Return to Saussure

A somewhat mysterious process. AI image Introduction: The Problem of the Text In the preface to the Course in General Linguistics , Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye openly acknowledge the difficulty of their task: “Will critics be able to distinguish between Saussure and our interpretation of Saussure? We hope that any blame may be laid at our door, rather than reflect upon the reputation of someone whose memory we cherish.” This remark is not merely editorial caution, it signals a structural feature of the text itself. What we read as Saussure is already mediated, condensed, and reconstructed. This is especially evident in Part II, Chapter IV, §1 (“The language as thought organised in sound”), where a series of foundational concepts—difference, opposition, sign, value—are introduced in rapid succession, often without explicit transitions. The result is a text that is conceptually dense but logically elliptical. The aim of this article is to reconstruct the implicit logic o...

The Teacher. AI image   “I’ll give €1000 to anyone who can tell me what a ‘1’ is.” A colleague once made this remark during a teacher training seminar. The context was telling: more than twenty experienced teachers were asked to assess the same student essay using a shared rubric. Despite comparable professional backgrounds and clearly defined criteria, the results varied significantly. Some assigned the top mark, others a “3,” with several gradations in between. Such divergence is often treated as a practical inconvenience, something to be minimized through clearer guidelines or tighter standardization. Yet its persistence suggests a deeper issue. If a grade were a stable property of the text, one would expect far greater agreement. At the same time, few educators would accept that grading is simply arbitrary. This tension points to a more fundamental question: what kind of act is grading? The following argument proposes that marks are not discovered but produced through acts ...

The Algorithmic Gaze. AI image   Introduction “Man is the measure of all things.” The phrase, attributed to Protagoras, is often taken as a simple statement of relativism. Yet its scope is wider. It marks a point of departure: a world in which reality cannot be separated from the standpoint of the one who encounters it. What is, appears always for someone. From this starting point, a long transformation unfolds. Across centuries, the locus of measure does not remain fixed. It is challenged, displaced, and reformulated in different ways. What begins as a claim about perception becomes, over time, a question about the ground of knowledge itself. Seen from the present, this trajectory takes on a new shape. From ancient philosophy to contemporary systems of calculation, the issue is no longer how the world is measured, but whether man still occupies that position as the measure of reality. Protagoras and the Human Measure Protagoras’s claim does more than register disagreemen...

Introduction For several centuries, Western thought rested on a seemingly stable conviction: that human experience is the ultimate source of meaning and authority. To know the world was, in the last instance, to return to oneself—to perception, reflection, or judgment. Whether in philosophy, politics, or ethics, the subject functioned as the final point of reference. Today, this assumption no longer holds with the same force. Decisions once grounded in intuition are increasingly delegated to systems that register, process, and anticipate behavior. What appears at first as a technical development points toward something more fundamental. The question is no longer simply how we know, but who—or what—counts as a knower. Humanism and the Authority of the Subject Modern humanism emerged from a decisive reorientation. With René Descartes, certainty was no longer anchored in tradition or external authority, but in the immediacy of thought itself. The cogito did more than establish a f...