Derrida

Abstract Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) remains one of the most controversial philosophers of the 20th century. Accused of obscurantism and nihilism, yet celebrated as profoundly original, his work has provoked both fierce hostility and devoted following. The book clarifies Derrida’s project by showing how ‘deconstruction’ emerges from a critical engagement with the Western philosophical heritage rather than its rejection. Central to Derrida’s work is the critique of the logocentrism internal to the civilization of the European West, a civilization framed by a distinctively onto-theological conception of ‘Man’ as the uniquely rational animal, the animal capable of grasping an order of pure intelligibility (the…