Polysemy and Dissemination

References

• I would like to thank Kalpana Seshadri and several of her Boston College colleagues, as well as an anonymous reviewer of the JBSP, for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.
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• One can express this difference as ‘two faces of Socrates’, i.e., dialogue and critical questioning, as James Risser has done in his comparison of Gadamer and Derrida; cf. James Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other. Re-reading Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997, 169–72. One can also distinguish between fruitful imagination in language versus change and the unexpected, as Leonard Lawlor has explained the distinction between Ricœur and Derrida; cf. Leonard Lawlor, Imagination and Chance. The Difference Between the Thought of Ricœur and Derrida. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
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• Paul Ricœur, ‘Le problème du double-sens comme problème herméneutique et comme problème sémantique’, in, Le conflit des interprétations. Paris: Seuil, 1969, 64–79; transl. by Kathleen McLaughlin as ‘The Problem of Double Meaning as Hermeneutic Problem and as Semantic Problem’, in, The Conflict of Interpretations. London, New York: Continuum, 2004 (1974), 61–76.
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• In this text Ricœur discusses the three levels in the sequence of increasing “scientific rigor” (p. 69/66): hermeneutics, lexical semantics and structural semantics.
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• Stephen Ullmann, The Principles of Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell, Glasgow: Jackson, 1967 (2nd ed., 1957), 114, cf. 62–3.
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• Ullmann, The Principles of Semantics, 117.
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• Ullmann, The Principles of Semantics, 62.
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• Both Ullmann and Ricœur, when they refer to this characteristic, quote W. M. Urban, Language and Reality. London, 1939, 112; cf. Ullmann, The Principles of Semantics, 117; Ricœur, ‘Le problème du double-sens’, 71/68.
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• Ullmann, The Principles of Semantics, 119.
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• This is my example, not Ricœur's.
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• Paul Ricœur, ‘Le problème du double-sens’, 70/66–7; I changed the translation, in the original French it is, “car ce sont les changements de sens qui ont leur projection synchronique dans le phénomène de la polysémie.”
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• Associative relations of signs show alternative words that can take the same place in a phrase, e.g., the relation horse—cow—animal—etc. Syntagmatic relations of signs are arranged by syntax: signs follow each other within a phrase. In every word of a phrase these two relations cross each other; cf. Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale, Lausanne: Payot, 1916, 176–86. Roman Jakobson made the same distinction with a different terminology: relations of combination and relations of selection; cf. Roman Jakobson, ‘Two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances’, in, On Language. Cambridge: Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1990, 115–33: 119–20; cf. Ricœur, ‘Le problème du double-sens’, 71–2/68–9.
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• See, e.g., Ricœur, Le conflit des interprétations, 31–63, 80–97/27–60, 77–94; idem, Du texte à l'action. Essais d'herméneutique II. Paris: Seuil, 1986, 113–32, 153–78; transl. by Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson as From Text to Action. Essays in Hermeneutics II. London: The Athlone Press, 1991, 75–88, 105–24.
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• Ricœur, ‘Le problème du double-sens’, 70/67.
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• Ricœur, ‘Le problème du double-sens’, 70/67, my italics.
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• Ricœur, ‘Le problème du double-sens’, 68/65; cf. Ricœur, De l'interprétation. Essai sur Freud. Paris: Seuil, 1965, 440–515; trans. by Denis Savage as Freud and Philosophy. An Essay on Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, 419–93; Le conflit des interprétations, 101–207/97–204.
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• See, e.g., his explanation of the Wirkungsgeschichte, history of effect: Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Tübingen: Mohr, 1990 (1960)). 305–12; transl. by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall as Truth and Method. London: Continuum, 2nd rev. ed., 2004 (1989)), 299–306; cf. Eddo Evink, ‘Horizons and Others. Gadamer, Levinas, Patočka’, in, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84, 4, 2010, 729–48.
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• Ricœur, Temps et récit III. Paris: Seuil, 1985, 375–90; trans. by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer as Time and Narrative III, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988, 208–16; cf. Reinhard Koselleck, ‘Erfahrungsraum und Erwartungshorizont’, in, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979, 349–75.
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• See, e.g., Ricœur, Du texte à l'action, 325/238.
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• Ricœur, Temps et récit I. Paris: Seuil, 1983, 145–46/77; cf. III, 307–8/168–9, where Ricœur even calls this task for the reader an “impossible task”.
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• Cf. Gert-Jan van der Heiden, The Truth (and Untruth) of Language: Heidegger, Ricœur and Derrida on Disclosure and Displacement. Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press, 2010, 2056.
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• Derrida, ‘Introduction’, 123/117 [translation slightly changed]; cf. ‘Limited Inc a b c…’, in, Limited Inc. Paris: Galilée, 1990, 61–179: 110–11; transl. as ‘Limited Inc a b c.’, in, Limited Inc, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988, 29–110: 56; ‘Postface: Vers une éthique de la discussion’, in: Limited Inc, 199–285: 218–21, 232–34/‘Afterword: Toward An Ethic of Discussion’, 120–2, 128–9.
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• In Derrida's later work the notion of horizon still plays a prominent role, e.g., in his thoughts on justice and messianism, but I leave that aside in this article.
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• Derrida, ‘La double séance’, in, La dissémination. 199–317: 294, transl. as ‘The Double Session’, in: Dissemination, 269; cf. ‘Signature événement contexte’, in, Marges, 365–93: 376, 386; transl. as ‘Signature Event Context’, 307–30: 316, 324.
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• Derrida, Positions, 62/45 (translation slightly changed).
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• Derrida, Positions, 61/45; cf. ‘Signature événement contexte’, 376/316.
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• Derrida, ‘La dissémination’, 390/385.
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• Derrida, ‘La différance’, in: Marges, 1–29: 20; transl. as ‘Différance’, 1–27:19. I changed several details of the translation; the main difference is the translation of usure by attrition [it might also have been wear] instead of usage.
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• Derrida, Spurs, 128–9; translation slightly changed.
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• Derrida, Spurs, 127.
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