Despre Sinn în Bedeutung

The present contribution addresses Jacques Derrida’s 1967 essay „Form and Meaning: A Note on the Phenomenology of Language”, which concerns Husserl’s theory of expressive acts in Ideas I. To set the stage for the later distinction between sense (Sinn) and meaning (Bedeutung), I begin with a short survey of Husserl’s earlier theory of meaning in his Logical Investigations and highlight his understanding of ideal meanings as species. Subsequently, I turn to Derrida’s discussion of various aspects in Husserl’s later theory of expression and approach the first two metaphors that Husserl uses in his discourse on meaning and sense, namely a geological and a weaving one. In a further step, I analyze Husserl’s specification of the expressive medium through what Derrida identifies as another two metaphors of mirroring and imprinting. Finally, I investigate the complex passive-active dynamic of the silent and expressive acts and formulate a series of open questions for further research.