Derrida Jacques - Derrida and Deconstruction

Continental Philosophy-I addressed the major developments in the continental mode of philosophizing from the time of Merleau-Pontys last lectures on philosophy and non-philosophy in 1961. It provided a rather comprehensive account of directions and practices in continental philosophy in the past quarter of a century. CP-II focuses on one of those major aspects of continental thought, namely, deconstruction and the corresponding philosophical practice of Jacques Derrida. In contrast to CPI in which the task was to explore major figures and their practices in the contemporary context, CP-II takes up the methods and orientations of deconstruction with respect to some of the most important names in the history of philosophy. Each of the essays in this volume assesses Derridean deconstruction as a philosophical practice in relation to dominant historical figures in the western tradition. This list of names is brought up to the contemporary era and even into the past several decades in terms of Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, and Foucault. And while Levinas (who had studied with both Husserl and Heidegger) is the only one of those considered who continues to write, his study of Husserl, published in the early 1930s, introduced Sartre to Husser-lian phenomenology long before Levinass own philosophy was at all known.

Naturally, the set of philosophers presented in CP-II is selective. Yet it is representative of those many significant periods and orientations in the history of philosophy that preoccupy continental thinking as it is understood today. Even with this limitation, there will be other names that ought to have been included here. However, our task has been to demonstrate aspects of Derridean deconstruction in relation to the history of philosophy and its highlights. Comprehensiveness and exhaustiveness has not been our concern. We wanted to offer a general account, not a total account (as Foucault would have said). Given limitations of space, we opted for in-depth studies of those figures considered rather than a superficial overview.

For many years Jacques Derrida taught the history of philosophy at the cole Normale Suprieure in Paris. Recently appointed Directeur dtudes at the cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, Derridas teaching is no longer officially limited to lectures in the history of philosophy. Indeed, only since he began teaching at Yale (and now at the University of California at Irvine) for a portion of the academic year has he taken up interdisciplinary contemporary topics in an institutional capacity. Thus many of his formative essays were devoted to readings of important figures in the history of philosophy. This second volume of Continental Philosophy captures the spirit as well as the content of those historical studies by following a more or less chronologicaldiachronic accounting of Derridas relation to Plato, Meister Eckhart, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, and Foucault.

While we have set out to present facets of Derridean deconstruction in relation to these major figures in the history of philosophy, our task has also been to demonstrate the principal aspects of deconstruction as philosophy. While other studies of deconstruction bring out the dominant features of the strategy and method, this volume explores not only what Derrida has said about figures in the history of philosophy but also how his practice both draws upon and rereads the tradition itself. The contributors to this volume examine what Derrida has written about the various philosophers in question, studying and developing the character, features, and implications of the relation itself. At the same time, they demonstrate their own manner of philosophizing in the continental tradition and bring out aspects of Derridean readings that have import for contemporary philosophical understanding. The contributors themselves are philosophers who have already written not only on Derrida and deconstruction but also on the corresponding philosopher whom they discuss. Hence they are each particularly well qualified to treat the conjunction of Derrida and the figure in question. Furthermore, the bibliography offered at the end of this volume provides not only a full listing of Derridas publications in French and in English but also a broad spectrum of writings on Derrida and deconstruction available in English. Along with the essays themselves, this bibliography should provide a substantial reference tool for anyone interested in exploring this topic further.

Jacques Derrida was born in 1930. While his philosophical training was done at the cole Normale Suprieure, where he subsequently taught until quite recently, his writings have had an impact upon a broad spectrum of thinking in the human sciences and cultural criticism. Although he received his doctorat dtat in Paris only recently (1980) and on the basis of his many publications, Der-ridas writings have had an even more significant effect outside France than at home. This element of alterity at the center is important for understanding continental philosophy in general. The term itself was introduced by British philosophers who referred to the philosophy practiced on the European continent as other than that which they themselves did. At first, and in its original version, continental philosophy was characterized almost exclusively as some type of phenomenology (transcendental, existential, or hermeneutic). Analytic philosophy (positivist, linguistic, or ordinary language) set itself off against these accounts of phenomenology. Gradually, even in Britain, continental philosophy came to characterize an aspect of philosophy (a legitimate area of philosophy) that could be taught as part of the philosophy course offerings. With the burgeoning of interest in continental thought, this area became a mode of philosophizing in its own righteven one that could be practiced by British and American philosophers irrespective of what was happening on the continent itself. Indeed, often some of the most adventuresome and significant work in continental philosophy has been occurring outside the European continent (though still owing its debt to certain traditions and modes of thinking prevalent there in this century). Hermeneutics, semiotics, critical and dialectical theory, structuralism, post-structuralism, French feminism, deconstruction, and post-modernism all came to operate as continental thought whether in Europe or elsewhere. That Jacques Derrida oftenlectures and teaches in the United States (and on occasion in Britain) intensifies the non-geographical location of what is now known as continental philosophy.