Return to Saussure

‘Fashion and literature signify strongly, subtly, with all the complexities of an extreme art, but, if you will, they signify “nothing”, their being is in the signifying, not in what is signified.’ — Roland Barthes, Essais critiques Introduction Imagine two jackets hanging side by side in a shop window. At first glance they seem almost identical. They are made from the same fabric, have the same color, and serve exactly the same practical purpose. Yet one has a slightly narrower lapel, a different button, or a thin strip of piping around the pocket. Suddenly, one jacket looks modern and elegant while the other appears dated. Customers gravitate toward one and ignore the other. But why? Nothing substantial has changed. Neither jacket keeps you warmer. Neither is more durable. No new practical function has been added. The physical differences are almost trivial, yet everyone seems to agree that they matter. Somehow, a tiny modification has acquired social significance. It now com...

“dans la langue il n’y a que des différences.” AI image Introduction Samuel Weber’s reading of Ferdinand de Saussure follows a clear and compelling line of reasoning. If language consists solely of differences, then those differences might appear capable of indefinite expansion. Determination would therefore require limits, and such limits, on this account, are secured by invoking linguistic institution, privileging synchrony, and bracketing diachrony. The resulting system seems closed only because historical movement has been set aside. This reconstruction raises serious philosophical questions. Yet it risks isolating one of Saussure’s most cited formulations ( “dans la langue il n’y a que des différences” ) from the broader conceptual structure of the Course in General Linguistics . A closer examination suggests that difference in Saussure never operates independently of an already instituted system. The problem, then, is not whether Weber’s questions are legitimate, but whet...

Traces. AI art Introduction In his Poetics , Aristotle offered one of the most cited definitions of metaphor: it consists, he writes, in “giving the thing a name that belongs to something else” (Poetics 1457b6–9). Jacques Derrida recalls this formula in Margins of Philosophy (p. 231), where it becomes the point of departure for a wide-ranging deconstruction of the philosophical dream of literal language. If metaphor is alien naming, then its opposite must be authentic naming: a speech where every entity possesses its own proper designation. This apparent alternative, Derrida argues, is precisely what metaphysicians have pursued—the fantasy of a discourse purified of figurative intrusion. Yet the very idea of such purity is internally compromised, since it is framed through metaphors of ownership, propriety, and transfer. Aristotle’s Definition and Its Implications Aristotle’s wording situates metaphor as a form of displacement: a name is carried across from its rightful home to...

Introduction In his essay On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense , Friedrich Nietzsche delivers a radical challenge to our understanding of truth, knowledge, and language. He provocatively asks: What is a word? What, then, is truth? These questions form the core of his critique, suggesting that truth is a human invention, shaped by language and metaphor. For Nietzsche, words are not neutral tools that reflect reality but distortions—metaphors we’ve created to make sense of a complex world. This unsettling idea forces us to confront how much of what we consider "true" is nothing more than a linguistic convention, deeply embedded in human culture and far removed from any absolute reality. His essay stands out in contemporary philosophy for its daring exploration of how language shapes our experience of the world. It challenges not only the possibility of objective truth but also the assumption that language can ever fully capture reality. His view that language is an arbitr...