Margins Of Philosophy

Jacques Derrida MARGINS of Philosophy lianslated, with Additional Notes, by Alan Bass THE HARVESTER PRESS 13 b33 First published in Great Britain in 1982 by THE HARVESTER PRESS LIMITED Publisher: John Spiers 16 Ship Street, Brighton, Sussex © 1982 by The University of Chicago This work was published in Paris under the title Marges de in philosophic, © 1972 by Les Editions de Minuit. British Library cataloguing in Publication Data Derrida, Jacques Margins of philosophy. 1. Philosophy I. Title II. Marges de Ia philosophie. English 190 BD22 ISBN 0-7108-0454-7 Manufactured in the United States of America All rights reserved Contents Translator's Note vii Tympan ix — Différance Ousia and Gram me: Note on a Note from Being and Time 29 The Pit and the Pyramid: Introduction to Hegel's Semiology 69 The Ends of Man 109 The Linguistic Circle r of Geneva 137 Form and Meaning: A Note on the Phenomenology of Language 155 The Supplement of Copula: Philosophy before Linguistics 175 White Mythology: Metaphcir in the Text of Philosophy 207 Qual Queue: Valery's Sourcep 273 - / Signature Event Context V 307 'lianslator 's Note Many of these essays have been translated before. Although all the translations in this volume are "new" and "my own"—the quotation marks serving here, as Derrida might say, as an adequate precaution—I have been greatly assisted in my work by consulting: "Differance," trans. David Allison, in Speech and Phenomena (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973). "Ousia and Grammé," trans. Edward Casey, in Phenomenology in Perspective, ed. F. Joseph Smith (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1970). "The Ends of Man," trans. Edouard Morot-Sir, Wesley C. Puisol, Hubert L. Dreyfus, and Barbara Reid, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 30, no. 1 (1969). "Form and Meaning," trans. David Allison, in Speech and Phenomena. "The Supplement of Copula," trans. James S. Creech and Josue Harrari, The Georgia Review 30 (1976). "White Mythology," trans. F. C. T. Moore, New Literary History 6, no. 1 (1974). "Signature Event Context," trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman, Glyph: Johns Hopkins Textual Studies 7 (1977). Although I read it after completing the work on this volume, I believe that Philip Lewis's "Vers Ia traduction abusive" (in Les fins de l'homme—4 partir du travail de Jacques Derrida, Paris: Galilee, 1981) contains the criteria by which all translations of Derrida will be judged. ALAN BAss New York City July 1982 VII Tympan The thesis and antithesis and their proofs therefore represent nothing but the opposite assertions, that a limit is (eine Grenze ist), and that the limit equally is only a sublated (aufgehobene [relevé]) one; that the limit has a beyond with which however it stands in relation (in Beziehung ste/it), and beyond which it must pass, but that in doing so there arises another such limit, which is no limit. The solution of these antinomies, as of those previously mentioned, is transcendental, that is. Hegel, Science of Logic The essence of philosophy provides no ground (bodenlos) pre- cisely for peculiarities, and in order to attain philosophy, it is necessary, if its body expresses the sum of its peculiarities, that it cast itself into the abyss a corps perdu (sich a corps perdu hineinzusfürzen). Hegel, The Difference between the Fichtean and Schellingian Systems of Philosophy The need for philosophy can be expressed as its presupposition if a sort of vestibule (eine Art von Vorhof) is supposed to b