Dr. Samani Shashi Pragya
Analytical Language Philosophy
Traditionally, the philosophy of language is concerned with speech. Speech was the model of traditional philosophy of Language. The speaker speaks something he intends to convey. Speaker addresses the hearer. When the hearer understands the meaning, communication occurs. Hearer can clarify the words, if he faces any difficulty.This is the significance of speech. So in the traditional method of philosophy of language, speech was considered as primary and writing the secondary. They claimed, writing is like an orphan (cut off from the speaker) without the father. But Jacque Derrida(1931-2004) defended this by quoting, ‘writing is prior to speech’. Derrida says- Language is Utterable. All expressions, utterances belong to some context and it is settled or fixed by the rules of convention. So language has no meaning independent of speaker. Because meaning of any language is determined by the rules of convention and writing represents fundamental features or characteristics of language. So language is something independent from human mind. Language has its own dynamic structure, independent of the speaker. In opposition, Noam Chomsky, says, ‘structure of language is derived by the structure of human mind’.
In the Book ‘Margin’, Derrida says, to understand any meaning, sign is needed. In order to capture the meaning, we need language, not the speaker. Speaker speaks with the intention to convey something. Derrida says, we look into very structure of language independent of speaker. Austin, a well known Anglo-American philosopher, came with the theory of speech act. He says,when I use language, I do something, so language is not cognitive, but pragmatic. The important lesson that Derrida has derived from Austin is, ‘Language is not used in relation to force.’ He says, ‘When I utter a sentence, what I intend to do, therein in lies force. In this sense, when emphasized on force, he deviated himself from western tradition. This is the innovation of Austin according to Derrida. Austin says, “When I use language, I use it to bring about a situation, that was not present.” When I use language, for example, I request. When I request, I create certain situation. Thus he concluded that speaker or speech does not represent anything but creates a situation.
Derrida received this insight from Austin. Now we will consider in what way he departs from Austin. As already mentioned Austin insisted on force, and not on the link between language and reality. Now, Derrida approves that when I speak something, I intend to mean something, that is application of my use of language. How the hearer understands my meaning is a main cause of successful communication. So the meaning is determined by the intention of the speaker. Again each speaker uses sentences in a particular context. So two things are important for understanding any language.They are,the intention of the speaker and the context in which one utters a particular sentence.
He says,“Context is determined by the intention and position of the speaker.” Thus Austin concludes, speakers control over intention and context is what is called “total context.” Unless there is total context, there will be no communication. Total context represents the ideal condition of successful communication. Total context is nothing but a state where the hearer understands the intention of the speaker completely. Thus, Austin by emphasizing again on this self identical meaning, he is stepping back to the tradition of language and reality. According to Austin, context is fixed by speaker. According to the Derridean Deconstruction, context is not fixed. He says, context is never absolutely determinable or the formation of context is never final and saturated.
The problem of word-meaning and the problem of synonymy is an illustrative issue in Western Post-modern philosophy. There is no one or ‘the meaning’ of any word. No two words can have a similar meaning in two different contexts. One cannot determine the meaning of a particular word absolutely. All the meanings of the similar words changes, according to the respective contexts. This is indeed, the reason why the verbal view point, which is mainly concerned with the philosophy of word, meaning and propositions, occupies an important place in the Jaina doctrine of naya.[1] So naya is a partial standpoint, which determines the context-based use of words. The theory of nikṣepa in Jainism is understood as a theory of word- meaning in terms of the present language philosophy. A word contains opposing non-synonymous meanings, where one is in the focus and the other one is in the margin, depending upon the context.
