HUSSERL 'S LOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

The Phenomenological Revolution 

A L E X Y l A N N O P O U L O S 

T H E V I E W T H A T L A N G U A G E I S A V E H I C L E F O R T H E C O M M U N I C A T I O N O F ( I M M A T E R I A L ) 

" C O N C E P T S , " I N O P P O S I T I O N W I T H T H E ( P H Y S I C A L ) " W O R D S " T H A T C A R R Y T H E M , I S 

T H E F O U N D A T I O N O F W E S T E R N P H I L O S O P H Y O F L A N G U A G E , A N D P E R H A P S T H E 

F O U N D A T I O N O F W E S T E R N P H I L O S O P H Y I N G E N E R A L . A S E D M U N D H U S S E R L A N D 

J A C Q U E S D E R R I D A C O N F R O N T T H I S R E L A T I O N S H I P B E T W E E N I D E A L I T Y A N D R E A L I T Y 

I N L A N G U A G E , T H E O L D O R D E R P R O M U L G A T I N G T H I S B I N A R Y C O M E S I N T O 

Q U E S T I O N . T H E F O L L O W I N G E S S A Y E X P L O R E S T H I S C H A L L E N G E T O T H E T R A D I T I O N A L 

A C C O U N T O F L A N G U A G E A S W E L L A S I T S W I D E R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R O N T O L O G Y 

A N D S U B J E C T I V I T Y . 



One of the seminal texts of the modern era, and indeed a 
text that would influence the course of Continental philos-
ophy throughout the 20th century, is Husserl's Logical 
Investigations. Conceived in part as a response to what 
Husserl termed "psychologism," the view that the truths of 
logic are derived from the facts of psychology, the Logical 
Investigations1 were a pivotal moment in the history of 
Western philosophy. Husserl's stated intention was to pro-
vide a stable ground for truth and knowledge, by "delineat-
ing" a 

...new, purely theoretical science, the all-important foun-

dation for any technology of scientific knowledge, and itself 

having the character of an a priori, purely demonstrative 

science.11 

This "new science" would be based on the principles of 
"pure logic," a decision made in reaction to what he saw as 
the tendencies of philosophy to downplay or deny the pos-
sibility of a direct knowledge and to assert that the univer-
sal and ideal truths of logic were derived from empirical ex-
perience. 

Over the course of the Investigations, the theory of knowl-
edge that Husserl articulated was, in its own way, radically 
different from everything that preceded it. His philosophy 
came to be known as "phenomenology," and it claimed to 
represent a total shift in how philosophical inquiry could, 
and should, proceed. The phenomenological revolution 
was characterized by its proponents as a radical break with 
the tradition of Western metaphysics—a new way of con-
ceiving reality. 

However, while certain aspects of phenomenology were no 
doubt radical, the question remains as to what degree 
Husserl's philosophy actually managed to break completely 
with traditional Western philosophy. Was the phenomeno-
logical revolution in fact a complete revolution independ-
ent of classical philosophy's principles, or was it consti-
tuted from within Western metaphysics? This question 
provides the starting-point for Derrida's critique of 

Husserl, entitled Speech and Phenomena. In the 
Introduction to Speech and Phenomena,111 Jacques Derrida 
poses the question of how we are "to accept and read" the 
"portentous distinction" 1 Husserl makes between expres-
sion and indication. This question is whether or not 

phenomenological necessity, the rigor and subtlety of 

Husserl's analysis, the exigencies to which it responds and 

which we must first recognize, nonetheless conceal a meta-

physical presupposition ... [and] harbor a dogmatic or 

speculative commitment which ... would constitute phe-

nomenology from within. 

Phenomenology was conceived by Husserl as a theory of 
science or knowledge in general: a "science of sciences." 
Fundamentally, this was an attempt to ground epistemol-
ogy in the human consciousness of the present moment. 
The "transcendental reduction" central to phenomenology 
is transcendental insofar as it reaches toward the ideal 
essences of things, hence the motto "return to things in 
themselves;" however, the locus of this ideality is necessar-
ily the "real" world of appearances. Since Husserl posited 
no separate transcendental realm, he was, in this regard at 
least, not a Platonist. And how is the ideal essence of 
things, the "thing itself," to be comprehended? As Robert 
Sokolowski notes, "the transcendental reduction is the turn 
toward the ego as the agent of truth:" it is the perceiving 
subject, "intuiting" the world around him, to whom truth is 
made apparent. True knowledge is the truth of experience 
as lived by a transcendental ego. Moreover, true knowledge 
is considered absolute and ideal: 

"Since Husserl posited no 
separate transcendental 

realm, he was, in this regard 
at least, not a Platonist." 

