Erring: A Postmodern, a Theology Book

This books certainly show all signs of being deconstructionist. It is complex, demanding of the reader and avoiding its own authority as a text. Taylor is at least clear with the complexity of being a deconstructionist and writing a book, where letters actually are objectively put on a page in a certain order conveying a message. He has some very interesting points on the question of identity and how identity is not constituted by sameness, but by difference. In that identity therefore includes it's own other, or rather is other. This is then taken over, mutatis mutandi, to language and meaning, or sign, signifier and signified in Taylor's (Saussure's) terminology. The end product is one of plurality and relativity and the impossibility of reaching set interpretations. I'm not sure that I agree with this all interpretations are equal conclusion. I also wonder if it is possible to argue about language in the same way he argued about human identity. With a human being one might argue that it is something in itself simply by being a human body with a brain. From that identity in its otherness is then created. However, with language, and even more so when using the theory of signification, there needs to be a language and with that a language user, before the reciprocity between signified and signifier can begin. It is, thus a problem of origin, which he doesn't quite solve. The signified only becomes also a signifier once the process of signification has started. Before that, it is simply a thing in itself caught in its own being without becoming.