I wasn’t sure from the way you put the first comment whether you were being snarky or whether you actually wanted to dialogue about Derrida. Your second comment is much more dialogue-friendly : ) First, I’m no Derrida specialist, but I do find this particular essay interesting. I don’t think that Derrida would subscribe to “closure under entailment.” Why? Because differance always involves *deferment* (temporal aspect) and difference (spatial aspect). That is, I never fully know anything much less all things.
Linguistically speaking, each sign that occurs in language refers to something preceding it and anticipates something that lies in the future. Therefore, the present signification of a sign is constituted at the intersection of its past and future. In short, the present is always dependent on a movement to the past, and similarly, the present requires a kind of anticipatory movement to the future. Derrida “instantiates” his view in the very form of his lecture, which is why the lecture has five different beginnings. You can’t understand the opening claim upon first reading. Rather, you have to understand what comes later by going back to the beginning (which makes the text a difficult read). I get the feeling that there is no “closure” at all for Derrida, the postponement continues with no endpoint in view.

Best,
Cynthia

Doesn’t Hume say something similar in his _Enquiry_? When I think of e.g.,an apartment, I don’t think of it in some kind of “vacuum” so to speak (completely isolated from all other ideas). It seems to me that he’s simply presenting a version of meaning holism in a postmodern vein.

Cynthia