GENERAL PHILOSOPHY

D d u and Wtigmtein
By NEWTON GARVER and SEUNG-CHONG LEE
Temple University Press, 1994. xiv +
242 pp. $37.95 cloth

In 1973, when Speech and Phenoma (French 1967)became the first of Derrida’s
books to appear in English, it was prefaced by an essay of Newton Gamer’s
which began with a bang: “Derrida’s critique of Husserl is a first-class piece
of analytical work in the philosophy of language.” That early essay suggested
that an understanding of Wittgenstein’s philosophy would provide two kinds
of help in approaching Derrida’s book. Derrida’s target text, Husserl’s Logital
Investzgatwns,was said to share certain family resemblances with Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus, but the real hook of Garver’s preface was his suggestion that
“Derrida’s position is markedly similar” to that of Wittgenstein’s Inuestigatiom.
And it is not hard to imagine that Gamer’s preface incited many of the
discussions of Wittgenstein and Derrida which have since appeared.
Since 1973, those who have read Wittgenstein and Derrida together have
sorted themselves into two teams. The larger team, with Searle as its captain,
finds Derrida’s work to be deplorably pre-Wittgensteinian: committed to just
those Cartesian premises for which Wittgenstein’s Investigations provide the
cure. Captain of the smaller team, and author of the 1984 Wttgmtein and
D d u with which Garver and Lee’s new book will inevitably and frustratingly
be confused, Henry Staten finds that beginning with the Blue Book,
Wittgenstein’s writing was consistently deconstructive. The competition
between these two teams has become so vitriolic and the central Derridian
and Wittgensteinian texts are so difficult that a careful untangling of the
textual knot this issue has become is critically necessary. Gamer and Lee’s
new book will therefore be opened with some excitement by those hoping to
measure the distance between Derrida and Wittgenstein in a manner
acceptable to all parties. But I am afraid this new book will be closed in
disappointment.
Between an introduction and a conclusion, Garver and Lee republish five
essays originally published by Garver between 1973 and 1991, but now
revised and expanded by Lee @. xii). They argue that while Wittgenstein is
a true philosopher grounding metaphysical assertions on a foundation of
grammar (pp. 154, 216), Derrida is not a philosopher at all @. 174, 216).
They endorse the view that since Denida believes metaphysics and philosophy
have come to an “end” @p. 98, 135,216),he shows considerable “irreverence”
(p. 3) towards the philosophical tradition, and is content with being the
practitioner of a vivid style of “literary criticism” (p. 218). They conclude
that however alluring, Derrida’s practice is nothing but an empty, textual
exercise engaging no substantive philosophical problems, at all @p. x, 133,
136, 141, 183, 216).
Of course, these results will be disappointing to those-such as myself-
who s t i l l find Derrida to be the “first-class”philosopher Garver had announced
in 1973. But Garver and Lee’s book will also disappoint anyone who is ready
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for something more than the pleasures of reading Derrida’s rap sheet. It is
too late in the reception of Derrida’s work to ignore his replies to the first
wave of criticism he received. Those replies may be inadequate, but this
cannot be demonstrated by ignoring their existence. Yet this is precisely what
Garver and Lee do.
Throughout the academy Derrida is known as the author of the ho+g
sentence “There is nothing outside the text” (OJCrammatolog (1976) pp. 158
and 163). According to Garver and Lee, this sentence proves that Derrida is
a peculiar kind of idealist of the text committed to the bizarre metaphysical
view that there are in the universe only books (p. 32) and to the hermeneutical
straitjacket of never using the context of a sentence to ease its interpretation
(pp. 49, 181, 186). In addition to these now familiar charges, Garver and
Lee also rely on the horrific sentence when they argue that Demda is not a
philosopher. Philosophers, they insist must focus on problems, not texts (p.
176). But for Derrida there is nothing outside the text @. 186). So Denida
is no philosopher. QED.
Set aside the question of why Dummett on Frege might be philosophy but
Demda on Plato not, and look at what Garver and Lee use as the mark of
being concerned with a text, not a problem: isolation from any context (pp.
181, 186). Set aside the fact that radical contextualisation is often dismissed
as of merely historical-not philosophical-interest, and ask only: why are
Garver and Lee so sure of their pantextualist interpretation of the horrific
sentence?
It is here that Garver and Lee too blithely ignore Derrida’s own attempts
to explain the horrific sentence to his critics. Since the concept of text Derrida
works with is generalised, he insists that the horrific sentence does not deny
reality beyond the book (Cnticul Znquzv, vol. xiii (1986), pp. 167-1 70). On the
question of context, he quite early observed, “This is my starting point: no
meaning can be determined out of context, but no context permits saturation”
(Deconstruction and Cntz’cimz (1979), p. 81). And thus he has offered this
translation of the offending sentence: “there is nothing outside the context”
(Limited Zm (1988), pp. 136, 148). In this situation, it is no longer credible
simply to assert that Derrida is concerned with texts alone, never contexts,
yet with one exception @p. 111-112), that is what Gamer and Lee do.
Ironically, their typical practice is to decontextualise the horrific sentence as
if its transparent meaning easily confirmed their view that Denida is an
idealist of the book (pp. 32, 49, 52, 59, 11 1, 112, 131, 133, 181, 186).
Demda’s work may be indefensible, but it is too late to ignore his own
replies to the “pantextualism” (p. 113) which Gamer and Lee assume
throughout. Sadly, this assumption mars their fine strategy of focussing on
Derrida’s and Wittgenstein’s contrasting visions of philosophy’s goal, or end
(p. x). Both philosophers begin from a picture of language involving games
or play. Wittgenstein’s practice aims to bring the metaphysical wanderings of
our words home, to stop the play,‘ to bring us peace, for a spell. Derrida’s
practice works to show us that the play can never stop. Wittgenstein and
Demda are very close. They are back to back.
LEHIGH UNIVERSITY GORDON C. F. BEARN

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