E L E M E N T S : : F A L L Of 



experiences are real particulars, temporally determinate, 

which come into being and pass away. Truth, however, is 

'eternal,' or, better put, it is an Idea, and so beyond time.1'1 

The Investigations were termed "Logical," and in many 
senses their object is, indeed, logic. Logic is, for Husserl, 
the ground of true knowledge as the sole guarantor of truth 
in its ideal form. I f logic is indeed the vehicle of truth, it is 
nonetheless clear that human language is by no means a 
simple or pure logical system. It is at this point that the re-
lationship between the ideality of a pure logical grammar 
and the reality of human language must be examined. 
Simply put, what is the relation of formal logic to practical 
language? 

It is in answer to this question that Husserl proposes the 
distinction between expression and indication. A n expres-
sion, in Husserl's sense, is a linguistic sign which incorpo-
rates or is animated by a formal, logical, propositional 
meaning. A n indication, by contrast, is still a sign, though 
one deprived of meaning. The difference between the two 
is thus explicitly one of meaning.vm 

The meaning of an expression is defined as an ideal logical 
content; as Derrida puts it, the logos is "determined from 
logic." But it is also something more: the ideal re-presenta-
tion of a conscious subject's experience. Husserl's position 
was that any experience of an object of cognition 
("noema"), even the experience of its representation in lan-
guage or memory, i n some way refers to ("intends") that ob-
ject in and by itself. Meaningful communication occurs 
when a sensible signifier—e.g. a series of sounds—is "ani-
mated" by nonsensible conceptual content, always deter-
mined on the basis of both a pure logic and an ideal object, 
in the mind of a conscious subject. What is meaningful 
about a series of words is not the material words them-
selves—not the pattern of sound in the case of spoken lan-
guage nor the pattern of light and dark in the case of writ-
ten language—but rather the conceptual content they hold. 

For Husserl, the distinction clearly functions at the level of 
an explicit willed meaning-content. For example, one can 

APPROACH I NG STORM C L O U D S INDICATE RAIN 

hear the utterance, "It wi l l rain"; alternativley, one can see 
storm-clouds gathering. The knowledge gained in both 
cases is, in theory, identical. In the former case, however, 
the words function as an expression. In the latter, the storm-
clouds function as an indication: they are that which 
"moves something such as a 'thinking being' to pass by 
thought from something to something else.": What sepa-
rates indication from expression is that the "something 
else," to which an indicative sign refers, is an existent entity 
and not an ideal meaning. Expressions, on the other hand, 
"refer" exclusively to ideal, conceptual meaning-content. 

However, concerning the possibility of a radical separation 
between expression and indication, Derrida notes, 

the difference between indication and expression very 

quickly appears in the course of the description to be a dif-

H U S S E R L ' S L O G I C A L I N V E S T I G A T I O N S 



ference more functional than substantial. Indication and 

expression are functions or signifying relations, not terms. 

One and the same phenomenon may be apprehended as 

an expression or as an indication, a discursive or nondis-

cursive sign depending on the intentional experience [vecu 

intentionneljwhich animates it.xl 

This is clear enough to see in a more salient example. What 
is the difference between a stone as a trail marker—a clas-
sic example of indication—and that same stone as part of a 
predetermined system of communication, with an explicit 

S T O N E S A L O N G A PATH AS AN EXAMPLE OF INDICATION 

meaning? Husserl wi l l say that "signs in the sense of indi-
cations do not express anything, unless they happen to ful-
fill a meaning as well as an indicative function." In other 
words, even when considering one and the same phenom-
enon, or one and the same communicative act, its indica-
tive and its expressive functions are supposed to remain ab-
solutely heterogeneous. And yet he wil l , on the other hand, 
admit that "meaning—in communicative speech—is al-
ways interwoven with such an indicative relation."5411 

But how can it be that a rigid delineation between two enti-
ties exists when they are "always interwoven?" As Hume 
pointed out, what is in theory distinguishable is always in 
principle separable/111 In fact, this provides the opening for 

Derrida's critique. As he states, 

We will have to clarify the modalities of this interweaving. 

