Jacques Derrida's On Logocentrism And The Philosophy Of Language

The term ‘logocentrism’ is a neologism used to refer to the attitude that logos is the fundamental principle of language, psychology and philosophy. Derived from the Greek verb legō, logos encapsulates the meaning of speech, reason, thought and law. The term stems from the 1920s having been coined by the German philosopher Ludwig Klages who believed the logos to be a supreme principle that gives meaning to all discourse and organises all differences in an intellectual system. Logocentrism essentially rejects writing as an appendage to speech and, in agreement with Aristotle, purports that while spoken words are the symbols of “mental experience”, written words are merely the symbols of that pre-existent symbol. Logocentrist theory views writing

In Jacques Derrida’s On Grammatology, logocentric hermeneutics are critiqued and deconstructed alongside Derrida’s consideration of Western philosophy and the ‘metaphysics of presence.’ Derrida points out the main limitation of logocentric theory being the promotion that writing is exterior to speech, and that speech is exterior to thought. He argues it is impossible to fully comprehend the written word if it is merely seen as an external representation of speech. Saussure also responds to this supposed flaw. Although logocentrism professes the signifier to be exterior from the signified, Saussure instead likens these concepts to one indivisible sheet of paper with the associated concept, the signified, on one side and the sound image, the signifier, on the other. This analogy by Saussure highlights the impossibility of isolating sound from thought, or thought from sound in language. Therefore, this view deviates from logocentric theory and instead suggests linguistics operates along the margin where sound and thought meet, hence Saussure’s comment, “The contact between them [the signifier and signified] gives rise to a form, not a

Coined by Derrida in his Writing and Difference, this portmanteau refers to “the system of metaphysical oppositions” that was predominant throughout Western philosophical tradition. Under this theory identity is determined by the presence or absence of the phallus. Whilst males possess this privileged signifier, females do not, making them non-existent or simply supplemental. The term highlights the way logocentrism has become genderised by a masculinist and patriarchal agenda and thus validates logocentrist theory by maintaining and perpetuating the structure of binary