Logocentrism
The term logocentrism was first created by Ludwig Klages , who criticized the modern emphasis on rationality as being detached from the reality of life and opposed this worldview with a "biocentric" concept in which actual life is viewed as a unity of body and soul. In the following, logocentrism primarily describes post-structuralist theories as rational-centered metaphysics and Western rationality. Logocentric thinking is seen here as the dominant discourse or as the dominant "way of thinking".
Criticism of the logic of identity
This term is used to criticize constructed meanings or also ideologically charged meanings that divide reality into identity-logical opposing pairs ( soul / body , positive / negative, etc.) and as a perspective of judgment ( reference point ) the presence of external variables such as truth , God , transparency, Assert origin, cause , reason or similar centers and categories of metaphysics.
The terms truth and reason are rejected as ideas of truth and essence and as authoritarian , one-dimensional, hierarchical , totalitarian and anti-pluralism. The concepts of metaphysics are viewed as an interlocking and self-referring system of metaphors . As constructions , these metaphors have no actual content that can be represented and therefore makes sense.
Post-structuralist positions
Against this background, for Roland Barthes, the Socratic maieutics is solely a principle of “driving others to the utmost shame: contradicting one another.” Jacques Derrida speaks of an “ imperialism of the logos ”. According to Jean-François Lyotard , logocentrism “requires thinking to participate in the process of rationalization . Any other way of thinking is condemned, isolated and rejected as irrational ”; because “the logos is not a special case in the infinity of codes : it is the code that puts an end to infinity; it is the discourse of enclosure that puts an end to the poetic, the para- and anagrammatic ”( Jean Baudrillard ).
Luce Irigaray : "This dominance of the philosophical logos is due ... to its ability to bring everything else back into the economy of the same." According to Barthes, logocentric thinking tries to shake off the principle of "that old ghost: the logical contradiction." "Activity / passivity, sun." / Moon, culture / nature, day / night, father / mother, head / heart, intelligible / perceptible to the senses, logos / pathos ... thinking has always worked according to oppositions ... according to dual, hierarchical oppositions "( Hélène Cixous , quoted from Kuhn) .
literature
- Roland Barthes , Die Lust am Text (1973). Frankfurt a. M .: Suhrkamp 1974. ISBN 3518013785
- Jean Baudrillard , The Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976). Berlin: Matthes & Seitz 1982. ISBN 3-88221-215-2
- Hélène Cixous , Sorties , in: Butler / Scott (Ed): Feminist Philosophy . New York / London: Routledge 1992.
- Gilles Deleuze / Félix Guattari , Anti-Oedipus . Capitalism and Schizophrenia I (1972). Frankfurt a. M .: Suhrkamp 1974
- Gilles Deleuze / Félix Guattari, a thousand plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia II (1980), Berlin: Merve 1992
- Jacques Derrida , Grammatology (1967). Frankfurt a. M .: Suhrkamp 1983. ( ISBN 3-518-28017-1 )
- Jean-François Lyotard , The Inhumane. Chat about time . Vienna: Passagen 2004. (3rd edition), ISBN 3-85165-551-6
- Luce Irigaray , The gender that is not one . Berlin: Merve 1972. ISBN 3-88396-001-2
- Susanne Konrad , Goethe's 'Elective Affinities' and the Dilemma of Logocentrism . Heidelberg: Carl Winter 1995. ISBN 3-8253-0335-7
- Gabriel Kuhn : Becoming an Animal, Becoming Black, Becoming a Woman - An Introduction to the Political Philosophy of Poststructuralism . Unrast Verlag 2005. ISBN 3-89771-441-8