But it is already evident that this defacto necessity of en-

tanglement, intimately associating expression and indica-

tion, must not, according to Husserl, cut off the possibility 

of a rigorous distinction of essence. This possibility is 

purely de jure and phenomenological. The whole analysis 

will thus advance in this separation between de facto and 

dejure, existence and essence, reality and intentional 

function.xw 

By admitting on the one hand an empirically necessary in-
terweaving that on the other hand may ideally be done away 
with, Husserl has already involved his theory of language 
and thus of knowledge in a rigid separation between fact 
and Idea. He has subordinated the former to the latter; 
though expression always and everywhere involves indica-
tion, there is nonetheless an assumed difference between in-
dication and expression. Empirical necessity does not im-
pact ideal truth, the truth of phenomenology. 

This separation of reality and ideality, matter and form, 
constitutes phenomenology as well as the entirety of 
Western metaphysics. Husserl claims that "no conceivable 
gradation could mediate between the ideal and the real,"3" 
and by extension that ideal meaning-content could never, i n 
any way, have anything to do with the real experienced 
world. This is precisely the difference between form and 
matter, essence and existence, substance and accidents 
which inaugurates Western philosophy. 

In fact, as Derrida has pointed out often over the course of 
his works, signs function at the border between ideality and 
physicality. Any sign, in order to signify, must have some 
generally recognizable, universal qualities—an ideality-
through-repetition—since a purely particular "event" 
would be absolutely unintelligible.™ A word can be under-
stood i f and only i f it conforms somehow to predetermined 
expectations: 

A phoneme or grapheme is necessarily always to some ex-



tent different each time that it is presented in an operation 

or a perception. But, it can function as a sign, and in gen-

eral as language, only if a formal identity enables it to be 

issued again and to be recognized. This identity is neces-

sarily ideal.xvn 

Because the ideal form of a sign is precisely nothing actual 
or empirical, the very physicality of a signifier, and hence 
the signifier itself, is necessarily and absolutely different 
from the ideality it instantiates. The basis of this ideality is 
the act of repetition, and not the other way around: any pre-
existing ideality would necessitate the existence of a preem-
pirical, ideal realm, and thereby a lapse into stark 
Platonism. By contrast, phenomenology asserts that the 
locus of ideality is the phenomenal world, and thus, that the 
source of ideality is the act of indefinite repetition. 

We have already seen that Derrida viewed the distinction 
between indication and expression as more "functional 
than substantial." This was for two reasons: first, any sign 
may function both indicatively and expressively, and sec-
ond, any actual expression is indicative, as the primary 
presentation or intuition of an object of cognition is always 
denied an interlocutor. A conversation partner wil l never 
have access to the full, ideal meaning of an expression, be-
cause any actual event of expression is always interwoven 
with indication, which makes the conceptual meaning-con-
tent impure. However, where the notion of "expression" 
could still possibly be relevant is within the consciousness 
of the subject. 

Expression is supposed to be more "full" than indication 
because it connects directly with the willed meaning of a 
conscious subject. This meaning is taken to be that sub-
ject's filled intuition. However, this is not necessarily the 
case. Husserl writes that what is 'meant' or intended 

can either be actually present, through accompanying in-

tuitions, or may at least appear in representations, e.g. in 

a mental image, and where this happens the relation to an 

object is realized. Alternatively this need not occur; the ex-

pression functions significantly...but it lacks any basic in-

tuition that would give its object.™111 

Fulfillment of intuition is unnecessary for the functioning 
of expression. As Derrida concludes, "The absence of an 
object is hence not the absence of meaning."*1* 

From the very beginning, Husserl's project was to restore 
the "dignity" of knowledge, in part by ensuring that the 
"aim" of scientific inquiry (i.e. certain knowledge of the 
truth) is arrived at properly: Husserl insists, as we have al-
ready noted, that "whether a science is truly a science, or a 
method a method, depends on whether it accords with the 
aims that it strives for." A Language, in this view, is subor-
dinated to the search for truth. The "dignity" of language 
lies in its ability to express the truth. 

