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Derrida raises the question of the presence to itself of the subject in silent intuitive consciousness and shows that privilege granted to consciousness is a privilege granted to presence and we should shake the whole of such metaphysics of presence, Consciousness, as presence, therefore is not a central form of Being for Derrida. It is itself a determination and effect of differance. The original process of teniporizing and spacing is at the heart of the transcendental subjectivity. Derrida incorporates the structuraJists notion of difference in his "strategy" of difference and uses it to go beyond Heidegger's ontological difference between Being and beings. The notion of simple self-identical presence of an undivided object is thus undermined because protentions and retentions, temporality and otherness are embedded in every actual experience of unmediated presence.13 Derrida replaces the transcendental subject by the subjectless anonymity of archewriting which makes it possible to treat culture as nature, different and deferred, and concept as different and deferred intuition.
II
Negative Theology
Differance is not a word, not a concept; not an entity, nor a truth or presence. It is not an appearance, not and essence, not a self-identical meaning and not an existence. It thus looks like Radhakrishnan's Absolute or Sankara's featureless Brahman. Differance looks like a hidden God because according to Derrida, "older than Being itself, such a differance has no name in our language." Caputo, in his discussion of Derrida with reference to Eckhart's mysticism however shows that even negative theologies are detours to higher affirmations whereas Derrida's differance is neutral regarding all claims of existence and non-existence, theism end atheism.1+ Derridr's grammatology leads to the unnameable, but as Caputo has shown, Derrida's differance lacks all ontological profoundity and mystical depth.
Radhakrishnan's discussion of Being involves some kind of negative theology, na iti, na iti. For Radhakrishnan, being is essentially unconcepualizable. It is not reachable by abstraction or rational analysis. 15 We can not be absolutely silent and yet when we speak of God we find that God is too great for words. There is a tension between mystical silence and unsuccessful attempts at any coherent articulation of Being. Radhakrishnan is keenly aware of the role of myths, metaphors and rhetorical devices involved in a discourse of Reality. He also finds that given the transcendent nature of reality, both logic and rhetorics are bound to fail. He therefore appeals to intutive insight which though not communicable has the sense of assurance and certainty and is in a sense a species of kowledge,10
