Language...and truth??????????

“Derrida held that language-especially written language-cannot escape built-in biases of the cultural history that produced it.” (Herrick, 253)  Derrida approached language in a deconstructive manner, challenging what was perceived based on language that has been defined by social structure, which can be denatured by asking questions such as “According to whom?” and “why?”

Derrida moves away from Locke’s idea that words signify ideas, and goes further to assert that they are more fluid, that words continually define the dynamic nature of words, because words only have meaning as they relate to other words and meanings, specifically words and meanings that apparent opposition.(Derrida, 278) An analogy might be the way states have their shapes. A state that is surrounded by other states has a particular shape, but that shape exists as it relates to the shape given to it by the states surrounding it, and part of the shapes of those states are also given part of their shape by that state. So it goes with Derrida’s idea that our perception of reality is governed.

No idea has its own substance, and therefore, has no objective and unchanging truth. There is only a form, but no substance from which its nature flows. The nature of it is the form defined by opposing qualities of other ideas.  (Derrida, 278)

“In the one case “to differ” signifies nonidentity; in the other case it signifies the order of the same.” (Derrida, 279) Derrida’s identification of differ is sort of an identification of an absence of something rather than a material reality. Difference, a distinct term from difference, is indicated by the fact that two things have a relation, and are identified by a root that gives similarity. One might say that the difference between a boy and girl would be mentioned and brought up only because they are of the same species, on the same planet, from the same family, nation, ethnicity, race religion, universe or any possible umbrella of identification. “As distinct from difference, difference thus points out the irreducibility of temporalizing (which is also temporalization-in transcendental language which is no longer adequate here, this would be called the constitution of primordial temporality- just as the term “spacing” also includes the constitution of primordial spatiality). (Derrida, 279)

The identification of differance itself is the primordial cause and effect that exists within differance, and exists outside itself when the idea itself is not talked about, but when its idea is in effect. The imperfect nature of language in its inability to perfectly convey the full truth of an idea recognizes and implicitly suggests that truth does exist, and it has an essence which may not be fully known. This begs the question of how we can come to know the full truth. If language itself is perfect, does this mean language can be perfected to a level that completely sheds light on this truth, on the world outside of Plato’s cave, where language only shows shadows and half forms?  Is there an undiscovered communication or medium to knowledge that is undiscovered, and would it be considered a language?

If there is an acknowledgement of a truth that can only be known imperfectly, how can such truth exist in the first place? If mathematical formulas and laws are discovered that govern the physical universe, then the language of science is likewise an imperfect language that, as it stands, sheds light on the truth, leading to unanswered questions that have answers people have not discovered through the imperfect language of the scientific method.