If "possibility" or "truth" is lacking, an assertion's 

intention can only be carried out symbolically; it cannot 

derive any "fullness" from intuition . .. it then lacks, as 

one says, a "true," a "genuine" meaning.xxl 

"Symbolically" is equivalent to "mediately," and insofar as 
mediation involves a step away from the "fullness" of true 
meaning, it accordingly introduces an impurity into the 
meaning that is communicated. Language can be used 
without the possibility of truth, but this is not how language 
should be used. Instead, language is ideally used to re-pres-
ent an initial fullness of intuitive content, the "truth," the 
actual presence of an ideal object to consciousness. 

If, however, such a pure and full initial presentation is 
never, in fact, possible, the possibility of such a use of lan-
guage would be radically altered. Regardless, such a state 
of affairs would in no way affect the ability of language to 
function. The dignity of language might be i n the search 
for truth, but the possibility of language necessitates no 
truth. 

Thus, even if, as Derrida notes, "[language] attains its enet-
elechy when it is true," X l ! it is nonetheless the case that lan-
guage requires no accompanying present-intuition. The 

H U S S E R L ' S L O G I C A L I N V E S T I G A T I O N S 



ideality of meaning, which Husserl had attempted to deter-
mine earlier on the basis of a simple and pure relationship 
with such a present-intuition, is therefore constituted to-
tally separate from any such intuition. I f an ideal meaning 
exists, it does so only after language; the possibility of a 
pure expression is a question, and one raised only after the 
nonideality of an indicative signification. 

Derrida sees this through to its logical conclusion: "we 
might be tempted to maintain not only that meaning does 
not imply the intuition, but that it essentially excludes it."xxm 

The existence of an ideal meaning makes the notion of any 
full, present-intuition absolutely impossible. This argu-
ment hinges on the distinction between the meaning of an 
expression and the ostensibly-accompanying—but in fact 
never-accompanying—intuition of an actual speaker. 

I f the general structure of signification is constituted by the 
possibility of absence, as indeed it is constituted by repeti-
tion and representation, it would be completely unjustified 
to determine this absence as exterior, secondary, or deriva-
tive to an initial presence or presentation. And far from 
being exiled as an abnormality or failure, it is this primor-
dial absence or nonpresentation which is the foundation of 
meaning i n general, as it is the necessary precondition of 
intelligibility. In examining Husserl's concept of the sign, 
Derrida reveals that the "sign" conceived as the mediation 
between ideality and reality is always already deconstruct-
ing. As a result, the opposition between ideality and reality 
is untenable. 

This is true of any conceptual operation that would seek to 
establish the terms of a relation in absolute purity. Hence, 
deconstruction is the construction of a new type of order 
from the incoherence of the old order. This old order is the 
structure of extremes; it is the determination of Being as 
absolute presence and Non-being as absolute absence. 

Now, negation is often viewed as an independent mode of 
existence, as though the concept of "not-A" were intelligible 
without the prior concept of "A." Non-existence is all too 

frequently misunderstood as simply the negative analogue 
of existence. But "A does not exist," in addition to not being 
a purely formal claim, is meaningless without the prior ex-
istence of A. Otherwise, 

1) Why should As nonexistence be any different from, 
e.g., B's? 
2) How should the nonexistence of A be properly identi-
fied in the first place? Without A, how could we speak of 
the nonexistence of A? 

Even within the more formal realm of propositional logic— 
that is, excluding statements of existence or nonexis-
tence—these results are by no means exclusive to the neg-
ative term, not-A. Would a proposition that could not be 
negated make any sense? Even a tautology may be negated 
into a contradiction. I f not-A is unintelligible without A, A 
is no less unintelligible without not-A. A and not-A, then, 
are both alike in only being intelligible on the basis of A. A 
negation may express an assertion of As nonexistence, but 
this assertion cannot be made without reference to A. As a 
result there can be no pure negation of A; existence and 
nonexistence are only ever misunderstood as opposites. 

