Jacques Derrida summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Jacques Derrida.

Jacques Derrida, (born July 15, 1930, El Biar, Alg.—died Oct. 8, 2004, Paris, France), Algerian-born French philosopher. Derrida taught principally at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris (1964–84). His critique of Western philosophy encompasses literature, linguistics, and psychoanalysis. His thought is based on his disapproval of the search for an ultimate metaphysical certainty or source of meaning that has characterized most of Western philosophy. Instead, he offers deconstruction, which is in part a way of reading philosophic texts intended to make explicit the underlying metaphysical suppositions and assumptions through a close analysis of the language that attempts to convey them. His works on deconstructive theory and method include Speech and Phenomena (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Of Grammatology (1967). Among his other works are Psyche: Invention of the Other (1987) and Resistances of Psychoanalysis (1996).

deconstruction Summary

Deconstruction, form of philosophical and literary analysis, derived mainly from work begun in the 1960s by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, that questions the fundamental conceptual distinctions, or “oppositions,” in Western philosophy through a close examination of the language and logic

metaphysics Summary

Metaphysics, branch of philosophy whose topics in antiquity and the Middle Ages were the first causes of things and the nature of being. In postmedieval philosophy, however, many other topics came to be included under the heading “metaphysics.” (The reasons for this development will be discussed in

literary criticism Summary

Literary criticism, the reasoned consideration of literary works and issues. It applies, as a term, to any argumentation about literature, whether or not specific works are analyzed. Plato’s cautions against the risky consequences of poetic inspiration in general in his Republic are thus often