Did philosophers like Derrida think there was any meaning to life?

[dms1972]

How did they find purpose or meaning or motivation to write their books?

I've been reading a bit about Jacques Derrida and his philosophy and views on language, and I can't quite figure out given his views why he would write at all. Im not very well read on him, and am reading about him in another book. I had the same sort of thoughts though, ie one signifier just leads to another. Meaning for him in the sense of a transcendental signifed is unattainable, or perpetually defered. I suppose he just spent his time deconstructing others writtings.

I take the view of Paul H. Portner in What is Meaning, that "meanings are out there in the world."

Explaining it is the tricky thing however.

 

[bhsmte]

How did they find purpose or meaning or motivation to write their books?

I've been reading a bit about Jacques Derrida and his philosophy and views on language, and I can't quite figure out given his views why he would write at all. Im not very well read on him, and am reading about him in another book. I had the same sort of thoughts though, ie one signifier just leads to another. Meaning for him in the sense of a transcendental signifed is unattainable, or perpetually defered. I suppose he just spent his time deconstructing others writtings.

I take the view of Paul H. Portner in What is Meaning, that "meanings are out there in the world."

Explaining it is the tricky thing however.

IMO, if one has to rely on others to help them define their own meaning in life, they likely have little meaning to their life.

 

[lutherangerman]

This seems like how I perceive life if I could not meet the benevolent God who both affirms life as meaningful and rich and transcends it into yet more glory. If life did not have this God, then life would eventually become a dull thing or fall prey to false ideas that do not get checked anymore. Death would seal it all and every thought of love or freedom would be youthful fallacies. Or we would adopt an existentialism of resistance that would go beyond our strength to keep going with it. Trust in God is one of those signifiers that point into an open space, that do not halt at a stop, check reality sign. God is to be able to be explored as He is not only a person but also a vastness as big as the entire universe, and going beyond the universe into an infinite cosmos of worlds and life habitats. Combine that with aliens and angelic cultures and you can see that we will have much to live from in the future. Could you conceive of a bored God? This is another of those signifiers into an open space. Ultimately it is not the conditions that shackle us but our lack of faith and insistence to seek and then trust God.

(Really life cannot be devoid of meaning, it can instead sometimes be too full of meaning. Our emotions often see that when they only want us to sit at a warm oven while it snows outside, and have a coffee, cigarettes, and a steak for dinner. We need meaning, but there are different and competing kinds of it. One meaning could be said to be, just be bored and you'll be like the famed artists of history. But we can choose one meaning over others in many things. Please choose the meaning of christmas in this coming season!)

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I htink deridda was a Postmodernist and deconstructionist. He would probably say theres more life to meaning (more than we can handle) than there is meaning to life. Meaning has a life of its own and we are subjects to its reign. Words are not our tools, we are the slaves of language. We dont habve menaing as agents, it "posesses" us in a master slave relationship.

Which is to say he wouldnt adress the issue in typical terms, but try to switch things round so that conventions were reversed, and the typical "insights" of pjhilosophy were mede to seem dumb, unfocused and nsound. The "politics of meaning" (in which we are in control) are subverted. meaning becomes the prime minister, but even that - we that is subject to its own weakeness in the hands of the right sounding out.

We are slaves to meaing, be meaning itself is ... (wait for it) MEANINGLESS!!!

 

[durangodawood]

...I take the view of Paul H. Portner in What is Meaning, that "meanings are out there in the world.".....

Can you provide an example?

 

[dms1972]

What I mean is find Portner helpful, though its not answering Derrida, they are both doing different things. I maybe should not have brought both up together.

I'll try to give an example

First off Portner is a linguist and not a philosopher. He is not really doing philosophy, he is approaching linguistic meaning scientifically.


Portner writes: "Can meanings be words? The answer is obviously "no," if we want to approach meaning as scientists."

Hes basically putting forward a basis for a scientific study of meaning.


So as an example the meaning of 'dog', are actual dogs - members of the species canine familiaris

The word dog means the same thing to different people because they have an intention to apply the word dog to the same things out there in our environment, namely the dogs.

"The meaning of the word dog implies that it describes all those things that are actually dogs, regardless of our ability to define it with words or to formulate an appropriate mental concept."

People have concepts or ideas of things such as dogs but meanings are not ideas, rather they are Portner writes :"based in language- and mind-external reality."

He says this after looking at several other theories for instance language games and social practice theory - he doesn't reject these theories entirely but says they are not adequate for a scientific theory of meaning. In games like baseball the goal is winning - this isn't so in a conversation - if some asks the question "what time is it?" they are not hoping you'll get the answer wrong. If someone replies "It's 6 o'clock" they are not trying to play a sneaky counter-move - they reply thus because it is 6 o'clock and they want the other person to believe this. This aspect of language distiguishes it from true games.

 

[durangodawood]

...."The meaning of the word dog implies that it describes all those things that are actually dogs, regardless of our ability to define it with words or to formulate an appropriate mental concept."....

What I get from this is that words have meaning because we intend them to correspond to categories that have some basis in reality. That the category "dog" is legitimately different from the other categories of animals, because of material facts like genetics and morphology, and so on.

 

[dms1972]

I think deridda was a Postmodernist and deconstructionist.

Yes, he was.

He would probably say theres more life to meaning (more than we can handle) than there is meaning to life. Meaning has a life of its own and we are subjects to its reign. Words are not our tools, we are the slaves of language. We dont have meaning as agents, it "posesses" us in a master slave relationship.

Well to be master over words would I suppose be to try to make words mean whatever one wants them to mean - wasn't that what humpty-dumpty tried to do in Alice and Wonderland?

 

[dms1972]

What I get from this is that words have meaning because we intend them to correspond to categories that have some basis in reality. That the category "dog" is legitimately different from the other categories of animals, because of material facts like genetics and morphology, and so on.

I think he means we intend words to refer to the actual things, but we have mental concepts also. Is there a difference between category, concept and idea - he uses ideas and concepts interchangably. But he is saying that words refer to the things (dogs, cats, chairs etc) themselves (I think) . As I said its not philosophy so he is not really going into the question of universals and particulars.

In next part of the book says : "We should think of the meaning of sentences in terms of Truth-conditions"