The Odd Couple Heidegger and Derrida

The Odd Couple: Heidegger and Derrida
Author(s): Robert Denoon Cumming

Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Mar., 1981), pp. 487-521
Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.
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THE ODD COUPLE: HEIDEGGER AND DERRIDA
ROBERT DENOON CUMMING
We may not disregard the web of language just because it seems to

force everything together into an inextricable tangle.?Heidegger
Metaphor is never innocent.?Derrida
l\ OT TOO long ago one coped with "The Availability of Wittgen

stein." Little did we anticipate how soon we would have to cope with
another elusive invader from the Continent. Insofar as Jacques Der
rida has become available, it has been mainly through widespread lit
erary imitation of his philosophical procedure of "deconstruction."
But philosophy and literature have rarely been as congenial a couple
in America as they sometimes have been in France. And while
American philosophers may be "exasperated" at what they suspect
Derrida is getting away with, not all of them are quite sure what it
is.l Here I am trying to find out.2 The term which perhaps best con
veys Derrida's elusiveness is trace. But he is elusive even in the way
he introduces it:
What has guided me in the choice of this term? .... This question is
such, and such is the nature of my reply, that the places [lieux] of both
must constantly suffer displacement. If terms and concepts take on
their meaning only in the concatenations of differences, one can justify
his choice of terms only with a topic [topique] and an historical
strategy. . . . The term trace must refer on its own to a certain
1 Derrida's major attempt to come to terms with Anglo-American phi

losophy is his interpretation of John Austin ("signature event context,"
Glyph 1:186-97). John Searle's reaction to this interpretation was charac
terized by Richard Rorty as "exasperated" ("Derrida," Journal of Philoso
phy (November 1977): 674), though a fuller summation would include Der
rida's own characterization of Searle's reaction?"serenely dogmatic"
("Limited Inc abc . . . ," (Glyph 2: 168).
2 I would gratefully acknowledge the aid and comfort I have received
from Derrida's comments, except that this might give the impression that
the present paper is an authorized version of Derrida, which would be most
implausible. In the notes I have cited some of his comments in the hope
that they might also be helpful to any other Anglo-Americans who are not
too exasperated or serene.
Review of Metaphysics 34 (March 1981): 487-521

Copyright ? 1981 by the Review of Metaphysics
488 ROBERT DENOON CUMMING
number of contemporary discussions, the force of which I intend to take

into account. Not that I accept them totally.3
The only assistance offered by the American translator is after top

ique, where she interjects "[orientation in space]." Later we shall
become aware of how very relevant such orientation is in Derrida.
For the time being, however, we are disoriented by his deriva
tiveness. His allusions extend back through the history of philoso
phy and rhetoric. Thus topique not only may imply "topological,"
but it may also suggest that "places allude to topoi. Derrida goes on
to refer to the use o? trace by Nietzche, Freud, Le vinas. Elsewhere
he refers to Plotinus, Condillac, Blanchot and Heidegger. Derrida is
notorious for his discounting of univocal usage, and one suspects that
the difficulty of tracing "trace" to any single predecessor may have
guided him to his choice of this term.
Bertrand Russell has appraised "the deepest convictions of phi
losophers" as "like citadels which must be guarded against the
enemy."4 Apparently Derrida does not crave this impregnability,
this autonomy. He is essentially unguarded. His thinking does not
constitute a citadel, but a "strategy," which is, if still polemical, con
siderably more flexible.
In view of the guidance Derrida himself finds in being derivative
and flexible, any attempt to pin down implications must be mis
guided. Yet I shall make the attempt not only with "trace" but also
with some other terms that turned up in the passage cited: "choice,"
"place," "displacement," "strategy." I shall not follow out all the
twisting and turning of their implications. But whatever short-cuts I
may take, I cannot shirk some of the details, for Derrida's decon
struction is a "method of detail," if I may misappropriate Mill's label
for Bentham's analysis. Although verbal details have continued
sometimes to be philosophically crucial in the Anglo-American tradi
tion (most recently when ordinary language analysis was wont to
challenge, How odd it would be to say. . . .) d?tailler retains an im
plication lost in English?"to cut into pieces." When the expositor
tries to pick up particular pieces, there is uncertainty as to how gen
eral is their significance. The present exposition is an exhibition of
my uncertainty. Traditionally philosophy is an undertaking where
3 OfGrammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins

University Press, 1976).
4 See my "Is Man Still Man?" Social Research (Autumn 1973): 507.
THE ODD COUPLE 489
particular details carry general implications. But whatever general

scope Derrida allows, seems to be restricted by his tactic of d?cou
page?of the "cutting out" of a contexte encadrant (a "contextual
framework"). We seem to be left with specific passages. Indeed he
denies that there is any passe-partout?any "pass-key" that will open
up all locks in philosophy.5
It is then hardly surprizing that Derrida's own generalizations
regarding his deconstruction are not remarkably illuminating. Ad
dressing an American audience in 1968, he explained that there are
"two strategies" to his deconstruction. It may proceed "without
changing the terrain," but then runs the "risk ... of consolidat
ing ... at an ever more secure depth or height what precisely one
was undertaking to deconstruct." But there are risks too with the
second strategy?"changing the terrain in a fashion which is discon
tinuous and interruptive [irruptive]," and Derrida proposes "to
weave and interlace [tisser et entrelacer] these two strategies."6
"The style of the first deconstruction" Derrida characterizes as

"by and large that of Heideggerian questions."7 And faced as we
have been by the proliferation of his predecessors, we may be able (1)
to take advantage of his singling out Heidegger here, in order to clar
ify the first strategy and the risk of consolidation it entails. Then we
would be in a stronger position, (2) when we watch Derrida make a
transition to the second strategy, to ascertain how he goes about
weaving and interlacing the two strategies. His relation to Heideg
ger is implicated in both: although his deconstruction is itself modeled
on Heidegger's "destruction" of philosophy as a metaphysical tradi
tion which derives from Plato and culminates in Hegel, Derrida in
5 La V?rit? en peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978), p. 17. I shall later

translate passage as "transition," but the metaphor draws attention to any
"opening" (e. g., "signature," p. 173) that language allows us to "pass"
through, and this sense should be kept in mind, whatever passage in Der
rida we are examining, for it marks his departure from an intentionalistic
analysis of language, whether of the speech-act, the phenomenological, or
the hermeneutical variety.
6 Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Ed. de Minuit, 1972), pp. 162-63.
7 Ibid., p. 163.
eludes Heidegger himself in this tradition by virtue of his continued

adherence to its pervasive doctrine of "presence." Thus we shall
have to see (3) how he deconstructs this doctrine as consolidated by
Heidegger.
Any comparison of Derrida with Heidegger may seem to be elu
cidating the obscurum per obscurius. But there is one text of Hei
degger's with whose obscurities any philosopher concerned with his
destruction is likely to be familiar?"The Origin of the Work of Art."
Here "truth" is "at work" in art in a fashion that Derrida deconstructs
in "Restitutions," which is the climactic text in his La V?rit? en pein
ture. Whenever we suspect Derrida would accuse Heidegger of
"consolidating," we can perhaps cling to whatever support Heidegger
thereby offers. Where this support falters, there is the alternative
of (4) following out, as Derrida does, the relation Heidegger admits
between "The Origin" and Hegel's Aesthetics. All that then need be
added to place Derrida in relation to the tradition, as he and Heideg
ger conceive it, are some references (5) to Derrida's own interpreta
tion of Plato, and (6) some illustration of how they can both interpret
the tradition as (broadly speaking) Neoplatonic.8
II
In comparing Derrida with Heidegger, I am taking advantage of

how prominent com-parison is as a trait of Derrida's analysis. (The
hyphen stressing that comparison is a pairing or coupling is Derrida's
own.) Thus "Restitutions" pairs an art historian with a philosopher:
its "pre-text" is what Meyer Shapiro has to say in "Still Life as a Per
sonal Object" about what Heidegger has to say in "The Origin" about
"the pair of shoes" in Van Gogh's painting. What is deconstructive
about Derrida's comparisons is that they come to seem odd, forced,
awkward. Something to which neither Shapiro nor Heidegger re
spond, but which lends Derrida's deconstruction its initial leverage, is
that the "pair of shoes" in the Van Gogh painting do not correspond in
the symmetrical fashion members of an actual pair should. They look
8 Lining up these up these six topics is designed to make my ensuing

exposition somewhat easier to follow, even though it will not be feasible to
keep Derrida in line. For if Heidegger's destruction became involved in a
"turn," Derrida's deconstruction becomes a series of detours.
THE ODD COUPLE 491
more like a couple of odd shoes. Instead of matching they look "awk
ward" (gauche), perhaps as if they might both be meant for a "left"
foot. At least they do not correspond, if the painting is the painting
Shapiro concludes Heidegger must be referring to, on the basis of a
correspondence he entered into with Heidegger in order to identify
it.9 The philosophical questions thereby raised of reference and iden
tity are themselves awkward in that we are not sure as to whether or
not they are relevant to painting. Does a painting correspond with
some actual thing which it can be said to refer to, by which it can be
identified as a painting of . . .?
In the long run Derrida is, I believe, also insinuating the ques
tion, Does a painting correspond with some actual thing which it
refers to in any way that corresponds to the way that language does?
If this were not a comparably awkward question, he would hardly be
displaying how inextricably tangled language becomes when such
terms as "correspondence" are used in different senses at different
levels. We have already observed his refusal to restrict a term to
some uni vocally distinct sense, which would preclude the prolifera
tion of its implications. His use of "correspondence" betrays a simi
lar refusal to distinguish levels, for he fears lest the distinctions may
become consolidated as the hierarchically paired oppositions which he
is concerned to deconstruct?most specifically the traditional subjec
tion (in Plato, Hegel, and Heidegger) of the other arts to poetry. But
if Derrida seems to be defending "the truth in painting," as over
against the conceptual superiority traditionally accredited the linguis
tic arts, he is also recognizing the stake philosophy itself has had in
this conceptual superiority, and he is deconstructing too the philo
sophical concept of truth.
At the outset, however, Derrida seems to be merely abetting
Heidegger's destruction of the correspondence doctrine of truth and
the corresponding doctrine of art as representational, in order to
reach truth in Heidegger's more fundamental sense of a-l?theia.
What Shapiro says about the painting assumes that it corresponds to
the actual pair of shoes represented, and at this level we become
aware of how ill-matched the art-historian and philosopher them
9 V?rit?, pp. 429, 296, 298, 303, 317, 334. In order to distinguish Der
rida's citations of Heidegger from those I add, I cite V?rit? where Derrida
himself cites "The Origin," while I shall cite "The Origin" when the citation
is not found in V?rit?.
selves are. They make an odd couple: there is so little correspon

