The copula supplement

Jacques Derrida

pp. 7-48

in: Don Ihde, Richard Zaner (eds), Dialogues in phenomenology, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1975

Abstract

Any theory of philosophie discourse based on the naive opposition between language and speech, language and discourse, seems to encounter the classic question: is philosophic discourse governed —to what extent and in what ways—by the constraints of language? In other words, if we consider the history of philosophy as one great discourse, a powerful discursive chain, isn't it immersed in a reservoir of language, the systematic fund of a lexicology, a grammar, a group of signs and values? From then on, isn't it limited by the devices and organization of that reservoir?