Jacques Derrida

Does anyone actually understand what he was talking about? I, for one, do not, and the more I read about him the more it seems to me that there is no actual consensus on the essence of his ideas. His style reads to me like word salad, which may be appropriate, but this conveys little in the way of unambiguous meaning...which is perhaps the point.

>>2747 >In this period, the founder of deconstruction turns his attention to ethical themes. In particular, the theme of responsibility to the other (for example, God or a beloved person) leads Derrida to leave the idea that responsibility is associated with a behavior publicly and rationally justifiable by general principles. Reflecting upon tales of Jewish tradition, he highlights the absolute singularity of responsibility to the other. >Deconstruction has had an enormous influence in psychology, literary theory, cultural studies, linguistics, feminism, sociology and anthropology. he got kicked out of school for being a jew, but his work had a lot of influence over many fields, it seems moral relativism and ambiguity were the points of his writing

>>2747 >>2748 sorry for necroposting, but both of those points are completele lies, and I hope to clear stuff up So the main point of Derrida is that all ideas have their weights, and through them themselves we can invert them so they result in emptiness, through which we can come to the real meaning (under no way he was a relativist, he rather considered that all points deserve to be watched through and deconstructed for their own sake). His most important work - 'Of Grammatology' is through critique of structuralism (the notion that words corefer themselves, it is more complex than that). I would say the basis of Derridianism is deconstruction, and noticing how a lot of system go back to those nonsense ideas in themselves, without reference back to history (Foucauldian, Nitzschean geneologies). You are free to ask more questions lol.

> His style reads to me like word salad, which may be appropriate, but this conveys little in the way of unambiguous meaning...which is perhaps the point. So like a soykaftier version of the Torah? I.E. You can read it forever and find whatever meaning you want in there, and claim that the author put it there.

>>2879 not OP, but I appreciate your sincere answer.

>>2879 just came here to say that cu*k philosophy is a recent YouTube channel that popped up that's focused on clearing up a lot of misconceptions about postmodernism. https://hooktube.com/watch?v=26fIBA7O5Ag

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>>2891 that's a good boy commie bootlicker if I ever saw one

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I guess you have to read Heidegger before reading Derrida, Heidegger starts his investigations from the fundamental question of metaphysics, "where are there beings rather them nothingness?", Derrida, according to himself in an interview, questions what comes before the question, what the question already presupposes, etc... I actually never read Derrida, I saw his interview out of curiosity, I think you need to know about Heidegger before getting into Derrida, Being And Time, Introduction To Metaphysics, Letter on Humanism, etc...

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>>3308 > communism > postmodernism Pick one.

Derrida also seeks to investigate and deconstruct our notions of binaries. One such example is the Speech Writing binary. Derrida claims that when we order the words of binaries, we tend to place the one we find more important first. Derrida claims that Philosophers cherish speech to writing, he makes a few arguments as to why. One argument is that speech has a direct connection to one's thoughts, where as writing is outside of our thought/us and isn't a direct representation of thought but a representation of language. Derrida then seeks to find the tension between speech and writing and find things that breakdown the notion of this binary. One such way is that he plays with language and create words that can't be merely represented verbally, but require the written form. Derrida can be seen as "word salad" or that his work isn't Philosophy but "literary analysis", but Derrida is encountering a key problem of Philosophy: The problem of language. For the analytical philosopher Wittgenstein, Philosophy tends to be a language game and that many Philosophical problems are non-problems and just issues of language. I believe that what Derrida does in his work is similar to Wittgenstein, however, Derrida is tackling the issue through a different means such as Lit analysis, linguistics, and playful language, aside from Wittgenstein's focus on logic. I definitely got something wrong here, but something to always remember is that in Philosophy when we read a work we should read the work as if the Philosopher is correct. This is so our own bias doesn't disable us from understanding the text, we can then go on to criticize the Philosopher through reading other sources or writing our own thoughts about the work. >>3308 Postmodernists aren't commies lmao >>3425 No >>2891 This >>2879 This

>>3427 >For the analytical philosopher Wittgenstein, Philosophy tends to be a language game and that many Philosophical problems are non-problems and just issues of language. Talks a lot about "analytical philosophy" being little more than an anti-philosophy trojan horse.

Derrida's project is to show how meaning is created within a text. He writes so difficult because he writes within the text he's dealing with, deconstructing it, ie, showing how it works "under the hood" so to speak.