dence between what Shapiro says about what Heidegger says about
the shoes and what Heidegger himself says. I know of no other dem
onstration as effective as Derrida's of how awkward an art historian
can be when he tries to put himself into the shoes of a philosopher.
Ill
Shapiro interprets Heidegger as attributing the shoes to a peas

ant woman; he himself would "return" (rendre) them to Van Gogh as
the true owner to whom they belong (reviennent). On the very first
page we are informed that "Returning [revenir] will take on great im
portance [port?e] in this dispute (and port?e too)." The average
reader might not suspect the importance of either term, and neither
is univocal. An actual pair of shoes can be worn (port?e), and so can
be identified by reference to a subject, the porteur, whose shoes they
are.
At the same time rendre can also mean "restore," and can inter
fere with "returning," since it can entail transformation, whether it is
an object that is "rendered" in a painting or a painting itself is "re
stored."10 When a painting is "restored" is it still the identical paint
ing? What interests Heidegger, however, is that the painting only
remains the painting which it is in its original context. Thus he is
concerned to "restore" the Van Gogh painting to the "world" to which
it belongs which is neither its place in its frame on the museum walls,
nor the context provided for it by the traditional esthetics of the mod
ern "world." The initial question of correspondence (with its ingre
dient questions of reference, identity, attribution) has gained scope
(port?e) by broadening into the question of context.
Here Derrida rebukes Shapiro for having "cut [d?coup?]
. . . some twenty lines out of Heidegger's long essay, brutally tear
ing them out of their contextual frame [cadre], which Shapiro doesn't
want to know anything about." Derrida, however, is not just trying
to "restore" this textual context: like the correspondences he detects,
the process of restoration is going on at other levels, as I have noted,
and their plurality is indicated by his plural title, "Restitutions,"
10 V?rit?, pp. 293, 295, 300, 309, 322, 325, 347.
THE ODD COUPLE 493
which is a "polylogue," though the restoration of Heidegger's at

tempted "return" to the origin of the work of art will be for our pur
poses the most pertinent process.
A proc?s is a juridical proceeding, and in restoring Heidegger's
context, Derrida would "do justice" (rendre justice) to him.11 Der
rida is thereby recalling the traditional de jure/de facto distinction,
which Shapiro disregards when he runs down factual clues regarding
the ownership of the shoes. Derrida may also be recalling (since he
retains Heidegger's interpretation of the entire philosophical tradi
tion as predominently Platonic) the traditional juridical definition of
justice, "to render to each his own," for Plato's Republic is an effort
to redefine this definition by determining what is most one's own.12
According to the subjectivist (or expressionist) version of the corre
spondence doctrine, a work of art is true to the extent that it corre
sponds with what is most the artist's own experience?that is, to the
extent that the artist represents, not just some object but himself.
The interpretation of the resulting work of art is then true to the ex
tent that the interpreter succeeds in doing justice to what the artist
was trying to represent that was most his own. Thus the "Object"
represented must be identified as "Personal," as Shapiro's title indi
cates is the case with the Van Gogh "Still Life." The shoes cannot be
turned over glibly by Heidegger to any peasant; they must by right
be restored by Shapiro to the painter as his own shoes.
More than the ownership of a pair of painted shoes is at issue in
Derrida's juridical defense of Heidegger against Shapiro. Derrida
has not surrendered deconstruction in favor of restitution. His
tongue is, as usual, more or less in his cheek. His presumption is not
any juridical inference, which would enable him to rendre justice to
Heidegger by restoring Heidegger's own interpretation of the shoes,
of art, of truth. Rather he presumes (shifting to his second strategy)
to deconstruct the entire philosophical tradition, as a tradition com
mitted to the hermeneutical assumption that an interpretation is au
11 Ibid., pp. 325, 292, 343.

12 Derrida's deconstruction of the doctrine of "presence" is almost in
distinguishably a deconstruction of the "appropriation" as one's own
(propre) of what is assumed to be "present" to oneself, including one's self,
so that one can become authentikos?the author of what one is. For the
way Plato's definition of what is one's own became incorporated in the philo
sophical tradition, see my Human Nature and History (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1969), esp. 2: 18-19, 25.
thentic when it corresponds to what was originally the author's own

interpretation and restores it without transformation.
Because Derrida carries out his restoration of Heidegger's inter
pretation of the Van Gogh painting with consummate ingenuity, it is
rather an awkward moment when we discover that it is a deconstruc
tion of "The Origin." We first become uneasy when we realize that
the charge of textual brutality against Shapiro turns against Derrida
himself. There is an even greater disparity than with Shapiro's at
tack between the length of Derrida's own brief in Heidegger's de
fense and the brevity of the lines Derrida actually cites intact. He
does not even cite two full sentences until after he has carried on for
thirty-five pages. I shall show that his ostensible defense of Heideg
ger is a more fundamental attack than Shapiro's. Derrida only gets
away with it because his special talent is in managing "the confronta
tion [which] never quite takes place."13 The place where it never
quite takes place I shall try to locate. We shall then realize that Der
rida and Heidegger make an even odder couple than Shapiro and Hei
degger.14
IV
The obvious point for us to start is where Derrida, if he could be

taken at his face value, restores "the context that frames [contexte
encadrant] immediately the reference to the painting"?the section
13 This complaint of Searle's that Derrida failed to come to terms with

Austin and the Anglo-American philosophical tradition ("Reiterating the
Differences," Glyph 1: 98), Derrida pounced on with glee. Partly, I sus
pect, because his "orientation in space" is never a frontal attack on whatever
position he is deconstructing: "It is the secondary, eccentric, lateral, mar
ginal, parasitic points which are 'important' to me" ("Limited," p. 180).
14 A confrontation has never quite taken place between Derrida and
myself, but there have been some odd coincidences. He was slightly taken
aback by the title of the present essay, which he received a short time be
fore the publication in February 1980 of his La Carte Postale (Paris: Flam
marion), where he makes a sitcom out of a mediaeval rendering of an "odd
couple," Socrates and Plato (e.g., p. 161), with the latter dictating to the
former. When I read La Carte Postale I was slightly taken aback by its
most prominent American institution, the "Dead Letter Office" (p. 136), for
my Starting Point (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979) had ended
with a chapter on "Hie Dead Letter," which like La Carte Postale deals in
part with an epistolary love affair. Only becoming modesty keeps me from
suggesting that we would make another odd couple, with it undecidable who
is dictating to whom.
THE ODD COUPLE 495
on Thing and Work'." That this context is not entirely Heidegger's

own, has already been hinted by Derrida's pronouncement, "One
should return to the thing itself." Heidegger succumbs in Derrida to
the same derivativeness which we have seen afflicts Derrida's own
thought. For Derrida is parodying the methodological behest, "Re
turn to things themselves," which Heidegger had inherited from Hus
serl.15 It might be added that whereas Heidegger regards Husseri's
"return" as a subjectivist method of re-duction (of "leading" the mind
"back" to a juncture where interpretations?notably those of the
philosophical tradition?supposedly no longer intervene, so that the
mind can come into direct intuitive contact with what things essen
tially are), Heidegger's "return to the thing" is indirect. It is not
only a "step backward" in the philosophical tradition (thus remaining
largely an interpretation of interpretations), but it is also a "return to
the thing" via the "work" (of art), for the "thing" (like the "work," as
we have already seen) must be restored from the damage done to it
by the traditional subjectivist interpretation, and it can be restored
by restoring the "work."
The traditional interpretation of the thing, Heidegger himself in
terprets as an ?berfall upon the thing. This "assault" Derrida ex
plains by paraphrasing Heidegger: "Metaphysical determina
tions . . . have fallen upon the thing, covering it up and at the same
time doing injury [?berfall] ... to what is properly thing in the
thing." The first of these is "the determination of the thing as under
neath (upokeimenon or upostasis) as opposed to the sumbeb?kota
which happen to it. These coupled opposites are transformed in
Latin into subjectum (substantia)/accidens"?that is, into the dis
tinction between the substructure, whereby the thing remains self
identical, and the changing attributes, for which the substructure
provides continuing support.16 To draw this distinction is to do al
most irreparable damage to the original integrity of the thing. Shoes
acquire some of their relevance as a "subject" inasmuch as they pro
vide "support" from "underneath" for their wearer (porteur/Tr?ger).
In French (as in German) the porteur is port?.u
15 V?rit?, p. 299. Like Derrida, when I use the term "parody" I in

clude in its range of meanings the original Greek sense of "a passing by" or
"side passage."
16 Ibid., p. 325.
17 Ibid., pp. 325, 347. For the translation of ?berfall as "injury," see
below, n. 31.
Although subjectum originally referred to the substructure of

the thing as object, it became in modern philosophy the "subject" as
opposed to the object. Thus the transformation of upokeimenon into
subjectum was the starting point for the development of that subjec
tivist orientation which (according to Heidegger) has been built into
epistemology as well as esthetics, which are modern disciplines that
are oriented towards and by the aisth?sis of the subject.
It is in the course of Derrida's elaboration on the "assault" that
we at last reach the passage where he cites two full sentences from
The Origin. They are introduced by his own "step backward" in the
historical tradition:
Let us return behind the allusion to the "famous painting" to the mo
ment where the section on "Thing and Work" names "the fundamental
Greek experience of the Being of being in general." I [Derrida] un
derline fundamental (Grunderfahrung). The interpretation of the
thing as upokeimenon, then as subjectum does not produce
merely ... an inconsequential [l?ger] linguistic phenomenon. The
translation that transforms [traduction transformatrice] upokei
menon into subjectum would correspond to another "mode of thought"
and of being-there. It would translate, transport, transfer (Heideg
ger underlines the ?ber in emphasizing the transition [passage]) above
and beyond the aforementioned fundamental Greek experience:
"Roman thought took over . . . the Greek words (W?rter) without
the corresponding co-original experience of what they say. . . . The
lack of ground (Bodenlosigkeit) of Western thought opens up [be
ginnt/s'ouvre] with this translation.18
The d?coupage which extracts these two sentences from Heidegger is

