Philosophy of Derrida

About the Book

For more than forty years Jacques Derrida has attempted to unsettle and disturb the presumptions underlying many of our most fundamental philosophical, political, and ethical conventions.

Overview

In The Philosophy of Derrida, Mark Dooley examines Derrida's large body of work to provide an overview of his core philosophical ideas and a balanced appraisal of their lasting impact. One of the author's primary aims is to make accessible Derrida's writings by discussing them in a vernacular that renders them less opaque and nebulous.

Writing Style and Interpretation

Derrida's unusual writing style, which mixes literary and philosophical vocabularies, is shown to have hindered their interpretation and translation. Dooley situates Derrida squarely in the tradition of historicist, hermeneutic, and linguistic thought, and Derrida's objectives and those of deconstruction are rendered considerably more convincing.

Writings and Themes

While Derrida's works are ostensibly diverse, Dooley reveals an underlying cohesion to his writings. From his early work on Husserl, Hegel, and de Saussure, to his most recent writings on justice, hospitality, and cosmopolitanism, Derrida is shown to have been grappling with the vexed question of national, cultural, and personal identity and asking to what extent the notion of a "pure" identity has any real efficacy.

Perspective on Derrida

Viewed from this perspective, Derrida appears less as a wanton iconoclast, for whom deconstruction equals destruction, but as a sincere and sensitive writer who encourages us to shed light on our historical constructions so as to reveal that there is much about ourselves that we do not know.