Jacques Derrida - biography, information, personal life. Biography of Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida representative

Derrida Jacques(1930-2004) – French philosopher, literary critic and cultural critic. His concept (deconstructivism) uses the philosophizing motives of Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Freud, Heidegger and others. According to the philosopher, the Western European tradition initially defined being from time, from the moment of the present (as presence), but temporality refers to spatial characteristics. He raises the question of the exhaustion of the resources of reason in the forms in which they were used by the leading directions of European thinking. The limitations of this method of philosophical work can be overcome through deconstruction, revealing supporting concepts and metaphors in texts, indicating the non-self-identity of the text, its overlap with other texts. Derrida explores the concept of being, pointing out that there is no “living present”: the past leaves its mark on it, and the future is a sketch of outlines. Consequently, the present is not equal to itself, does not coincide with itself, it is affected by “difference”, “delay”.

Sayings:

“The reader must be either over-sophisticated or unsophisticated at all.”

“To speak your own language means to demand translation, to cry out for translation.”

“This is the fate of the tongue, to move away from the body.”

“There is something, something really there, beyond language, and everything depends on interpretation.”

Dictionary of personalities with biographical information 1 .

Comte Auguste (1798 – 1857) French scientist and philosopher, founder positivism. He studied at the Polytechnic School in Paris (1814 - 1816), but was expelled for his republican beliefs (remember that in 1814 Napoleon was overthrown and the Bourbon dynasty was restored, Louis XVIII came to power, liberal-democratic ideas sharply went out of fashion). In 1817-1822. worked as a secretary for a famous utopian that time K.A. de Saint-Simon. Later Comte taught at the Ecole Polytechnique and conducted scientific research.

Major works: "Course of Positive Philosophy" (1830-1842).

M ill John Stewart (1806-1873) - English philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, economist. One of the founders of the “first” (classical) positivism. He did not receive a school education, but his father James Mill (English historian and psychologist) turned out to be a good teacher for his son. At the age of 17, J. St. Mill founded the "utilitarian society" whose purpose was to spread Bentham's ideas. In 1823 (i.e. at the same age) he became a representative of the East India Company, of which he served until 1858. For several years (1865-1868) Mill was a member of Parliament.

Main works: “On Freedom” (1859), “Discourses on Representative Democracy” (1861), “Utilitarianism” (1863).

M ah Ernst (1838-1916) German physicist and philosopher, from 1897 to 1901 professor in Vienna, founder of the “second” positivism or Machism.

Main works: “Mechanics and its development” (1883), “Analysis of sensations and the relationship of the physical to the mental” (1886), “Cognition and delusion” (1905).

TO un Thomas Samuel (1922-1996) - American historian and philosopher, one of the leaders of the historical-evolutionary movement in the philosophy of science. He proposed a scheme (model) of the historical-scientific process as an alternation of episodes of competitive struggle between various scientific communities. The most important types of such episodes are "normal science" (the period of undivided dominance paradigms) and the “scientific revolution” (a period of paradigm collapse, competition between alternative paradigms) and, finally, the victory of one of them, the transition to a new period of “normal science”.

Main works: “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (1962), “Structure and Development of Science.”

Feyerabend Paul Karl (b.1924-1994) American philosopher and methodologist of science, post-positivist. Professor at the University of California (Berkeley). Denies the possibility of a universal method of cognition, because every development of knowledge presupposes the abandonment of old methods. Refuses the concepts of truth and objectivity, emphasizes the relativity of the criteria of rationality. It demands that science, which is the ideology of the intellectual elite, be deprived of its central place in society, equating it with religion, myth, and magic.

Main works: “Against the method. Essay on the anarchist theory of knowledge" (1975), "Science in a free society" (1978), "Problems of empiricism. Philosophical Notes" (1981).

Marx Karl Heinrich (1818-1883) - German philosopher and public figure. Born into the family of a lawyer, he studied at the Universities of Bonn (1835-1836) and Berlin (1836-1841). In 1841 he defended his doctoral dissertation in philosophy, from 1842 to 1843. worked at the Neue Rheinskaya Gazeta, after the closure of the publication he moved to Paris, collaborated with the German-French Yearbook, and here he met F. Engels. In 1847 they created the “Union of Communists” in Belgium, the program of which is set out in the “Manifesto of the Communist Party”. After the defeat of the bourgeois revolutions of 1848-49. moving to London. In 1864, the “I International” was created - an international organization of the working class. From 1857 until the end of his life, Marx began to study the problems of political economy, summarizing his research in the monumental work “ Capital».

Main works: “Capital” (1857-1883), “The Poverty of Philosophy” (1846), “Towards a Critique of Political Economy” (1859).

Engels Friedrich (1820-1895) - German philosopher, publicist, public figure. Born into a textile factory family. After graduating from high school, at the insistence of his father, he began commercial activities. In 1840-1841 served his military service, and in his free time attended lectures at the University of Berlin. In 1842-44. lived and worked in England. The meeting in 1844 with K. Marx marked the beginning of a creative collaboration that lasted until Marx’s death. Engels's independent works represent the testing of the Marxist method to real historical events and the latest achievements of scientific knowledge (for example, to the work of L. Morgan “Ancient Society”). Along with Marx, he was the leader and founder of the First International.

