ABSTRACT
Wittgenstein and Derrida resemble each other in a number of ways. Both take metaphysical philosophy as their primary target (both are, in this respect, heirs of Kant). More specifically, both identify a main region of this target with a suspect notion of the mental self-presence of meanings (something which in both Derrida’s reading of Husserl and in contemporary readings of Wittgenstein’s Investigations goes under the name of “platonism”);4 and both locate the source of this suspect notion in the attempt to account for the possibility of representing meaning in linguistic signs given the premise that what could account for this must be found in the mind, conceived as a region of reality left over for investigation after one brackets the world and its empirical circumstances. Given these resemblances, it is understandable that a growing number of commentators should suggest that we might come to appreciate Wittgenstein’s discussion of meaning and understanding in terms drawn from Derrida. Wittgenstein, it is said, “achieved a consistently deconstructive standpoint.”5