Husserl's separation of the real from the ideal is no less rad-
ical than the distinction between the existent and the non-
existent, or the true and the false. In fact, it is both cotermi-
nous and coextensive with these oppositions. Husserl 
ultimately reserved a peculiar, eternal mode of existence for 
the ideal; in real or empirical terms, 'the ideal' could only be 
said not to exist. 

Derrida's analysis of Husserl is neither definable as com-
mentary nor determinable as interpretation. Derrida does 
not simply explain Husserl's philosophy, nor does he sim-
ply draw conclusions from it, though both of these are stops 
along the way. Speech and Phenomena points out the criti-
cal incoherence of the linguistic model, generally assumed 
in the West, which would hold that language is a kind of ve-
hicle that transmits a conceptual meaning, the signified, in 
or on or through a material signifier. Husserl's account of 

E L E M E N T S F A L L 07 



language, and in particular his strong attachment to ideal-
ity, might sound tinny to postmodern ears. But, in fact, his 
account of language—in which a conceptual meaning-con-
tent is transmitted across a physical medium—remains the 
dominant understanding of language i n the West. 

In the most general form, this model of language is predi-
cated on the premise that there is a substantial materiality 
separable from a substantial immateriality, on whose basis 
truth is defined, and further that a material quantity can 
"refer" to an immaterial quantity, thus forming a mediation 
of experience and truth. It may be that Husserl expressed 
these premises i n a more radical form than other thinkers 
had previously; certainly, i f nothing else, Derrida brings to 
light the absolutely fundamental nature of Husserl's initial 
distinction between ideality and reality. But that Husserl 
expressed the split in radical terms does not in any way 
imply that other thinkers did not hold or indeed have not 
held to it. I n fact, it is this precise distinction between the 
material and the immaterial, hyle and morphe, which inau-
gurates Western metaphysics, and which continues to de-
termine its course. Husserl gave this distinction the most 
definitive formulation of the modern era, but it does not 
begin with him; and though he radicalized the issue, he was 
not the last to wittingly or unwittingly commit to its being 
radicalized. 

For Husserl, this conceptual meaning was necessarily 
propositional, but that is only because within his philoso-
phy of true ideality, the truth of ideality is restricted to 
propositional logic, analogous to the formal rules of syntax. 
Derrida's critique is leveled foremost against the view that 
speech or writing is primarily "representative" of an initial, 
conceptual meaning-content, whether it is purely proposi-
tional or not. Derrida ultimately points out the elements of 
Husserl's account of language which work against each 
other; he demonstrates that Husserl's sundering of ideal 
from real is an operation that is anything but purely de-
scriptive. Rather, that which authorizes this philosophy to 
speak is the case which should render it mute: the case 
where the real and the ideal are conjoined, the spoken 

word. 

The defining characteristic of speech, in phenomenology, 
is its bridging of the gap between materiality and immate-
riality. Husserl predicated truth on ideality; however, ideal-
ity is not mediated through the senses. That is to say, for 
Husserl, the truth had to be absolute, ideal, and formal: 
thoroughly nonphysical. But there cannot be an apprehen-
sion of this truth apart from some sort of sensory activity. 
Husserl's thought was in a trap; there had to be some 
means by which the truth of ideality could be grasped, else 
there was no sense positing it in the first place. This medi-
ation is the spoken word. 

The spoken word is, in phenomenology, the unfolding-in-
time of eternal, ideal truth. It is the case which perfectly 
joins or mediates ideal meaning with real expression, eter-
nity with temporality. This is because in spoken speech 
there is an unbroken link between the ideal meaning of the 

T H E S P O K E N WORD MEDIATES BETWEEN T H E REAL AND T H E 

IDEAL W O R L D OF P H E N O M E N O L O G Y 

H U S S E R L ' S L O G I C A L I N V E S T I G A T I O N S 



expression and the real acoustic pattern. The voice is the 
place where the distinction between the ideal and the real 
collapses. It is the perfect mediation between the two ends 
of the opposition. As a result, it is the "sole case to escape 
the distinction between what is worldly and what is tran-
scendental [i.e. ideal]; by the same token, it makes that dis-
tinction possible. " X X 1 V 

Though there is not and cannot be any experiential differ-
ence between the voice and the meaning it signifies, such a 
difference must be maintained by Husserl, in order to pre-
serve the initial "essential distinction" between the ideal 
and the real. Because the voice perfectly mediates between 
the two, it demonstrates that such a mediation—and hence 
that such a distinction—is in fact possible. A n objective 
worldly science, in Husserl's sense, can teach us nothing at 
all about the nature of the voice, precisely because this self-
nature escapes empirical access, precisely because the 
voice is inscrutable in its ideal unification of the ideal and 
the real. "The signifier," Derrida writes, "would become 
perfectly diaphanous due to the absolute proximity to the 
signified." x x v The reason? 

