RIP Jacques Derrida

Gone to meet the (absent) transcendental signifier in the sky

http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/s...60,00.html

derrida was the man.

rip.

who is he?

A French "deconstructionist" philosopher. Always found him very hard work meself

who is he?

philosopher, did excellent and revealing readings of key texts in the history of philosophy.

Less said about how certain people, especially English Lit departments in US universities gave the word 'deconstruction' a bad name the better. His early work was his best imo.

wow, that's sad....


i saw a great documentary about him about a year ago. forget the name though....

well, it's an admirable feat to change the way people in general think, in one lifetime. He'll be greatly missed by many.

R.I.P

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/art...4Oct9.html

Jacques Derrida, yimach shmo (may his name and memory be obliterated), the most Satanic philosopher of our generation has died, thank God, and good riddance. May he burn in Hellfire for the rest of eternity. This evil Satanic degenerate French demon brainwashed an entire generation to believe that words have no definitive meaning. Deconstruction is best summarized in the words of Bill Clinton, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement." Jacques Derrida Dies; Deconstructionist Philosopher.

"With him, France has given the world one of its greatest contemporary philosophers, one of the major figures of intellectual life of our time," Chirac said in a statement.

This puts him right next to Robert Mugabe and Saddam Hussein in the Chirac pantheon of deities.

The lack of fixed meaning in a text did not keep Mr. Derrida from publishing hundreds of books. The fact that there is no single meaning does not mean there is no meaning, he said, and it doesn't excuse writers, thinkers and speakers from trying to be as clear as possible about what they think they mean.

In other words, absolute rubbish that will be cast into the trash heap of history alongside Rousseau and Marx.

haha! wouldn't want to be ya

People like Wittgenstein arrived at the conclusion that words have no absolute meaning 30 years before Derrida's first paper.

That was not what he was on about. He was a critical reader of the history of philosophy - you are obviously an utter cunt who has never tried to engage with his writing, instead you mindlessly parott what other people claim Derrida said.

Please don't ruin a reflective thread on a philosopher of note with your hate filled nonsese about Satan and some other right wing insanity.

People like Wittgenstein arrived at the conclusion that words have no absolute meaning 30 years before Derrida's first paper.

You are obviously an utter cunt who has never actually read Wittgenstein.

"If you do know that here is one hand, we'll grant you all the rest." -- Ludwig Wittgenstein

That was not what he was on about. He was a critical reader of the history of philosophy - you are obviously an utter cunt who has never tried to engage with his writing, instead you mindlessly parott what other people claim Derrida said.

On the contrary, it is you who are mindlessly parroting what other people have said of Derrida. I am judging Derrida, yimach shmo, based upon his own remarks.

Please don't ruin a reflective thread on a philosopher of note with your hate filled nonsese about Satan and some other right wing insanity.

I see your aren't very tolerant of dissident opinion and divergent viewpoints. Why is that? Why are you so intolerant?

i've never heard of him, but if pursley thinks he's an evil satanic degenerate, then he must have been ok

[Statto]

And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:

People like Wittgenstein arrived at the conclusion that words have no absolute meaning 30 years before Derrida's first paper.

You are obviously an utter cunt who has never actually read Wittgenstein.

"If you do know that here is one hand, we'll grant you all the rest." -- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein - On Certainty, Oxford 1968

SubWay, are you a bot or just an incredibly bad troll?

SubWay, are you a bot or just an incredibly bad troll?

I'm a bot. I was manufactured in the bowels of Halliburton by Karl Rove.

Pursley.

You are a complete moron

Having said that, we love your posts. Each one more pathetic and pointless than the last.

Pursley.

You are a complete moron

Having said that, we love your posts. Each one more pathetic and pointless than the last.

I think they have a point. I find that I need people to remind me of the reasons why I'm such a cynical cunt regarding humanity.

On the other hand, he's taking the piss.

On the other hand, he's taking the piss.

Right on Derrida's grave, yimach shmo, may his name and memory be obliterated.

