Abstract

Based on key texts of Derrida as well as his interviews and recently published seminars the article presents a “micrological” analysis of deconstructivist thought in the context of its appeal to phenomenology of Husserl and fundamental ontology of Heidegger. Derrida begins his intellectual path with a reflection on the most important topics of Husserlian phenomenology and discovers in the descriptions of temporalization a paradoxical movement of the immanent self-deconstruction of phenomenology. It from within undermines its own basic principle of the primordial givenness of the living present to itself in its whole presence. From the point of view of Derrida’s deconstruction, the living present of self-presence of the transcendental ego, like itself, is no longer the original source of sense, meaning, knowledge and experience but rather the effect of difference. Derrida discovers the radical constitutive dependence of the present on the trace of the inevitably lost past, thus, his thought resolutely destroys the primordial nature of the present and roots it in the true “origin” as a game of delays and differences. Similarly, Derrida criticizes the project of fundamental ontology. While Heidegger conceives of the ontological difference between being and Being as the last hidden basis of any question in the discourse of metaphysics, Derrida insists that this differentiation is derived from différance as an even more primordial movement of difference. And although Derrida claims to have a more essential comprehension of the core of metaphysics compared to Husserl and Heidegger and even confidently classifies their philosophical work ones to the field of metaphysics, he continues to use the resources of phenomenological and transcendental discourse again and again, leaving them without any criticism. The most telling example here is the use of the phrase “always already” (toujours déjà, immer schon), incredibly common in the works of Heidegger and Husserl (as well as most other most famous modern phenomenologists) and accompanying most of Derrida’s texts. In this article we seek to draw attention to the mystery power of this phrase, which hides the secret of the origins of phenomenological, fundamental-ontological, transcendental, and deconstructivist discourses as such, and also to demonstrate the possibilities of self-deconstruction of deconstruction, which with new urgency returns us to the problem of defining the limits of metaphysics and the “margins of philosophy”.