In his landmark essay “Différance,” Jacques Derrida attempts to establish a “non-concept” by which he can demonstrate how Western philosophy, and rhetoric, have been based upon what he calls in Of Grammatology “the metaphysics of presence” (23). The essential question in Western metaphysics is the essence of being. Derrida points out that, “The formal essence of the signified is presence [. . .] This is the inevitable response as soon as one asks: ‘what is the sign?,’ that is to say, when one submits the sign to the question of essence” (18). In other words, being itself, in the metaphysics of presence, has no predicate. Being itself, in this case, is transcendent because it presupposes presence. Différance, on the other hand, according to Derrida, is not a word and is not a concept. It is nothing. In order to describe such a “thing,” Derrida writes that one must, “delineate that différance is not, does not exist, is not a present-being (on) in any form; and we will be led to delineate also everything that it is not, that is, everything. [. . .] It derives from no category of being, whether present or absent” (“Différance” 6). Derrida claims that différance, therefore, defies the metaphysics of presence because in order for it to be it must be described in terms of what it is not—in terms of absence.
This affects Augustine in a number of fairly obvious ways. First and foremost, the very idea of God is based on the metaphysics of presence. God is a transcendent being whose presence is required to have always been, exist currently, and into eternity. The Bible begins by presupposing the existence of God: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (New American Standard Bible, Gen. 1:1). However, an even better example of the logocentrism that Derrida finds in Christian doctrine, especially with relation to Augustine, is in the book of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (New American Standard Bible, John 1:1-3). For Derrida, this statement is logocentric because it privileges presence and attempts to establish the Word as transcendental equal to God. God spoke the Word into being. The two are inseparable. When Augustine sets forth his project of explaining the Word, he is fully aware of the difficulty in understanding a transcendental Word and God, as stated earlier; every treatment of the Word depends on “the means of discovering what the thought may be, and the means of expressing what the thought is” (456). In Derridean terms, there is an inherent difficulty in discovering what the signifier and signified are within a text that claims to transcend such language constraints.
There is a problem, as Graham Ward puts it, with “the capacity of language to communicate the Word” (25). Augustine, in a sense, circumvents this problem at the end of Book IV, when he writes, “But whether a person is now making ready to speak before the people or before any other group whatever, or to compose something neither to be delivered before the people or read by those who wish or can do so, he should pray God to put a fitting discourse upon his lips” (485). God will help man overcome man’s own limited language so that he might find the best words he possibly can to communicate God’s own message. Yet this is paradoxical because the meaning of God’s Word is absent to man, while the Word itself claims transcendent presence. It always was, is, and will be, but then where, what, and how is it if its true meaning is absent to man? The answer lay in negative theology. Humans cannot describe God in terms of what He is, only in terms of what He is not. Since the book of John asserts that the Word is God, the same can be said of the Word. Therefore, this paradox leads to an extremely fascinating observation—there is seemingly a close parallel between the Word and différance—that which attempts to undermine the Word.
Language does not have the capacity to describe either différance or the Word; both must be described in negative terms. Of course, Derrida is very careful to distance himself early from any notion of negative theology in relation to différance. He admits, “[T]he detours, locutions, and syntax in which I will often have to take recourse will resemble those of negative theology, occasionally even to the point of being indistinguishable from negative theology” (“Différance 6). If it is indistinguishable from negative theology, then what makes it not negative theology? This is a question that Derrida answers ambiguously, as John D. Caputo points out, “ ‘It is and it is not.’ Yes and no” (2). This type of answer does stay true to the “essence” (though there is no such thing in relation to the term) of différance. But it is interesting to note how différance seemingly transforms the Word into the very thing “it is.” It is through différance that the distinction between presence and absence is achieved (Of Grammatology 143) because “it” resides in the in-between—it is a trace, a ghost, something that we can never quite see. Thus, we are forced to see the problem with a meta-narrative that presupposes eternal presence through John 1:1. However, Augustine asserts that the true meaning of the Word is absent and requires God’s intervention to deliver the best possible interpretation. He warns that, “those men steal His words who wish to appear good by speaking God’s word, though they are evil in following a course of their own” (484). Therefore, it is never possible for men to arrive at the true meaning of the Word.
