This book offers a vigorous and constructive challenge to relativism by examining a wide range of anti-realist theories, and in response offering a variety of arguments amounting to a strong defence of critical realism in the natural and social sciences.

This book review symposium aims to open a space for discussions and questions responded to the book Education between Speech and Writing: Crossing the Boundaries of Dao and Deconstruction, which is...

Written in the aftermath of the deaths of the French philosophers Jacques Derrida (19302004) and Paul Ricoeur (19132005), this book is an important and ...

The environmental crisis, one of the great challenges of our time, tends to disenfranchise those who come after us. Arguing that as temporary inhabitants of the earth, we cannot be indifferent to future generations, this book draws on the resources of phenomenology and poststructuralism to help us conceive of moral relations in connection with human temporality. Demonstrating that moral and political normativity emerge with generational time, the time of birth and death, this book proposes two related models of intergenerational and (...) environmental justice. The first entails a form of indirect reciprocity, in which we owe future people both because of their needs and interests and because we ourselves have been the beneficiaries of peoples past; the second posits a generational taking of turns that Matthias Fritsch applies to both our institutions and our natural environment, in other words, to the earth as a whole. Offering new readings of key philosophers, and emphasizing the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida in particular, Taking Turns with the Earth disrupts human-centered notions of terrestrial appropriation and sharing to give us a new continental philosophical account of future-oriented justice. (shrink)

I observe that the aim and method of a Victorian text within Shakespeare criticism overlaps significantly with deconstruction.

My aim in this paper is to draw Plotinus and Derrida together in a comparison of their respective appropriations of the famous “receptacle” passage in Plato's Timaeus (specifically, Plotinus' discussion of intelligible matter in Enneads 2.4 and Derrida's essay on Timaeus entitled “Kh ō ra”). After setting the stage with a discussion of several instructive similarities between their general philosophical projects, I contend that Plotinus and Derrida take comparable approaches both to thinking the origin of the forms and to problematizing (...) the stability of the sensible/intelligible opposition. With these parallels in focus, I go on to explain how examining such points of contact can help us to dismantle the canonical constructs of “Plotinus the metaphysician” and “Derrida the anti-metaphysician” that have obscured important connections between Neoplatonism and deconstruction, and suppressed latent resources within the Platonic tradition itself for deconstructing the dualistic ontology of so-called “Platonic metaphysics.”. (shrink)

In “Against Theory” we argued that a text means what its author intends it to mean. We argued further that all attempts to found a method of interpretation on a general account of language involve imagining that a text can mean something other than what its author intends. Therefore, we concluded, all such attempts are bound to fail; there can be no method of interpretation. But the attempt to imagine that a text can mean something other than what its author (...) intends is not restricted to writers interested in interpretive method. In fact, the denial that meaning is determined by intention is central to projects as indifferent to method as hermeneutics and deconstruction. For hermeneutics, a text means that its author intends but also necessarily means more, acquiring new meanings as readers apply it to new situations. For deconstruction, an author can never succeed in determining the meaning of a text; every text participates in a code that necessarily eludes authorial control. Since both these projects are committed to the view that a text from mean something other than what its author intends, they are also committed to the view that a text derives its identity from something other than authorial intention. The text is what it is, no matter what meaning is assigned to it by its author and no matter how that meaning is revised by its readers.What gives a text its autonomous identity? On most accounts, the answer is linguistic conventions—the semantic and syntactic rules of the language in which the text is written. One of our aims in the present essay is to criticize the particular notions of textual identity advanced by hermeneutics and deconstruction, but our more general target is the notion that there can be any plausible criteria of textual identity that can function independent of authorial intention. Because there can be no such criteria, nonmethodological versions of interpretive theory are as incoherent as methodological ones and, like the methodological ones, should be abandoned. Steven Knapp is associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of Personification and the Sublime: Milton to Coleridge. Walter Benn Michaels, professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism. (shrink)

Stimulated by these three brilliant target essays this commentary raises a few questions about the universality of the “emotions,” the cultural psychology of “natural kinds,” and the analytic deconstruction of the idea of an emotion.

