Leibniz’s philosophical and philological interests overlapped at many points, and some of his fundamental philosophical notions shaped his views on language, particularly his thinking about language history, in decisive ways. Although he is better known for his work on universal language, his writings on natural language and language history are worth consideration both for their subtlety and for the insight they give into the complex history of thought on this topic. The principles of sufficient reason, praedicatum inest subjecto, and his (...) doctrine of marks and traces are echoed in his work on natural languages and in his account of their histories. He attempted to reconcile philosophical investigations of the natural languages with the Biblical accounts of the confusion of languages at Babel, and in his approach to etymology he participated in a long tradition of thinking about language and its essence as hidden or secret, the truth of which remains scattered in signs and which etymology alone may occasionally reveal. (shrink)

Some scholars claim that in Derrida's Of Grammatology the author presents China and its script as essentially and radically Other when compared to the West. In this paper, I argue that Derrida's discussion of Leibniz, his critique of the notions of ‘phonetic writing’ and ‘ideograph’, and the distinction he makes between ‘logocentrism’ and ‘phonocentrism’, enables him to deconstruct an essentialist conception of China or Chinese writing. However, far from conceiving China in a relativist or ethnocentric manner, Derrida also pays attention (...) to the historicity of the encounter between European philosophy and China. In order to underline the transcultural potential of deconstruction, I discuss the concept of ‘crypt’ in light of the Chinese translation of the word ‘ différance’. This allows me to reinterpret what I claim to be Derrida's problematic reference to Chinese writing as ‘outside of all logocentrism’ from the point of view of his philosophy of translation. 1. (shrink)