms of either man or Being alone would be to admit a concomitant lack of
either man or Being as such into identity. Heidegger therefore concludes that
identity is grounded in the irreducible yet unified difference of the appropriative
movements of man and Being-what he elsewhere calls the ontological dif-
ference.
Heidegger talks of the ontological difference (Differersz)between Being and
beings as opposed to the difference (Unterschied) or distinction of one being
from another. The ontological difference is unique in that it distinguishes Being
as the ground of beings from the beings themselves. Hence the term ontological.
However, we have, in fact, not yet understood this difference as it is not enough
merely to distinguish (ureterscheiden) Being from beings. The ontological dif
ference is not a simple analytic distinction between categories. But then how is it
possible to make sense of this difference? How is the difference between Being
and beings to be understood?
We have already, in talking about the mutual appropriation of Being and
man in what Heidegger calls the event ofapprofiriation, ascertained an irreduci-
ble difference between these two movements. This is the ontological difference
and it is to be understood in terms of both thinking and Being together, not
either one alone. Heidegger places the difference in the relation between these
two appropriative movements. Thinking appropriates Being as presence: "It is
man, open toward Being, who alone lets Being arrive as presence."'e As
presence, Being is the ground of each being as that which is present. Paradox-
ically, however, Being, the ground, is grasped by thinking subsequent to the be-
ings that are present, as Being never appears in itself but only as a presence
signified on the horizon of beings, seemingly contributed by thinking to beings.
Two things follow from this. In the first place, thinking reduces the on-
tological difference "to a distinction, something made up by our
understanding."18 Heidegger takes note of this reduction and argues that
"Whenever we come to the place to which we were supposedly first bringing dif-
ference along as an alleged contribution, we alwaysfind that Being and beings
1°Ibid., p. 31.
" MartinHeidegger,"The Onto-theo-logical
Constitutionof Metaphysics"
in Identity
and Difference(NewYork:Harper & Row, 1969),p. 62.
135
in their difference are already there. "20Thinking is hence incapable of grasping
either the ontological difference or Being as such (i.e. the Being that is always -
"already there") as it reduces both to categories of thought inadequate to the
task-the difference to a distinction and Being to presence.
The second consideration involves another distinction: Man qua thinking is
distinguished from all other beings in that only man appropriates Being. "Being
is present and abides only as it concerns man through the claim it makes on
him .... Such becoming present needs the openness of a clearing, and by this
need remains appropriated to human being. "" The corollary of man'sap-
propriation of Being is hence that man is distinguished in his Being from all
other beings. Man is the only being who
as the being who thinks, is open to Being, face to face with Being; _
thus man remains referred to Being and so answers to it. Man is
essentially this relationship of responding to Being, and he is only
this. This "only" does not mean a limitation, but rather an excess.
A belonging to Being prevails within man, a belonging which
"
listens to Being because it is appropriated.22
All beings belong to Being in that Being is the ground of beings. Yet only man
qua thinking refers and responds to Being. Thinking distinguishes man from be-
ings and man qua thinking is consequently not like other beings which belong to
Being. Unlike other beings, man is the being for whom Being is an issue. It is this
fundamental characteristic of man that Heidegger focusseson in the existential
analytic of Being and Time, where it is claimed in regard to Dasein that "Being
is that which is an issue for every such entity."" Hence thinking is ontologically
significant in two different ways: 1) Thinking ascertains Being as the presence,
the ground, of all beings including man; 2) thinking distinguishes man in his Be-
ing from other beings, making the Being of man and Being in general an issue
for man. In the former, man is distinguished by thinking as the being who con-
templates and appropriates the Being of beings as presence; in the latter, think-
ing distinguishes man from beings in his Being, in the manner in which he is ap-
propriated to Being. With regard to this latter sense, we read, again in Being
and Time: "Dasein always understands itself on the basis of [aus] its ex-
istence-on the basis of [aus] a possibilityof itself: to be itself or not itself. "24Be-
ing is alwaysan issue for man, for Dasein, that is only resolved through existence.
137
Because identity is grounded in the belonging, Heidegger critiques the
Hegelian or idealist notion that identity is "a mediation, a connection, a syn- - -.
thesis: the unification into a unity" for its neglect of the primordiality of the
belonging as determinative for identity. To think of identity simply as a media-
tion is to fall short of the belonging and short of the realization that identity,
even the identity of Being or man, is subsequent to the event of appropriation
and the ontological difference. Heidegger alludes to Hegel in writing that
To enter the domain of the belorcging is to succeed where Hegel and all
metaphysical or "pure" thinking fails. It is to acknowledge the primordiality of
the event of appropriation in relation to sameness and identity. Heidegger
makes this shockingly plain when, after a lengthy discussion of the event, he
ironically asserts that appropriation has nothing to do with identity. However,
he then goes on to say: "Identity, on the other hand, has much, perhaps
everything, to do with appropriation."2'
Heidegger wants to shock us here because he has effected a reversal that com-
pletely turns the ordinary notion of identity as simple sameness on its head in
two regards: 1) Identity or sameness is, in essence, 4ifference; and 2) appropria-
tion, ordinarily conceived of as the taking up and making use of what we assume
is a self-identical object is but the shadow of an appropriation more primordial,
than the identity of the object itself, in which the identity of the object is
grounded. Here the relation between identity and appropriation is entirely
reversed. Whereas appropriation and difference had been seen by thinking as
grounded in identity, Heidegger now asserts that the abode of identity is built on
a foundation of appropriation and the ontological difference. To talk of identity
as sameness is no longer to talk of repetition and tautologies; nor even to talk of
simple mediation. Instead, .
