Abstract

What, ultimately, is the nature of reality according to Derrida? What, in his scheme of things, is being, what is time? What is consciousness and how should we conceive of the relation between self and other? What sort of metaphysics, or, more specifically, what sort of ontology if any can Derrida justifiably be said to adhere to? The aim of this chapter is to address these questions in a way that will not be entirely disloyal, or, rather, will be as loyal as possible, to Derrida's legacy. In “Violence and Metaphysics,” Derrida subjects this term to a relentless deconstruction. In Specters of Marx, written almost 30 years later than “Violence and Metaphysics,” Derrida famously invokes and sketches what he calls hauntology, namely, a “logic of haunting” understood as a discourse and practice that would transcend “the opposition between presence and non‐presence, actuality and inactuality, life and non‐life”.