3. What is, for you, aporetic in Derrida’s consideration of deconstruction?

What do
you propose in order to surpass or to disentangle this? ? (600min-1000max)
(30%)

I think what is aporetic in Derrida’s deconstruction is its treatment of privileged concepts.

While it must be admitted that some concepts may have been privileged by a choice, I would to
argue that the privileging of being is not at all a choice. It is, rather, a fundamental notion of our
understanding, without which, not even deconstruction can begin.
The differance is a demonstration of Derrida’s deconstruction. Allow me, therefore, to
start there. Derrida takes Saussure’s understanding of how signs function, i.e. through a
difference among themselves. This is because the signified concept is never presented by the
sign. Signs, after all, are merely arbitrary. The trace which Derrida tries to term by his usage of
the misspelled word differance is that something which allows for the distinctions among signs.1
Because of this, this trace which allows for the distinction among signs ultimately becomes that
which even makes any idea of being possible. Thus this trace, this differance, is older than
being.2
When Derrida speaks of the differance as older than being, he means to say that it is what
allows being to be even understood. Here, I think Derrida is wrong. I therefore propose my view
as to how we might be able to surpass Derrida’s aporia.
Our understanding of being is, I think, fundamental to our understanding of the world.
The first data of our minds as gained in the infancy of our experiences is the idea of being. The
idea of being then brings with it the principles which are what allows for understanding. I would
like to especially mention the principle of non-contradiction. Hence, when we first know being,
we know that when a thing is, it cannot be not-be at the same time and under the same respect.
Now, when we know being, we do not know it through language. We know it as we
observe the world and perform abstractions. The child then, even when he or she is still at the
stage of being unable to speak a language, is amazed at magic tricks because he/she knows that
events like a rabbit suddenly appearing from nowhere in a hat is something unnatural. Therefore,
when we know being and the principles which follow from it, we know it not from language. We
know it simply by abstraction.
If we know that signs are different, it is because we know that different things cannot
collapse with each other in a way that it would violate the first metaphysical principle. Now,
since we wish to express the things in our mind which are, in the first place, understood
according to the principles that follow being, we must use our resources so that we can come to
an understanding. Therefore, we create signs. Language then, is a necessary consequence of our
being a rational community.

1
Derrida, “Difference,” 263.
2
Ibid., 276.
 The problem of language now confronts us. Since signs are arbitrary in nature, how are
we able to know the thing in themselves by it? I’d like to argue that although indeed signs are
arbitrary, they do not, in anyway impede our understanding of things. Imagine, then, a man who,
in his adventures in the dessert, becomes very thirsty. He therefore looks for a well of water. The
man certainly understands what ‘well’ he is talking about, And certainly he knows this even
when well may also mean being healthy. He does not speak, nor does he make a judgment about
what a well is. He simply knows, at the back of his head, that he is looking for a well. This is
because, I think, apprehension is a simple act of the mind. We only hear ourselves speak when
we make judgments about our apprehension, i.e. when we know that we already know. Thus,
when we define things according to signs, we are not left with more signs. We are led to the
correct apprehension through those signs.
Deconstruction can only be possible if the binary opposites were, in the first place,
already different from each other, one of which is privileged, the other subsumed. Signs, though
arbitrary, can still lead us things although not entirely and not always correctly. What allows us
to distinguish between signs is precisely the fact that differences cannot be collapsed into one
and hence understood as something ‘at the same time and under the same respect.’

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