Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Writing: Writing is a method of communication and expression using symbols or characters to convey language, thoughts, or information onto a surface. See also Messages, Texts, Literature, Historiography, Cultural tradition, Culture, Communication, Information, Reading, Speaking._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Paul Ricoeur on Writing - Dictionary of Arguments
II 25 Speaking/Writing/Ricoeur: (...) the transition from speaking tow writing has ist conditions in the theory of >discourse (...), especially in the dialectic of event and meaning (...) >Discourse/Ricoeur, >Dialogue/Ricoeur. Writing/Plato/Ricoeur: [Plato criticized] writing as a kind of alienation (...). Writing/Ricoeur: What happens in writing is the full manifestation of something that is in a virtual state, something nascent and inchoate, in living speech, namely the detachment of meaning from the event. But this detachment is not such as to cancel the fundamental structure of discourse (...). The semantic autonomy of the text which now appears is still governed by the dialectic of event and meaning. Moreover, it may be said that this dialectic is made obvious and explicit by writing. Writing/text/Ricoeur: What happens in writing is the full manifestation of something that is in a virtual state, something nascent and inchoate, in living speech, namely the detachment of meaning from the event. But this detachment is not such as to cancel the fundamental structure of discourse (...). The semantic autonomy of the text which now appears is still governed by the dialectic of event and meaning. Moreover, it may be said that this dialectic is made obvious and explicit by writing. II 26 Writing/Derrida: To hold - as Jacques Derrida(1) does - that writing has a root distinct from speech and that this foundation has been misunderstood due to our having paid excessive attention to speech, its voice, and its logos, is to overlook the grounding of both modes of the actualization of discourse in the dialectical constitution of discourse. RicoeurVsDerrida: I propose instead that we begin from the schema of communication described by Roman Jakobson in his famous artcle, "Linguistics and Poetics."(2) Jakobson: To the six main "factors" of communicative discourse — the speaker, hearer, medium or channel, code, situation, and message—he relates six correlative "functions": the emotive, conative, phatic, meta-linguistic, referential, and poetic functions. Ricoeur: Taking this schema as a starting point, we may inquire into what alterations, transformations, or deformations affect the interplay of facts and functions when discourse is inscribed in writing. >Media/Ricoeur. II 28 (...) does the problematics ot fixation and inscription exhaust the problem of writing? In other words, is writing only a question of a change of medium, where the human voice, face, and gesture are replaced by material marks other than the speaker's own body? When we consider the range of social and political changes which can be related to the invention of writing, we may surmise that writing is much more than mere material fixation. [The] political implication of writing is just one of its consequences. To the fixation of rules for reckoning may be referred the birth of market relationships, therefore. the birth of economics. To the constitution of archives, history. To the fixation of law as a standard of decisions, independent from the opinion of the concrete judge, the birth of the justice and juridical codes, etc. Such an immense range of effects suggests that human discourse is not merely preserved from destruction by being fixed in writing, but that it is deeply affected in its communicative function. Literature: [When] is human thought directly brought to writing without the intermediary'stage of spoken language[,] [t]hen writing takes the place of speaking. A kind of short-cut occurs between the meaning of discourse and the material medium. II 29 The best way to measure the extent of this substitution is to look at the range of changes which occur among the other components of the communication process. The relation writing-reading is no longer a particular case of the relation speaking-hearing. With written discourse, (...) the author's intention and the meaning of the text cease to coincide. This dissociation of the verbal meaning of the text and the mental intention of the author gives to the concept of inscription its decisive significance, beyond the mere fixation of previous oral discourse. II 30 Meaning/intending: What the text means now matters more than what the author meant when he wrote it. >Intentional Fallacy/Wimsatt, >Literature/Ricoeur. 1. Jacques Derrida, La voix et le phénoméne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967); L'écriture et la différence (Paris: Seuil, 1967); De la grammatologie (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1967); „La Mythologie blanche," Rhétorique et philosophie, Poétique, 5 (1955); reprinted in Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1972), pp. 247-324. 2. R. Jakobson, „Linguistics and Poetics“. In: T. A. Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1960), pp. 350-377._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Ricoeur I Paul Ricoeur De L’interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud German Edition: Die Interpretation. Ein Versuch über Freud Frankfurt/M. 1999 Ricoeur II Paul Ricoeur Interpretation theory: discourse and the surplus of meaning Fort Worth 1976 |
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Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2024-04-20