Purpose. Objectives of the study are as follows: to remove the reduction of women to a metaphysical subject, to the "castrated Other" through the correlation of postmodern strategies and gender medicine; to institutionalize gender medicine as knowledge and practical activities that improve the quality and span of life of women based on the methodological application of deconstruction, complementarity, differance, "double writing", X-subject treatment and biomedical innovations; the perspective of gender medicine development is the implementation of the concept of "sovereign (...) writing" of postmodern in individual treatment of a person. Theoretical basis. Shock value of the title means farewell to metaphysics in the complex of its derived concepts. The author criticizes the abstract, reduced, marginalized, deviant subject of classical metaphysics and its continuation in psychoanalysis, explores the correlation of postmodern philosophy strategies and biomedical innovations. The allusion to the masterpiece of world cinematography Pasolini’s "Ciao maschio" corresponds to the rhizomatic stylistics of the postmodern. Originality. After feminist transgressions, gender constructivism postmodern philosophy demonstrates a new subject and a new methodology, which formed gender medicine. Differance, distinction, complementarity, X-subject of treatment, chiasmatic movement, "double writing", "sovereign writing" organically turned over and reconstructed modern medicine in gender, biochemical, and hormonal innovative variations. Conclusions. 1. Based on the philosophy and biomedical innovations, a new direction has grown – gender medicine, which has removed the reduction of women to a metaphysical subject, "castrated Other", which has improved the quality of women’s health and span of life. 2. Gender medicine in organic combination with the strategies of deconstruction, complementarity, differance, distinction as hormonal distinction, "double writing" as a "dual protocol" of treatment for the same diseases of men and women, the treatment of X-subject turned out to be "new wisdom", which improves the quality of health and span of life in everyday practice. 3. The prospect of the gender medicine’s development is in the implementation of the "sovereign writing" as an individual treatment of a specific person. (shrink)

Examines the relationship of Derrida’s writings on architecture to his methodology of deconstruction and to deconstrutivism in architecture. Between 1984 and 1994 Jacques Derrida wrote and spoke a great deal about architecture both in his academic work and in connection with a number of particular building projects around the world. He engaged significantly with the work of architects such as Bernard Tschumi, Peter Eisenman, and Daniel Libeskind. Derrida conceived of architecture as an example of the kind of multidimensional writing (...) that he had theorized in Of Grammatology, identifying a rich common ground between architecture and philosophy in relation to ideas about political community and the concept of dwelling. In this book, Francesco Vitale analyzes Derrida’s writings and demonstrates how Derrida’s work on this topic provides a richer understanding of his approach to deconstruction, highlighting the connections and differences between philosophical deconstruction and architectural deconstrutivism. “Although there has been some discussion of the intersection of deconstruction and architecture in the past, mostly among architects and architectural critics, Vitale’s work is distinguished by the fact that it is written by a true philosopher who has a much more acute sense than has usually been the case of the philosophical underpinnings of Derrida’s exchanges with Tschumi, Eisenman, and others. Vitale is throughout concise, precise, insightful, and often brilliant.” — Geoffrey Bennington, author of Interrupting Derrida. (shrink)

This paper begins by presenting Lawlor's Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problems of Philosophy, an account of how deconstruction emerges as Derrida discusses Husserl's phenomenology (I.). It then determines the genre of Lawlor's intellectual history. Lawlor writes a continuist narrative history of ideas and concepts (II.). In the subsequent main section the paper uses Lawlor's material to take a position in the debate between Husserl and Derrida (III.). This is done in three parts. The first part reconstructs Derrida's version (...) of Husserlian time consciousness (III. 1). The second part proposes an alternative and revisionist reading of Husserl's theory of internal temporality. On this reading Husserl is a process theoretician of consciousness (III. 2). The third part juxtaposes Husserl and Derrida's critical views (III. 3), arguing that Husserl's fluxive theory of time consciousness does not suffer from the problems Derrida finds in his Husserl. The final section (IV.) points to relativizing consequences for deconstruction and identifies programmatic consequences for phenomenology. (shrink)

Introduction: Fielding Derrida -- Jacques Derrida's early writings : alongside skepticism, phenomenology -- Analytic philosophy, and literary criticism -- Deconstruction as skepticism -- Derrida, Husserl, and the commentators : a developmental approach -- A transcendental sense of death : Derrida and the philosophy of language -- Literary theory's languages : the deconstruction of sense vs. the deconstruction of reference -- Jacques Derrida and the problem of philosophical and political modernity -- Jacob Klein and Jacques Derrida : the (...) problem of modernity -- Jacob Klein and Jacques Derrida : historicism and history in two interpretations of Husserl's late writings -- Derrida's contribution to phenomenology : a problem of no species -- Foretellese : futures of Derrida and Marx. (shrink)

