Grice on DN

--- and that's Double Negation

---- by JLS
------- for the GC

This is a brief appendix on Grice on double negation. But of course it is about Blanchot. J. Kennedy writes in "The greatest living philosopher", commentary:

"Blanchot pursues the idea that every word equates to 'nothing', is a negation, a presence referring to an absence. Then comes his double negation that forms literature... still trying to be 100% sure what he is getting at here. Advice?"

Yes. I recall your passage to Martin, I think it was, on negation from Blanchot, so we may paste the thing here. It was a long good quote.

I think Blanchot is joking. But I think Grice IS too. In his System G, he opposes intuitionism. For intuitionists, double negation IS a beast. The negation of a negation is NOT an affirmation (for the intuititionists. For Grice it is). I think Blanchot is possibly joking about literature being double negation, but I get his point. If language negates, literature, in being metalinguistic, annihilates the negation, and constructs, instead.

The idea that a concept is a limitation (or negation) is, R. B. Jones may correct me here, Leibnizian, in nature. Recall that for Plotinus:

Inscrutable, impossible, God only wise
Incontingent, innecessary, God only wise.

--- the C. of E. hymn.

All we can say about God is _negative_ ('theologia negativa'), because to affirm a concept of Him is to LIMIT him.

"Blanchot pursues the idea that every word equates to 'nothing', is a negation, a presence referring to an absence."

This may relate to the absent structure of Umberto Eco. I suppose there is some logic to it, if we follow Leibniz that every concept is a limitation. Blanchot is possibly waxing (or something) Hegelian on this.

"Then comes his double negation that forms literature... still trying to be 100% sure what he is getting at here. Advice?"

Well, Barthes (who you did at Dartington) did speak of the 'degree zero' of literature and writing (my lit. prof. Loved that book), so Blanchot may be following Todorov, Barthes, et al. Witty French people. I never took the word 'literature' too seriously seeing that it's a rather bad translation of Greek 'grammatica', no? (the study of letters, right? -- grammata). When it comes to literature, we may still want to discuss the issue of genres. It seems that you, Jason, are into 'fiction', although you seem to favour 'meta-fictional fiction', i.e. self-reflective fiction. What is difficult (but not impossible) for me to conceptualise is a common ground that encompasses, say: drama, fiction, AND VERSE. It seems that 'verse', poesy if you must, need NOT be fictional. Drama can be fictitious alright, but we still do make a distinction -- in Barnes & Noble: drama is under theatre, not fiction. Etc.

Etc.

For Grice, then, there's nothing too mysterious about 'not'. It is the '-' of the logicians. And, as such, it needs to be introduced and eliminated. (via Gentzen's system of natural deduction and inference rules). We introduce it via reductio ad absurdum (RAA, in Grice's acronym). We eliminate it via Double Negation (DN). The idea of the (+, -) and (-,-), i.e. intro and elim of 'neg' forms the basis of his 'Vacuous Names', etc.