ABSTRACT

Metaphysics tries to put a stop to sceptical questioning, to show why it is (really) unintelligible. It wants, therefore, access to something which would be able to stand in judgement over our forms of thought and life. Derrida calls such a ground a ‘transcendental signified’ and it occupies a paradoxical position in metaphysical thought. Its role demands that it should be able to judge human thought, even that of philosophers, and so it must be, in a sense, beyond, transcendent, to thought. On the other hand, to play its role, it must be thought, brought within the human thinking it is to be judge of, which immediately creates the possibility for it to be questioned. Metaphysics, against its intentions, unfolds as a history. Its ambition is to put a stop to fundamental questioning, to bring thought to its final truth, and in that sense either to show the historical appearance of metaphysics to be accidental, since reality is what it is independently of history, or to bring history to its end by appropriating, as Hegel does, this history as the unfolding of truth which has now reached its telos. What makes this history possible, however, is what makes the metaphysical ambition an illusion, and we come to see this when the linguistic character of human thought and life forces itself on philosophical attention.