In this article, the aim is to address different forms of relationship between deconstruction, as coined by Jacques Derrida, and research perspectives on music education. Deconstruction represents a radical departure from Western ontology from Plato onward and its essentialistic notions of the metaphysics of presence. Instead, Derrida claims that signs, as well as texts, are decentered, that is, they are continually altering meaning in relation to other signs or texts, being in constant motion. Simultaneously, signs and texts, as (...) well as existence and experience, constitute themselves by binary oppositions, like nature/culture, content/form, original/copy, internal/external, empirical/ theoretical, and so on. Derrida argues that such differences are not inherent, but are instead socially produced and hierarchical mechanisms for providing systematic priority to one aspect of the dualism to the neglect of the other. Consequently, the ethical interest of music education research, from a deconstructive perspective, would be to expose what is marginalized in musical schooling, upbringing, and socialization. In that case, deconstruction might also be able to rectify some of its destructive reputation. (shrink)

However widely--and differently--Jacques Derrida may be viewed as a "foundational" French thinker, the most basic questions concerning his work still remain unanswered: Is Derrida a friend of reason, or philosophy, or rather the most radical of skeptics? Are language-related themes--writing, semiosis--his central concern, or does he really write about something else? And does his thought form a system of its own, or does it primarily consist of commentaries on individual texts? This book seeks to address these questions by returning to (...) what it claims is essential history: the development of Derrida's core thought through his engagement with Husserlian phenomenology. Joshua Kates recasts what has come to be known as the Derrida/Husserl debate, by approaching Derrida's thought historically, through its development. Based on this developmental work, Essential History culminates by offering discrete interpretations of Derrida's two book-length 1967 texts, interpretations that elucidate the until now largely opaque relation of Derrida's interest in language to his focus on philosophical concerns. A fundamental reinterpretation of Derrida's project and the works for which he is best known, Kates's study fashions a new manner of working with the French thinker that respects the radical singularity of his thought as well as the often different aims of those he reads. Such a view is in fact "essential" if Derrida studies are to remain a vital field of scholarly inquiry, and if the humanities, more generally, are to have access to a replenishing source of living theoretical concerns. (shrink)

An exploration of the occurrence of the words “safe” and “intact” in the writings of Derrida and Nancy, the author likes to suggest, allows us to catch a glimpse of some of the fundamental differences between the late works of these two thinkers as well as to distinguish the most salient features of their divergent interpretations of deconstruction. This chapter concentrates on the intersection of the later writings of Derrida and Nancy concerning the general topic of “religion”. What is (...) of particular interest is the significant role that the interpretation of the term salut ‐ which in French has two meanings “greeting, salutation” as well as “salvation” ‐ plays in this interaction. In broad outlines, for Derrida, the goal of “religion”, if it can be said to have one, is to keep the living – the adherents of “religion” ‐ safe, unscathed, and intact. (shrink)

In Biodeconstruction (2018) I argued that Derrida, in the Life Death seminar (1975–76), would have anticipated the most recent developments in epigenetics, a field in which the dogma of genetic determinism is radically challenged by noting the influence of the environment in the production of mutations in the genetic program, particularly when a genetic population is faced with a radical change in its environmental conditions, which I propose to call an ‘ecological event’. I explore a comparison between the Derridean (...) class='Hi'>deconstruction of genetic determinism and the theoretical elaborations of epigenesis, referring to the work of Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions (2005). Jablonka and Lamb propose a theory of genetic variation in which mutations would be the result of the interpretation of unpredictable environmental events by the individual whose survival would be in danger. Through this comparison, I show that the study of ‘interpretive Mutations’ as reactions to unpredictable environmental events can be helpful in understanding the Derridean theme of the ‘event’, rearticulating it in relation to the radical environmental changes that humanity will sooner or later face. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to shed light on the dynamics of regional identity construction and deconstruction. We will argue that four forms of identity can be identified that are linked through various processes of change. To that end, we will theoretically conceptualise 'identity' by discussing historical and current scholarly debates on identity in a variety of scientific disciplines. Then, we will argue that the mutual contradiction of the current theories is a paradox if seen from the angle of (...) regional identity construction and deconstruction. Building upon elements from the various theoretical approaches, we propose a heuristic model describing the dynamics of identity construction and deconstruction, which will be explored by means of the example of the Green Heart region, a spatial planning concept in western Holland. (shrink)

