Unearthing the Logos: Derrida and the Myth of Good Writing

 Introduction: The Voice of the Soul and the Body

The history of Western metaphysics is structured by oppositions: interior and exterior, nature and artifice, presence and absence. Nowhere is this clearer than in the traditional opposition between good and bad writing. In Of Grammatology, Derrida calls attention to this inherited dichotomy. What is named "good writing"—the divine inscription in the heart—is not writing in the literal sense at all, but a metaphor for the logos, the supposed origin of truth and meaning. In contrast, "bad writing" is associated with exteriority, technique, and mediation—the very things that Western thought has long held suspect. The distinction parallels the idea of a "voice of the soul," pure and internal, as opposed to a "voice of the body," passionate and external. This opposition has governed conceptions of meaning, language, and truth for centuries. But Derrida does not merely invert this hierarchy; he exposes the metaphysical assumptions that make such a hierarchy possible. This article aims to unpack the symbolic weight of this "good writing," reveal its role in sustaining the myth of the logos, and explore Derrida's attempt to deconstruct it.

Section I: The Hierarchy of Good and Bad Writing

In Western metaphysical tradition, writing has often been treated with suspicion. Plato famously condemned writing as a mere aid to memory, something external to thought itself. The interior monologue—the silent voice of reason—was elevated above the external trace. In this schema, good writing is understood as the internal truth of conscience, inscribed directly by God or nature, while bad writing is seen as artificial, crafted, technical. As Derrida describes it, this "perverse and artful" writing is "exiled in the exteriority of the body." It is aligned with passions, deception, and the fall into appearance. This logic extends to the distinction between the voice of the soul and the voice of the body. The former is seen as immediate, sincere, and self-present; the latter, as noisy, mediated, and fallible. Such hierarchies, Derrida suggests, rest on a fundamental belief in an origin of meaning untouched by difference or deferral. The "good" writing is not a sign of anything—it is the thing itself, presence made legible. But this belief in a pure origin is precisely what Derrida puts into question.

Section II: Good Writing as a Metaphor for the Logos

If good writing is not literal inscription, what is it? Derrida shows that this "divine inscription in the heart" is a metaphor for what metaphysics has called the logos—the internal, self-present truth that is supposed to precede and ground all signification. It is not writing in the inscriptive, symbolic sense, but rather a fantasy of unmediated access to meaning. It is imagined as the writing of conscience, the truth of the soul, untouched by the spacing and differentiation that characterize real language. This logos functions as the transcendental signified: an origin that anchors meaning from beyond, guaranteeing stability and unity. But such a signified is never actually encountered. It is a regulative ideal, always deferred. Derrida's strategy is not to deny that this belief system exists, but to show how it relies on metaphor and mystification. "The good and natural" writing, then, is a fiction—a way of safeguarding the myth of presence. It is not a description of a real practice, but a symbolic placeholder for metaphysical comfort.

Section III: Arche-Writing and the Deconstruction of Origin

Rather than rehabilitate literal writing or privilege it over speech, Derrida reveals that both are effects of a more fundamental structure he calls arche-writing. This is not writing as we ordinarily understand it, but the general condition of signification—characterized by spacing, deferral, repetition, and difference. Writing in this expanded sense is not secondary to speech or thought. It is the structural possibility of both. As Derrida writes, "There is no linguistic sign before writing." Even the supposed voice of the soul is mediated by traces, by iterable elements that are never fully present. The fantasy of divine, internal writing—of logos—is possible only because of the very mechanisms of difference it attempts to deny. "Bad" writing, in its literal, technical form, turns out to be not a corruption of truth, but the very condition of its articulation. Derrida does not replace one origin with another. He shows that origin itself is a product of differential systems. Arche-writing, then, is not a new foundation, but the end of foundational thinking.

Conclusion: The Question That Remains

Derrida's analysis challenges the traditional opposition between good and bad writing, showing it to be a symptom of metaphysical longing. The good writing—pure, divine, internal—is revealed to be a metaphor for the logos, the fantasy of a stable ground. Bad writing—external, iterable, material—is not its fall or corruption but its condition of possibility. In calling attention to this reversal, Derrida shifts our understanding of language, meaning, and truth. Yet one question lingers: isn’t Derrida secretly smuggling in a universal meaning of “writing” when he talks about good vs. bad writing, or arche-writing as the condition of possibility for all sign systems?

At first glance, it may appear so. Yet he does not seem to be proposing a new essence. Rather, he presents arche-writing as a name for the very process by which all essences are deferred and displaced. In Derrida’s framework, arche-writing is not a stable concept but a strategic displacement—a gesture that marks the impossibility of any pure origin. The work of deconstruction, then, is not to replace metaphysics with a new foundational truth, but to keep the question of truth permanently open. Still, future inquiries may find it fruitful to return to this tension, where “writing” appears to both name and destabilize the very ground of thought.

Bibliography

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

Derrida, Jacques. De la grammatologie. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1967.