Beyond the language

Derrida focuses his analysis on Aristotle’s Perì Hermēneías, a treatise that has been the subject of sustained attention in our research. In this text, Aristotle formulates a theory of meaning that establishes a double representational relationship: vocal sounds are signs of psychic states, while written words refer to those sounds. This hierarchy, whose structure seems evident, is based on a supposed essential relationship between voice and soul, which gives oral language ontological precedence over writing.

The Aristotelian conception confers on logos the status of natural and universal expression of a pre-existing interiority. In this framework, language is conceived as an instrument of mediation between subjects, allowing the externalization of given mental contents. The communicative function of language thus presupposes a primacy of meaning over its formulation, which implies that meaning precedes and transcends the sign.

Derrida interrupts this theoretical tradition with a decisive objection: the assertion of an interiority prior to the word implies a metaphysics of presence that reduces language to its representational function. Instead of assuming a pre-figured meaning, he proposes to consider that language configures its own field of signification. It does not express a previous experience, but rather establishes a system of differences whose operation does not refer to an original source. Meaning does not precede the sign; it emerges in the very space of its deferred inscription. This perspective dialogues with the critique developed by Michel Foucault, who in Les mots et les choses shows that language is not essentially linked to things. The relationship between sign and referent can no longer be thought of as a natural correspondence, but as a historical device for the production of knowledge. Given this dislocation, to assert that language translates a state of the soul is to reinstate a logic of representation that Derrida seeks to dismantle. By dismantling the priority of the voice, Derrida challenges the classical notion of the sign, questions the supposed transparency of speech, and displaces the ontological privilege that Western metaphysics had attributed to it. The word does not reflect a given interiority, nor does it constitute a privileged gateway to meaning. Rather, it is the place where meaning is delayed, fractured, and produced without any original guarantee. This conceptual shift radically transforms the status of language: meaning no longer appears as content prior to its formulation, but as an effect generated by differential operations. Writing, in this logic, is not a secondary derivation of the word, but the instance that reveals the impossibility of a full presence of meaning in the sign. Language does not translate a prior order: it configures the only horizon in which signification takes place.

Derrida undertakes a decisive critique of the traditional conception that maintains the existence of an interiority of the soul prior to language, conceived as a self-sufficient source of meaning. This tradition, inherited from Western metaphysics, assigns language a subordinate function as a vehicle for the expression of pre-established content. Under this assumption, language appears as a secondary instrument, responsible for translating a prior and independent state. However, Derrida dismantles this hierarchical relationship. Language does not translate a prior substance: through its deferred functioning, it produces what is retrospectively interpreted as origin. Interiority, far from constituting a pre-linguistic core, emerges as an effect of textual operations. In this sense, the soul, understood as a substrate prior to the sign, turns out to be a position constructed by the signifying dynamic.

This is not to deny the existence of subjectivity, but to show that its articulation does not precede language. Everything that presents itself as immediate has already been filtered through a network of discursive mediations.

Subjectivity does not give rise to language: it is configured within it, under the conditions imposed by the regime of the sign. There is therefore no autonomous psychic instance that determines discourse from outside. Derrida’s famous formula il n’y a pas de hors-texte highlights this shift.

What is denied is not the materiality of the world, but the possibility of a guaranteed reference outside textuality. Meaning does not come from an external point: it is produced in the signifying chain, through the endless play of differences. Each term acquires value solely through its relationship with other signs, never through an immediate link with an extralinguistic reality. This approach dissolves the classical relationship between word and object. The signifier “dog,” for example, does not refer to a univocal entity, but acquires meaning within a structure of differential oppositions. Spoken language, being associated with the voice, creates the illusion of an original presence. Phonation seems to give meaning an immediacy that reinforces its credibility as a reflection of an external reality. Writing, on the other hand, deactivates this illusion. It does not conceal its artificial nature: it exhibits the absence of an ultimate guarantee. Unlike speech, which tends to naturalize its link with the thing, writing refers only to other textual marks. This self-referential character reveals the autonomous functioning of the signifying system. The text does not translate prior content: it constitutes it through differential relationships that exclude any transcendental anchorage. From this perspective, even thought must be understood as a linguistic structure. Thinking does not imply accessing pure mental content, but rather activating a discursive device internally. Silent thought does not escape language: it is articulated through internalized phonetic operations. Consciousness is not external to the text; it is part of its economy. Consequently, there is no outside that precedes or grounds language. All meaning emerges from within the textuality that makes it possible.

In the framework of Derridean philosophy, not only speech and writing, but also thought must be understood as textual configurations. What appears as the origin or content of language is already determined by its inscription in the signifying structure. There is no exterior to the text that can operate as its ultimate foundation. Even instances traditionally conceived as original—the world, divinity, the subject—participate in the internal logic of the discourse that produces them.

The distinction between the text and that which it supposedly refers to is thus dismantled. No extra-textual referent can be legitimized as a primary source of meaning. The statement il n’y a pas de hors-texte does not deny the empirical existence of the world, but it does prevent us from conceiving of it as something accessible outside of semiotic mediation. Once enunciated, even the concept of “God” is subject to the operations of language. There is no divinity prior to or outside the sign. Strictly speaking, all meaning is constituted within the text; outside it, there is nothing that can be said.

A similar thesis can be found in our Retroprogressive Path, where the only ultimate reality is pure consciousness, devoid of form and object. The contents of experience—perceptions, thoughts, emotions—are not substantial entities, but ephemeral manifestations of that absolute consciousness. Thought, considered as the first differentiation within the undifferentiated, can be understood as an operation analogous to that of language: the articulation of the indeterminate into distinguishable modes. However, this convergence should not obscure their structural differences. In Derrida’s thought, language has no stable origin: it functions as a self-generating system of differential references. In contrast, for the Eastern contemplative tradition, language represents a transitory modality of consciousness, which does not come from textuality but transcends it. Being is not generated from semiosis, but from a formless reality prior to all distinction. If in Derrida subjectivity dissolves in the play of signs, in Eastern metaphysics its substantiality is denied on the basis of the emptiness that structures all phenomena.

Both currents coincide, however, in the impossibility of positing an original and independent entity that legitimizes language as representation. There is no self fixed outside the discursive field. Deconstruction points to the absence of a full signifier; Eastern emptiness indicates that all appearance lacks a fixed essence. This absence does not refer to a negation, but to an opening: the condition of possibility of everything that manifests itself. It is not a deficient void, but a non-objectifiable totality: to hen, the One, or the formless Absolute. From this perspective, the consciousness that sustains experience is indistinguishable from the emptiness that constitutes it. Language, in its unfolding, does not refer to autonomous external realities, since these are revealed as effects of the signifying structure itself. Words do not reflect reality: they make it appear as such. Consciousness is only recognized through the marks of language, and these do not refer to a substantial beyond, but to a relational field that sustains them.

In the experiences that different traditions have called nirvāṇa, samādhi, or enlightenment, no discursive truth is accessed, nor is any ultimate proposition formulated. There, thought, sign, and difference cease. Unity cannot be spoken, for every word fractures its immediacy. To realize the One is to annul the instance of the self, to cease speaking, to be nothing.

This ontological silence is also found in the biblical tradition, when it is stated: