Heidegger uses the term phenomenology in Hegel’s sense as “uncovering what is hidden” though always already there inconspicuously: making conspicuous.

Hegel says the tearing of the sock phenomenalizes the Category of Unity, “as” a lost-Unity. Hegel, in his inaugural address, Heidelberg, 1816, says

“The Being of the universe, at first hidden and concealed, has no power which can offer resistance to the search for knowledge; it has to lay itself open before the seeker — to set before his eyes and give for his enjoyment, its riches and its depths.” Heidegger notes: “Both scientific and prescientific comportments are a knowing in the sense of uncovering what is previously concealed, of revealing what was previously covered up, of disclosing what so far was closed off.”

Heidegger continues:

“In order to understand, Heidegger says, one must see phenomenologically. He thus invites us to the first exercise of phenomenological “kindergarten.” To tear apart [zer-reissen] means: to tear into two parts, to separate: to make two out of one. If a sock is torn, then the sock is no longer present-at-hand—but note: precisely not as a sock. In fact, when I have it on my foot, I see the “intact” sock precisely not as a sock. On the contrary, if it is torn, then THE sock appears with more force through the “sock torn into pieces.” In other words, what is lacking in the torn sock is the UNITY of the sock. However, this lack is paradoxically the most positive, for this Unity in being-torn is present [gegenwärtig] as a lost unity.” (Heidegger, Martin. Four Seminars p. 11). “Twice the audience laughed over the “torn sock” saying. At first Heidegger answered pedantically, “I do not know why you are laughing. You must learn to endure the scope of a sentence such as the one I have cited.” (Heidegger, Martin. Four Seminars p. 100).

Metaphysics in Philosophy doesn’t merely mean “more basic physics” in the sense that more basic than tables and chairs and trees is the quantum level of explanation/reality. Rather “ta meta ta physica” means disclosing the hidden context which makes possible the way things appear as objects of experience.

Derrida, by contrast, denies the compelling nature of reason as it is in making conspicuous, and favors the abyss out of which the call comes. For example, I might say “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” and so it’s not that taking a toy away from a spoiled child discloses the hidden attachment the child always already inconspicuously had for the toy (but who never played with or thought about the toy). The child’s attachment is not uncovered but created in the taking out of selfishness, and if the toy is given back the love and attachment will thus vanish. Or, feeling one’s heartstrings pulled when a lover breaks up with you doesn’t necessarily show how much you always really loved them but weren’t aware. Perhaps the longing is produced ex nihilo in the leaving. “If you love someone send them away – if they come back they truly love you and if not they never loved you in the first place” is perhaps a fictive sleight of hand making conspicuous of their love for you. “The Magician of Messkirch,” or more often, “The Magus of Messkirch,” is a prominent nickname for the influential German philosopher Martin Heidegger.

Or, take Heidegger’s famous example of Van Gogh’s peasant shoes.

(Source: wiki)

Do we say the shoes dis-close a world of “horrific” abject poverty, or by the contrary the “home-ness” of a well-worn pair of favorite shoes? We see here how authorial intent is shifted since an author may produce a piece intended as self-sacrificial love, that is on the contrary shown by a critic to unwittingly contain many troubling feminist, psychoanalytic, and Marxist points of objection that negate a sacrificial love reading. In Philosophy, Hume’s skepticism will contain something that overturns his skepticism when Kant picks up the ball and runs with it.

So, given that “context,” and Derrida said there is nothing above context, I will do a reading of Derrida’s Sauf le nom (Post-Scriptum), starting next time. Perhaps Derrida’s most quoted and famous assertion, which appears in an essay on Rousseau in his book Of Grammatology (1967), is the statement that “there is no outside-text” (il n’y a pas de hors-texte). Critics of Derrida have been often accused of having mistranslated the phrase in French to suggest he had written “Il n’y a rien en dehors du texte” (“There is nothing outside the text”) and of having widely disseminated this translation to make it appear that Derrida is suggesting that nothing exists but words. Derrida once explained that this assertion,

“which for some has become a sort of slogan, in general so badly understood, of deconstruction … means nothing else: there is nothing outside context. In this form, which says exactly the same thing, the formula would doubtless have been less shocking.”