Discourse, Figure

Thickness on the Margins of Discourse

103 Thickness on the Margins of Discourse A decade before Saussure, Gottlob Frege had understood and developed this effect of positionality, establishing that the words’ opening onto reference belongs to actual discourse and not to the virtual system of language [langue], suggesting moreover that there is silent meaning or thickness on this side of significations, lodged this time at the heart of discourse itself, in its form.The separation of the two vectors that allowed Benveniste to locate the arbitrary nature of linguistic signs overlaps exactly with the distinction Frege posits between Sinn and Bedeutung.1 This last remark is more than a mere anomaly, for Frege’s reflection goes far beyond a formalist revision regarding propositional calculus; it follows a Kantian lineage when it starts from the separation between an a = a type equation, which is analytical, and the equation of the a = b variety,which implies an increase in knowledge,but needs to be justified. Above all, Frege’s reflection culminates in an organization of the space of discourse and thought that will serve as reference for the Husserl of the Logical Investigations as much as for the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, becoming, with its intersecting dimensions, the matrix of intentional as well as analytical philosophy. It is important to return to the point where, on the one hand, the exclusion of designation in favor of signification, and on the other, the burying of the Sinn’s key structure under intentional analyses, are not yet completed, where the union of the two great Kantian themes of the transcendental as subjectivity and the transcendental as structure is not undone, but on the contrary refined— especially since Frege’s conclusions find, in certain results and omissions of structural linguistics, an echo that makes his reflection all the more timely. An expression such as a = b encapsulates the whole problem of the sign. If it turns out to be true, it would mean that one could take b instead of a; but a is not b, and their difference is maintained in the formulation of their 104 thickness on the margins of discourse identity. What constitutes this difference? If b differed only from a as an object (als Gegenstand ), for example through its form and not in the way it designates (bezeichnet), the expression a = b would have the same knowledge value as the expression a = a, and their difference would be trivial. However, their difference is so important that it contains the entire opposition between the analytic and the synthetic, the entire gain in knowledge. The difference, then, consists in the way in which the designated is given respectively by a and by b.2 Let us assume M is the point where the three median lines x, y, z of a triangle intersect. One can designate M as the point of intersection of x and y, or y and z. These two designations each indicate (deuten) a different way of presenting the designated object: this is what grants the statement “the point of intersection of x and y is the point of intersection of y and z” a positive knowledge value. One must therefore distinguish between the sign’s Bedeutung, its designation, involving the exteriority of the designated, and its Sinn, consisting in the way the object is given (die Art des Gegebenseins). The Bedeutung of the expression “point of intersection between x and y” is the same as that of the expression “point of intersection of y and z,” but not its Sinn. This is not to suggest that if reference is objective,signification would be subjective.To emphasize how far he stands from a psychologizing interpretation , and to locate signification precisely within objectivity, Frege provides a new coupling where signification is this time opposed to “representation” (Vorstellung). The latter can vary from one subject to the next, while signification is independent of the word’s or the expression’s formulation. The phrase “a new day is born”can elicit various representations, images, feelings, depending on the listener, but each and every listener, if knowledgeable of the English language, will understand it in the same way. Thus emerges the concept of a non-reifying objectivity, for which Frege provides as model the image of the moon in the lens of a telescope: “I compare the moon itself to the reference (Bedeutung); it is the object of the observation, mediated by the real image projected by the object glass in the interior of the telescope and by...