What is the metaphysics of presence?

Jacques Derrida, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Jacques Derrida answers

The history of metaphysics, I have argued, is the history of a determination of being as presence — and that determination, in all its forms, is also the history of logocentrism, which is to say the history of a reduction of the trace.¹ What does this mean, precisely? Consider how the center of any structure has always functioned: it is the point that organizes the play of elements while itself remaining outside that play, exempt from substitution, fully present to itself.

The history of metaphysics is the history of substitutions of such centers — eidos, archē, telos, energeia, ousia, alētheia, transcendentality, consciousness, God, man — each receiving a different name in a regulated succession, each designating what I call an invariable presence.² The matrix of this entire history, in all its epochs and all its metaphors, is the determination of being as presence in every sense of that word.³

What changes across the history is the form presence takes. Before Descartes, the identity of presence was constituted under the objective form of the ideality of the eidos or the substantiality of ousia. After the Cartesian cogito, this objectivity becomes representation — the idea as the modification of a self-present substance, conscious and certain of itself at the moment of its relationship to itself.⁴

What the cogito accomplishes is a kind of infinite assurance: ideality and substantiality relate to themselves in the element of the res cogitans by a movement of pure auto-affection. Consciousness becomes the experience of pure auto-affection.⁵ And in this structure, God functions not as an exterior limit but as the very name and element of what makes absolutely pure self-knowledge possible — the logos as self-presence, infinite and self-present, produced as auto-affection only through the voice.⁶

This is the hinge on which everything turns. The logos can be self-present only through voice — through the experience of s'entendre-parler, hearing-oneself-speak — because in this experience the subject takes from itself into itself, borrowing no signifier from outside.⁷ The voice appears to leave no exterior residue, no spatial mark, no sensible element that would interrupt the transparency of self-relationship.

Writing, by contrast, is precisely the name for that interruption — the "exterior," "sensible," "spatial" signifier that the metaphysics of presence must exclude in order to maintain its dream of pure self-presence.⁸ The category of subject, consciousness, hypokeimenon, ousia — none of these has ever been conceivable without reference to presence.⁹

The privilege accorded to consciousness is the privilege accorded to the present; and even Husserl's transcendental phenomenology, which describes temporality with great depth, still accords to the "living present" the power of synthesis, the incessant gathering-up of traces.¹⁰ This privilege, I have written, is the very ether of metaphysics, the element of our thought insofar as it is caught in the language of metaphysics.¹¹

The closure of this history is what I name through différance. The appearing of infinite différance is itself finite — and this means that différance can no longer be conceived within the opposition of finiteness and infinity, absence and presence, negation and affirmation.¹² The history of being as presence, as self-presence in absolute knowledge, as consciousness of self in the infinity of parousia, is closed — not ended in the sense that it simply stops, but closed in the sense that its structure becomes legible as a structure.¹³

The history of metaphysics can be expressed as the unfolding of an absolute will-to-hear-oneself-speak, and this history closes when the infinite absolute appears to itself as its own death: a voice without différance, a voice without writing, is at once absolutely alive and absolutely dead.¹⁴ The trace is what the entire history of metaphysics has worked to subordinate and reduce.

The subordination of the trace to the full presence summed up in the logos, the humbling of writing beneath a speech dreaming its plenitude — these are the gestures required by an onto-theology that determines being as parousia, as life without différance.¹⁵ Only infinite being can reduce the difference in presence; and in that sense, the name of God, at least as pronounced within classical rationalism, is the name of indifference itself.¹⁶

What deconstruction does with this is not simply reverse the hierarchy — not substitute writing for speech, absence for presence. It is the patient tracing of how the determination of being as presence organizes every classical opposition, and the demonstration that the trace it sought to reduce was always already at work within it.

Sources

If the history of metaphysics is the history of a determination of being as presence, if its adventure merges with that of logocentrism, and if it is produced wholly as the reduction of the trace, Rousseau's work seems to me to occupy, between Plato's Phaedrus and Hegel's Encyclopaedia, a singular position.
Of Grammatology, pp. 171–172
all the names related to fundamentals, to principles, or to the center have always designated an invariable presence—eidos, archē, telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject) alētheia, transcendentality, consciousness, God, man, and so forth.
Writing and Difference, p. 400
Its matrix—if you will pardon me for demonstrating so little and for being so elliptical in order to come more quickly to my principal theme—is the determination of Being as presence in all senses of this word.
Writing and Difference, p. 400
Before that, the identity of presence offered to the mastery of repetition was constituted under the 'objective' form of the ideality of the eidos or the substantiality of ousia. Thereafter, this objectivity takes the form of representation, of the idea as the modification of a self-present substance, conscious and certain of itself at the moment of its relationship to itself.
Of Grammatology, pp. 171–172
Ideality and substantiality relate to themselves, in the element of the res cogitans, by a movement of pure auto-affection. Consciousness is the experience of pure auto-affection.
Of Grammatology, pp. 171–172
God is the name and the element of that which makes possible an absolutely pure and absolutely self-present self-knowledge. From Descartes to Hegel and in spite of all the differences that separate the different places and moments in the structure of that epoch, God's infinite understanding is the other name for the logos as self-presence.
Of Grammatology, pp. 171–172
The logos can be infinite and self-present, it can be produced as auto-affection, only through the voice: an order of the signifier by which the subject takes from itself into itself, does not borrow outside of itself the signifier that it emits and that affects it at the same time.
Of Grammatology, pp. 171–172
That experience lives and proclaims itself as the exclusion of writing, that is to say of the invoking of an 'exterior,' 'sensible,' 'spatial' signifier interrupting self-presence.
Of Grammatology, pp. 171–172
Just as the category of subject is not and never has been conceivable without reference to presence as hypokeimenon or ousia, etc., so the subject as consciousness has never been able to be evinced otherwise than as self-presence.
Speech and Phenomena, pp. 185–186
even if the transcendental temporality of consciousness is described in depth, as Husserl described it, the power of synthesis and of the incessant gathering-up of traces is always accorded to the 'living present.'
Speech and Phenomena, pp. 185–186
This privilege is the ether of metaphysics, the very element of our thought insofar as it is caught up in the language of metaphysics.
Speech and Phenomena, pp. 185–186
The appearing of the infinite differance is itself finite. Consequently, differance, which does not occur outside this relation, becomes the finitude of life as an essential relation with oneself and one's death. The infinite differance is finite. It can therefore no longer be conceived within the opposition of finiteness and infinity, absence and presence, negation and affirmation.
Speech and Phenomena, pp. 141–142
The history of being as presence, as self-presence in absolute knowledge, as consciousness of self in the infinity of parousia—this history is closed.
Speech and Phenomena, pp. 141–142
The history of metaphysics therefore can be expressed as the unfolding of the structure or schema of an absolute will-to-hear-oneself-speak. This history is closed when this infinite absolute appears to itself as its own death. A voice without differance, a voice without writing, is at once absolutely alive and absolutely dead.
Speech and Phenomena, pp. 141–142
The subordination of the trace to the full presence summed up in the logos, the humbling of writing beneath a speech dreaming its plenitude, such are the gestures required by an onto-theology determining the archeological and eschatological meaning of being as presence, as parousia, as life without differance.
Of Grammatology, pp. 146–147
Only infinite being can reduce the difference in presence. In that sense, the name of God, at least as it is pronounced within classical rationalism, is the name of indifference itself.
Of Grammatology, pp. 146–147