The Post-structuralist Jacque Derrida’s view (1931-2004) seems to be parallel with the Jain concept of anekānta. He actually deals with the philosophy of language and Deconstruction.The conceptual argument for deconstruction depends on the relativitywhich I mean the view that truth itself is always to the different standpoints….[2]. In Western world of philosophy, Derrida’s Critique focuses on privileging the spoken word over the written word. The spoken word is given a higher value because the speaker and the listener are both present during the utterance simultaneously.Derrida attacked this theory of presence and origins by attacking the notion that speech has priority over Writing.[3]There is no temporal or spatial distance between speaker, speech and listener. This immediacy seems to guarantee the notion that in the spoken word, we know what we mean,we mean what we say, say what we mean, and know,what we have said. Whether or not perfect understanding always occur in fact, this image of perfectly self-present meaning is, according to Derrida, the underlying ideal of Western culture…. of Logo-centricism… which considers writing to be only a representation of speech.[4] In the course of his critique, Derrida simply reverses this value system and says that ‘Writing is prior to speech.’When Derrida attacked on the priority of speech over writing he was attacking on which is very much parallel to the Jaina view of non-absolutism. the notion of any sort of absolute He supposes that nothing is stable; the so called structure is also not stable. Everything is tentative, there is no permanent the truth, the meaning, the text, the interpretation and the context. One cannot tie down the meaning of any word. Moreover, he says every sign is made up of signifier and signified. But he claims that, there is no transcendental signified and no signified can be found as it is an abstract mental construction. Moreover signified is never a finished product. It is like a cloud forming which is endless. So the quest for the meaning of any word, would lead one to the endless deferal.Derrida says that as soon as there is meaning,there is differnce, from the French verb diffrer,which means both ‘to differ’,and ‘to defer’.[5]So Derrida claimed that meaning is never immediate,it is always deffered. For example, let us try to tie the word ‘meaning’ of the meaning. The meaning of the word "meaning" according to the Oxford Dictionary is 'what is meant'.[6] Further it is searched and the meaning of 'meant' is given as, 'what it means'. If the word 'means' meaning is searched, it is found to be 'signify'. Again the same process is continued and we get the meaning of the word ‘signify’ as being ‘significant’. The meaning of the meaning is infinite in its implication, this is what anekānta claims. Each word has infinite meanings, if dealt from different perspectives.
Derrida emphasized that language cannot refer to a fixed stable meaning ‘deconstruction’,is used to unravel meaning from texts inorder to show that it is composed of assimilations that cannot be true; the meaning of the text cannot be limited by the intention s of the author of the text….Words donot carry meaning with them, they ‘put off’their ability to carry meaning by reffering to other possibilities of meaning. Language is relational.[7] His term In an attempt to capture the signified (the meaning of the word), we keep moving from one signifier (word) to another signifier, we never get to the signified, the signified gets lost in the search, and we keep going round and round. Thus one can mark the circularity of 'signifiers'.For meaning perpetually slips away from word to word with in the linguistic chain.[8] One may try defining (i.e. capturing the signified) even of simple words like 'a city', it can never be defined in absolute terms. We can only say, it is a larger town. But, again the word 'town' has to be specified, we can say, it is a large village. This clearly shows that a sign is a sign of another sign with no fixed meaning or signified, there is no final transcendental signified.[9] According to Derrida, language is structured as an endless deferal of meaning and any search for the essential, absolute stable meaning must therefore be considered metaphysical. There is no fixed element, no fundamental unit, no transcendental signified that is meaningful in itself.
In addition to this, Derrida pointed out that in everything (sign, text, context) whatever the opposite of it, is always already there, as a trace. According to Derrida, wherever there is endless deferral, there is trace. For example, in light there is trace of darkness and vice-versa. There is a trace of land in sea and vice-versa. In adult there is a trace of child, in man there is a trace of women. You can’t dycotomize and say, this is absolute man and absolute women. Jain view of anekānta is in agreement with this concept of trace, when Hemachandra also says that in the particles of darkness, there are particles of light and vice-versa.[10] In the view of Derrida, the other is always already present in the Reality, one doesn’t have to invent it. According to the Jain view, jar is defined by its resident qualities (for example, red etc.) as well as by “non-jar”. This metaphysical idea presented in language, is confirmed in the third statement in saptabhaṅgī naya: syād gha a asti ca nāsti ca.[11] The now existing jar is metaphysically determined and defined by its other, non-jar. In this sense, the jar is also non-jar. In the Derridean language, words are signs, the signified is another word. We move from word to word,word to word, with endless deferal. This is the position of today’s philosophy of language.
