Editing Deconstruction (section)

===Influence of Nietzsche===
[[File:Nietzsche187a.jpg|thumb|Friedrich Nietzsche]]
Derrida's motivation for developing deconstructive criticism, suggesting the fluidity of language over static forms, was largely inspired by [[Friedrich Nietzsche]]'s philosophy, beginning with his interpretation of [[Trophonius]]. In ''Daybreak'', Nietzsche announces that "All things that live long are gradually so saturated with reason that their origin in unreason thereby becomes improbable. Does not almost every precise history of an origination impress our feelings as paradoxical and wantonly offensive? Does the good historian not, at bottom, constantly contradict?".<ref>{{cite book|title=Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality|last1=Nietzsche|first1=Friedrich|last2=Clark|first2=Maudemarie|last3=Leiter|first3=Brian|last4=Hollingdale|first4=R.J.|date=1997|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0521599634|location=Cambridge, U.K.|pages=8–9}}</ref>

Nietzsche's point in ''Daybreak'' is that standing at the end of modern history, modern thinkers know too much to continue to be deceived by an illusory grasp of satisfactorily complete reason. Mere proposals of heightened reasoning, logic, philosophizing and science are no longer solely sufficient as the royal roads to truth. Nietzsche disregards Platonism to revisualize the history of the West as the self-perpetuating history of a series of political moves, that is, a manifestation of the [[will to power]], that at bottom have no greater or lesser claim to truth in any noumenal (absolute) sense. By calling attention to the fact that he has assumed the role of a subterranean Trophonius, in dialectical opposition to Plato, Nietzsche hopes to sensitize readers to the political and cultural context, and the political influences that impact authorship.

Where Nietzsche did not achieve deconstruction, as Derrida sees it, is that he missed the opportunity to further explore the will to power as more than a manifestation of the sociopolitically effective operation of writing that Plato characterized, stepping beyond Nietzsche's penultimate revaluation of all Western values, to the ultimate, which is the emphasis on "the role of writing in the production of knowledge".<ref name="Zuckert"/>