There is an unfailing complicity here between idealization 

and speech ... My words are "alive" because they seem not 

to leave me: not to fall outside me, outside my breath, at a 

visible distance; not to cease to belong to me.xxm 

In contrast with every other action, speaking brings the ide-
ality of meaning and the reality of the world into indistin-
guishable contact. At the very moment that speech is pro-
duced, as it comes into being, its material 

body—sound—fades away. As a result, "this effacement of 
the sensible body and its exteriority is for consciousness the 
very form of the immediate presence of the signified.' , X X V 1 1 

Speaking in the phenomenological sense is the foundation 
of and the authorization for the whole chain of sine qua non 
first principles: self, ideality, presence, and so forth. 

Writing, however, is a fundamentally different case. There 
is no active consciousness producing the written page as it 
is read; writing exists (or may exist) in no way dependent 
upon its author. Unlike the voice, which always—at least 
until the invention of telecommunications—had to be pro-
duced in proximity to a recipient, and further could not be 
reproduced in time, writing bears no even putatively neces-
sary relation between the physical word and the conscious 
meaning-intent of a subject. The subject who produced a 
text, the author, the " I , " may be unconscious or dead, and 
the text is still legible. It exists in the world, despite the fact 
that there is no "animating" intention. There can conse-
quently be very little sense in positing this animating inten-
tion as a necessary requirement for intelligibility. The writ-
ten word remains perfectly understandable, even without 
that which Husserl saw as absolutely required for intelligi-
bility. 

Husserl followed the traditional Western model; he viewed 
writing as merely a re-presentation of speech, which was it-
self simply a representation of the original meaning of an 
expressive act of communication. However, what he neg-
lected to take into account was the radically cast-off nature 
of the written sign. I f writing is merely a representation of 
speech, i t nonetheless remains a full (in the sense of com-
plete) use of language. What is the phenomenological dif-

"Unlike the voice ... writing bears no even putatively nec-
essary relation between the physical word and the 

conscious meaning-intent of a subject." 



"It is ... hearing-oneself speak which is the pure 
form of subjectivity: before one's speech ... has gone 'out' 

into the world, it [remains] within the 'solitary 
mental sphere' of subjective activity." 

ference between producing a speech-utterance and produc-
ing a written utterance? The actual moment of conscious 
activity is fundamentally indivisible in both instances; the 
neurological processes involved may be different, but both 
make full use of language, both require the structures that 
define and order language use in general. 

There was never a speech that was not "writing," i f we un-
derstand writing as what Derrida ultimately terms pro-
towriting: the process of differentiation within the self that 
was always the origin of the concept "self." There is no un-
divided self, and no pure presence which could exist in 
meaningful or mediable opposition with absence—there is 
no expression without indication. The motion of this pro-
towriting is evident in the deconstruction of "expression," 
"present" or "presence, and "self"; the very condition of 
these concepts' intelligibility is their ultimate incoherence. 
What allows us to say "present" as opposed to "absent," 
"self" as opposed to "other," is a never-ending operation of 
effacing differance, effacing the fact that the condition of 
self-identity is an irreducible alterity—an alterity which, by 
extension, can never be pure or primal or absolute. 

Differance "produces sameness as a self-relation within 
self-difference; it produces sameness as the non-identi-
cal."*™ 1 1 T h e preceding examination of the transcendental 
or phenomenological reduction reveals difference always 
already at work within the same. This difference, however, 
does not and cannot exist i n opposition with any notion of 
sameness; it is a difference within the same, a sameness 
within difference, that destroys the possibility of any mean-
ingful opposition between sameness and difference, of any 

absolute self-identity or absolute difference. Differance 
does not exist to be grasped. 