Even though Sub Way writes in a way that make people comment the claims, I am willing to see a small point in the critique, IF applied to for example defferal and displacement, as well as the denying of 'full presence'. However, I am not against philosophy or a specefic philosopher just because critical, radical or less 'useful' material has been projected onto or used 'against' one's personal opinion, or just for existing. The material is there and cannot be rid of, and it is now a part of the sphere of philosophy.

And another thing, do not critique someone who reads philosophy and tries to get a sense of what philosophers has to say in the original works, rather than looking in secondary sources. It takes time to understand, and we have our own individual reading-experiences and different levels of understanding. It should not be about projecting the things one do get to understand onto someone in order to push them down or to critique something or someone that one does not have any experience of.

In 1992, staff at Cambridge University in the UK protested against plans to award him an honorary degree, denouncing his writings as "absurd doctrines that deny the distinction between reality and fiction".

Via: http://www.ukcommentators.blogspot.com/

In 1992, staff at Cambridge University in the UK protested against plans to award him an honorary degree, denouncing his writings as "absurd doctrines that deny the distinction between reality and fiction".

Via: http://www.ukcommentators.blogspot.com/

Yes, some academics (mainly ossified logical positivists) did protest, on the other hand others - including someone I know flysheeted and voted in his favour, and the vote was passed, i.e he got his honorary degree. So what if he was controversial? It's not exactly news is it?

You do know there has been a lot of rapproachment between the continental and Anglo American schools in philosophy recently, especially with people like Davidson? Stop trying to fight the culture wars of the 1980s please.

Oh and I would like to see you actually go and scrawl on his grave you coward.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida

Following Paul de Man's death it was revealed that, in fact, he had written more than 170 articles for the pro-Nazi paper Le Soir some of which were openly anti-Semitic and, in one case, called for a final solution to the Jewish question. Derrida defended de Man and used literary deconstruction in an attempt to show that de Man's articles weren't really anti-Semitic. Peter Lennon writing in The Guardian commented that "borrowing Derrida's logic one could deconstruct Mein Kampf to reveal that [Adolf Hitler] was in conflict with anti-Semitism." Mark Lilla writing in the New York Review of Books scoffed that Derrida left "the impression that deconstruction means never having to say you're sorry."

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/arch...mpost.html

Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content. The chances are that you would produce something like the following

does anyone actually understand him?

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/...84,00.html

Alain de Botton, writer
Derrida defies summary. He investigates the different ways in which attempts to simplify and summarise ideas are, in fact, a betrayal of the true complexity of things. He stands, rather like Wittgenstein or perhaps Freud, as an example of a thinker who made it his business to tell us that things are more complicated than we trust them to be.

Julie Burchill, writer
I didn't know much about him. He was French, which to me says it all. Leave well alone! I did laugh, though, when I saw the news on AOL. It said: "Cancer claims snowy-haired philosopher."

AC Grayling, philosopher
Derrida says that any text has multiple meanings and the great majority of those meanings won't be apparent even to the author of them. So a deconstruction of the text will show the variety and levels of meanings, some of which will be inconsistent with each other.

Cristina Odone, deputy editor of the New Statesman
Words are not what you think they are. That's about as much as I've understood.

Richard Dawkins, scientist
My thoughts are contained in my book, A Devil's Chaplain, published by Weidenfeld, in the chapter called "Postmodernism disrobed".

Colin McCabe, professor of English at Exeter University
Derrida's philosophy derives from the fact that being manifests itself through difference. His writing largely consists of carefully unpicking all attempts to deny this differentiation. Most importantly, he deconstructed that philosophical tradition which appealed to speech as a source of unmediated being.

Michael Holroyd, writer and biographer
Can I pass on that? Not my sort of thing I'm afraid.

Denis MacShane, minister for Europe
The core of Derrida's thinking is that every text contains multiple meanings. To read is neither to know nor to understand, but to begin a process of exploration that is essential to comprehend oneself and society. This is, however, the sort of pretentious bullshit language a minister for Europe can only use when speaking French.