too partial a selection to do justice to him, especially since it is accom
panied with considerable tinkering in Derrida's parentheses.
But this very partiality and tinkering will facilitate discerning the
bias of Derrida's reweaving of Heidegger's text. Why should he
have picked out this historical "transition?" He shows no further in
terest in "Restitutions'9 in restoring "the fundamental Greek experi
ence" or in differences between it and "Roman thought." He never
mentions the Greek temple and "The Roman Fountain," which are
the other noteworthy examples of works of art besides the shoes.
Derrida is in fact indifferent to this historical "transition." This
is evident from his own traduction transformatrice of beginnt as
s'ouvre. Not only does beginnt in Heidegger signal the starting point
of a "transition" which is historical, but this "transition" is also not
18 Ibid., pp. 328. I leave Derrida's interpolations in the parentheses

he usually employs and put my own additional interpolations in brackets.
THE ODD COUPLE 497
the "opening up" which it becomes as a passage in language for Der

rida. It is instead in Heidegger a "covering up" of what had origi
nally been the experience of truth as the "opening up" of what is con
cealed (a-l?theia). This "covering up" of an "opening up" Derrida is
transforming into an "opening up." But at the same time he is
"changing the terrain." Where Heidegger's "commitment" is to
truth "at work" in history as "destiny" [Geschick] (and hence to the
work of art which is Geschichtlich), Derrida is sceptical of the pros
pect of anything reaching its original destination.19
If Derrida's interpretation is a juridical proceeding, it is one

where he would not stay for an answer to the question "What is
truth?" He characterizes "The Origin" as a "discussion of place and
of truth,"20 and what interests him is not the traditional structure of
truth as correspondence or even its more fundamental structure in
Heidegger as an "opening up," but the spatial metaphor, "opening
up." For this is what a metaphor is for him. In short, wherever lan
guage affords & passage, an "opening," it is meta-phorical?a transi
tion from one point to another. Thus
19 This scepticism is a theme of "Le facteur de la v?rit?" (La Carte

Postale, pp. 441-524), which is also a deconstruction of a restitution as a
return to an origin. Derrida even suggests that Heidegger's "history" of
the "assault" may be a "fable" in "Living On" (Deconstruction & Criticism
[New York: Seabury Press, 1979], p. 134). In "Restitutions" itself he refers
to "that truth . . . which 'happens' (geschiet)," but omits the concluding
phrase of Heidegger's question, "Can truth happen at all, and thus be his
torical [geschichtlich]?' ("The Origin of the Work of Art," Poetry, Lan
guage, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter [New York: Harper & Row,
1971], p. 38). The reader should be alerted by Derrida's objection here, "Je
ne vous ai pas tr?s bien suivi sur l'eiyeu de la traduction de 'beginnt' par
's'ouvre'." This seems to be a rather crucial juncture at which I have failed
to understand him. In discussion he seemed willing to go further than I was
pushing him and to reject any philosophy of history. This rejection is con
sistent with my interpretation here, but it remains difficult to reconcile with
whatever pattern is implicit in the special place he assigns the eighteenth
century, which seems almost as pivotal a transition for him as the transition
is for Heidegger from the original Greek experience to its Latin translation.
For an instance where it would seem impossible to sequence, see my article
"Strukturen des Wissens," Wissenssoziologie (Opladen: Westdeutscher
Verlag, 1930).
20 Vent?, p. 304.
metaphor is never innocent. It orients investigation and determines

its results. When the spatial model is discovered, when it functions,
critical reflection depends on it.21
My critical reflection on "Restitutions" depends on gradually discov

ering the functioning of Derrida's "spatial model," as oriented by the
metaphors which he reads into "The Origin." Already he has read
into Heidegger's emphasis on the ?ber, in the passage on the "transi
tion," his own emphasis on spatial orientation itself?on the transla
tion, transportation, transference involved in a metaphor. For he is
about to transfer from Heidegger's context, or perhaps rather from
his own previous context of the "correspondence" between Shapiro
and Heidegger. Correspondance, as any metropolitan will appreci
ate, now becomes a "transfer-point."22
It is no surprise then that Derrida makes a "transfer-point" out
of a metaphor:
At the juncture where Heidegger denounces the translation into Latin
words, he himself makes use of a "metaphor." At least one metaphor,
that of foundation or ground. The ground of the Greek experience
was lacking to this "translation." What I have just termed a "meta
phor" concentrates all the difficulties to come.23
The "lack of ground" which concerned Heidegger was a discontinuity

in the "history" of being and truth. In contrast Derrida will exploit
the discontinuity which is entailed spatially in a metaphor (as transla
tion, transportation, and transference) but which is particularly well
conveyed by the metaphor of the "foundation" or "ground" which was
"lacking" to the "translation" subjectum. His taking over this spe
cific metaphor from Heidegger helps explain his selection of the com
parable metaphor "terrain" for the traditional philosophical problem
atic, since it is founded, according to Heidegger, on the principle
[Grund] that "nothing is without ground." The way that Heidegger
often plays up the ambiguity of this pronouncement may have en
couraged Derrida's transformation of "the lack of ground" into an
"abyss," once he has translated beginnt as "opening up."
21 U?criture et la diff?rence (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1967), p. 30. A-l?th

eia as "opening up" is privileged in Heidegger because it is "the founding
metaphor of western philosophy as metaphysics" (Ibid., p. 45). It remains
a privileged metaphor in Derrida, but because metaphor as such is an
"opening up." For a parody, see my Starting Point, pp. 349, 352.
22 V?rit?, p. 333.
23 Ibid., p. 331. This generalization will seem even more striking,
when we later discover that Heidegger's "spatial model" is concentric,
whereas Derrida's is eccentric.
THE ODD COUPLE 499
This metaphorical discontinuity we can better appreciate, if we

respect the continuity of the tradition (the continuity that indicates
its "history" is a "destiny") and take its beginning as located by Hei
degger in conjunction with its culmination, which he also locates.
"The end of art," Heidegger reminds us, is announced "in the most
comprehensive reflection on the nature of art that the West possesses
?comprehensive because it is thought out from [the perspective of]
metaphysics?i.e., Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics."24
Let me expand here on what is at stake with citations from Hegel
which neither Heidegger nor Derrida supply. The culmination of
what began with subjectum is in some sense reached in esthetics with
Hegel's subjectivist definition: "A work of art is such insofar as
having originated [entspringen] in the human spirit, it continues to
belong to the ground [Boden] of spirit."25 From the different per
spective of Heidegger's "The Origin [Ursprung] of the Work of Art,"
"the end of art" may in one sense be reached when a work of art can
be interpreted as exhibiting the origin assigned by Hegel. To the ex
tent that "the ground" from which it "springs" can be interpreted as
merely a physical metaphor for its spiritual origin, the work is dam
aged by the intrusion of a metaphysical distinction between the physi
cal, which is available to the senses [aisth?ton], and the spiritual [no?
ton], which is "beyond." This is the second hierarchical distinction
which Heidegger finds involved in the "assault."
Since Derrida like Heidegger would deprive us of this distinc
tion, the problem of availability is more complicated than I antici
pated at the outset. La V?rit? en peinture may have seemed to hold
out the hope that art can be interpreted philosophically in the Hege
lian fashion as rendering otherwise elusive metaphysical truth (or in
Derrida's case anti-metaphysical truth) available to us esthetically?
at the level of our sense-perception. Our hope is dashed. Heidegger
may himself offer the Van Gogh painting as an "illustrative exemplifi
cation" (Veranschaulichung),26 but for us to rely on our esthetic sen
sibility to it (or to the illustrations that dot the pages of La V?rit? en
peinture) may be to perpetuate the damaging distinction. Yet not
even Derrida expects he can with his deconstruction outmanoeuvre
once and for all the aisth?ton/no?ton distinction or the attendant
couples, "illustrative exemplification'Vintelligible meaning and lit
24 Ibid., p. 35.
25 trans, by T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 29.
26 V?rit?, pp. 336-37.
eral/metaphorical. Apparently our deprivation is merely relative,

which is all the more frustrating.
If we must resign ourselves to this relativity, we can appraise
the effect on the tradition of Derrida's reliance on metaphors. Hegel
explains that "metaphor is always an interruption [Unterbrechung] in
the continuity of representation and a constant dispersal, because it
arouses and brings together pictures which do not immediately be
long to the thing in question and its meaning, and therefore draw the
mind away from it."27 This is what Derrida is doing to us with his
metaphors. Or rather matters are more cumbersome, since our
minds and our meanings are at the mercy of the metaphysical tradi
tion. Derrida is accordingly exploiting the discontinuity metaphors
introduce in order to interrupt the recurrent movement (Aufhebung
in Hegel) with which interruptions are overcome metaphysically and
the continuity of our experience is restored at an even higher, more
spiritual level. Recall that his second strategy is "to change the ter
rain in a fashion which is discontinuous and interruptive."
VI
This discontinuity becomes even more "interruptive" with Der

rida's "launching metaphors against metaphors."28 Thus the spatial
metaphor?the "opening up" of "a lack of ground"?is launched
against the continuity that is implicit in Heidegger's metaphor for his
owTn procedure [d?marche]?marcher. Earlier we observed Der
rida's parodying Heidegger's taking "a step backward on the path of
thought." This metaphor (not to mention again the "support" shoes
provide when steps are taken) acquires its "importance" from Hei
degger's "insistence on questioning thought as Weg, as path, or a pro
ceeding along a path." This "regulates [r?gle] everything with Hei
degger."29 When against this metaphor is launched Heidegger's
other metaphor of "lack of ground," he can no longer continue on his
path, for he is interrupted by an "abyss."
27 Aesthetics, pp. 407-408. Hegel is returning to his own version of

the original Greek experience, for he is praising them for not indulging "too
frequently in metaphors" (see Starting Point, p. 450).
28 La Voix et le ph?nom?ne (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1967),
p. 13.
29 V?rit?, p. 326.
THE ODD COUPLE 501
"Abyss" is a traduction transformatrice which cannot be dis

missed as "an inconsequential linguistic phenomenon" (if I may bor
row this phrase from Derrida's version of Heidegger's history of
metaphysics), for with this transformation linguistic phenomena be
come of the utmost consequence. Consider how Derrida follows up
the passage in "The Origin" regarding the translation of upokei
menon as subjectum:
The "same" . . . words . . . corresponding to the original Greek
experience of the thing, the "same" words which are no longer alto
gether the same, these phantoms which are doubles of themselves,
their light replicas [simulacres l?gers], start walking above the void or
in the void, bodenlos.30
The subject has been eliminated by Derrida's refurbishing against