True, in the context I’ve been using it, has a quality of hyper-reality, not only in relation to Derrida but Augustine too, which is where the distinction between the Word and différance lay. Caputo points out that “Negative theology is always on the track of a ‘hyperessentiality’ [. . .] so really real that we are never satisfied simply to say that it is merely real. Différance, on the other hand, is less than real, not quite real, never gets as far as being or entity or presence [. . .] Différance is but a quasi-transcendental anteriority, not a supereminent, transcendent ulteriority” (2-3). In terms of Augustine’s assertion that God will put the correct words into the mouth of the chosen speaker, the Word is actually distinguished from rather than linked to différance because Augustine is concerned primarily with coming as close to transcendence as possible. Therefore, Augustine’s notion that the speaker arrives at meaning in the Word through God himself, through negative theology, is deconstructed because the original uncovering of the presupposition of presence, through différance, does in fact stand—it does not contradict itself as it would have if the parallel had stood.
Even though it seems like deconstruction has put down negative theology altogether, it would be a misunderstanding of the concept and a misreading of Derrida to assume so. Deconstruction is not satisfied with merely saying “No” to anything. Caputo agrees: “Deconstruction is thoroughly mistrustful of discourses that prohibit this and prohibit that” (3). Yes, deconstruction can point out how Augustine’s discourse falls into this prohibitive category, but it would contradict itself if it turned around and prohibited the prohibitive category altogether. The project of deconstruction is concerned, rather, with an awareness of the constraints that Western metaphysics has placed on us. It wants to uncover what seems impossible for us to see—which is where an affinity with negative theology reemerges. Both attempt to uncover the impossible.
Augustine’s desire for truth, to discover the impossible, is not merely based on his firm belief in the Divine Inspiration of the Bible. Charles S. Baldwin points out that “Augustine too had been brought up on sophistic” that “[h]e had been himself, in Plutarch’s sense and Strabo’s, a sophist” (195-6). Augustine’s familiarity with sophism only further enabled his disgust with the rhetorical style when he converted to Christianity. He writes in Book II,
There are, moreover, many false conclusions of the reasoning process called sophisms, and frequently they so imitate true conclusions that they mislead not only those who are slow but also the ingenious when they do not pay close attention. [. . .] As I see it, the Scripture condemns this kind of captious conclusion [. . .] At times a discourse which is not captious, but which is more abundant than is consistent with gravity, being inflated with verbal ornament, is also called sophistical. (67)
Augustine’s agenda is partially against any use of empty or deceptive language when communicating God’s message. He repeats continually in Book IV that wisdom must precede eloquence: “For these words were not written by human industry, but were poured forth by Divine Intelligence, with wisdom and eloquence—wisdom not being intent on eloquence” (464). He insists that teachers, “avoid all words which do not teach” (465). From this perspective, Augustine’s instruction on teaching does mirror deconstruction in that it wishes to dig into the core of the impossible by stripping away all excessive terms that surround the impossible or for Augustine, the truth. Neither Derrida nor Augustine is interested in language that distracts from what is at stake. On the surface of On Christian Doctrine, it may seem like Augustine is merely making assertions of absolute truth in order to support his points regarding teaching. However, it can be more accurately described as a desire for truth. At the core of Augustine’s instruction on teaching is ultimately desire to find truth. Even though Derrida certainly criticizes Christian doctrine for claiming to be authority based on what he exposed as logocentric, he can still appreciate the desire found within it because deconstruction is fed by a very similar desire.
Many critics of deconstruction have found it rather easy to denounce because it can be used to so authoritatively sweep away any other ideology that claims authority. As I have shown, deconstruction is not so easily cornered. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine would seem easy prey for deconstruction if the agenda were simply to topple over authoritative ideologies—if it claimed to be an ideology free from ideology. However, that is not what deconstruction is interested in. It is interested in keeping the door open. It is interested in questioning that which prohibits in order to maintain authority. Augustine is interested discovering the meaning of a text that is absent to man. Augustine and deconstruction, though they seem like they should be diametrically opposed to one another, both have a desire to discover the impossible.
Works Cited
Augustine. On Christian Doctrine: Book II. Trans. D.W. Robertson, Jr. Indianapolis: The Liberal Arts Press, Inc., 1958.
—. On Christian Doctrine: Book IV. Trans. Thérèse Sullivan. The Rhetorical Tradition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzburg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 456-85.
Baldwin, Charles S. “St. Augustine on Preaching.” Essays on the Rhetoric of the Western World. Ed. Edward P.J. Corbett, James L. Golden, Goodwin F. Berquist. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 1990. 195-205.
Caputo, John D. The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997.
Derrida, Jaques. “Différance.” Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. 1-27.
—. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
New American Standard Bible. Ed. The Lockman Foundation. Grand Rapids: The Zondervan Corporation, 2002.
Ward, Graham. Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology. New York: Cambridge UP, 1995.
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