Abstract

In this dissertation, I give an exposition and evaluation of the writings of Jacques Derrida. I explain the motivations for Derrida's strategy of interpretation, which he calls "deconstruction": why it proceeds through a commentary on philosophical texts, why certain topics, such as the relation between speech and writing, are important, and why Derrida must resort to a novel vocabulary to articulate what he calls the closure of philosophy and what might lie outside it. I try to set out the major themes of Derrida's work: the priority of structural and differential relations over simple presence, the role of absence and play in the transformation of structure, the independence of the linguistic sign from meaning, truth, and reference, and the overcoming of philosophical oppositions, like sensible/intelligible, real/ideal, and transcendental/empirical, in the interweavings and networks which Derrida calls "writing," "trace," and "difference." ;I examine these themes primarily as they develop in Derrida's interpretation of structuralism and phenomenology, giving particular attention to Derrida's deconstruction of Saussure in the first part of Of Grammatology and his deconstruction of Husserl in Speech and Phenomena. These works obtain their importance because they contain Derrida's clearest arguments for his positions and because, as I shall argue, deconstruction remains dependent on the principles and presuppositions of phenomenology and structuralism, if only as a necessary point of departure. ;I conclude by arguing that while Derrida's notion of difference offers a forceful displacement of phenomenological and structuralist themes, the more radical aspects of Derrida's position can be avoided if we follow Kant in not identifying truth with the presence of the thing itself.