Shapiro Heidegger's attack on subjectivism, so that Heidegger is no
longer around to do the walking, any more than his peasant woman.
Instead the words themselves are walking with a certain levity,
where there is no "ground" to walk on. Heidegger's "consolidating"
at the "more secure depth [profondeur]" of "the original Greek expe
rience of the thing" also gives way. With this effondrement there is
no longer any prospect of returning to it. In Derrida "the thing itself
eludes us forever."31 Thus one member is d?coup? from the couple
composing the contexte encadrant, "Thing and Work." Later we
shall witness what happens to the remaining member.
For the moment I can only suggest that more may be at stake in
30 Ibid., p. 330. This can perhaps be taken as self-parody in that the

"phantoms" might include those "words" of Derrida's text which are the
"same" as those of Heidegger's. The latter would then "live on" (sur-vi
vent) as "ghosts" (revenants) whose "return" would take the place of Hei
degger's "return" to the "original Greek experience of the thing." For this
after-life of a text, see "Living On." In "Restitutions" it's sometimes diffi
cult to determine whether the "phantoms" are real ghosts or fetishes, but so
far as I can I am repressing the Freudian dimension of Derrida's analysis.
31 Voix, p. 117. Husserl's undertaking to "return to things them
selves" Derrida is criticizing on behalf of his own undertaking where "the
original absence of the subject of writing is also that of the thing or referent"
[Grammatology, p. 69]). The displacement of Heidegger's "thing" is fur
ther promoted by Derrida's juridical context in "Restitutions." There is no
justification in "The Origin" itself for interpreting the damage done by the
"assault" on the "thing" as "injury" in the juridical sense (see above, p. 493),
but Derrida takes advantage of the etymological link in Heidegger's "The
Thing" between res as "thing" (chose) and as a "case" at law (V?rit?, pp. 313,
325). Thus the proc?s becomes the proc?s-verbal a proc?s is likely to in
volve.
the "opening up" of the "abyss" than the levity with which Derrida
indulges in word-play. Return to "the original Greek experience."
The abyss that opens up in Derrida's interpretation of "The Origin"
also opens up in Derrida's interpretation of Plato. When Derrida in
Diss?mination explores the "space" of the Phaedrus, he follows the
same procedure of interpreting an interpretation of an interpretation
and displays the same preoccupation with a meta-phor and hence with
translation, transportation, and transference. He focuses initially on
the passage where Socrates parodies an interpretation in terms of
physical things of the myth of the raptus or "carrying off" of a nymph
by Boreas: "When she was playing with Pharmakeia, the boreal wind
pushed Orytheia and precipitated her into the abyss 'below the rocks
nearby.'" In the standard French edition of the Phaedrus Robin
notes, "A fountain, perhaps medicinal, was consecrated to Pharma
keia." Derrida cites this note, and goes on to play with Plato's con
ception of the written word as at once a "plaything" and apharmakon
(a medical remedy/poison). What a traditionalist Derrida is: there is
precedent in Plato both for parody and for word-play. But Derrida
carries the deconstruction further. The "carrying off" may be rape
in the Phaedrus itself, but the abyss which Derrida introduces into
the text is "contamination" and not just a slip of his pen:
a little stain, i. e., a spot (macula) remains marked in the background
of the painting of the dialogue as a whole, the scene of this virgin pre
cipitated towards the abyss.32
What is at worst a cliff in Plato becomes through Derrida's traduction

transformatrice an abyss, just as "lack of ground" does in "Restitu
tions."
"Contamination," like "dissemination," is a pictorial rendering of
the process of deconstructive interpretation?or would be if this
were not a process which deprives us of the metaphysical distinction
between a pictorial rendering, such as a metaphor makes available to
our senses (the aisth?ton), and its intellectual meaning (the no?ton).
At least zmacula as a "blind spot" (unlike a blood "stain") is not avail
32 Diss?mination (Paris: Seuil, 1972), p. 78. The "stain" is presum

ably a "trace." In Derrida's treatment of "the question of style" in Spurs
(trans. Barbara Harlow [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979]) pen
or "stylus" or "stilletto or even rapier" (pp. 34, 36) are assimilated to a
"spur," and spur in German is a "trace" (p. 41). Meantime woman herself
turns out to be the abyss (pp. 38, 50). With so much shuttling of metaphors
it is hard to tell where we are at. Indeed we shall see that Derrida is de
signing a mise en abyme.
THE ODD COUPLE 503
able to our senses, and is the place in the original dialogue where a
new perspective "opens up" with Derrida's interpretation. In "Res
titutions" too we have in effect been watching a process of "contami
nation" spread from the "blind spot" of Shapiro's interpretation of
Heidegger's interpretation of the Van Gogh painting.
In Heidegger himself the metaphor of contamination may seem
to furnish a pictorial rendering of the process of interpretation; at any
rate it does in the American translation of his HegeVs Concept of Ex
perience, where Heidegger compares interpreting dialectic to "an at
tempt to explain a surging fountain in terms of the stagnant waters of
the sewer."33 We have long since recognized that Derrida like Hei
degger interprets interpretations. Now we are recognizing similar
ities in their interpretations: Macula (as "a blind spot") is a metaphor
for what Heidegger interprets as the "unthought" in a thinker; ma
cula (as the "stain" of "contamination") is a metaphor which corre
sponds to Heidegger's admission that his interpretations are not lit
eral. But we should also begin to recognize the differences between
Derrida's interpretation of interpretation: Heidegger's "sewer" dis
parages interpretation as derivative from an original; Derrida takes
derivativeness for granted, though in a fashion which will require fur
ther examination.
It is true that the contamination introduced by translating Ab
wasser by "sewer" may be superfluous. The etymological translation
"overflow" might be sufficient downgrading of the derivative to sat
isfy Heidegger's dedication to the original. But the problem of de-ri
vation, of overflow, requires further treatment, if interpretation is to
have any justification. Such treatment is secured by a fountain in
"The Origin." Unfortunately this fountain may be a "blind spot" for
Derrida. He does not even "attempt to point in its direction," which
is what Heidegger recommends, when he admits that he has not with
his interpretation reached the fans et origo of Hegel's dialectic.
VII
Derrida's compunction with regard to the fountain in "The Ori

gin" is the more striking, considering that he rebukes Shapiro for
33 HegeVs Concept of Experience, trans. Kenley Dove (New York:

Harper & Row, 1970), p. 117. See my Starting Point, p. 174 for the impli
cations of this passage in Heidegger's own terms.
"halting at what is only a stage of The Origin," when "one should go

further." He explains that "even if, like Shapiro, one cuts [coupe]
and brutally disarticulates the progress [d?marche] of The Origin the
reference to the 'famous painting' becomes a little more comprehensi
ble if one reads one more paragraph." As a result of Shapiro's not
having read further, "the locus of the argumentation . . . has been
displaced."34 Let me indicate in outline what Derrida takes to be the
locus. The paragraph regarding the peasant woman's shoes begins
and ends with an apocalypse. It begins, "Out of the dark opening
of . . . the shoes," and this revelation becomes pivotal in "Restitu
tions," for it is merely a factual clue to Shapiro for identifying the
painting that Heidegger is singling out, so that he can determine its
date, whereas in Heidegger himself it implies that truth is revelatory
in the sense of the Greek a-l?theia. The last sentence of the para
graph echoes the beginning but broadens the revelation: "Out of this
protected [in the world] belonging [to the earth] the artefact [the
shoes] orginates [ersteht] in its reposing within itself [Insichru
hen]."35 The paragraph as a whole might be summarized crudely as
restoring the experience of the "ground" that has been damaged by
the first of the metaphysical distinctions involved in the "assault."
The "support" the peasant woman's shoes provide is to be understood
in conjunction with the earth [terre] as the original support. Derrida
cites both these sentences, and I have already anticipated the perti
nence of this experience of "ground" to the terrain, which is his meta
phor for the traditional philosophical problematic.
The support provided by the shoes acquires further implications
in the following paragraph: "The artificial being of the artefact con
sists in its usefulness. But this rests [ruht] in itself in the fullness of
an essential being of the artefact. We name it 'reliability. ' " Derrida
cites these sentences when he rebukes Shapiro for failing to take this
next step with the shoes?beyond the question of their "usefulness"
to the more fundamental experience of their "reliability." But when
Heidegger reaches "reliability," he points in the direction of "The
Roman Fountain," which will also end in repose ("the water
. . . rests")?repose which will again be a matter of the "fullness" of
the "essential being" of an artefact.
34 V?rit?, p. 397.
35 Ibid., p. 398; Poetry, p. 34.
THE ODD COUPLE 505
On Heidegger's "We name it 'reliability [Verl?sslichkeit],9" Der