The question of the meaning of the Same is the question of the ac-
tive nature of identity. The doctrine of metaphysics represents
identity as a fundamental characteristic of Being. Now it becomes
21Ibid., p. 32.
" Ibid., p. 38.
138
clear that Being belongs with thinking to an identity whose active
essence stems from that letting belong together which we call the-
appropriation. The essence of identity is a property of the event of
appropriations [italics all mine].'o
Heidegger concludes at this point that identity is active in essence. The identity
of all beings, including man, reflects the appropriations of both Being to man as
presence and man to Being as that for whom Being is an existential issue and is
present. These two different appropriations belong to one another, are framed
.
together by Heidegger, and in this way are the same. Still, identity, as the
belonging together of two separate appropriations, is, in all cases, maintained
by an absolute, ontological difference.
The nearer your destination,
. The more
you re slip slidin' away.
. - Paul Simon, "Slip Slidin' Away"
The event of appropriation is that realm, vibrating within itself,
through which man and Being reach each other in their nature,
achieve their active nature by losing those qualities with which
metaphysics has endowed them.
- Martin Heidegger, "The Principle of Identity"
... the same is not merely identical. In the merely identical, the
difference disappears. In the same, the difference appears, and ap-
.0 Ibid., p. 39.
139
pears all the more pressingly, the more resolutely thinking is con-
cerned with the same matter in the same way." .
The closer thinking comes to its subject matter, the more urgently the dif-
ference appears. A particular subject matter, taken initially as identical, is, in
this way, conceived by Heidegger as, at bottom, a sameness which is not iden-
tical. The active essence of identity refers to a sameness which is not identical.
Man, for instance, as the thinking being, is one being, the same as himself, yet
reflects a difference, ontologically, as both the being who thinks and the think-
ing of the Being of beings. He who thinks and thinking (as appropriated to Be-
ing) are ontologically different yet ontically the same and go under the single
name man.
With this definition of identity as the sameness which is not identical (a seem-
ing paradox resolvable in terms of the ontological difference), we return to Der-
ridean differance at the end of the Heideggerian path. We recall from the outset
of this essay that differance, too, speaks of a nonidentical sameness-now an in-
dication of the debt owed by Derrida to Heidegger's analysis of identity in the
ontological difference, a debt Derrida himself repeatedly acknowledges. In "Dif-
ferance" and in Of Grammatology, for instance, we are explicitly told to stay
with the Heideggerian path as the road to differance: .
140
begins by determining it as the ontico-ontologicaldifference before
erasing that determination. The necessity of passing through that-
erased determination, the necessity of that trick of writing is ir-
'
reducible."
In the two texts just cited, differance is held apart as more "originary" than
the ontological difference: "something so violent that it refuses to be stopped
and examined as the epochality of Being and ontological difference." Yet Der-
rida links differance to the ontological difference in the passage beyond the
"logos of metaphysics" which, as is evidenced by the appropriative movement of
Hegel's absolute thought, maintains identity as a property of Being, a "full
presence" that belongs to beings and is ascertained in thinking alone. In contrast
to metaphysics, both differance and the ontological difference indicate the im-
possibility of full presence in principio. In the ontological difference, Being is
acknowledged as prior to any cognitive designation as presence and therefore as
equally determinative, with thinking, of identity in its active essence. That iden-
tity implies not presence but sameness in the ontological difference, that we, in
our encounter with the "things" of this "world," are necessarily held "in a rela-
tion with what exceeds ... the alternative of presence or absence"'·-for
Heidegger the relation with Being prior to any determination by thought- takes
us immediately beyond metaphysics and the attempt to ascertain a full presence.
Derrida's contention is that differance articulates this fundamental im-
possibility of a full presence even more consistently than the ontological dif-
ference whose reference to "Being" and "beings" suggests an abiding structure.
