On Scribes and Foresters. The Ethical Sense of Arche-writing

Abstract

The paper is argued that the opposition between speech and writing introduced by Jacques Derrida at the end of the previous century is only a form of expressing two different understandings of language functions. According to one of them characteristic for the European culture, the main function of language is communication. According to the other understanding characteristic for the traditions of the Middle East, the main function of language is organization and structuring of the world. Although Derrida followed the second tradition, he was also determined by the European linguistic philosophy of the 20th century (philosophical hermeneutics, analytic philosophy, structuralism, etc.) when he suggested that human subjectivity is completely caused by the ‘anonymous’ speech practice which he called ‘Arche-writing’. However, the tradition he followed implied that man is independent from language because he is correlated with the creator of both language and being, i.e. with God. This aspect of the tradition became central for E. Levinas, the contemporary of Derrida. The author believes that the dialogue in the theory of Levinas is not like the ‘communicative interaction’ in Heidegger’s philosophy of language or the ‘speech acts’ in the analytic philosophy. The speech act is fundamentally contrary to the ethical relation to the Other because it makes the Other into the object of manipulation. Therefore Levinas’s dialogue suggests “the hospitality” but not ‘the communicative interaction’. The article supplements the idea of Arche-writing with Levinas’s moral idea of ‘the absolutely Other’ to continue the deconstruction of the European culture begun by Derrida.