rida comments, "This act of naming . . . presupposes by its very
performance the reliability of language and discourse."36 His slip
ping in this presupposition is another "transfer-point," comparable to
his earlier "transition" from "the Greek experience of the thing" to its
"translation" into "words." Derrida struggles to translate Verl?ss
lichkeit, instead of going on to the "translation" the poem will offer of
the words "ground," "rests" and "fullness." Thus these words re
main bodenlos.
As a translation of Verl?sslichkeit Derrida finally settles for
"trustworthiness" (fiabilit?) at this very juncture where he himself is
proving untrustworthy in his rendering of Heidegger's language and
discourse. This Latinism enables him to substitute for the fountain
Van Eyck's painting of the Arnolfini couple plighting their troth per
fidem?i. e., without a witness besides the painter's mirror.
VII
Let us take a glance at the fountain which Derrida displaces from

its locus in Heidegger's argumentation:
THE ROMAN FOUNTAIN
The jet ascends and falling fills
Full the marble basin round;
This, veiling itself, overflows
Into a second basin's ground.
The second gives, so abundant it is,
To a third its swelling flood,
And each at once receives and gives
And streams and rests.37
With respect to the Van Gogh painting, Derrida raises the question of
choice:
One must of course explain why Heidegger needed to choose an object
of such a type, a painting of such a type, such a painter, in order to say
what he wanted to say. . . . One must of course analyze the choice
and the limitations of the exemplary model for such a discourse as The
Origin of the Work of Art. And to raise analogous questions with re
spect to Heidegger's poetic models.
36 V?rit?, p. 403.
37 Poetry, p. 37. This disastrous literal translation fails to reproduce
the original, but I shall soon cite the German.
Why should we not then try to explain why Heidegger needed to

choose "The Roman Fountain" as a poetic model? What, we also
have to ask, are the differences between Derrida and Heidegger that
will explain why Derrida does not choose the fountain?38
Their choices can be compared if we read "The Origin" as "the dis
cussion of place" which it is for Derrida, and recognize that a poetic
model can be "exemplary" as a "spatial model," just as a metaphor
is. The fountain will then turn out to be the place where the confron
tation never quite takes place between Derrida and Heidegger. The
closest Derrida himself comes to a confrontation is with the alterna
tive spatial models in the title he proposes in La V?rit? en peinture,
"The Circle and the Abyss." Derrida's abyss we have already in
spected. "The figure of a circle," he remarks, "is imposed at the
opening of Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics and of Heidegger's The
Origin of the Work of Art. "39 Derrida is alluding specifically to a pre
liminary manoeuvre Heidegger undertakes in "The Origin" before
reaching the first section, "Thing and Work." Because Heidegger is
up against a subjectivist metaphysics which culminates in Hegel's
Aesthetics, he cannot start out without running foul of the presuppo
sition that it is the artist who is uniquely the origin of the work of
art?the presupposition Derrida finds exhibited by Shapiro's restora
tion of the shoes to Van Gogh as his "Personal Object." In "The Ori
gin" Heidegger circumvents the artist by a logic which is circular: "As
the artist is the origin of the work . . . and the work is the origin of
the artist, so ... art is the origin at once of artist and work." He
eventually admits "we are moving in a circle," and observes, "Not
only is the main step from work to art a circle like the step from art to
work, but every separate step that we attempt circles within this cir
cle."40
"The Roman Fountain" illustrates the circularity of Heidegger's
logic and thereby the difference between it and Derrida's mise en
abyme, even though the latter is also a circling within a circle. Look
38 V?rit?, pp. 420-21. That not choosing is relevant, and that Der
rida's own different choices might illustrate the different limitations of his
V?rit? en peinture, seems implied by his further comment: "He [Heidegger]
would not have so easily been able to say the same thing with other objects,
other painting, other shoes, such as those of Van Eyck, Miro, Magritte, or
Adami."
39 Ibid., pp. 27-28.
40 Poetry, pp. 17-18.
THE ODD COUPLE 507
at the structure of "The Roman Fountain": a succession of couplets

delineating a succession of three concentric basins, each broader than
the other (instead of smaller as with a mise en abyme), so that each
"receives" what "overflows" from the higher level and "gives" it again
to the basin at the next lower level. If the fountain were as voluble
as the shoes are, it would be a commentary, not just on the prelimi
nary movement in a circle to which Derrida draws our attention, but
also on the movement of the argumentation in "The Origin" as a
whole, which the poem mirrors as effectively as the artist-witness
mirrors the couple in the Van Eyck picture with which Derrida sur
reptitiously displaces the poem. Thus there are three sections com
posing "The Origin", with an overflow from each of the first two (i. e.,
of one member of each couple) into the next section, which offers ad
ditional breadth with its added member:
"Thing and Work"
"Work and Truth"
"Truth and Art"
Although the structure of Heidegger's thought in "The Origin"

and Hegel's system are characterized by Derrida as both circular,
there are differences which can be brought out by "The Roman Foun
tain," if we do not take as basic the first "basin round," as Derrida in
effect does when he substitutes a mise en abyme for its overflow into
the "second basin's ground." Hegel's system is encyclopedic in that
the recurrent movement of Aufhebung completes in the end a return
to the origin. But "The Roman Fountain" is not a circular return to
the origin. Presumably it would be if it were a mere artefact, but in
the fountain as a work of art the plumbing is not visible. Thus there
is a gap interrupting the flow between the last member of the last
couple, "Art" and the first member of the first couple, "Thing."
Moreover, if as much is to be made of coupling in "The Origin" as
Derrida suggests, neither "Art" nor "Thing" receives its due, since
neither is brought into relation to the other and thereby accorded
double treatment. The question which explicitly remains open at the
end of "The Origin" is the Hegelian question of "the end of art," which
is not an ordinary historical issue but a teleological issue, inasmuch as
"history" is "destiny." The gap we are left with in Heidegger is the
unresolved relation between Art and Thing, whereas in Hegel it is
the relation between Art and Spirit which is resolved with the Aufhe
bung that transcends art to the higher, more spiritual level of reli
gion, until Spirit arrives at its destination with philosophy taking
over at the third and highest level, and bringing the circling to an
end.
There is no corresponding resolution in "The Origin."41 Indeed
one feature of the fountain is that its ascending movement is cut off at
the caesura in the first line. In any case the orientation in Heidegger
is not towards philosophy as "the end of art," but towards the origin
of the work of art. The question posed by this title, if it receives no
higher level philosophical resolution, is in some sense liquidated by
the fountain, as a work of art which is itself an origin?an Ursprung,
whose energeia illustrates how truth is "at work" in a work of art.
Yet we have learned to be wary of the concept of illustration: the
fountain is not an "illustrative exemplification" of Heidegger's philos
ophy, but its "exemplary model," if I may bend Derrida's description
to my different purposes. In other words the movement of Aufhe
bung may be spiritual restoration in Hegel, but in Heidegger it dam
ages the thing, for it enforces the distinction between the aisth?ton
and the no?ton, which is the second of the metaphysical distinctions
engaged in the ?berfall?in Derrida's translation, "the violent su
perimposition which falls aggressively on the thing." The "work"
41 Derrida corrected the impression, given at least by my original ver

sion, that he assumed the circle in Heidegger "?tait la m?me" or "de m?me
type que celle de Hegel." He makes no such assumption. The differences
at issue between Heidegger's interruption, as I interpret it, of the Hegelian
return to the origin, and Derrida's own interruption of the return, which he
seems to ascribe to Heidegger himself, might have become clearer in my dis
cussions with Derrida, had they not been interrupted by a trip he took to re
turn to his origin in Algeria. If Heidegger (in my interpretation) does not pre
tend to reach his destination, Derrida is insistent on not reaching his. This
not reaching becomes even more strenuous in La Carte Postale. Carte is an
anagram for trace, which previously embodied derivativeness at the ex
pense of any origin, and the post would be (if Derrida were not undercutting
the distinction between the metaphorical and the literal) a metaphor for the
meta-phorical process of "transference" which I am trying to track down in
"Restitutions," insofar as it is involved in several senses in Derrida's rela
tion to Heidegger. (That Heidegger is a father figure may be suggested by
Derrida's "finding in [a photo of the elderly] Martin the head of an old Jew
from Algiers" [p. 204].) The psychoanalytic process of "transference"
(among others) is explored in "Le Facteur de la v?rit? [Facteur is a "post
man," though it presumably also carries the implication that there are other
factors], where Poe's "Purloined Letter" is demonstrated (pace Lacan)
never to reach its destination. In Envois (the "forward" to La Carte Pos
tale, but reminiscent as well of Heidegger's Geschick [pp. 70, 73, 153]?the
plural disposes of Heidegger's "monoreferentialism" [V?rit?, p. 352]) the
question of "forwarding" a letter to its original destinataire is recurrent, but
this restitution too never takes place.
THE ODD COUPLE 509
(ergon) of the fountain as a work of art, the "function" of its overflow

ing, falling, circulating water, is reintegrate in pristinum statum?
to restore the thing to its original integrity. Unless this prospect of
repair is taking into account, the pairing is not fully explained, even
of "Thing and Work," which composes the contexte encadrant which
Derrida would defend against Shapiro's disarticulation. In this con
text of course some of the damage may have already been repaired by
the painting of the shoes, once the "earth" is implicated in their sup
port. But water is also an original element, and the fountain per
forms a supplementary "function." In his initial list of what are
usually "called things" Heidegger included not only "a lump of earth,"
but also "the fountain at the edge of the path" and "the water in the
fountain."42
VIII
We cannot, however, appreciate the process of reparation until

we have assessed in more detail the damage that has been done by
the ?berfall. One source, as I mentioned earlier, from which Der
rida has derived his term "trace" is Plotinus, who had employed this
term in distinguishing what is derivative from what is original. Since
Derrida's "trace" does not derive from an origin, I suspect he would
deconstruct the distinction which Plotinus had drawn when he ex
plained, "Real being" is "not something that is merely called 'being'
because it has a trace of being and is an image in relation to an original
[arch?tupos]." The problem of this relation is formulated hierarchi
cally by Plotinus's distinguishing motion from rest ("as when souls are
said to be 'jets', such that the being [from which they derive] remains
immobile in itself") and the spiritual from the physical (at the third
and lower level where the soul in turn in its relation to the body "rests
in itself.")43
42 V?rit?, p. 344; Poetry, p. 20.

