德里达的解构理论与传道者的“语言辩证法”

Jacques Derrida's Deconstruction and Qoheleth's "Dialectics of Language"

如何在西方后现代文化和批评语境中诠释和发展《圣经》传统,是当代《圣经》解释学各种方法中的重要进路。希伯来《圣经》的智慧文献,作为犹太教正典“著作”部分最具边缘化意味的文本,还没有太多地被置于后现代理论框架下进行解读。借助德里达的解构哲学,可以了解作者在《传道书》中是如何运用一种新的二分法,解构了过分简单化、容易引起偏见的智愚二分法,但是他所替代的新的二分法(益处/虚空),与其说对以二元对立著称的智慧神学构成了破坏,不如说新的真实的明确区分仍然是难以捉摸的,它不得不被无限地推迟,这正对应于德里达意味上的“延异”。如果说,德里达的“解构”是为了达到对逻辑中心论的颠覆,那么,《传道书》的“语言辩证法”则表现了在传统的智慧教导不足以描述现实生活的复杂和多元的情况下,人如何重新处理与上帝的关系,接受自相矛盾的生存世界。

Contemporary hermeneutics has largely focused itself on the interpretations of the Bible and the development of the biblical traditions in the context of postmodern cultural and critical discourses. Wisdom Literature, however, has long been marginalized in Kethuvim （The Writings） of the Hebrew Bible through insufficient attention on the part of many critics in the perspective of postmodern theories. This essay presents an analysis on the dialectical method used by the author of Ecclesiastes in the light of Jacques Derrida‘s theory of deconstruction. Qoheleth employed a new dichotomy （profit/debit） to deconstruct the old one （wisdom/folly）, which was over-simplified and resulted in hidden prejudices. Rather than a deconstruction to the binary structure of wisdom theology, his new dialectics （profit/ultimate debit） offers once again the idea of an unstable meaning that can only be infinitely deferred. It corresponds to Jacques Derrida’s idea of différance that meaning is always ＂deferred＂ to the point of an endless supplementarity by the play of signification. This essay is not interested in defining Qoheleth as a deconstructionist, but in suggesting that, if Derrida＇ s deconstruction seeks to identify and undermine such logocentric paradigms as dichotomies, the idea of binary opposites, etc., the dialectics of language of Ecclesiastes reveals an ultimate impasse of thought engendered by a rhetoric that always insinuates its own textual workings into the truth claims of philosophy or theology. There runs a theme of utopian longing for the textual free play which would finally break with the instituted wisdom of language. In a summary, when traditional wisdom becomes insufficient in describing the diversity and multitudes of real life, Qoheleth offers a deconstructing dialectics of language to rationalize human＇ s relations with God and his acceptance of a self-contradictory world.