PHIL2005 wk4 Heidegger PHIL2005 wk4 Heidegger

Last Week summary…

1. Language is arbituary – meaning is social
2. meaning is produced through relations of difference.

To get there:
A ‘sign’ – word is made up of two pieces; the signifier and the signified.

+ there are no concepts prior to the formation of signs.
⇨ meaning is produced when signifiers are delimited -> thus attached to concepts.

2 differentials:
⇨ disassociative : parralegamatic
⇨ combination : sygolamatic



This week…Emile Benviniste

Structuralism:
Social analysis that changed the focus of study.
1. shift emphasis from individuals to unconscious (hidden) underlying structures that shape individual acts. => meaning is social and assimilated by individual
2. doesn’t treat terms or individual as independent entities – rather the basis of analysis is the relation between subjects. (terms, indivi texts.) => meanings are values – not facts
⇨ aims at discovery laws at how a system operates

meaning matters because it is value
⇒ it has currency => leads to Heidegger as meaning being essential to Being.

Epistemology:
No absolute truth | only generated values via society.
⇒ nor universal truth

Politics & Ethics:
Descriptors carry value as well as meaning.
⇨ social context : values derived from their relative position
⇨ has limiting factors: role as discerning self-value and value others place on you.

Language, even though it is free-forming, falls into dichotomies.
⇒ play of differences -> leads to conceptual opposites -> justice and descrimination occurs.

Limitations:
Does not provide account of the production of language.
⇒ we are outside/separate from world
⇒ and likewise langauge is separate -> assimilated langauge @ unconscious level.

Benveniste_ critiques difference between
1. value and signification
2. speech act and language

two levels of meaning
1. potential -> concept -> mind
2. actual -> speech

• enacting the differences in values and then in signification is not in two acts but happens simultaenously within the speech act.

Value & Signification: (confusion due to Sausiere’s interpretation)
⇒ Emile argues that ‘I’ am only a conscious subject through the act of speech.

No fixed to the term ‘I’ – it only signifies the speaker in the discourse of the time – ie. Not universal.

*Differential relation within the utterances itself.
Referant: “I’m tired” -> actual speaker.
Referee: the ‘I’ in the instance of discourse positions the speaker in language. -> the ‘I’ is constituted by language itself and the speaker him/herself/itself.

I/you = indicators +> they indicate position of spker in discourse. -> time andplace.

The sense of I and you are newly defined in each discourse. They are open to shift so that anyone can occupy the I and the you.
⇒ shifters => they do not have potentialities.

Only through language is subjectivity constituted.
⇒ sense of self (ego) is established by language
⇒ structure of language is such that it already implies a dialogue

in taking up ‘i’ it is instand and only temporal.
⇒ but by doing this you are being contrasted by other signifiers -> that link to past/present/future
…history of discourse.

Communication is a necessary option in taking up a subject
⇒ to be conscious
⇒ to understand yourself

subject: social because individual is not separate from society or social structures of meaning.
+> point taken up against social contract – that as soon as you speak you are part of society.

1. language and subject are interconnected - there is no meaning without language.
2. subject constant in language via relation difference (you) – suggests fundamental instability.

Labels: philosophy

  ¶ 1:00 pm