43 Ennead 5. 3. 13; 6. 4. 3. Br?hier's note on these jets lumineux sug
gests that the metaphor may derive from the figurative art of the period, in
which case there is another sense in which the poem is a return to an ori
gin. Derrida's reference to "trace" in Plotinus (Marges, p. 187) is an epi
graph without comment. The present commentary is entirely my responsi
bility and of course is not intended as an adequate exposition of Plotinus.
Plotinus is struggling with the traditional problem of "presence"

?of reconciling the relation between transcendence and omnipres
ence?the problem whereby "being cannot be present to a thing
without losing something of its own nature." Heidegger, according
to Derrida, has not achieved the destruction of this distinction, but
has instead "consolidated" it as the problem of "the Being of beings."
But "The Roman Fountain" at least illustrates a considerable re
structuring of the problem. Plotinus's resolution depended in part on
repudiating the metaphysically inappropriate metaphor of the flow of
water by appealing to the metaphor of reflected light, where there is
no transportation, transference:
An image in a mirror is the activity [energeia] of the object that one
sees there . . . without anything flowing from it. . . . Light is an
activity which does not flow outside of its origin. . . . There is in the
illuminating body [sc, the sun] an internal activity, a sort of fullness
which is the origin and fountain [p?g?] of that activity which is light.44
The philosophical tradition is for Heidegger a Platonic "light meta

physics" (and for Derrida a photologie), where truth is "at work" as a
lumen naturale.45 Heidegger is undertaking the destruction of this
tradition when revelation becomes a-l?theia and comes "out of the
dark opening of . . . the shoes" and "out of belonging [to the
earth]."
The destruction/reconstruction is further assisted by rehabilitat
ing the repudiated metaphor. The fullness with which the fountain
overflows overcomes the traditional problems not only of the relation
44 Ennead 4. 5. 7. Although Neoplatonism is derivative, when its lan

guage is still Greek, it can sometimes perhaps be read in relation to "the
original Greek experience of the thing." Since I have always been puzzled
by Heidegger's relatively slight reliance on Homer, let me be more Preso
cratic than he usually is. By the time Plotinus repudiated the water-flowing
metaphor ("The nature of the intelligible universe is aenaos and does not flow"
[6. 4. 5]) aenaos had come to mean "eternal." But it had originally meant (if
a translation can be risked) "ever-flowing" in Homer, where the metaphor is
not metaphysical, and so perhaps not a metaphor at all in the sense Heideg
ger and Derrida would stigmatize as traditional. It has become such a met
aphor in Plotinus, for if he was still sensitive to the Homeric meaning, it
would have been as posing a contradiction at the level of the senses (be
tween "ever-flowing" and "does not flow"), and this contradiction would
have impelled him to move up beyond the aesth?ton to the higher level of the
no?ton, where the metaphysical meaning "eternal" is the required Aufhe
bung. This impulsion is no longer felt with the ever-flowing "Roman Foun
tain."
45 L'?criture, p. 45.
THE ODD COUPLE 511
between transcendence and omnipresence, but also of the status of

the work of art itself. Before citing the poem, Heidegger asks,
"What is pregiven to the poet, and how is it given, so that it can be
reproduced [wiedergegeben] in the poem?" In the metaphysical tra
dition the work of art is a physical image (like the metaphors of flow
ing and illumination), as distinguished from the transcendent original
(Plotinus's arch?tupos) from which it derives. Plotinus asserts the
distinction with his explanation that "the intelligible gives little to the
[physical] universe, for it gives what the later is able to receive."
But this limitation is overcome by the giving and receiving of the
overflowing fountain. At the same time the poem itself can no longer
be thought of as just a reproduction of something intelligible ("the
universal essence of a Roman fountain") or of something physical ("a
fountain actually present to the senses").46 Our again being deprived
of the distinction between the no?ton and the aisth?ton reminds us
that we should not be interpreting the poem as if its "work" or "func
tion" were to render Heidegger's intellectual undertaking more avail
able to our senses.
Conversely, the sound effects of the poem are not to be inter
preted as onomatopoeia: they are not to be distinguished as sounds
from the meanings of the words. Listen to the German:
Der r?mische Brunnen
Aufsteigt der Strahl und fallend giesst
Er voll der Marmorschale Rund,
Die, sich verschleiernd, tiberfliesst
In einer zweiten Schale Grund;
Die zweite gibt, sie wird zu reich,
Der dritten wallend ihre Flut,
Und jede nimmt und gibt zugleich
Und str?mt und ruht.
The orientation towards the final ruht was earlier anticipated in "The
Origin" when "the repose of the artefact resting in itself was exem
plified only by the shoes. Although Derrida interrupts the text here,
this orientation is reasserted in the first line of the poem, with its
equipoise between the upward ascent of the Strahl and the downward
flow. The water falling (giving) then fills the Rund (the last word of
the first couplet), yielding another moment of repose (receiving), with
the Ru of Rund again preparing us for the reception of the final
46 Ennead 4. 5. 7; Poetry, p. 37.
ruht. Meantime the overflow of ?berfliesst reproduces, indistin

guishably with its meaning and rhyme, the flowing of giesst. But
since the st in both words lacks the r o? Strahl, we are kept waiting
for their reunion in str?mt, which is coupled with ruht in the last
line. Although seemingly opposites, str?mt and ruht are themselves
united, not simply by the meaning of und but by the proximity too
between the sounds r? and ru, which fulfills the intimate relation in
the title between r?mische and Brunnen.47
This intimate relation is not just a matter of sound. R?mische
identifies the structure of the poem as Neo-classical. Thus the dam
aging metaphysical distinction is overcome, not only between aisth?
ton (sound) and no?ton (meaning) but also between attribute and sub
stance. By "Neo-classical" I do not just mean that this poem about
poetic reproduction also reproduces the formal style of an earlier pe
riod. The poetic reproduction is a pictorial reproduction ("poetisch
abgemalt," says Heidegger) of the fountain. This does not merely
pair it with the Van Gogh picture. Such a reproduction is Neo-classi
cal in that it is an "illustrative exemplification" (though we should still
be wary of the distinction) of the Neo-classical principle, ut pictura
po?sis. This comparison had been disrupted by the contradiction
(taken over in Hegel's Aesthetics) between painting as a spatial art
form, which can only reproduce what is in a state of repose, and po
etry, which can reproduce movement. "The Roman Fountain" over
comes this contradiction, but in favor of repose, notwithstanding that
it is in form a poem. Thus it overcomes some of the damage done by
the third metaphysical distinction?between form and matter.
IX
This third distinction I have not yet taken into account, for it is
distinct from the first two in that it derives more specifically from its
applicability to an artefact. Thus when Heidegger turns to the work
of art for assistance in restoring the integrity of the thing, which has
been damaged by this distinction, it is necessary for him to include its
relation to the artefact. This necessity helps explain his choice of ex
amples. The Van Gogh picture and "The Roman Fountain" might
47 The drawing thereby of the title within the structure of the poem, as
it comes to its end, so that it becomes self-enclosed, should have enticed
Derrida, who is bothered by the extraneous location of titles.
THE ODD COUPLE 513
seem as ill-matched as the shoes themselves, were the two works not
comparable?ut pictura po?sis?in matter as in form in that both are
reproductions of artefacts. Hence they can be paired together in the
same contexte encadrant.
Earlier we watched Derrida deconstruct the first member of the
pair composing this context, the "Thing." Now that we have begun
considering the status of the work of art in "The Origin," we can
watch Derrida's deconstruction of the second member, the "Work."
The applicability, which derives from the artefact, of the distinction
between matter and form is illustrated by Heidegger's comment that
the material for shoes must be "firm yet flexible." In conducting his
deconstruction, Derrida transfers these two material traits to the
lace: "in its twisting, passing and repassing through the eyelet of the
thing . . . [the lace] assures the thing its gathering together. . . .
Firm and flexible at one and the same time."48
It may not be prima facie obvious, but what is going on in this
passage is that firmness and flexibility are becoming meta-phorically
traits of Derrida's own method. The flexibility we have been aware
of from the outset. It is most evident in this very process of transfer
ence with which he cuts across distinctions of level as too susceptible
of consolidation in a metaphysical hierarchy. One distinction even
the most unmetaphysical of us is anxious not to be deprived of?that
between subject-matter and method.49 In the passage just cited the
48 V?rit?, p. 341.
49 Any well brought up Anglo-American knows that one doesn't have
to be a fat driver to drive fat oxen. And Searle was especially "exasper
ated" by Derrida's reluctance to distinguish mention and use. Indeed
Searle's confidence in what can be accomplished by distinguishing levels was
an insurmountable issue between them. Another instance of trespassing in
V?rit? is the "slow trudge" of Heidegger's peasant woman becoming a trait
of Heidegger's own method, thereby providing us with what would be a con
trast with the methodological nimbleness which Derrida displays as a
Nietzschean dancer (Marges, p. 163), as he leaps from one level to another,
were not his violation of the distinction between method and subject-matter
a warning that he has "no method" ("Living On," p. 96). Since pas de m?
thode can also mean "methodological step," I have felt still free to observe
the steps he takes to eliminate levels. Thus although Heidegger himself
had only claimed that thinking was a "handicraft," he is credited by Derrida
with the "subtlety of a shoemaker as a craftsman" (V?rit?, p. 420), while
Van Gogh is quoted to the effect that his commitment to the "truth" entailed
a preference for being a "shoemaker" rather than a painter (ibid., p. 291).
The "subtlety" is Derrida's own, for unlike the translation "shoemaker,"
cordonnier can convey the implication that the "twisting" of a cordon is in
volved. But this movement, we have just recognized is characteristically
Derridean.
transfer from the shoes as the subject-matter takes place in the first
place to Heidegger's method of treatment: "Gathering together" (ras
semblement) is Heidegger's Versammlung, which is what "the old
High German word 'thing' means,"50 but which also becomes Heideg
ger's method of treating the thing. The transfer from the shoes
takes place in the second place to Derrida's method of treating Hei
degger's treatment and involves its deconstruction.
Let us track down this process of transference step by step.
Derrida's deconstructive method is an attempt to "unlace [d?lacer]
The Origin," as well an "interlacing of this discussion with another
[presumably Shapiro's]." The metaphor ostensibly derives from the
shoes themselves, which are "d?laiss?es, d?lac?es [abandoned, un
laced]." It also is transferred from the shoes to their treatment by
Heidegger: his method is visualized as sometimes taking him "out
side" the "frame" of the painting, and during this phase he "lets fall,
abandons the painting [laisse tomber, d?laisse le tableau]"51 This
phase is alleged in order to defend Heidegger against Shapiro's
charge of referring to the painting as a work of art when he is merely
referring to the shoes as an artefact. But in fact Derrida is guilty of
treachery or at best tricherie, since his metaphors are implicated in
the deconstruction of Heidegger's treatment of the work of art. If I
lingered with the question of its status in "The Origin," this was
partly because Heidegger's persistent emphasis is on the way the
work "stands up"?e. g., on the shoes as "dastehende" in the paint
ing.52 He does not "let" the shoes "fall."
This loss of status Derrida cunningly prepares for by interpolat
ing (in the crucial passage on the translation o? upokeimenon as sub
jectum) an unwarranted reference to "being-there," along side of the
bona fide quotation referring to another "mode of thought!"53 Thus
he is able to transfer "falling" and "abandonment" (d?laisse
ment/Geworfenheit), which are traits of "being-there" in Being and
Time to the shoes in "The Origin." But to interlace these two texts
in this way is to play down the shift in focus from the "being-there" of
man in Being and Time to the "standing-there" (Dastehen) of the
50 Poetry, p. 174.
51 V?rit?, pp. 374, 37. The "transfer-point" is the fact that "shoes are
what one lets fall. Old shoes in particular (p. 348).
52 Poetry, p. 33. The same status is assigned the Greek temple (pp.
41, 42).
53 See above, p. 496.
THE ODD COUPLE 515
work of art in "The Origin," though the paradoxical result is that Der
rida thereby also plays down the continuity between the two texts to
the extent that Heidegger in both is engaged in the destruction of the
doctrine of substance. Derrida instead laisse tomber the term sub
stantia (even though Heidegger continues to manipulate the root
"stand" in "The Origin") in favor of subjectum. This metaphor of
what "lies under" eases Derrida's transition to "the lack of ground"
which leaves nothing to stand on.
In the interest of fair play, I am trying to do to Derrida what he

