Editing Deconstruction (section)

===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]].