Abstract

Originally published in 1995, Advances was first written by Jscques Derrida as a long foreword a book by one of his most promising former students, the philosopher Serge Margel's Le Tombeau du Dieu Artisan (The Tomb of the Artisn God). Derrida uncovers Margel's unique theory of the promise in relation to an an-archic, pre-chronological temporality, in conjunction with Margel's radical rereading of Plato's Timaeus. As Derrida states right away, Margel's reading is a new Demiurge. A new promise. A new advance. This magisterial late essay is a conversation with Derrida's former student as well as an opening for new reflection on ecological and political crises that are all the more urgent today, when the possibility of death as a human race and the end of the world is more real than ever.