has done to Heidegger?to "render him justice" by reapplying in in
terpreting him his own method. Let me press on, obedient to Der
rida's own behest:
One must of course explain why Heidegger needed to choose an object
of such a type, a painting of such a type ... in order to say what he
wanted to say. . . . One must of course analyze the choice and the
limitations of the exemplary model for . . . The Origin of the Work of
AH.
The choice of the shoes was Heidegger's (and Shapiro's). The choice
of the laces is authentically Derrida's own. He half confesses his
obliquity: "The exhibition of these laces which are half untied, Hei
degger does not speak about directly, but it is what is important
here."54
What is their port?e? I have so far dealt only with their flexibil
ity as a trait of Derrida's method. But his own broader claim was
that the laces
54 V?rit?, p. 388. Derrida demurred that the choice was dictated by

"la revue Macula . . qui avait l'intention ... de publier le texte de Sha
piro (who did also?and first?choose the shoes), en me demandant de le
commenter." I did not allege collusion between Derrida and a magazine so
entitled, but I was alarmed by the fact that the restoration of the previously
eliminated subject seems in the offing, once a "choice" is ascribed to Heideg
ger, so that we seem to be left with subjective criteria: Heidegger chooses (to
interpret) the shoes as a pair (and hence as useful), while Derrida chooses
(to interpret) them as lacking in symmetry (and hence to be abandoned)
and does abandon them in favor of the laces, which he has toyed with else
where. Since Derrida quoted my "choose the shoes" in English, I imagine he
recognized I was parodying his own phonic procedure by echoing the couplet
regarding the oddest coupling of all?"How odd of God/To choose the Jews."
assure the thing its gathering together, underneath tied together with
what is above, within drawn together with the outside, by a law of
constriction. Firm and flexible at one and the same time.
Firmness may not seem the most salient trait of Derrida's method.
Yet even though he shuns consolidation, there is still "the struc
tured . . . form of the constriction [stricture]."55
One constriction is that the "eyelets" of the shoes are "edged
[bord?s] with metal." Bordeur or cadrage ("framing") is the all en
compassing methodological problem in La V?rit? en peinture, and it
cannot be neglected if we are to face up to the puzzling fact that Der
rida does accord a place in "Restitutions" to Der Brunnen am Weg in
Heidegger's initial list of "things," even though he later bypasses
"The Roman Fountain."56 Perhaps once he has translated Der Brun
nen am Weg as la fontaine au bord du chemin ("at the edge of the
path"), it is no longer in the way and can be passed by. Perhaps its
merely marginal location allows Derrida to continue with his convic
tion that the metaphor of "way" or "path regulates everything in Hei
degger." But these explanations would assume that Derrida's decon
struction is linear, when his recurrent move is trans lineam, a going
over the edge, to where the marginal takes over.57
His method of interlacing, however, whether of strategies or
texts, involves this d?bordement: a lace "from within" goes over "the
edge" of the eyelet "to the outside" and "from left to right" and vice
versa. Why could he not then welcome the overflowing (d?borde
ment) of the fountain?from within one basin then outside it into an
other? Indeed there is a superfluity of evidence in Derrida's other
writings that other traits of the fountain should have tantalized him:
the trajet of the "jet" itself, as well as its overflow, its "veiling itself,"
and its invaginating in the basins.
Where the d?bordement would fail to satisfy Derrida is that
there is no vice versa, no "criss-crossing" (croisement). "The Roman
Fountain" confronts us with a "spatial model" which we have recog
nized is Neo-classical: the upward movement of its "jet" is centered,
and its downward overflow, its "veiling itself," respect the perpendic
ular. But Derrida's eccentricity, indirection, obliquity, perversity, is
55 V?rit?, p. 389.
56 Ibid., pp. 347, 350-51. Derrida bypasses the poem in the sense
that he does pick up later features of "The Origin." His reason is not that
he is literally concerned with "truth in painting." Architectural members
and statues are accorded attention.
57 Ibid., p. 394.
THE ODD COUPLE 517
not just commitment to criss-crossing or to interlacing as a "spatial

model." He is also committed to chiasmus?to the d?bordement of
the chi (x), the "privileged criss-crossing," where the lines are ill
matched and "unequal, one of the points extending its scope further
than the other."58 (The lace on the right of the Van Gogh painting
does dangle and extend its scope further than the other.) Derrida
would find the symmetry, the equilibrium of a Neo-classical fountain
too equable; there is nothing "exorbitant," about its d?bordement, as
there is about his Mannerism. Anyone so on edge, so off balance,
could never accept the equanimity with which the fountain finally
"rests in itself."
The "question of style" here cannot be reduced to the aisth?ton
as distinguished from the no?ton. What is at stake in this repose for
Heidegger is related ultimately to the "letting go" of Gelassenheit.
To explore this relation would be to follow out the implications of Ver
l?sslichkeit which Derrida evades. In lieu of the repose of "letting
go," Derrida "lets" the shoes "fall." But I am raising "the question
of style," only in order to suggest that Derrida's choice of the laces pro
vides an "exemplary model" (like Heidegger's choice of the shoes and
the fountain), which may illustrate certain "limitations" of his
method. The lace's "twisting, passing and repassing through the eye
let," is not what "gathering together" entails in Heidegger, but in
volves instead a merely phonic transition from the German lassen
[let] to Je les [the laces] laisse and to the shoes as being d?laiss?es,
d?lac?es. Such twisting deconstructs the symmetry of sound and
meaning which Heidegger would have us experience with "The
Roman Fountain" in order to repair the damage done by metaphysi
cal distinctions.
XI
To the extent that this damage presupposes assimilation of the

thing to an artefact, we have watched Heidegger turn to the Van
Gogh painting and "The Roman Fountain" as works of art which re
produce artefacts, in order to restore the thing. This procedure is
dictated by the following comparisons:
An artefact, shoes for example, . . . rests in itself like the mere
thing, but it has not, like the block of granite taken shape on its own
58 Ibid., p. 189.
[Eigenw?chsige]. On the other hand, the artefact displays an affinity

with the work of art insofar as it is produced by the human hand. Yet
the work of art still is similar in its self-sufficient presence to the mere
thing.
It is by virtue of this similarity that the work of art might help over
come the assimilation of the thing to the artefact.
This "self-sufficient presence," which is conveyed by the Daste
hen of the shoes in the painting, by the repose of the fountain, is the
more fundamental symmetry which Derrida would deconstruct. Ei
genw?chsige he translates as "compact sufficiency, the property of
being hard and of referring only to itself, obstinate." His deconstruc
tion, whether pictured as a mise en abyme, as dissemination, as un
lacing, as chiasmus, as de-rivation, as d?bordement, leaves no place
for anything so autonomous, so underivative, so obstinate, as to refer
only to itself. If he had let himself be confronted by the fountain, he
would have interpreted it, not in terms of its overflow, but as an ef
fort at consolidating the "experience of pure presence"?as one of the
"endless efforts to dam up the d?bordement" to which he would have
us succumb, and to confine it within a basin.59
The disparity between Derrida and Heidegger is illustrated not
only by Derrida's bypassing the fountain but also by his different in
terpretation of the shoes. When Derrida deconstructs "presence" in
"The Origin" as at once a doctrine of place and of truth, the place of
"the dark opening" of the shoe ("out of" which the revelation comes) is
taken by the outlet of the eyelet. "What opens there its presence
veiled?revealing, by letting itself [en se lassant] like an eye
let .. . be traversed by the laces? Towards the truth?" In lieu of
the single "opening" of the shoe in Heidegger's "monoreferential" in
terpretation, the eyelets come in pairs, and the "veiling-revealing"
takes place as the lace successively "shows itself" [sich zeigt] and "dis
appears." Derrida's interpretation is meta-phorical: translation,
transportation, transference take place from one point to another.
Meta-phor is the loss of innocence which could be enjoyed only if
meaning were simply present. The deconstruction of "self-sufficient
presence" which is illustrated by paired eyelets at this level also goes
on at the level where with his two strategies Derrida interlaces Hei
degger's destruction with his own deconstruction, for this interlacing
too involves translation, transportation, transference?from one
59 Ibid., p. 340; Glyph, 183; "Living On," p. 84.
THE ODD COUPLE 519
point in Heidegger's text to another point in Derrida's. Thus the

