[Vision2020] Eulogy for Jacques Derrida

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:

I met Mark Taylor, author of the article below, in Denmark in 1978-79. We 
were both on sabbatical and I was writing my book on Wittgenstein while he 
was writing his book on Hegel and Kierkegaard. When he became one of the 
leading spokesmen for Derrida in America, I entered into some very heated 
private exchanges with him. Regardless of our differences, I find his 
eulogy below from today's NY Times very insightful.

In "Wittgenstein and Deconstruction" I defend Wittgenstein against a 
Derridean interpretation, and you can find this piece at 
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/WittDeCon.htm

What Derrida Really Meant
By MARK C. TAYLOR

         Along with Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, Jacques 
Derrida, who died last week in Paris at the age of 74, will be remembered 
as one of the three most important [continental] philosophers of the 20th 
century. No thinker in the last 100 years had a greater impact than he did 
on people in more fields and different disciplines. Philosophers, 
theologians, literary and art critics, psychologists, historians, writers, 
artists, legal scholars and even architects have found in his writings 
resources for insights that have led to an extraordinary revival of the 
arts and humanities during the past four decades. And no thinker has been 
more deeply misunderstood.

         To people addicted to sound bites and overnight polls, Mr. 
Derrida's works seem hopelessly obscure. It is undeniable that they cannot 
be easily summarized or reduced to one-liners. The obscurity of his 
writing, however, does not conceal a code that can be cracked, but reflects 
the density and complexity characteristic of all great works of philosophy, 
literature and art. Like good French wine, his works age well. The more one 
lingers with them, the more they reveal about our world and ourselves.
What makes Mr. Derrida's work so significant is the way he brought insights 
of major philosophers, writers, artists and theologians to bear on problems 
of urgent contemporary interest. Most of his infamously demanding texts 
consist of careful interpretations of canonical writers in the Western 
philosophical, literary and artistic traditions - from Plato to Joyce. By 
reading familiar works against the grain, he disclosed concealed meanings 
that created new possibilities for imaginative expression.

         Mr. Derrida's name is most closely associated with the often cited 
but rarely understood term "deconstruction." Initially formulated to define 
a strategy for interpreting sophisticated written and visual works, 
deconstruction has entered everyday language. When responsibly understood, 
the implications of deconstruction are quite different from the misleading 
clichés often used to describe a process of dismantling or taking things 
apart. The guiding insight of deconstruction is that every structure - be 
it literary, psychological, social, economic, political or religious - that 
organizes our experience is constituted and maintained through acts of 
exclusion. In the process of creating something, something else inevitably 
gets left out.

         These exclusive structures can become repressive - and that 
repression comes with consequences. In a manner reminiscent of Freud, Mr. 
Derrida insists that what is repressed does not disappear but always 
returns to unsettle every construction, no matter how secure it seems. As 
an Algerian Jew writing in France during the postwar years in the wake of 
totalitarianism on the right (fascism) as well as the left (Stalinism), Mr. 
Derrida understood all too well the danger of beliefs and ideologies that 
divide the world into diametrical opposites: right or left, red or blue, 
good or evil, for us or against us. He showed how these repressive 
structures, which grew directly out of the Western intellectual and 
cultural tradition, threatened to return with devastating consequences. By 
struggling to find ways to overcome patterns that exclude the differences 
that make life worth living, he developed a vision that is consistently 
ethical.

         And yet, supporters on the left and critics on the right have 
misunderstood this vision. Many of Mr. Derrida's most influential followers 
appropriated his analyses of marginal writers, works and cultures as well 
as his emphasis on the importance of preserving differences and respecting 
others to forge an identity politics that divides the world between the 
very oppositions that it was Mr. Derrida's mission to undo: black and 
white, men and women, gay and straight. Betraying Mr. Derrida's insights by 
creating a culture of political correctness, his self-styled supporters 
fueled the culture wars that have been raging for more than two decades and 
continue to frame politicTo his critics, Mr. Derrida appeared to be a 
pernicious nihilist who threatened the very foundation of Western society 
and culture. By insisting that truth and absolute value cannot be known 
with certainty, his detractors argue, he undercut the very possibility of 
moral judgment. To follow Mr. Derrida, they maintain, is to start down the 
slippery slope of skepticism and relativism that inevitably leaves us 
powerless to act responsibly.

         This is an important criticism that requires a careful response. 
Like Kant, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Mr. Derrida does argue that 
transparent truth and absolute values elude our grasp. This does not mean, 
however, that we must forsake the cognitive categories and moral principles 
without which we cannot live: equality and justice, generosity and 
friendship. Rather, it is necessary to recognize the unavoidable 
limitations and inherent contradictions in the ideas and norms that guide 
our actions, and do so in a way that keeps them open to constant 
questioning and continual revision. There can be no ethical action without 
critical reflection.

         During the last decade of his life, Mr. Derrida became preoccupied 
with religion and it is in this area that his contribution might well be 
most significant for our time. He understood that religion is impossible 
without uncertainty. Whether conceived of as Yahweh, as the father of Jesus 
Christ, or as Allah, God can never be fully known or adequately represented 
by imperfect human beings.

         And yet, we live in an age when major conflicts are shaped by 
people who claim to know, for certain, that God is on their side. Mr. 
Derrida reminded us that religion does not always give clear meaning, 
purpose and certainty by providing secure foundations. To the contrary, the 
great religious traditions are profoundly disturbing because they all call 
certainty and security into question. Belief not tempered by doubt poses a 
mortal danger.

         As the process of globalization draws us ever closer in networks 
of communication and exchange, there is an understandable longing for 
simplicity, clarity and certainty. This desire is responsible, in large 
measure, for the rise of cultural conservatism and religious fundamentalism 
- in this country and around the world. True believers of every stripe - 
Muslim, Jewish and Christian - cling to beliefs that, Mr. Derrida warns, 
threaten to tear apart our world.

         Fortunately, he also taught us that the alternative to blind 
belief is not simply unbelief but a different kind of belief - one that 
embraces uncertainty and enables us to respect others whom we do not 
understand. In a complex world, wisdom is knowing what we don't know so 
that we can keep the future open.
In the two decades I knew Mr. Derrida, we had many meetings and exchanges. 
In conversation, he listened carefully and responded helpfully to questions 
whether posed by undergraduates or colleagues. As a teacher, he gave freely 
of his time to several generations of students.

         But small things are the measure of the man. In 1986, my family 
and I were in Paris and Mr. Derrida invited us to dinner at his house in 
the suburbs 20 miles away. He insisted on picking us up at our hotel, and 
when we arrived at his home he presented our children with carnival masks. 
At 2 a.m., he drove us back to the city. In later years, when my son and 
daughter were writing college papers on his work, he sent them letters and 
postcards of encouragement as well as signed copies of several of his 
books. Jacques Derrida wrote eloquently about the gift of friendship but in 
these quiet gestures - gestures that served to forge connections among 
individuals across their differences - we see deconstruction in action.

Mark C. Taylor, a professor of the humanities at Williams College and a 
visiting professor of architecture and religion at Columbia, is the author, 
most recently, of "Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World Without 
Redemption."
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