In critiquing Husserl's concept of the sign, then, Derrida is 
in fact showing how Husserl's attempts to absolutely sepa-
rate presence from absence, ideality from reality, and exis-
tence from nonexistence are absurd and futile efforts. The 
very attempt to articulate a notion of pure presence de-
mands reference to a nonpresence or nonplenitude which 
prima facie constitutes the possibility of any presence at all. 
Nowhere is this more clear than within Husserl's philoso-
phy of language, precisely because language is so com-
monly viewed as the phenomenon which mediates be-
tween the world of sense and the world of ideas. But is such 
a mediation i n fact possible? 

In general, a mediation is that which forms a connective 
link between two terms. Or a mediation is that connection 
itself. As far as one may trust etymology as a source of 
(philosophical) knowledge, mediation is derived from the 
Latin medius, "middle." The medium of a discussion is the 
material basis of a dialogue through which meanings are 
transferred. And the very assertion of an act of mediation, of 
a concept which is able to function as a midway point between 
the two poles of an opposition, implies that opposition. For 
Husserl, as ultimately for Saussure, the sign is the mediation 
between the sensible and the intelligible; this ineluctably 
presupposes the existence of such things as intelligibility 
and sensibility, at least insofar as the two are not one and 
the same. Thus, i f the opposition between expression and 
indication, the ideal and the real, were tenable in the slight-
est, a mediation between the two terms would be possible. 

H U S S E R L ' S L O G I C A L I N V E S T I G A T I O N S 



However, Husserl's account of language, and by extension 
the entire phenomenological project, requires an absolute 
inferiority, a pure subjectivity. It is in fact nothing other 
than hearing-oneself-speak which is the pure form of sub-
jectivity: before one's speech, and hence one's thought, has 
gone "out" into the world, it is asserted to remain within the 
"solitary mental sphere" of subjective activity. In Husserl's 
philosophy, as Derrida demonstrates, the eventual exit of 
speech into the world is by no means necessary to its con-
stitution as expression, that is, as representative of an orig-
inal pure ideality. 

Such a pure subjectivity is only ever and can only ever be a 
fantasy, in Husserl's words, an "ideal l imit, something ab-
stract which can be nothing for itself." x x l x Just as "A" is un-
intelligible without "not-A," the notion of a "self" is not 
comprehensible without reference to the notion of "other." 
This mutual dependence of the terms of a conceptual oppo-
sition upon each other represents an irreducible alterity 
within the " I , " or in general within the self-nature of any 
phenomenon. This alterity is not opposed to anything; it is 
what Derrida terms the primordial bifurcation, the differ-
ance which constitutes any notion of "self" or "other" from 
within. 

"But this attack stems 
ultimately not from 

Derrida's pen hut from 
within the very conditions 
set forth hy the notions of 

immateriality and self-
nature. 77 

What an indication lacks is the immaterial volitional con-
tent typically termed "meaning." It is purely a physical phe-
nomenon, with no ideal mental component. Hence the 
substance of Derrida's critique may be taken as an attack on 
the very notion of an immateriality separable from a mate-
riality, or an intelligibility separate from a sensibility. But 
this attack stems ultimately not from Derrida's pen but 
from within the very conditions set forth by the notions of 
immateriality and self-nature. And this is by no means to 
say that Derrida is a materialist, or that he is asserting the 
existence of only the sensible signifier. In Speech and 
Phenomena as elsewhere, he admits that language is to 
some degree an operation of not-strictly-empirical 
entities. Rather, the thrust of the argument exposes the 
open contradiction at the heart of any philosophical posi-
tion which separates the ideal from the real—and this 
would include denying the existence of one or the other. 
The "Law of Non-Contradiction" would hold that an entity 
cannot be both material and immaterial; the related "Law of 
the Excluded Middle" would hold that an entity must be one 
or the other. But through the critique of Husserl's theory of 
signs, Derrida points out that the notions of materiality and 
immateriality, sensibility and intelligibility, are radically in-
separable. In general, "A" is not in principle separate from 
"not-A." One may assert with the empiricists that the ma-
terial is primary, or with Husserl that truth and meaning 
are strictly ideal, but in either case there is a total failure of 
philosophical coherence. Reality and ideality, the material 
and the immaterial, hyle and morphe, self and other, exis-
tence and nonexistence—far from being separable quanti-
ties, even in theory, these remain inextricably bound to each 
other. 

