Derrida, Jaques [1997 (1967)]: Of Grammatology
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4.DE, pp. 34 f. 5.The group that was called the “Jesuits of Canton” applied themselves to discovering the presence of occidental (Judaeo-Christian and Egyptian) influences within Chinese writing. Cf. V. Pinot, La chine et la formation de l’esprit philosophique en France (1640—1740) ( [Paris], 1932), and DE, pp. 59 f. 6.Athanase Kircher, Polygraphia nova et universalis et combinatoria arte detecta [Rome, 1663]. John Wilkins, An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language ( [London], 1668) . 7.Letter to Mersenne, 20 November 1629 [Descartes: Philosophical Letters, tr. Anthony Kenny (Oxford, 1970), pp. 9 f.]. Cf. also Louis Couturat and Léopold Léau, Histoire de la langue universelle [Paris, 1903], pp. 10 f. 8.Supra p. 57, 38-39. 9.I would like to restore the context of this quotation: “I believe, however, that it would be possible to devise a further system to enable one to make up the primitive words and their symbols in such a language so that it could be learnt very quickly. Order is what it needed: all the thoughts which can come into the human mind must be arranged in an order like the natural order of the numbers. In a single day one can learn to name every one of the infinite series of numbers, and thus to write infinitely many different words in an unknown language. The same could be done for all the other words necessary to express all the other things which fall within the purview of the human mind. If this secret were discovered I am sure that the language would soon spread throughout the world. Many people would willingly spend five or six days in learning how to make themselves understood by the whole human race. “But I do not think that your author has thought of this. There is nothing in all his propositions to suggest it, and in any case the discovery of such a language depends upon the true philosophy. For without that philosophy it is impossible to number and order all the thoughts of men or even to separate them out into clear and simple thoughts, which in my opinion is the great secret for acquiring true scientific knowledge. If someone were to explain correctly what are the simple ideas in the human imagination out of which all human thoughts are compounded, and if his explanation were generally received, I would dare to hope for a universal language very easy to learn, to speak, and to write. The greatest advantage of such a language would be the assistance it would give to men’s ((331))
judgment, representing matters so clearly that it would be almost impossible to go wrong. As it is, almost all our words have confused meanings, and men’s minds are so accustomed to them that there is hardly anything which they can perfectly understand. “I think it is possible to invent such a language” [Philosophical Letters, pp. 5—6]. 10.Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz, ed. Couturat, [Paris, 1903], pp. 27-28. 11.Cf. Yvon Belaval, Leibniz critique de Descartes [Paris, 1960], especially pp. 181 f. 12.Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz (Couturat), pp. 98-99. 13.Cf. Couturat, Histoire de la langue universelle [Paris, 1903], pp. 1-28. Belaval, op. cit., pp. 181 f. and DE, chap. IV. 14.Cf., for example, among many other texts, Monadology 1 to 3 and 51. It is beside the point both of our project and of the possibilities of our demonstrating from internal evidence the link between the characteristic and Leibniz’s infinitist theology. For that it would be necessary to go through and exhaust the entire content of the project. I refer on this point to works already cited. Like Leibniz when he wishes to recall in a letter the link between the existence of God and the possibility of a universal script, I shall say here that “it is a proposition that [we] cannot demonstrate properly without explaining the foundations of the characteristic at length. . . . But at present, suffice it to remark that the foundation of my characteristic is also the demonstration of the existence of God, for simple thoughts are the elements of the characteristic, and simple forms are the source of things. Now I maintain that all simple forms are compatible among themselves. It is a proposition that I cannot demonstrate properly with- out explaining the foundations of the characteristic at length. But if it is granted, then it follows that the nature of God which holds absolutely all simple forms, is possible. Now we have proved above, that God is, provided He is possible. Therefore He exists. Which had to be demonstrated.” (Letter to the Princess Elizabeth, 1678) There is an essential connection between the possibility of the ontological argument and that of the Characteristic. 15.Cf. DE, chap. IV. 16.Nouveaux essais [sur l’entendement humain (Amsterdam, 1765); translated as New Essays
], III, II, S I. In 1661, Dalgarno published the work entitled Ars signorum, vulgo character universalis et lingua philosophica (London, 1661). On Wilkins cf. supra, Couturat, op. cit., and DE, passim. A script or a language of pure institution and of pure arbitrariness cannot have been invented, as a system, except all at once. It is this that, before Duclos, Rousseau, and Lévi-Strauss (cf. infra), Leibniz deems probable: “Thus it was the opinion of Golius, a celebrated mathematician and great linguist, that their language is artificial, i.e. had been invented all at once by some clever man in order to establish verbal intercourse between the large number of different nations inhabiting this great country which we call China, although this language may now be found altered by long use” (III. I. S 1) . 17.Die philosophische Schriften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt, [Berlin, 1875—90] Book VII, p. 25; and
exchanged with Father Bouvet on the subject of Chinese thought and script, cf. pp. 18—2o and [Jean] Baruzi, Leibniz ( [Paris], 1909), pp. 156—65. 18.DE, chap. III. 19.DE, pp. 43-44.
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