Jacques Derrida by James Mannion
Jacques Derrida (1930–) is another contemporary French philosopher who started the philosophical school called deconstruction. Deconstruction is the process of breaking down of a thing (in Derrida's case, language) to show that what is being stated is in fact inherently false.
Linguistics, the study of language, is Derrida's area of expertise. He sees language as a flawed means of communication, arguing that the reader can not really know the author's true intent, and for that matter, neither can the author. The text you are reading may have an entirely different meaning to you than the author intends, and the author may not even have a clue about what the meaning of his words are.
There are an infinite number of interpretations to any finite body of text, according to Derrida. To him, language is a fluid concept and often a stormy sea of contradictory meanings and multiple interpretations. And the ever-impish Derrida did not suggest that he was immune to all this. His voluminous writings, if deconstructed, would be as flawed and bogus as anyone else's.
Logocentricism is Derrida's derisive phrase for philosophy. Logos is the Greek word for “word,” and logocentric means that philosophers see their writings as superior to other forms of writing, including fiction, poetry, or other manners of linguistic expression.
Derrida is considered by many to be a twentieth-century Sophist. He is playing language games to provoke and, in some cases, annoy. He thumbs his nose at traditional philosophy by saying that philosophy is logocentric.
