Editing Deconstruction (section)

==Deconstruction according to Derrida==
===Etymology===
Derrida's original use of the word ''deconstruction'' was a translation of the German ''[[Destruktion]]'', a concept from the work of [[Martin Heidegger]] that Derrida sought to apply to textual reading. Heidegger's term referred to a process of exploring the categories and concepts that tradition has imposed on a word, and the history behind them.<ref name="Heidegger">{{cite book|last1=Heidegger|first1=Martin|last2=Macquarrie|first2=John|last3=Robinson|first3=Edward|title=Being and Time|date=2006|publisher=Blackwell|location=Oxford|isbn=9780631197706|pages=21–23|edition=1st|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S57m5gW0L-MC|access-date=8 September 2017|language=en}}</ref>

===Basic philosophical concerns===
Derrida's concerns flow from a consideration of several issues:

* A desire to contribute to the re-evaluation of all Western values, a re-evaluation built on the 18th-century [[Immanuel Kant|Kantian]] [[Critique of Pure Reason|critique of pure reason]], and carried forward to the 19th century, in its more radical implications, by [[Søren Kierkegaard|Kierkegaard]] and [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]].
* An assertion that texts outlive their authors, and become part of a set of cultural habits equal to, if not surpassing, the importance of authorial intent.
* A re-valuation of certain classic western dialectics: poetry vs. philosophy, reason vs. revelation, structure vs. creativity, [[episteme]] vs. [[techne]], etc.

To this end, Derrida follows a long line of modern philosophers, who look backwards to Plato and his influence on the Western metaphysical tradition.<ref name="Zuckert">{{cite book|last1=Zuckert|first1=Catherine H.|title=Postmodern Platos: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss, Derrida|date=1996|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|isbn=978-0226993317|chapter=7}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=September 2017}} Like Nietzsche, Derrida suspects Plato of dissimulation in the service of a political project, namely the education, through critical reflections, of a class of citizens more strategically positioned to influence the polis. However, unlike Nietzsche, Derrida is not satisfied with such a merely political interpretation of Plato, because of the particular dilemma in which modern humans find themselves. His Platonic reflections are inseparably part of his critique of [[modernity]], hence his attempt to be something beyond the modern, because of his Nietzschean sense that the modern has lost its way and become mired in [[nihilism]].

=== {{Lang|fr|Différance}} ===
{{Main|Différance}}
{{Lang|fr|Différance}} is the observation that the meanings of words come from their [[Synchrony and diachrony|synchrony]] with other words within the language and their [[Synchrony and diachrony|diachrony]] between contemporary and historical definitions of a word. Understanding language, according to Derrida, requires an understanding of both viewpoints of linguistic analysis. The focus on diachrony has led to accusations against Derrida of engaging in the [[etymological fallacy]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Soskice|first1=Janet Martin|title=Metaphor and Religious Language|date=1987|publisher=Clarendon|location=Oxford|isbn=9780198249825|pages=[https://archive.org/details/metaphorreligiou0000sosk/page/80 80–82]|edition=Paperback|url=https://archive.org/details/metaphorreligiou0000sosk/page/80}}</ref>

There is one statement by Derrida—in an essay on [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]] in ''[[Of Grammatology]]''—which has been of great interest to his opponents.<ref name="Derrida"/>{{rp|158}} It is the assertion that "there is no outside-text" ({{Lang|fr|il n'y a pas de hors-texte}}),<ref name="Derrida"/>{{rp|158–59, 163}} which is often mistranslated as "there is nothing outside of the text". The mistranslation is often used to suggest Derrida believes that nothing exists but words. [[Michel Foucault]], for instance, famously misattributed to Derrida the very different phrase {{Lang|fr|Il n'y a rien en dehors du texte}} for this purpose.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Foucault|first1=Michel|last2=Howard|first2=Richard|last3=Cooper|first3=David|title=Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason|date=2001|publisher=Routledge|location=London|isbn=978-0415253857|page=602|edition=Reprint}}</ref> According to Derrida, his statement simply refers to the unavoidability of context that is at the heart of {{Lang|fr|différance}}.<ref name="Limited">{{cite book|last1=Derrida|first1=Jacques|title=Limited Inc|date=1995|publisher=Northwestern University Press|location=Evanston|isbn=978-0810107885|edition=4th|title-link=Limited Inc}}</ref>{{rp|133}}

