Are Word and Concept the Same? Natural Language and Philosophical Language
—Jacques Derrida, Talking Liberties, interview with Alan Montefiore
1. The Problem of Familiar Words
When we read philosophy, we encounter words such as word, term, meaning, concept, language, and sign, and we usually have little difficulty understanding them in ordinary contexts. We know what a word is, what it means for something to have a meaning, and what it is to call something a concept. Speakers intuitively recognize the units that matter in discourse, even though they may not be able to explain systematically how those units are distinguished or related. The difficulty begins when these familiar terms become part of a philosophical argument, where distinctions that seem obvious in ordinary contexts may acquire a more precise or entirely different role.
This becomes particularly clear with the word concept. When philosophers speak of a concept, are they referring to something in thought, something expressed by language, an abstract entity, a particular kind of meaning, or something else? And how is such a concept related to the word or term through which it is expressed?
These questions cannot be answered simply by consulting an ordinary definition of concept. Before deciding what the word means, we need to ask how a particular thinker is using it, what distinctions surround it, and what role it plays in the argument.
2. The Jungle of Terms
Once we begin comparing philosophical and linguistic discussions, the apparent simplicity quickly gives way to a dense network of related terms: word and term, word and meaning, meaning and concept, sign and concept, natural language and philosophical language, semantic and conceptual. Each pairing suggests a distinction, but the distinction is not organized in the same way across different traditions.
Frege, for example, distinguishes among sense, reference, concept, and object, while ordinary-language philosophy directs attention toward the ways expressions are actually used. Linguistics and lexical semantics investigate the relation between word meaning and conceptual structure, whereas contemporary theories of concepts ask what concepts are and how they function in thought. These approaches overlap, but they do not simply share a common vocabulary whose terms have fixed meanings.
The problem, then, is not merely that there are many terms. Apparently familiar terms can occupy different positions within different theoretical frameworks. The fact that two authors use the word concept does not establish that they are talking about the same kind of thing, just as using the word meaning does not guarantee that they have the same account of what meaning is.
The same word may occupy a different theoretical position in different systems.
3. A Method for Reading Philosophers
If this is the problem, how should we read philosophical texts? Rather than beginning by asking what a term such as concept means in general, we can begin by asking what work the term does within the particular theory or argument in which it appears. Three questions are especially useful: What distinctions does the author make? How are the terms related to one another? What function does each term perform in the argument?
The first question identifies the boundaries the author draws; the second shows how the elements of the vocabulary are connected; the third reveals why those distinctions matter. A term may acquire much of its theoretical significance from its relations to other terms rather than from an isolated definition, so its position within a system can be as important as any explicit explanation the author gives.
This provides a more reliable basis for comparison. Before deciding that two thinkers are using the same concept, we need to establish how their terms are positioned and what functions they perform within their respective frameworks.
The point is therefore to reconstruct the vocabulary of a particular thinker before moving from one framework to another. Derrida's discussion of ousia and on provides a useful illustration of this method because it places a familiar distinction between a linguistic expression and a concept under pressure.
4. Case Study: Derrida and the Concept of Being
A useful example appears in a 1992 interview with Alan Montefiore, where Derrida discusses the relation between philosophical concepts and the languages in which philosophy has developed. Speaking about Greek philosophy, he remarks that when he says ousia or on for Being, these terms are “not simply a conventional sign associated with a concept.” He then makes the stronger claim that “you cannot dissociate a concept from a language, from a what we call a natural language.”
The distinction can be represented at three levels. On and ousia are linguistic expressions in Greek; Being is the philosophical notion they articulate in this context; and Greek is the historically given natural language within which that articulation takes place. These three elements belong to different levels of the analysis, but they cannot simply be treated as independent of one another.
Derrida is not saying that the word ousia and the philosophical notion of Being are identical, nor is he treating the concept as merely a word. His point concerns the relation between a philosophical concept and the language through which it has been articulated. If a concept were simply an independent entity to which a linguistic label could subsequently be attached, the particular language of its articulation would be theoretically secondary. Derrida rejects that picture: “you cannot dissociate a concept from a language, from what we call a natural language.”
The concept is not the word, but neither is it simply separable from the language in which it has been articulated.
This helps clarify the status of natural language in his argument. Greek is not a special philosophical language created for metaphysics; it is a historically given language in which philosophy develops its vocabulary and formulates its questions. Philosophy can give expressions new distinctions and technical functions, but it does so through a language that is already there.
The issue is therefore not simply the meaning of a particular Greek expression. It concerns the peculiar status of philosophy itself: philosophy formulates claims that aspire to universality, yet the concepts through which those claims are formulated arise within particular historical languages.
5. When Does a Word Become Philosophical?
The example of ousia raises a further question: What happens when a word becomes a philosophical term? An expression can belong to an ordinary language and acquire a specialized function within philosophical discourse, as ousia does in the Greek philosophical tradition. What, then, has changed? Has the word changed, has the concept changed, or has the relation between linguistic expression and conceptual function been transformed?
This question shifts our attention from the existence of philosophical vocabulary to the process by which such vocabulary acquires its role. Philosophy does not generally begin with a separate stock of purely philosophical words. It takes expressions from an existing language and places them within new distinctions, arguments, and systems of thought.
One possible response, associated with ordinary-language philosophy, is to turn attention from abstract definitions toward the ways expressions are actually used. That approach opens a different line of inquiry, but it helps illuminate the general problem: the philosophical significance of an expression cannot be determined simply by looking at the expression in isolation.
Philosophy may transform the use of words without ever acquiring a linguistic medium entirely separate from the language in which it develops.
6. A Reading Principle
The broader lesson is methodological. When reading a philosopher, familiar words should not be treated as transparent windows into familiar meanings. Their significance has to be established within the particular vocabulary in which they appear.
The practical rule is therefore simple: first reconstruct the author's vocabulary; only then compare it with another author's. This prevents us from importing distinctions from one framework into another before we have established how either framework is organized.
Derrida's remark about on and ousia illustrates the principle particularly well. The philosophical concept is distinguishable from the linguistic expression through which it is articulated, yet it cannot simply be detached from the natural language in which philosophical thought has taken shape.
Once this problem is visible, further questions about ordinary language, philosophical language, metaphor, literature, science, and deconstruction can be approached with the same question in mind: how does a particular form of discourse organize the relation between language and thought?
References
Carston, R. (2012). Word meaning and concept expressed. The Linguistic Review, 29(4), 607–623.
Montefiore, A. (1992). Interview with Jacques Derrida [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B-gzOQLzJk&t=297s
Derrida, J. (1992). An interview with Jacques Derrida. In D. Attridge (Ed.), Acts of literature (pp. 39–54). Routledge.
Frege, G. (1997). On concept and object. In M. Beaney (Ed.), The Frege reader (pp. 181–193). Blackwell. (Original work published 1892)
Margolis, E., & Laurence, S. (2019). Concepts. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
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