I suppose. There's no telling when deconstruction ends, and when his critique on phenomenology begins.

Miller is one of the foremost students of Derrida. He's not "pointing out the irony". He's repeating what Derrida himself has always claimed - that deconstruction always takes place within what it deconstructs.

Same peanuts and nuts.

I really don't understand why people who have never read a word of Derrida in their life like to talk about Derrida. It's the same impulse that teenage boys have talking about quantum physics. It must sound cool or something despite their total ignorance.

Worse are those who have read and claim that they understand Derrida then when put to the test, they write blarbles.

Whatever it takes for you to feel better about your ignorence.

You have proven yourself time and again that you can't...digest what you read.

I'm still waiting on my quote.

That's the quote. From a high quality writer -- Miller. Anymore questions? Oh yeah, you can't digest what you read.

What did Derrida's approach say about nihilism? — Tom Storm

Speaking loosely, his 'freeplay' seems like some sunny cousin of nihilism. Derrida was well aware of Camus and Sartre (he continued to respect Nausea), and Nietzsche was one of his heroes. So certainly he thought about it. But I think his message was more about the opportunity in godlessness (not that he'd use such a phrase.) On the other hand, his bio ( the one by Peeters) reveals that he was subject to intense intermittent 'nihilistic' depressions. On the bright side, he experienced fits of intense inspiration too. This is worth watching, if you haven't seen it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoKnzsiR6Ss

It's a quote that has nothing to do with skepticism, and it's not from Derrida.

But it's very cute that you know how to press search in Google.

↪L'éléphant
It's a quote that has nothing to do with skepticism, and it's not from Derrida. — Streetlight

Are you really a robot? Can't think for yourself. I say that's skepticism based on my thoughts of what skepticism is. I don't care whether he claims he's a skeptic. His criticism is a form of skepticism.

When I say I'm putting in my critique as skepticism, I don't need Derrida to agree with me. I'm not here to point out that Derrida is a self-proclaimed skeptic. I am here to point out that my conclusion about his ideas led to my criticism that his is a form of skepticism.

Sorry I couldn't hear you over your total inability to substantiate yourself.

You should be banned as a moderator.

Lol

"Substantiate your points"

"You should be banned!"

I love it.

The deconstructive critic seeks to find, by this process of retracing, the element in the system studied which is alogical, the thread in the text in question which will unravel it all, or the loose stone which will pull down the whole building.

This is one of its virtues, and it's just good ol' Western rationality at work, looking for weakness in totalizing systems, looking for plot holes and confusions and the one loose brick that makes the whole thing vulnerable. Checking a totalizing system or theory of knowledge for weakness is no more absurd or irrational than checking every inch of a parachute you're planning to use.

Grow up.

Thanks. All very interesting. I watched this and some others already. I wonder what it was like for Derrida to inhabit the quotidian world with the potential burden of all those complex ideas. I feel thankful to be shallow, poorly read but generally phlegmatic, if uninspired.

Says the dude calling for a ban after being asked to substantiate his claims. Uh huh.

I did. I provided Miller's explanation. I defer to his writing. Unlike you who provided blarbles on deconstruction. You have no idea what you're talking about. I'm sure you read it, though.

Now, deal with your own self and learn how to read and come up with your own ideas.

Oh I'm sorry did the big words I use go over your head?

I wonder what it was like for Derrida to inhabit the quotidian world with the potential burden of all those complex ideas. I feel thankful to be shallow, poorly read but generally phlegmatic, if uninspired. — Tom Storm

Down to earth comment! There are better philosophical tools to critique ideas/written texts -- we don't need to use deconstruction.

I'm glad I could give my own little testimony.

On the Plato thing, which I didn't get to, I think his work suggests that Platonic forms are unrealistically 'pure' (impossibly uncontaminated by and independent of history.) A nice analogue is the contamination of 'literal' and 'serious' conceptuality by metaphor. While such conceptuality cannot be collapsed into metaphor (or metaphor would itself so collapse), it's also never pure. That kind of thing.

I really don't understand why people who have never read a word of Derrida in their life like to talk about Derrida. It's the same impulse that teenage boys have talking about quantum physics. It must sound cool or something despite their total ignorance. — Streetlight

What proof can you provide of your knowledge?

.

As a normative , grammatical or rule-forming criterion, is the relation between this system and actual word use referential( the rule is accessed and applied to the current situation) or does the system only actually exist as it is being redefined by the present context of word use? — Joshs

The tricky issue is that the meaning of 'actually exist' is caught up in what we are discussing here. Do we (can we?) ever 'actually know' what we are actually talking about when we say 'actually exist'? Or, and now it turns back on me, when we say 'actually know'? It's largely blind or pre-articulate skill.

Hence my interest in semantic constraint, presumably primarily pragmatic. As we wander from practical contexts, there's less and less constraint. Only the symbols returned by smaller and smaller groups, naturally biased toward the intelligibly and significance of the coin of the realm.


