ABSTRACT
The ordinary, or vulgar notion of presence is the understanding that individual and corporate entities may be affirmed as being at hand on the basis of sensible, empirical evidence. The fundamental problem of presence is the seeming impossibility of rationally affirming the absolute unchanging unity of particular entities on the basis of the ceaseless flux of temporal experience. In the context of the development of phenomenology, it is the appeal of Edmund Hussel ‘to the things in themselves’ which has provoked the debate, particularly with respect to Martin Heidegger’s ontology, around the issue of presence. Jacques Derrida criticizes Husserl’s endeavour to separate expression from indication. That is, the meaningful sign system in terms of language, which for Husserl is grounded upon the living presence of the speaking subject. A particular and crucial focus of Derrida’s criticism is set out in Speech and Phenomena in relation to Husserl’s Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time.