This article aims to be a confrontation with Nancy's 'deconstruction of Christianity.' Its arguments are instructed by Derrida's thesis in his On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy , in which he speaks of the 'destructive effects' of Nancy's own thinking. One such effect is, according to Derrida, Nancy's complicity with some form of metaphysical thinking. The conclusion of this article therefore aims to expound on just what sort of metaphysics returns in Nancy's work and proposes a more viable—and phenomenological—option with regard to (...) the question of what is to be done with the relics of the Christian tradition through forging an opening towards Levinas' and Merleau-Ponty's philosophies. (shrink)

Redrawing the Lines,the first book to focus on that interaction, brings together ten essays by key figures who have worked to connect literary theory and philosophy and to reassess the relationship between analytic and Continental ...

Introduction: Philosophy in Spite of Itself Aristotle defines man as the political and rational animal, but the readings in this book are guided by his ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Invitation to Play:A Response to Patrick Schmidt's "What We Hear is Meaning Too:Deconstruction, Dialogue, and Music"Patrice Madura Ward-SteinmanThe aims of dialogue-as-deconstruction, as described by Patrick Schmidt, are concepts I have pondered as a result of a five-week sabbatical visit to Melbourne, Australia. My research focus there was improvisation, and early in my visit I attended two concerts at the premier jazz club, Bennett's Lane. There I (...) heard twelve improvisers in a variety of ensembles, all in celebration of the seventieth birthday of their mentor, Tony Gould, who also performed. Gould is cited by John Whiteoak and Aline Scott-Maxwell as an "outstanding player who has never ceased to develop as an improviser" and who "as a pianist, records prolifically across a wide musical spectrum."1While the music was jazz, it was freer and fresher than usual. There was striking interaction among the musicians, including facial expressions that reflected genuine ecstasy, and body movement that was naturally "in sync" with the music. I began to ask many questions, including: Is Australia's jazz different from that [End Page 82] in the U.S.? Is Tony Gould's influence as a teacher the reason for the difference? What accounts for the sensation of "freshness" in this music? And why is this musical experience so gripping, both aurally and visually? Serendipitously, I discovered answers through the opportunity to respond to Schmidt's aims of dialogue-of-deconstruction. I shall illustrate how those aims, namely decentralized power and conflict, multiplicity and meaning, and mis-listening may be met in the improvising music ensemble.Decentralized Power and ConflictThe lifeblood of "free jazz" and "free improvisation" ensembles is de-centralized musical interaction, which may be considered a metaphor for dialogue-as-deconstruction. Case in point: the Tony Gould Quartet was an improvising unit with each musician contributing to the musical whole. The air was electric with each musician poised in both the anticipation of what the other might play and in the moment of creation.A recent trend in studies of organizational behavior is on "self-directed" or "self-managed" groups, as identified by Keith R. Sawyer.2 David Borgo3 explains that the characteristics of these "self-organizing systems" or "SOSs" are threefold: they operate without centralized control, they "exhibit both complex and adaptive dynamics," and they are comprised of autonomous individuals who demonstrate a high degree of connectivity. Both authors assert that an ideal SOS is the free improvising ensemble, where musical ideas are allowed to emerge and adapt, and even musical "mistakes" may be manipulated into the context, thus creating new directions in dialogue.However, SOSs have some inherent problems. For example, they are "slow to emerge.... The more complex they are, the longer it may take them to warm up: hierarchical layers have to settle down... and individual(s) have to acquaint themselves with one another."4 Borgo explained that even advanced improvisers often need to pursue a musical idea for a long while for it to achieve coherence. Philip Alperson adds: "As the number of designing intelligences increases, the greater is the difficulty in coordinating all the parts; the twin dangers of cacophony and opacity lurk around the corner."5It seems that "interactional synchrony"6 can develop among musicians who have "good chemistry" after a warm-up period, but those with conflicting personalities, aesthetic dispositions, or musical styles may have a more difficult time of it. When members of the Tony Gould Quartet were asked how they are able to achieve musical unity, they explained that they have played together for many years, they "hang out and drink together" when not on the bandstand, and they trust each other. Even when one of the members feels "out of sorts," their improvisations are respected as authentic expressions. Others' differences are honored, [End Page 83] rather than felt in opposition to one's self.7 Ingrid Monson8 quotes several musicians who use the metaphor of marriage to describe the musical relationship during a peak performance; on the other hand, jealousy, competition, and even hostility on the bandstand are not uncommon and can destroy an ensemble. So, it appears... (shrink)

This paper is a deconstruction of a ghostwritten report of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled efficacy and safety trial of citalopram in depressed children and adolescents conducted in the United States. Court documents revealed that protocol-specified outcome measures showed no statistically significant difference between citalopram and placebo. However, the published article concluded that citalopram was safe and significantly more efficacious than placebo for children and adolescents, with possible adverse effects on patient safety.