I suppose one could make a more or less successful case for one of the branches of your either/or, or for its dissolution in some more profound framing of the situation. But while I feel able, if willing, to play at this level of abstraction, I become more...skeptical...of this twilight kingdom's secret candy.

@Streetlight has clearly fucking read lots of Derrida and many many other thinkers, while certain other rowdy participants have clearly not.

Folks should maybe work out why they simultaneously want to nullify Derrida and yet find it impressive enough to have grokked him to demand proof of that accomplishment.

Just admit that you want in and put in the effort.

FWIW, I've been through weird bouts of resistance/desire myself with thinkers. It's normal...I hope.

Jackson's request is reasonable. Let Streetlight respond please.

What proof can you provide that you are worth one moment of my effort?

Derrida was well aware of Camus and Sartre (he continued to respect Nausea) — igjugarjuk

Here’s my collection of Derrida quotes about Sartre. They’re all nasty. Hold onto your seat:

The Pocket-Size Interview with Jacques Derrida Freddy Tellez and Bruno Mazzoldi “It is true that in my work Sartre was very important, in the beginning. When I was a student, he was already there, and it's by reading Sartre that, in a certain way, I began to get into the field of philosophy and literature. For this reason, it would be absurd for me to try to absolutely distance myself from Sartre. That being said, quite quickly I thought it clear that Sartre was a representative of a philosophy like Husserlian phenomenology, adapted to France, a philosophy that was already beginning to make some noise but that at the same time, and even with respect to what he was introducing or translating from phenomenology, from Heidegger even, that there were some enlargements, distortions, simplifications, which from that point of view seemed to me to amortize what was essentially interesting about the work of Husserl and Heidegger. And so since then I have never ceased, in a certain way, to see better into all of that. [Lights up a cigar.]

FT: But do you mean that from the point of view of the legitimacy of Husserl's and Heidegger's thought, for instance, or of a critique of the reading offered by Sartre of Husserl or Heidegger? JD: Yes, I mean that both in what he was keeping and in what he was critiquing, in my opinion, he was not a rigorous enough reader. And from that point of view, it turns out that the work done by him in France was very ambiguous. I am not saying that it was simply negative, but he and others with him kept from us for a long time the real importance and the sharpness of Husserl's and Heidegger's work while importing them and pretending to critique them, as both translator, if you like, of Husserl and Heidegger and critic of Husserl and Heidegger. This is not to say that it was simply a question of finding our way back into Husserlian and Heideggerian orthodoxy against Sartre. Not at all. But I think that even in order to understand, to critique Husserl and Heidegger, it was necessary to understand them better than Sartre did in those days. The point is not here to issue some condemnation; since that's how it happened, it couldn't have happened otherwise, in those conditions and in a certain number of historical conditions. But it is a fact that Sartre's thought obscured in quite a powerful way what was happening elsewhere in German philosophy, even in the philosophy that he himself pretended to be introducing in France. To say nothing of Marx and to say nothing of Freud and to say nothing of Nietzsche, whom he, in a way, never really read. I mean that he misunderstood Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche (to put them together as is usually done) even more than he misunderstood Husserl and Heidegger, whom he nevertheless quoted.

And so, from that point of view, we have to deal with a huge sedimentation of thought, a huge philosophical sediment that covered the French scene for quite a few years after the war and that, I think, has marked everyone from that generation. I would say that there was a lot of dissimulation, and subsequently it has been necessary to undo this sedimentation in order to find again what was dissimulated by it, in a way. But, in the end, I don't want to take it all out on Sartre now and say that he as an individual is responsible for this obscuring. If this obscuring has taken place it is due to a great number of conditions: the French tradition of thought, the state of the French university, the ideological scene in Paris, the political scene in the postwar period. OK, all of that is worthy of an analysis that would not be limited to Sartre as an individual. I would not want to privilege..not even in a critique..the case of Sartre. An analysis would have to be undertaken that would run, again, through very complex historical and political networks, right? Through, evidently, once again, what the French university was like. But Sartre is still, I would say, on this point, even though he left the university quite early and, until today, is very deeply marked, more than some professional academics, by the university, by this very building, by the rhetoric, by the display of the dissertation, of the lesson, in his writing. For this reason his writing, for instance (I haven't read the text on Calder, but I have read others), is still, in spite of his agility, his talent, and his resources, marked by a French university rhetoric against which he has never really busied himself, whatever his position against the university might have been. That doesn't change anything.

I think that, for example, "Cartouches" is more of a rupture with respect to this rhetoric..even though I, me, personally [smiles], am inside the university to a greater degree than Sartre..let's say, more of a rupture against that kind of writing than that of Sartre's.” From ‘Points':

Q.: It is then that you began to read Sartre, right?

