How is metaphysics possible? This question can be perspicuously approached by asking, as Derrida has done, how it is possible for metaphysical remarks to be expressed, in what sort of language or medium metaphysics makes sense. To approach the question this way raises the problem about the relation of philosophy to language, whether there is a language of metaphysics, and whether what linguists have done or may do might conceivably throw light on the status of metaphysics.