Paul Bailey, novelist
Deconstructionism and all that - I haven't a clue. I read the obituary in the Guardian but I couldn't make much of it. There are times when you think you're an intellectual and there are times when you think you're not. I know he's important, but I'm not sure why.

Michael Billington, Guardian theatre critic
He's synonymous with certain key words such as structuralism and deconstruction. What strikes me is, when applied to literature, how close this is to what I was brought up to call Practical Criticism of the IA Richards school - the assumption that understanding literature is enhanced by breaking it down into its constituent parts and analysing these with scientific thoroughness.

Roger Scruton, philosopher
He's difficult to summarise because it's nonsense. He argues that the meaning of a sign is never revealed in the sign but deferred indefinitely, and that a sign only means something by virtue of its difference from something else. For Derrida, there is no such thing as meaning - it always eludes us and therefore anything goes.

Julian Baggini, editor of The Philosophers' Magazine
British-trained philosophers like myself don't know much about Derrida, though that doesn't stop some of them dismissing him. I don't dismiss him, but nor do I know enough to be able to sum him up.

Amy Ziering Kofman, director of the film Derrida
Derrida has been mischaracterised - he's not nihilistic or relativistic. He doesn't say, "Everything is equal and you can do what you want." Because there is no God or higher power, you have to take responsibility yourself. There is no absolute truth, so you have to agree a course of action. His thinking is based on a strict code of ethics.

JG Ballard, novelist
Do I even partly understand him? If I'm honest, not really. For 20 years, I've been floating around Derrida like a space capsule whose landing instructions have got lost, and I have never really made contact. Only professional philosophers and Eng Lit deconstructionists can really explain him.

David Lodge, novelistAccording to Derrida, the foundations of traditional philosophy are illusory. We inhabit "a world of signs without fault, without truth and without origin". The very nature of language undermines the claim of any text or utterance to have a determinate meaning, and licenses the reader to produce his/her own interpretation of it by an activity of "semantic freeplay".

Iain Loe, research and information manager, Campaign for Real Ale
I'm sorry, he's passed me by. I did a bit of philosophy at university but never came across him. I fear it's a gaping hole in my knowledge.

Sir Christopher Frayling, rector of the Royal College of Art
The essence of Derrida is inter-linear analysis: that is, reading between the lines as well as on them; seeing what lies behind a text as well as what is commonly understood as its meaning.

AS Byatt, novelist
Derrida examines how we construct meaning, the provisional way in which our constructions depend upon other constructions. He was an exciting person to read but had a bad effect on British critical writing. He wrote with immense ad hoc wit and had no interest in creating a system, but his followers did create a system and sought to deconstruct everything.

Ivan Massow, former chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts
Who? I don't know who you are talking about? I'm in a meeting with a group of City luminaries and none of them has heard of him. I can Google him for you if you are having difficulties.

Richard Boston, writer
Deconstructionism is what, when I was at school, we called parsing. At Cambridge 10 years later we called it practical criticism. Then, another 10 years later, I became aware that this familiar pastime had a new name, deconstructionism. It's just taking things apart. I do, though, have to confess that I have not made a close study of Jackie Derrida.

Colin McCabe, professor of English at Exeter University
Derrida's philosophy derives from the fact that being manifests itself through difference. His writing largely consists of carefully unpicking all attempts to deny this differentiation. Most importantly, he deconstructed that philosophical tradition which appealed to speech as a source of unmediated being.

That is actually perfectly straightforward if you know a bit about French structuralism (and Saussure) and Heidegger's history of how the West has thought being, though I'm sure you've got something clever to say about Heidegger as well Pursley.

He was writing in a tradition, something continental philosophers are very self-aware about, but English and American ones usually deliberately forget for their own purposes.

Do you, or any of those other 'luminaries' know what Kant or Hegel was on about?

Aside from the fact that postmodern so-called "intellectuals" like Derrida are sophist frauds I'll say this, Kant and Heidegger are two of the greatest thinkers who ever walked the face of the Earth. Hegel is more like toilet reading for a good laugh.

I'll gladly discuss the infallibility of Kant at any time.