This paper demonstrates that when the concept of ethicalpolitical responsibility is taken in its modern sense as a decision or outcome based on the protocols of reason, responsibility is neither simply possible nor simply impossible. Paradoxically, it appeals to a demand that it cannot fulfil; responsibility is thus (im)possible. Moreover, insofar as a deconstructive demonstration of this aporia is itself a response to reason’s own demand, deconstruction cannot be characterized as simply responsible or irresponsible. Rather, deconstruction inscribes itself (...) as the interior limit of the order of ethics, of responsibility, as such. Deconstruction is thus characterized best as an (ir)responsible interrogation of the very principle of reason to which political philosophers such as Habermas appeal when they invoke responsibility. To this extent deconstruction enacts the strange responsibility of interrogating critically precisely what is deemed ‘just’. Key Words: critique • deconstruction • Derrida • Enlightenment • ethics • Habermas • justice • modernity • reason • responsibility. (shrink)

In this interview, which took place in Center City in Philadelphia in September 2020, I ask Jean-Michel Rabaté to reflect on his personal and writerly relationship with Jacques Derrida, and to assess the legacies of Derrida and deconstruction across the globe today. In the last five years, Rabaté has published three books on Derrida: Les Guerres de Derrida, After Derrida, and Understanding Derrida, Understanding Modernism. In response to this flurry of publications, I ask Rabaté what has prompted his recent (...) and vigorous turn to Derrida and what his intentions were with these books. As we review their organising principles, the central thematic of this discussion is thus concerned with Derrida's relevance to the Humanities and Social Sciences as we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

“One of the most dangerous of ideas for a philosopher is, oddly enough, that we think with our heads, or in our heads.” Wittgenstein… aber wir sprechen das Allgemeine aus;” Hegel“Hegel is the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing.” Derrida“Linguistic turn”, “pragmatic paradigm”, “Destruktion”, “deconstruction”, “condition postmoderne”, “pensiero debole” are not only philosophical labels. They are not only indices of intellectual positions which have inscribed themselves, as consequences as well as preconditions, in the end (...) of traditional metaphysics. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”, Nietzsche'sGenealogy of Moralsannounces, describing the empty space which the metaphysical concepts have left; and in doing so opening up a seemingly boundless dimension for new developments of thoughts. The dilemma of these developments of modernity is that the vacuum they left, caused by their ruthless critique, cannot be refilled. So the outlook of modernity remains necessarily heterogeneous and unstable, meandering towards the colourful and fashionable-macabre extremes of postmodemity which gain from the tragic certainty of rien ne va plus the happy imperative of anything goes. But these are also ciphers of a particular philosophical-historical constellation, a work situation, in which the potencies of reason, being verhimmelt for a long time, now are going to be situated into their real contexts. Only, as Habermas puts it, “under the premises of an unexcited postmetaphysical thinking”, the once heroic concept of theory, which was meant to explain the world of human beings and their history as well as Nature out of onto-theleological principles of rationality, falls to pieces. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to shed light on the dynamics of regional identity construction and deconstruction. We will argue that four forms of identity can be identified that are linked through various processes of change. To that end, we will theoretically conceptualise 'identity' by discussing historical and current scholarly debates on identity in a variety of scientific disciplines. Then, we will argue that the mutual contradiction of the current theories is a paradox if seen from the angle of (...) regional identity construction and deconstruction. Building upon elements from the various theoretical approaches, we propose a heuristic model describing the dynamics of identity construction and deconstruction, which will be explored by means of the example of the Green Heart region, a spatial planning concept in western Holland. (shrink)

L’article de Nathalie Heinrich sur les « petits malentendus transatlantiques, paru sur Telos le 9 février, soulève quelques questions qui méritent réflexion. Si les « cultural studies » ont leurs défauts, il faut prendre au sérieux leur réflexion sur le naturel, le construit et l’arbitraire, qui bouscule différentes traditions, d’Aristote à Marx et ouvre sur de nouvelles exigences de justice.