A Davidsonian Version Of Derrida

Samuel Wheeler III at nonsite:

Decades ago, I argued that indeterminacy of interpretation, construed in the terminology of Husserl’s phenomenology and Saussure’s conception of language, was very close to Derrida’s “deconstruction.” I have come to see that the very structure of Davidson’s account of language commits him to a version of “dissemination,” the fluidity and “play” of ascriptions of meaning. The core of Davidson’s account of language and interpretation guarantees that natural languages will be disseminative.

Husserl construed meanings as entities that in principle could be common to different languages. Frege’s “senses,” the Analytic tradition’s version of Platonic forms, were similar metaphysical equipment. Languages were ways of expressing such meanings. Derrida and Davidson attacked trans-linguistic meanings. Derrida treated metaphysical trans-linguistic meanings historically, as an aspect of philosophy’s obsession with Presence, which had shaped the history of metaphysics.

more here.