23 On Logocentrism
I was asked at the close of my last blog entry to clarify the word “logocentrism.” It stands at the center of Derrida’s thought, was perhaps an invention of his as well, and in fact brings a fundamentally new philosophical concern into the world.
It is connected with feminism, in that women think fundamentally differently than do men. The composer John Cage, already in the 60s, propagated his belief, that “different people think differently”―an idea which greatly inspired me―and with it (at least partially) defended, or rather justified, his revolutionary æsthetics.
Furthermore, the newly forming research disciplines of comparative anthropology, i.e. ethnology, among universities, foremost among which in France with Claude Levi-Strauss with the thesis of the “primitive thought” found (for example) in the native peoples of the Amazonian Basin, had a great influence on the international debates and discussions. That “primitive thought” can truly be a different kind of thought. Certain representative research into language has also confirmed these theses.
Thus does Derrida claim, that the thinking of a man is essentially premised on logic, while that of a woman can also be influenced by emotion, empathy, intuition, and even æsthetics. Un-logical thinking would overwhelm a man, but would inspire a woman; that is, she might be enticed or stimulated towards further thought. Un-logical, also paradoxical thinking or image-richness leads, in a man, to blockages in his understanding, even in his readiness to understand, while a woman can seemingly be buoyed by the same.
Man always wants only the one and whole of it, precise and exact, and perhaps also immediately, does he not? His logic, with which he might also connect rationality, even reason, he might employ―in its unconditional right(eous)ness, or in its pontificating dogmatism―to puff himself up, solid, unmastered, to become strong, also great and fascinating (such words I’ve rediscovered!) … and here we are arrived at the phallus, its great size, its dominance and power: the phallocracy.
The phallus (as an image), excitation, strength, escalation, and victory thus define masculine disputation. Whereas woman is seemingly rather more prepared to hold out through detours, compromises, inferiority, and setbacks.
Now, the critics of logocentrism (i.e., the male-specific logic must now stand at the center of every discourse, and internationally) claim that this is a specifically occidental/western achievement, one far less definitive among other cultures. Logocentrism would thus consequently be a result of a (cultural-imperialist) eurocentrism. Thus would, for example, Chinese/Japanese thought recognize a yes/no dichotomy far less; in its stead deploys the And, the As-Well-As, in its discourse. The fundamentally Aristotlean logical clause that A cannot simultaneously be B (the oppositional clause, or that of the excluded third) obtains in these cultures only conditionally. This is why one has, in these cultures, far fewer problems with paradoxes as we do in this country. Zen Buddhism lives precisely from its rejection of the yes/no dichotomy: A can also be B.
On the other hand (or also significantly), the digital thinking of computers functions only with 1s and 0s … and it is very effective, useful, perhaps even necessary for survival. We would no longer want to abstain from them.1
All these examples of the possibilities of thought serve only to show, once more, that reality can only exist on a case-by-case basis. That we find ourselves, again and again, in a chaotic pluriversum, staggering hither and thither from thesis to antithesis and back, to find success with the one, as well as perhaps with the other. … Yet what is meant here with “success”?
Plato would interject: it is just this complex of problems, in this contradiction, the idea of truth reveals itself as a timeless guidepost and value. In a beautiful flower, we are shown not only the concrete case of the beauty of this particular flower but also, simultaneously, the idea of beauty as a time-transcending phenomenon shines and shimmers through in opposition to it.
In the love of a particular person not only are joy, desire, lust, and gratitude revealed to us. Rather, it is a general sign of the eternal and transcendent idea of love, to perceive it, to recognize it not only a matter of feeling, but also as one of intellectual perception.
As the image of an idea, an “archetype,” this flower thus discloses a great and beautiful and transcendentally valid truth. Despite all the hardship and anguish and relativity of our awareness.
Also as regards my own very limited, and limited to me―my biography, my life’s story, or corporeal and existential orientation―relativity of thought.
Yet even behind that relativity, there stands the idea of relativism, which once again smiles upon us, observes us, sometimes also watches over us, as if to say:
Carry on, little ants, in your finely constructed State, and in your logically constructed world. Carry on with your pretty conceptions of Idea, Thought, Equity, Self- and Species-Preservation, Relativity. The footfalls of the woodsman over there can bring you and your State to ruin in the blink of an eye. And you won’t ever know who, why, wherefore, or for what reason. For you know nothing of this higher being, its thought, its appearance, its actions. No, you have none of that. Even should you try so hard, when you reckon with it, pray, doubt and/or believe.
1This, too, is of course an uncertain assertion in the advent of quantum computing, which achieves orders of magnitude in increased computational power precisely through utilizing quantum states that simultaneously occupy two identities in the course of its calculations. -Ed.
