Loose-fitting garments

Kant claims that philosophy got off to a bad start when the word itself stopped being used in a strict sense to name a wissenschaflichen Lebensweisheit and is transferred to speculation and mysticism.

As Derrida summarizes the point ( Raising the Tone of Philosophy ), “no harm would have happened, no mystagogic speculation would have been credible or efficient, nothing or no one would have detoned in philosophy without this errance of the name far from the thing, and if the relation of the name philosophy to its originary sense had been insured against every accident” (126).

Derrida, of course, doesn’t think this strictness is possible or desirable. Kant sees the slackness and opening space for “a rerouting of sense or the trip of a perversion.” Derrida thinks that the slackness is necessary if the word is to be used at all: “the bond fastening the name to its signification really had to be slackened for the philosophical title to be regularly available as a simple ornament, adornment, decoration, costume, or ceremonial dress” (127).

Kept too tight, it could have only fit one thing. To be useful, language must be a loosened garment. And this is a danger and offense only to Kantians and others who desire a suffocating, form-fitting sign for each thing.