While philosophy had always been determined on the basis 
of being as presence, the purity of this presence was always 
an impossible, incoherent idea. Concordantly, the refuta-
tion performed by Derrida is not and could not be done in 
the name of an absolute absence or nonexistence. 

Within philosophy there is no possible objection concern-

ing this privilege of the present-now; it defines the very ele-



ment of philosophical thought, it is [phenomenological] ev-

idence itself, conscious thought itself, it governs every possi-

ble concept of truth and sense. No sooner do we question 

this privilege than we begin to get at the core of conscious-

ness itself from a region that lies elsewhere than 

philosophy, a procedure that would remove every possible 

security and ground from discourse. In the last analysis, 

what is at stake is indeed the privilege of the actual 

present, the now. This conflict, necessarily unlike any 

other, is between philosophy, which is always a philosophy 

of presence, and a meditation on nonpresence—which is 

not perforce its contrary, or necessarily a meditation on a 

negative absence, or a theory of nonpresence qua 

unconsciousness.xxxl 

E N D N O T E S 
i . Husserl 2001 
i i . Husserl 2001 (14) 
i i i . Derrida 
iv. Derrida (4) 
v. Husserl 1970 (17) 
vi . Moran (58) 
v i i . Ibid. 
v i i i . Cf. Logical Investigations (183): "Every sign is a sign for 
something, but not every sign has 'meaning,' a 'sense' that the 
sign 'expresses.'" Expressive signs have "sense" or "meaning;" 
indicative signs do not. 
fx. Husserl (2001) early on speaks of "the concepts or proposi-
tions which function as the meanings of our expressions" (65) 
x. Derrida (28) 
xi . Derrida (20) 
xi i . Husserl 2001 (269) 
x i i i . Cf. A Treatise of Human Nature: "Whatever is distinct, is dis-
tinguishable; and whatever is distinguishable, is separable by 
the thought or imagination." What would it mean to posit two 
entities, e.g. expression and indication, which were never in 
principle separable? What possible sense would there be in 
claiming that two entities are being considered? I n examining 
the "interwovenness" of expression and indication, Derrida is 
in fact interrogating the very possibility of the unity of the sign, 
wi th everything that might entail; "To say that there could be a 
truth for the sign i n general, does this not suppose that the sign 
is not the possibility of truth, does not constitute it, but is satis-
fied to signify it?" Derrida (24) 
xiv. Husserl 2001 (20-21) 
xv. Husserl 2001 (50) 
xvi. Cf. "Signature, Event, Context" in Limited Inc (18-21) 

xvii . Derrida (50) 
xvii i . Husserl 2001 (280) 
xix. Derrida (91-92) 
xx. Husserl 2001 (25) 
xxi. Husserl 2001 (Section 11, pp. 285-286) 
xxii . Derrida (98) 
xxi i i . Derrida (92) 
xxi v. Derrida (78) 
xxv. Derrida (80) 
xxvi. Derrida (75-76) 
xxvii. Ibid. 
xxviii. Derrida (82) 
xxix. Moran (63) 
xxx. Cf. Speech and Phenomena (50): "A signifier (in general) 
must be formally recognizable i n spite of, and through, the di-
versity of empirical characteristics which may modify it . It 
must remain the same, and be able to be repeated as such, 
despite and across the deformations which the empirical event 
necessarily makes it undergo. A phoneme or grapheme is nec-
essarily always to some extent different each time that it is pre-
sented in an operation or a perception. But, it can function as a 
sign, and in general as language, only i f a formal identity 
enables it to be issued again and to be recognized. This identity 
is necessarily ideal." 
xxxi. Derrida (63) 

REFERENCES 
Derrida, Jacques. 1973. Speech and Phenomena. Translated by 
Allison, David B. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 

Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis in European Sciences and 
Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern 
University Press. 

Husserl, Edmund. 2001. Logical Investigations, Volume I . 
Translated by J.N. Findley. New York: Routledge. 

Moran, Dermot. 2000. Introduction to Phenomenology. New 
York: Routledge. 

H U S S E R L ' S L O G I C A L I N V E S T I G A T I O N S