Derrida, Jacques (1930–2004)

Derrida has become a figure of extreme fame and extreme notoriety, neither of which phenomena has aided the evaluation of his work. Despite a later reputation for purposeless obscurity or creatively going beyond conceptual truth, depending on the point of view taken, Derrida started off as a scholar of the very [Page 734]formal and rigorous phenomenological philosopher, Edmund Husserl. His first notable publication was a long commentary on Husserl's short essay “Origin of Geometry.” Derrida claimed that a close study of Husserl was bound to show contradictions between elements that emphasized the historical origin of geometry and the abstract structures of geometry as a discipline. For Derrida, the contradictions cannot be removed without destroying Husserl's position. This is not something unique to Husserl; all philosophy and all thought rest on contraction. Everything I say is an attempt to communicate the contents of my consciousness to another individual, who cannot grasp the contents of my consciousness. I cannot even grasp the contents of my own consciousness, since during the time of the act of grasping the contents of my consciousness, the contents of my consciousness have changed. The process of time means I may have died before my words have reached the listener or before I have finished grasping the contents of my own consciousness. The possibility of death always undermines claims to transparency of communication and consciousness for Derrida, and awareness of death is a constant factor in his philosophy, drawing on the discussion of death in G. W. F. Hegel and Martin Heidegger.

Philosophy, and all thought, have necessarily tried to ignore and repress contradiction in order to create systems of thought and stable ways of thinking. The repression of contradiction follows a pattern: One of the contradictory terms is regarded as superior, as truth, and the other is regarded as inferior. In the history of philosophy, being has been preferred to non-being, truth to falsity, oneness to difference, and so on. This may not look immediately harmful, but we cannot refer to being without referring to non-being and that gives non-being a being of some kind, as Plato recognized. We cannot escape from the lower term, as it must appear when we are discussing the higher term. The most important discussion in Derrida of this refers to speech and writing as aspects of language and meaning. He examines the privileging of speech over writing in Plato and Rousseau. Plato condemns writing as orphaned from its father, the originator of the words, who remains constantly present in speech. Writing has to be interpreted without reference to the original meaning and is therefore not a reliable expression of truth. Truth is only reliably present in speech, as we know what someone who is speaking means, and we can ask if we are not completely sure. For Derrida, the reduction of language to the presence of truth is “logocentrism,” the centrality of “logos” as the living word of truth. The privileging of speech over writing is “phonocentrism,” the centrality of the spoken word, and is a form of “logocentrism.” “Logocentrism” is another word for metaphysics, and Derrida belongs to a tradition that questions the metaphysical elements of philosophy, while regarding them as unavoidable.

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