Ousia

 

 

Written words represent spoken words. Spoken words, the voice itself is the producer of the first signifier. The voice signifies, represents, mental experiences. Mental experiences mirror things conceptually through natural resemblance, or similarity.

The mind is a thinking activity assimilates representations into concepts and uses them in language. Creating language. The thinking activity is a part of the body. The thinking activity is the part is the part of the body that can't consume material like the digestive system because it doesn't exist in the same way. It exists as an abstraction, an abstract entity. So it must consume other abstract entities, namely, representations of objects. The social function of this mechanism is the creation of concepts for language.

All people may use different forms of writing but they all have mental experiences where writing is an expression of these experiences in symbolic forms. The universality of mental experiences creates a universal mental language which is erased due to differing epistemes, languages, etc. The voice is always the closest to the mind. The voice is closest to the signified.

The written words functionality is largely technical. It is arbitrary. Written words could refer anything a society decides. The word "horses" could refer to what we think of a planets. The word "planet" could refer to "deez nuts", and so on.

And if voice sounds are also just as arbitrary then what's the point in privileging them?

When one hears oneself and internalizes sounds and images this is the basis for subjectivity, for being as presence. Present to oneself. The subject relates to itself in the form of ideality.

The voice became the signifier of presence. Thus began the phonocentric age. Voice signifiers subjectivity, presence, being, self-consciousness, ousia, etc. And writing is debased as the mediation or mediation. Writing signifies voice. But there no inferiority with exteriority.

While voice signifies metal mental experience, there is no concept of "sign" (signifier/signified) before writing. Writing is a system of symbols that represent voice, isn't voice the expression of mental experiences with symbols. (This can go on obviously,  with mental experiences signifying other things and possibly so on.)

The point is that without the exteriority of the signifier, writing in there can be no linguistic sign. There is no linguistic sign before writing. Without the exteriority of the signifier the sign falls rots, it withers away. And all language would follow suit. We obviously can't do away with the sign. That would be stupid and only a complete idiot would misinterpret this to got in some dumbassed stupid relativistic paradigm. No relativism is stupid. The point here is to point out the arbitrariness of the privileging of speech, the necessity of Différance, exteriority and the history and context. The sign must be maintained, but its history must be critiqued.

There have been two kinds of writing. The "good" writing, the writing of the divine,  God, the conscience on the soul and the "bad" writing, literal writing, the external writing, the passions write on and using the  body. Or rather the onscience speaks for the soul, while the passions speak for the body.

Good writing resprents logos, truth. This truth is understood in a totality, the book. Good writing is still writing which is still a signifier and a signifier still needs a signified to give it meaning. Thus the idea of the book as a totality doesn't make sense. It's not total if its meaning comes from that which is external.