"work" (ergon) in Heidegger is displaced by the parergon?etymo
logically the "outside of the work," but more appetizingly translated
into French as hors-d'oeuvre.60
A contrast can be risked with the work which is a chef-d'oeuvre,
for "decapitation" is another of Derrida's metaphors for his decon
struction of the hierarchical. Such a work is identified in "The Ori
gin" by the self-sufficiency it displays:
Yet is the work ever in itself accessible [zug?nglich]! To gain access
it would be necessary to push away from it all relations to anything
other than itself, in order to let it rest on itself alone. But this is [geht]
already the aim of the artist that is most his own. The work is to be
let go [entlassen] by [durch] him to its pure standing in itself. With
the master-piece?and only such art is being discussed here?in rela
tion to the work the artist remains irrelevant, almost like a passage
way [Durchgang] that is destroyed for the production [Hervorgang] of
the work.61
This autonomy Derrida denies by surrendering the work, not to the

authority of its author (as Shapiro does, when he restores the shoes to
Van Gogh as his "Personal Object"), but to the unauthorized inter
ventions of the interpreter, who can take advantage with his own
choices of passageways the author never entered, such as the eyelets
of the shoes?those "openings" language affords for the "passing and
repassing" of the "laces" of interpretation. While Derrida flexibly
passe partout, "goes his own way everywhere," Heidegger comes up
against "the self-sufficient presence" of the work. If as Derrida
stresses, "questioning thought as Weg . . . regulates everything
with Heidegger," the explanation of why his thought is questioning is
that his "way" or meth-odos remains aporetic; there is "no passage
through."62
XII
Inasmuch as Derrida seems, like Heidegger, On the Way to Lan

guage, the disparity between their ways can be underestimated.
60 V?rit?, pp. 371, 352, 341, 344; Being and Time (New York: Harper
& Row, 1962), p. 340.
61 Poetry, p. 40.
62 This helps explain why Derrida can be so nimble, whereas Heideg
ger's method is a "slow trudge" (see above, n. 49). For the etymologies of
meth-odos and aporia, see Starting Point, pp. 146, 305.
When Derrida first elaborates in La V?rit? en peinture on the meta

phor of "lacing," he promises that he will eventually deal with it in
Heidegger's terms: "I shall return ... to what Heidegger says
about the trait of 'interlacing' (Geflecht)" But he never returns. If
he had, he would have discovered that the metaphor of Geflecht is
used by Heidegger of language as a "web" which analysis merely
"loosens." Derrida's "unlacing" is a more artificial metaphor for anal
ysis than Heidegger's "loosening," which can be justified by restoring
the etymological origin of analysis. "Interlacing" is Derrida's corre
sponding metaphor for what traditionally had been opposed to anal
ysis as synthesis. But Geflecht is not interlacing nor synthesis, since
it is used by Heidegger of language as already woven together before
he as interpreter intervenes. "This "web of language" he refuses to
"disregard . . . just because it seems to force everything together
into an inextricable tangle."63 Indeed when he does intervene, it is
only in order to "allow us to see into the interconnection."
This Zusammenhang, which is integral to language (just as in
terconnection is integral to the structure of the fountain), is displaced
in Derrida by a "context" in the artificial sense of something the inter
preter reweaves as he interprets the text. Derrida is even "distrust
ful of the textile metaphor," which "still retains . . . a sort of virtue
of naturalness, or originalness, of authenticity," and prefers the met
aphor of "stitching" (couture), which "takes place with something
that is already an artefact."64 Thus Heidegger might well view Der
rida as conspiring with the "assault" that super-imposes preconcep
tions deriving from the artefact.
We have so shared Derrida's preoccupation vis-?-vis Shapiro
with restoring the contexte encadrant, "Thing and Work," we have
not realized that if thought is "to hold at a distance the onslaught of
these preconceptions," it must arrogate to itself (as well as on behalf
of the thing and the work) an autonomous structure, which would
render the d?coupage of a contexte encadrant an impudent intru
sion.65 Heidegger can still cite the tradition: "Philosophy has to dem
onstrate its integrity by upholding its own laws,"66 whereas Derrida's
63 V?rit?, p. 37; On the Way to Language (New York: Harper & Row,
1971), p. 113.
64 Glas (Paris: Galil?e, 1974), p. 233.
65 Poetry, p. 31. In Derrida "context is always ... at work
mithin . . . and not only around" (Glyph 1: 198 [italics in original]).
66 Existence and Being (Chicago: Regnery, 1967), p. 321. Heidegger
is quoting Kant's Metaphysics of Morals.
THE ODD COUPLE 521
philosophy is heteronomous, parasitical; it does not uphold but dan

gles, like the lace in the picture of the shoes or the extended member
of the chi.
This posture must not be construed as humility. In spite of Der
rida's decapitation of the hierarchical, of the masterful, his sway is
all-inclusive. If he does not offer a passe-partout in the sense of a
single "master-key to philosophy," he does offer passe-partout in a
sense which has passed into English?"a method of framing with
strips pasted over the edges."67 In "Restitutions" these edges are
where Heidegger's thought no longer demonstrates its integrity, be
cause he has been framed by Derrida. I have unstuck some of Der
rida's strips in order to show that there are no edges underneath in
the original?if its "exemplary model" is "The Roman Fountain,"
which is self-enclosed as a work that is its own Ursprung. Even
though Derrida's strips are not left "outside of the work" but pass
within through eyelets as the laces of the shoes in the Van Gogh pic
ture, they are not part of the picture in "The Origin of the Work of
Art."
Columbia University.
67 "Passe-partout" is the title of the preface to V?rit?.

The Odd Couple Heidegger and Derrida

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The Odd Couple Heidegger and Derrida

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The Odd Couple: Heidegger and Derrida

Author(s): Robert Denoon Cumming

We may not disregard the web of language just because it seems to

l\ OT TOO long ago one coped with "The Availability of Wittgen

1 Derrida's major attempt to come to terms with Anglo-American phi

Review of Metaphysics 34 (March 1981): 487-521

number of contemporary discussions, the force of which I intend to take

The only assistance offered by the American translator is after top

3 OfGrammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins

particular details carry general implications. But whatever general

"The style of the first deconstruction" Derrida characterizes as

5 La V?rit? en peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978), p. 17. I shall later

eludes Heidegger himself in this tradition by virtue of his continued

In comparing Derrida with Heidegger, I am taking advantage of

8 Lining up these up these six topics is designed to make my ensuing

selves are. They make an odd couple: there is so little correspon

Shapiro interprets Heidegger as attributing the shoes to a peas

10 V?rit?, pp. 293, 295, 300, 309, 322, 325, 347.

which is a "polylogue," though the restoration of Heidegger's at

11 Ibid., pp. 325, 292, 343.

thentic when it corresponds to what was originally the author's own

The obvious point for us to start is where Derrida, if he could be

13 This complaint of Searle's that Derrida failed to come to terms with

on Thing and Work'." That this context is not entirely Heidegger's

15 V?rit?, p. 299. Like Derrida, when I use the term "parody" I in

Although subjectum originally referred to the substructure of

The d?coupage which extracts these two sentences from Heidegger is

18 Ibid., pp. 328. I leave Derrida's interpolations in the parentheses

the "opening up" which it becomes as a passage in language for Der

If Derrida's interpretation is a juridical proceeding, it is one

19 This scepticism is a theme of "Le facteur de la v?rit?" (La Carte

metaphor is never innocent. It orients investigation and determines

My critical reflection on "Restitutions" depends on gradually discov

The "lack of ground" which concerned Heidegger was a discontinuity

21 U?criture et la diff?rence (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1967), p. 30. A-l?th

This metaphorical discontinuity we can better appreciate, if we

eral/metaphorical. Apparently our deprivation is merely relative,

This discontinuity becomes even more "interruptive" with Der

27 Aesthetics, pp. 407-408. Hegel is returning to his own version of

"Abyss" is a traduction transformatrice which cannot be dis

The subject has been eliminated by Derrida's refurbishing against

30 Ibid., p. 330. This can perhaps be taken as self-parody in that the

What is at worst a cliff in Plato becomes through Derrida's traduction

32 Diss?mination (Paris: Seuil, 1972), p. 78. The "stain" is presum

Derrida's compunction with regard to the fountain in "The Ori

33 HegeVs Concept of Experience, trans. Kenley Dove (New York:

"halting at what is only a stage of The Origin," when "one should go

On Heidegger's "We name it 'reliability [Verl?sslichkeit],9" Der

Let us take a glance at the fountain which Derrida displaces from

Why should we not then try to explain why Heidegger needed to

at the structure of "The Roman Fountain": a succession of couplets

Although the structure of Heidegger's thought in "The Origin"

41 Derrida corrected the impression, given at least by my original ver

(ergon) of the fountain as a work of art, the "function" of its overflow

We cannot, however, appreciate the process of reparation until

42 V?rit?, p. 344; Poetry, p. 20.

Plotinus is struggling with the traditional problem of "presence"

The philosophical tradition is for Heidegger a Platonic "light meta

44 Ennead 4. 5. 7. Although Neoplatonism is derivative, when its lan

between transcendence and omnipresence, but also of the status of

46 Ennead 4. 5. 7; Poetry, p. 37.

ruht. Meantime the overflow of ?berfliesst reproduces, indistin

In the interest of fair play, I am trying to do to Derrida what he

54 V?rit?, p. 388. Derrida demurred that the choice was dictated by