For example, the word ''house'' derives its meaning more as a function of how it differs from ''shed'', ''mansion'', ''hotel'', ''building'', etc. (form of content, which [[Louis Hjelmslev]] distinguished from form of expression) than how the word ''house'' may be tied to a certain image of a traditional house (i.e., the relationship between [[signified and signifier]]), with each term being established in reciprocal determination with the other terms than by an ostensive description or definition: when can one talk about a ''house'' or a ''mansion'' or a ''shed''? The same can be said about verbs in all languages: when should one stop saying ''walk'' and start saying ''run''? The same happens, of course, with adjectives: when must one stop saying ''yellow'' and start saying ''orange'', or exchange ''past'' for ''present''? Not only are the topological differences between the words relevant here, but the differentials between what is signified is also covered by {{Lang|fr|différance}}.

Thus, complete meaning is always "differential" and ''postponed'' in language; there is never a moment when meaning is complete and total. A simple example would consist of looking up a given word in a dictionary, then proceeding to look up the words found in that word's definition, etc., also comparing with older dictionaries. Such a process would never end.

===Metaphysics of presence===
{{Main|Metaphysics of presence}}
Derrida describes the task of deconstruction as the identification of metaphysics of presence, or ''[[logocentrism]]'' in western philosophy. Metaphysics of presence is the desire for immediate access to meaning, the privileging of presence over absence. This means that there is an assumed bias in certain binary oppositions where one side is placed in a position over another, such as good over bad, speech over the written word, male over female. Derrida writes,
{{blockquote|Without a doubt, Aristotle thinks of time on the basis of ''[[ousia]]'' as ''[[parousia]]'', on the basis of the now, the point, etc. And yet an entire reading could be organized that would repeat in Aristotle's text both this limitation and its opposite.<ref name="Heidegger"/>{{rp|29–67}}}}
To Derrida, the central bias of logocentrism was the now being placed as more important than the future or past. This argument is largely based on the earlier work of Heidegger, who, in ''[[Being and Time]]'', claimed that the theoretical attitude of pure presence is parasitical upon a more [[wikt:originary|originary]] involvement with the world in concepts such as [[ready-to-hand]] and [[being-with]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Heidegger |first=Martin |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/243467373 |title=Being and time |date=22 July 2008 |publisher=HarperPerennial/Modern Thought |others=John Macquarrie, Edward S. Robinson |orig-date=1962 |isbn=978-0-06-157559-4 |edition=Reprint |location=New York |oclc=243467373}}</ref>

===Deconstruction and dialectics===
In the deconstruction procedure, one of the main concerns of Derrida is to not collapse into Hegel's dialectic, where these oppositions would be reduced to contradictions in a dialectic that has the purpose of resolving it into a synthesis.<ref name="Derrida2"/>{{rp|43}} The presence of Hegelian dialectics was enormous in the intellectual life of France during the second half of the 20th century, with the influence of [[Alexandre Kojève|Kojève]] and [[Jean Hyppolite|Hyppolite]], but also with the impact of dialectics based on contradiction developed by [[Marxism|Marxists]], and including the [[existentialism]] of [[Jean-Paul Sartre|Sartre]], etc. This explains Derrida's concern to always distinguish his procedure from Hegel's,<ref name="Derrida2"/>{{rp|43}} since Hegelianism believes binary oppositions would produce a synthesis, while Derrida saw binary oppositions as incapable of collapsing into a synthesis free from the original contradiction.