on indication as its vehicle. Indications can be expressions if
they have been selected by someone in order to convey a
meaning. (The canals and the fossils are indications but not
expressions, since they are not products of intention.) We can
tell something about the mood of those we listen to because
they express themselves, and because their expressions are also
visible or audible indications. As Husserl remarks, “we ‘see’
their anger, their pain etc.” (Logical 1. 7 [ 190 ]). Not all human
gestures are expressions. Involuntary facial tics may also com-
municate something to a hearer: that the speaker is nervous,
for example. Such tics are indications, pieces of visible evi-
dence. But they would not be expressions, since they have not
been chosen by someone as a means to say something.
Indication and expression are therefore, for Husserl, the
two basic aspects of meaning. It is important for Husserl that
these two aspects remain separable. I have already mentioned
cases in which indication exists without expression: the canals
of Mars, or facial tics. But for Husserl, expression can also
occur apart from indication, a point that will rouse Derrida to
fierce disagreement. When we have an interior monologue
with ourselves, argues Husserl, we engage in expression, but
not indication.
In a decisive passage, Husserl considers the case of “soli-
tary mental life” as an example of pure expression that needs
no indication:
Shall one say that in solitude one speaks to oneself,
and thus employs words as signs, i.e. as indications,
of one’s own inner experiences? I cannot think such
a view acceptable....
One of course speaks, in a certain sense, even in
soliloquy, and it is certainly possible to think of50 From Algeria to the École Normale