Structuralists Claude Levi Strauss(1829-1902), a French philosopher, had said that, a word is meaningful because of its binary “other” word. A single word by itself has no meaning. In the world around us, if there had been only absolute permanence, then its nomenclature would not have been possible. Since there is permanence, that is why we understand impermanence. If there was only light and no darkness, then light could not have been defined. All the names are given so, on the basis of their opposites. The need for opposites is a fundamental principle. For example, ‘yat sat tatt sa pratipak·aṃ’. Even Claude Levi Strauss says that no word is meaningful all by itself. The word ‘day’ is not a self-content or self-complete. It is determined by the other. The meaning of the word ‘night’ is only meaningful with the meaning of the ‘day’. The word ‘night’ is not meaningful by itself. That’s why even Structuralist Claude Levis Strauss asserts that there is a binary relation between day and night, God and non-God. The word ‘God’ is meaningful in reference to non-God. The qualities given to the God i.e. Creator, Destroyer, Sustainer, Merciful etc. are meaningful in reference to the other i.e. the devil or the cruel. The two words are rolled in one. One is revolving around the center of the word and other remains in the margin.
Rejecting this Structuralist view, Jacque Derrida says that a word includes its other within its meaning. He refers to Plato’s use of the word pharmokon, which means medicine as well as poison.[12] Thus the word contains opposites as its meaning. This idea of Derrida applies in general in his theory of words and meanings. One can say that the sentence, ghata asti nāsti ca, reflects this idea, if taken in terms of philosophy of language. The point I want to make is that today’s cultural problem of the “other” can be seen in this light. Infact the other or others are not that “other” sealed off against each other. Anekāntavāda, then, said this long long ago before Derrida. Western thought, says Derrida, has always been structured in terms of dichotomies or polarities;good vs.evil, being vs. nothingness, truth vs. error, identity vs. difference, mind vs. matter, presence vs. absence….The second term in each pair is considered as …opposed in their meanings,but are arranged in the hierarchical order which gives the first term priority,in both the temporal and the qualitative sense of the word.[13]Bad and good, men and women both are complementary (one that complete the other), not antonyms. [14]The same view is accepted in Jainism, no Reality is self-complete by itself, it achieves its completeness because of ‘the other’. The moment one privileges one attribute, falls in fallacy. It falls in the category of pseudo-naya(durnaya) as per jain view, on account of its being absolutistic in character.[15] Without lie, you can’t say truth, in misunderstanding also there is understanding, in vagueness also there is clarity, in truth also there is untruth and vice-versa. So there is nothing like absolute, everything is always relative to the other. This is why that Jain perspective of anekānta which accepts this relativity will never assert anything absolutely.
According to the anekānta philosophy when one quality becomes dominant in expression, the rest would be secondary at that time. Samantabhadra in his text rightly says,a significant rule of anekānta is that one will be predominant while all the rest will be secondary. It is on this basis that relativity has developed.[16] In this way, multiple truth can be expressed with the help of syād particle. In this state, no attributes are left privileged. Along with this Derrida says, if a sign is a sign of another sign and if a text is a text of another text, then a context is a context of another context. This implies that even contextual meaning is not fixed and there is no limit to what may be called 'contextual meaning'.[17] There is endless deferral in contextual meaning. So language,thought,and meaning are now all in an uncomfortable position;they are unstable.[18] This view can be compared with Siddhasena’s perspective (Sanmati Tarka Prakarana,3.28) pertaining to naya, where he says no word of the jina is independent of naya.The nayas are as many in number as there are ways of putting the sentences.So,many-many commentaries were written in Jainism from the very past on a particular agamic text namely, niryukti, tikā, cūrṇi, bhā·ya etc. No ācārya claimed that the interpretation which is written by him is final.There is always scope for further interpretation of each and every aphorism. Thats why only on Tattvārtha Sūtra, on one single text,many commentaries were written.
So it can be concluded that Derridean deconstruction is a kind of hermeneutic freedom-for-all, a joyous release from all the rules and constraints of critical reading and understanding as per some American deconstructionists. Thus, it is mentioned how the western and postmodern philosophers view seems to be running in parallel with the concept of relativity of anekāntic perspective, relativity of meaning, relativity of word and the impossibility of exhaustive cognition as well as expression of any object as accepted by Jain philosophers.
