ABSTRACT
For Chauvet, overcoming onto-theology necessitates a rejection of metaphysics and a turn to the symbolic order. But what is the symbolic order? There is some controversy and ambiguity concerning this concept that generally designates the cultural and linguistic milieu in which human beings live. For example, does it imply that an unbridgeable abyss exists between nature and culture, body and thought, or the thing-in-itself and a totally arbitrary conception of it? Sometimes one is left with the impression of such an abyss when linguists speak of language without “real reference” or when psychoanalysts describe a split in the subject. Whether or not there is an abyss of this sort is a matter that must be taken up with each individual theorist who speaks of a symbolic order. We can assume that any thinker who refers to the symbolic order certainly implies that there is at least a distinction to be made between what we might think of as “reality-as-such” and a human reality constituted by various dimensions of the symbolic order, most notably that of language. Chauvet himself makes this distinction in accordance with developments in the understanding of language associated with what has been called the “linguistic turn.” The linguistic turn rejects an instrumental theory of language which understands the linguistic sign to be a tool used to simply “mirror” reality. This instrumental theory of language, dominant in both the premodern and Modern era, coincides with representational theories of knowledge. Therefore, its rejection involves a significant revolution in the understanding of epistemology and links the linguistic turn with postmodern thought.
