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    Derrida and Deconstruction

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    Alan
    Derrida employs the technique of deconstruction to critique the foundations of Western philosophy. Deconstruction examines philosophical binaries like presence/absence and shows how the terms slip into each other, contradicting the strict distinctions. Derrida also argues that language does not have a direct relationship to reality and introduces the concept of "difference" to show how meaning is constantly deferred through language. Deconstruction attacks the idea of building knowledge on fixed foundations, as all concepts are interrelated and enmeshed with their opposites.

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    Derrida and Deconstruction

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    Alan
    543 views2 pages
    Derrida employs the technique of deconstruction to critique the foundations of Western philosophy. Deconstruction examines philosophical binaries like presence/absence and shows how the terms slip into each other, contradicting the strict distinctions. Derrida also argues that language does not have a direct relationship to reality and introduces the concept of "difference" to show how meaning is constantly deferred through language. Deconstruction attacks the idea of building knowledge on fixed foundations, as all concepts are interrelated and enmeshed with their opposites.

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    Derrida and Deconstruction

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    Derrida employs the technique of deconstruction to critique the foundations of Western philosophy. Deconstruction examines philosophical binaries like presence/absence and shows how the terms slip into each other, contradicting the strict distinctions. Derrida also argues that language does not have a direct relationship to reality and introduces the concept of "difference" to show how meaning is constantly deferred through language. Deconstruction attacks the idea of building knowledge on fixed foundations, as all concepts are interrelated and enmeshed with their opposites.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    543 views2 pages

    Derrida and Deconstruction

    Uploaded by

    Alan
    Derrida employs the technique of deconstruction to critique the foundations of Western philosophy. Deconstruction examines philosophical binaries like presence/absence and shows how the terms slip into each other, contradicting the strict distinctions. Derrida also argues that language does not have a direct relationship to reality and introduces the concept of "difference" to show how meaning is constantly deferred through language. Deconstruction attacks the idea of building knowledge on fixed foundations, as all concepts are interrelated and enmeshed with their opposites.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Mercylin Chyne

    Derrida and Deconstruction


    Derrida is not really interested in making a point about the nature of language and
    thought. For him, what is necessary is how is writing and speech related. To understand this,
    he employs a type of reading called Deconstruction. Deconstruction takes what are assumed
    to be strict distinctions, important so-called binaries such as presence/absence, being/non-
    being, true/false, analytic/synthetic and shows their fragility towards each other. These
    distinctions have traditionally been used to provide metaphysical foundations of Western
    philosophy. This happens by treating one of the pair as the positive one and then through a
    matter of differentiation, logical exclusion and implication creating a system of meaning.1
    Deconstruction, however, tries to show that the authors manipulating these distinctions are
    never able to maintain them perfectly because the terms slips into each other and authors
    contradict themselves very subtly. Derrida uses deconstruction as a tool for critiquing what he
    calls ‘Logocentrism’ viz. a sort of logical guarantee of the presence of what is real. Derrida
    wants to maintain that there is no guarantee that language directly relates to reality as we
    refer to it in our language systems. Language itself provides evidence for ambiguity for it
    both defines limits as well as violates them.2
    It is an attack on any method that tries to construct knowledge on the basis of
    foundations since there are no privileged terms or concepts on which to build knowledge. All
    the things we regard as positive in constructing our systems are enmeshed with their
    opposites and related to other concepts. He goes a step further in his development by coining
    a new term ‘difference’ taken from the French word ‘differer’, which means either to differ or
    defer. Derrida means it both ways at once. On the one hand, it indicates the difference that
    continually appears not logically between binary terms such as human and nonhuman but
    between the fit of the terms. There is always a failure for logic to capture fully the situation
    because the right fit never quite happens. Meaning is always put off or deferred, even though
    it is further attempted at other levels, difference will again rise and this happens endlessly.3
    If we take pure, infinite ideas as the ground then we are always going to get into
    contradiction applying them to experience, the finite and the concrete. This is the necessary

    1
    Diogenes Allen and Eric O. Springstead, Philosophy for Understanding Theology (London: Westminster John
    Knox, 2007), 231.
    2
    Ibid., 232.
    3
    Ibid., 232.
    consequence of all metaphysics.4 On the one hand he means to say that logical form never
    captures the world there is always some sort of misfit and slippage at the same time he also
    wants to point to the fact that our thinking takes place within these categories. Difference
    signals not only to the negative limitations of language but also the positive play of language.
    and its push forward. It also signals the historic nature of language - how language changes
    according to what its situatedness. In using the notion of difference Derrida is therefore
    careful not to make it an unchanging ideal that causes this play of language. It cannot be a
    concept active or passive, but as Derrida suggests it is the possibility of conceptuality of a
    conceptual system.5

    4
    Barry Stocker, Derrida on Deconstruction (New York: Routledge, 2006), 171.
    5
    Stocker, Derrida on Deconstruction, 172.

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