63
TN. The "logic of the kettle" is used by Freud to illustrate how the dreamwork accumulates
contradictory arguments so that the dreamer is always right. The man accused of returning
the kettle he borrowed from his neighbor in damaged condition retorts (1.) that the kettle he is returning is new, (2.) that the holes were already in it
when he borrowed it, and (3.) that he had never borrowed a kettle in the first place.
What Derrida is saying is that there is no philosophical argument to be made against
Freud's position that there is only one, male libido: this is the essence of philosophy
itself, which, like the man who borrows the kettle, will accumulate all and any arguments
to support this position, all of which will be true in the traditional sense, and blind to their mutual contradictions. Thus Derrida's reference earlier in this
paragraph to the equivalence of "depth" and ''height." This is an allusion to the
double meaning of anus--both lowest and highest--as the definition of truth the singular
origin at the bottom of things raised to the level of the highest truth
. What reason never recognizes is that it depends upon "unreason," double meanings,
in order to conceptualize itself.
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