J . D . : A little earlier. He played a major role for me then. A model that I have since judged to be nefarious and catastrophic, but that I love; no doubt as what I had to love, and I always love what I have loved, it's very simple . . .

Q.: Nefarious and catastrophic! That's a bit strong; you'll have to explain . . .

J . D . : Do you think we should keep that or cut it? Okay. First of all, I repeat, Sartre no doubt, well, guided me, as he did so many others at the time. Reading him, I discovered Blanchot, Bataille, Ponge-whom I now think one could have read otherwise. But finally, Same was himself the "unsurpassable horizon"P Things changed when, thanks to him but especially against him, I read Husser!, Heidegger, Blanchot, and others. One would have to devote several dozen books to this question: What must a society such as ours be if a man, who, in his own way, rejected or misunderstood so many theoretical and literary events of his timelet's say, to go quickly, psychoanalysis, Marxism, structuralism, Joyce, Artaud, Bataille, Blanchot-who accumulated and disseminated incredible misreadings of Heidegger, sometimes of Husserl, could come to dominate the cultural scene to the point of becoming a great popular figure? It is true that works can traverse their time like tornadoes, overturn the historical landscape, interpret it without seeming to understand anything about it, without being sensitive or acquiescing to every "novelty."

I don't think this is the case with Sartre but, while asking myself a lot of questions, even about his likeable and legendary generosity, I sometimes share the almost familial affection that many feel for this man whom I have never seen. And who does not belong to the age of those works that matter for me . . .

Q. : And that were being written at the same time . . .

J . D . : Or even much earlier, look at Mallarme! What must a French intellectual be if such a phenomenon can happen or happen again? What grants authority to his evaluations? What interests me still today is especially the France of Sartre, the relation of our culture to this man (rather than to his work) . And also Sartre's relation to the University. It is said that he escaped it or resisted it. It seems to me that university norms determined his work in the most internal fashion, as they did for so many writers who don't realize or who deny this fact. An analysis of his philosophical rhetoric, of his literary criticism, and even of his plays or novels would be greatly helped if it took into account, for better or worse, the models and the history of education, the lycee, the khagne, the Ecole Normale, and the agregation.4 I began this exercise, one day, with some students, taking the example of Sartre's Saint Genet. Thus an enormous screen of French culture. But reading it, I no doubt learned a lot and, even if it goes against him, I am indebted to him. But tell me, is this an interview about Sartre!

Q. : So, in short, you see in Sartre the perfect example of what an intellectual should not be . . .

J . D . : I didn't say that . . .

Q.: But, then, what should be the attitude of an intellectual in relation to political affairs?

J . D . : No one stands to gain by there being a model, especially just one model. Also the category of "intellectual" no longer has very strict limits, and probably never did. It is true that Sartre's example, which is why one has to insist upon it, incites one to prudence. His academic legitimacy (graduate of the Ecole Normale, agrege) and his legitimacy asa writer for a major publishing house5 (don't ever separate these two things, but I am going too quickly) lent to his most impulsive remarks, whether or not you take them seriously, a formidable authority, the authority that was not granted to stricter and more interesting analysts. In political affairs especially, as everyone knows. One could take other examples today, because the thing is being amplified here and there as new powers and new structures appear (media, publishing, and so forth). Not that one has therefore to go into retreat or avoid taking public positions: quite to the contrary, the moment has perhaps come to do more and better, that is, otherwise . . .”

“After the war, under the name of Christian or atheist existentialism, and in conjunction with a fundamentally Christian personalism, the thought that dominated France presented itself essentially as humanist. Even if one does not wish to summarize Sartre's thought under the slogan "existentialism is a humanism," it must be recognized that in Being and Nothingness, The Sketch of a Theory of the Emotions, etc., the major concept, the theme of the last analysis, the irreducible horizon and origin is what was then called "human-reality." As is well known, this is a translation of Heideggerian Dasein. A monstrous translation in many respects, but so much the more significant. That this translation proposed by Corbin was adopted at the time, and that by means of Sartre's authority it reigned, gives us much to think about the reading or the nonreading of Heidegger during this period, and about what was at stake in reading or not reading him in this way. Certainly the notion of "human-reality" translated the project of thinking the meaning of man, the humanity of man, on a new basis, if you will. If the neutral and undetermined notion of "human reality" was substituted for the notion of man, with all its metaphysical heritage and the substantialist motif or temptation inscribed in it, it was also in order to suspend all the presuppositions which had always constituted the concept of the unity of man.

It's telling when a request for a substantiating quote is met with - "you should be banned."




Admit you haven't read enough Derrida for this dialogue, swallow your pride, eat your crow, and go read some Derrida. Pursue wisdom, not winning.


It's the beauty of anonymity: you can digest your glaring deficiencies in private.


It's obvious to anyone watching this slaughter - and who's read a few of his books - that you haven't read enough Derrida to have a leg to stand on.