Return to Saussure

The Deconstruction of Vision. AI image     Introduction: Seeing through the Blind In 1990, Jacques Derrida curated an exhibition at the Louvre, Mémoires d’aveugle: L’autoportrait et autres ruines , combining self-portraits with images of blindness to challenge conventional distinctions between seeing and not-seeing, presence and absence. The self-portrait, emblematic of self-knowledge and self-revelation, is juxtaposed with figures who cannot see, provoking reflection on the limits of representation. This tension—between visibility and invisibility—forms the axis of Derrida’s inquiry. Derrida’s text, inscribed on the walls and reproduced in the catalogue, weaves together themes of blindness, memory, and self-portraiture, positioning lack of vision not as a deficit but as a unique modality of insight. Through the inclusion of figures such as Homer, Borges, and Joyce, the exhibition illustrates how literary and artistic creation can emerge from worlds inaccessible to the eye...

The naïve in Nietzsche, Schiller and Raphael. AI art   Introduction In The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Friedrich Nietzsche offers a radical reinterpretation of classical Greek culture by examining the aesthetic and metaphysical impulses that gave rise to tragedy. Among the many concepts he rethinks, the notion of the “naïve” undergoes a striking transformation. Far from connoting childlike innocence or unreflective simplicity, the term becomes, in Nietzsche’s hands, the ultimate artistic achievement—a heroic affirmation of life through the power of illusion. This revaluation takes shape most decisively in §§3 and 4, where Nietzsche explores the Apollonian strategies that respond to the suffering inherent in existence. The “naïve,” thus redefined, is not a beginning but a culmination: the apex of aesthetic transfiguration in the face of the tragic. From Common Usage to Philosophical Depth In its everyday sense, “naïve” suggests transparency, trust, or a disarming lack of c...