For this reason, Derrida, vis-i-vis differance, points out the decisiveness of
Heidegger's ontic-ontological difference in which "all 'isnot to be thought at one
go, " but immediately adds in reference to the structure of difference which
abides in Heidegger's text that it too is subject to the "law of difference:" "entity
[being] and being [Being], ontic and ontological, "ontico-ontological," are, in
an original style, derivative with regard to difference."", Hence the ontological
difference, constitutive of all identity, is itself, in its "lived identity," derivative
of difference and is not to be construed as a kind of presence or transcendental
signified. The ontological difference differs internally and is, in this way,
grounded in difference, i. e. is subsequent to a difference "older" than on-
tological difference. It is this "older" difference, "a difference even less con-
" Derrida, Of
Grammatology,pp. 23-24.
s4 Derrida,"Differance,"p. 151. '
'6 Derrida, Of
Grammatology,p. 23.
141
ceivable than the difference between Being and beings"" whose trace "no longer
belongs to the horizon of Being, "" that Derrida attempts to express with the a of -.
differance.
The keynote of differance is struck by the unheard a that both signifies and
conceals the difference of differance from difference. Derrida makes use of the
fact that "this graphic difference (the a instead of the e), this marked difference
between two apparently vocalic notations, between vowels, remains purely
graphic: it is written or read, but it is not heard. "" Since the a of differance is
pronounced the same as the e of difference, the words "differance" and "dif-
ference" are, as heard, identical. To hear "differance" is to hear "difference,""
and an identity is present which conceals the phonetically absent difference of
"differance.""
The above word play is significant in that the difference between differance
and difference is concealed in the phonetic present. According to Derrida, the
ideology of full presence, metaphysics, always conceals the difference more fun-
damental than all heard or thought identity, viz. Heidegger's ontological dif-
ference or his own differance. In other words, the fact that identity reflects not a
full presence, but rather a nonidentical sameness, remains an implicit, though
necessarily hidden feature of metaphysical thinking for which full presence is
both the origin and goal of all "ideas in the mind." For this reason, both Derrida
and Heidegger criticize full presence as a dogmatic ideal maintained by an
epoch of metaphysics. Identity and presence are in fact grounded in a difference
neither identical nor present- a difference which cannot be heard or in any way
"thought at one go." To try to understand this difference as present, to try to
analyze it into component parts, is to fail, in the manner of metaphysical think-
ing, to acknowledge the difference which constitutes not only the whole but all
parts as well. It is to fail to acknowledge that this difference does not belong to
Being. The difference is prior to Being and in this sense is not. And since all
identity and presence is grounded in the difference as distinguished by its non-
Being, it follows that whatever we say is, whatever is identical or present to
thought, at bottom u not, i.e. does not exist as it is thought to exist. If anything
at all can be thought to exist fully, it would have to be the difference as ground.
But this difference is distinguished by its non-Being. It resists categorization in
terms of Being.
Note that the difference is distinguished from all of that which is present by its
non-presence. The failure of metaphysical thinking is that it reduces the dif-
142
ference (Differenx) to this distinction (Unterschied). The ontological di, fference
and differance, distinguished by their non-Being, must at the same time be
acknowledged as the ontologically different or differant ground of identity and
presence. Hence Heidegger tells us that the domain of the difference can only be
entered through a "leap" or "spring" "away from the attitude of representational
thinking, ... away from being ... as the ground in which every being as
such is grounded," and into the realm of the mutual belonging of man and Be-
ing in the event of appropriation represented by metaphysical thinking as an
abyss." Neither differance nor the ontological difference (Differenz.)can be
understood by the metaphysical thinking which reduces Differenz to a disdnc-
tion and the realm of the Differenx to an abyss, an absence which veilsDifferent
and subsequently differance in non-presence. Although the primordial, con-
stitutive difference is indeed not present, it is also, most certainly, not absent.
Rather it precedes and constitutes the identical things to which presence and
absence are predicated.
Derrida and Heidegger thus agree that metaphysical thinking is inadequate to
grasp "originary" difference (for Heidegger, the ontological difference; for Der-
rida, differance) and the true nature of identity grounded in this difference.
Both communicate the need to go beyond the ordinary or metaphysical concep-
tion of the objects of experience as fully present to a conception in which full
presence is deemed impossible and the object is regarded not as selfsamebut as a
nonidentical sameness. For this reason, Heidegger uses expressionslike "active
"
essence," "active nature," and "that realm, vibrating within itself' to
characterize identity. Derrida goes even a step further. He completely neglects
identity as if to emphasize a philosophical "twist of fate." Whereas it had long
been thought that the identity of one is necessarily prior to the difference bet-
ween two or more, Derrida now contends that differance, the "originary" and
incessant play of differences, is prior to and unthinkable in terms of identity.
Even that which pervades all experience-appropriately called "differance"
although in fact unnamable, i.e. unidentifiable-cannot be construed as an
identity. The moment of sameness is mutable, subject to differentiation, and
ultimately an expressionof nonidentity. Samenessis therefore never more than a
trace (of identity). Differance is not an identity but a trace, and the (pure) trace
is not an identity but differance. We can conclude that for Derrida, identity is
an abstraction and reification of differance, an arbitrary stoppage of the play of
differences.
It Heidegger,"The
Principleof Identity,"p. 32.
145