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A Question of Origin: Hegel's Privileging of Spoken Over Written Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

John McCumber
John McCumber*
Affiliation:
UCLA
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Abstract

In ‘Le puits et la pyramide’, Jacques Derrida critiques the way in which Hegel privileges speech over writing at Encyclopedia §459. He traces that privileging back to Hegel's teleologically motivated view of time as the sublation of space, which he takes in turn to be motivated by Hegel's concern, as a metaphysical thinker, for validating and securing the philosophical dream of “full presence”. This, on Hegelian terms, involves subjecting the “materiality” of space to the “ideality” of time.

Perhaps surprisingly, Hegel himself openly concedes Derrida's first two points. By limiting his discussion of language in the Encyclopedia to consideration of its function as a vehicle for the expression of representations, Hegel requires himself to discuss the relative merits of spoken and written utterances, an issue which he then argues out in favour of the former. Within the written domain, alphabetic and hieroglyphic writing must also be compared, and it is hardly astonishing that Hegel should view the key contrast between the two as that of the temporality inherent in alphabetic speech, which captures sound, as opposed to the spatiality of hieroglyphics, which exist only as inscriptions.

Hegel's privileging of speech over writing is thus no mere slip; it is a whole set of consciously elaborated arguments, undertaken for specifically stated reasons. This casts doubt on the third of Derrida's points above: is Derrida mistaking the purpose of a specific discussion for the motivating force of teleology in general? Is Hegel's openly conceded privileging of spoken over written language justified by something other than a teleology dictated by an unexamined metaphysical preference for “full presence”?

Type
Hegel and his Critics
Information
Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 24 , Issue 1-2: number 47/48 , 2003 , pp. 50 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2003

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References

1 Derrida, Jacques, ‘Le puits et la pyramide: introduction à la sémiologie de Hegel’ in Derrida, , Marges de la philosophie Paris: Minuit, 1972, pp. 79-127, pp. 101–111 Google Scholar; English translation, Derrida, , ‘The Pit and the Pyramid: Introduction to the Semiology of Hegel’ in Derrida, , Margins of Philosophy (Bass, Alan, trans.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, pp. 69-108, esp. pp. 88–95 Google Scholar.

2 Hegel, G. W. F., Werke (Moldenhauer, Eva & Michel, Karl Markus, eds.) Frankfiirt: Suhrkamp, 20 vols. 1970–1971 (hereinafter: Werke), IV 213Google Scholar; English translation, Hegel, , The Philosophical Propadeutic (Miller, A. V., trans.) Oxford: Blackwell, 1986, p. 8 Google Scholar.

3 Hegel, , Werke [Ästh.] XV 144 Google Scholar; English translation, Hegel, , Aesthetics (Knox, T. M., trans.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2 vols with consecutive pagination, 1975, pp. 972, 989 Google Scholar.

4 The wider account is missing as well from the two supplementary discussions to which Hegel refers us in his Encyclopedia discussion (references to the Encyclopedia, hereinafter Enz., will be by paragraph number to Werke VIII-X). One of these, the account of the “psycho-physiological material” of language at Enz. § 401, turns out to be devoted to interjections, cries, laughter, weeping, etc. — to language as a natural expression of emotion. The other supplemental account mentioned is of grammar, which is in turn identified with the structures of the Understanding, the faculty of representations. It is an account which Hegel never actually gives.

5 McCumber, John, The Company of Words. Hegel, Language, and Systematic Philosophy Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993 Google Scholar.

6 My discussion here draws upon my ‘Sound-Tone-Word: Towards an Hegelian Philosophy of Language’, forthcoming.

7 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik (Lasson, Georg, ed.) Hamburg: Meiner, 2 vols. 1932, II 26–32 Google Scholar; English translation, Hegel, , Science of Logic (Miller, A. V., trans.) New York: Humanities Press, 1976, pp. 411–416 Google Scholar.

8 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik II 150–152 Google Scholar / English translation pp. 523-526.

9 As Derrida notes: ‘Le puits et la pyramide’, p. 82/71.

10 Sinn will be importantly restored to the tone, by the name as mere “sign”, at Enz. §463 (“mechanical memory”); like “the “names” through which such memory runs, such restored Sinn serves the expression of thought in ways I cannot explore here.

11 Cf. Heidegger, Martin, Unterwegs zur Sprache Pfullingen: Neske, 4th ed. 1971 Google Scholar; English translation, Heidegger, , On the Way to Language (Hofstadter, Albert, trans.) New York: Harper & Row, 1971 Google Scholar.

12 Hegel, G. W. F., Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion (Walter Jaeschke, Hrsg.) Frankfurt: Meiner, 3 vols. 1983, III 213 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; English translation, Hegel, , Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Hodgson, Peter C. et al., ed. & trans.) Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, III 288 Google Scholar.

13 See my The Company of Words, passim.