Main works: “Anti Dühring” (1876-1878), “Dialectics of Nature” (1873-1895 - not finished, remained in the form of separate articles and sketches), “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” (1884), “L. Feuerbach and the end of German classical philosophy" (1886).

Marcuse Herbert (1898-1979) – German-American philosopher and sociologist, one of the founders and leading representative of the Frankfurt School. In 1933 (after the Nazis came to power) he emigrated to Switzerland, and in 1934 to the USA. He considered himself a follower of Marxism, but believed that the latter needed to be updated by combining with existentialism and Freudianism. During the Cold War, he sharply negatively assessed “Soviet Marxism” and the Soviet social system, although he denied the difference between capitalism and socialism on the grounds that both of them are modifications of an industrial society in which technological progress contributes to the creation of a “total” system based on the powerful development of productive forces that stabilize it. However, within this integrity there are contradictions that cannot be resolved by revolutionary means. In 1939-50 worked for the US government, in the information agencies of the Office of Strategic Intelligence. He taught at Columbia University (1934-1941, 1951-1954), California University (1955-1964), and the University of San Diego (1965-1976).

Main works: “Hegel’s Ontology and the Basic Theories of Historicity” (1932), “Reason and Revolutions. Hegel and the formation of social theory" (1940), "Eros and civilization. Philosophical study of Freud's teachings" (1953), "Soviet Marxism. A Critical Study" (1959), "One-Dimensional Man: A Study on the Ideology of a Developed Industrial Society" (1964), etc.

Adorno (Wiesengrund – Adorno) Theodore (1903-1969) - German philosopher and sociologist, musicologist, composer, one of the leading representatives of the Frankfurt School. He began his creative activity at the age of 17, publishing a critical his article “Expressionism and Artistic Truthfulness” (1920), in which he rationally comprehended the musical material, paying attention not to expressiveness, but to cognitive(related to cognition, thinking) potential of music. From the beginning of the 20s he collaborated with the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, around which the Frankfurt School began to take shape. In 1934 he emigrated from Nazi Germany to Great Britain, and since 1938 he lived in the USA. He developed the philosophical and aesthetic concept of “new musicality,” defending the positions of aesthetic modernism and protesting against a return to classical realistic art. He influenced modern Western philosophy, sociology, aesthetics, musicology, as well as the ideology of the left-wing radical student movement of the 1960s.

Main works: “Philosophy of New Music” (1949); “Prisms. Critique of Culture and Society" (1955); "Dissonances, Music in a Controlled World" (1956); "Notes on Literature" vol.I- III, (1958,1961,1965); “Studies on Husserl and phenomenological antinomies” (1956); "The Authoritarian Personality" (1950); “Dialectics of Enlightenment” (1948 together with M. Horkheimer).

Habermas Jurgen (b. 1929) - German philosopher and sociologist. From 1961 to 1964 he taught philosophy in Heidelberg. Since 1964 - professor of philosophy and sociology in Frankfurt am Main. Since 1971 - Director of the Institute for the Study of Living Conditions in the Scientific and Technical World in Starnberg. He acted as a successor to Horkheimer and Adorno, a leading representative of the “second generation” of theorists of the Frankfurt School, and an ideologist of the “new left”. Since the early 60s, he has taken a moderate reformist position, trying to combine the humanism of traditional liberalism with the ideas of “organized” capitalism and the rule of law. His teaching is based on the critical theory of the Frankfurt school, supplemented by the ideas of psychoanalysis, analytical philosophy, and modern sociology.

ABOUT Main works: “Theory and Practice” (1963), “Knowledge and Interest” (1963), “Technology and Science Ideology” (1968), “Problems of Legitimization in the Conditions of Late Capitalism” (1973), “Towards the Reconstruction of Historical Materialism” ( 1976), “The Theory of Communicative Action” (in 2 volumes, 1981), “Morality and Communication” (1986), etc.

Reich Wilhelm (1887-1957) - Austrian psychologist and psychiatrist, founder of Freudo-Marxism, one of the leaders of left-radical Freudism. Freud's student and colleague. Doctor of Medicine (1922). In 1920 he joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. In 1924-1930 he practiced psychoanalysis at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1934 he abandoned orthodox psychoanalysis and left the International Psychoanalytic Association. In connection with the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship, he emigrated and since 1939 lived and worked in the United States. He developed a natural philosophical doctrine of “orgone energy” (natural, free-flowing sexualized life energy) and methods for its psychotherapeutic use.

Main works: “Instinctive Character” (1925); “The Function of Orgasm” (1927); “Puberty, Abstinence, Marriage Morality” (1930); “Hacking Sexual Morality. On the history of sexual economy” (1931); “Character Analysis” (1931); “Mass Psychology of Fascism” (1933); “Psychic contact and vegetative course” (1934); “Sexuality in the Struggle of Cultures” (1936); “Experimental results of studies of the electrical function of sexuality and fear” (1937); “Bion. Towards the emergence of vegetative life” (1938); “Cancer biopathy” (1948).

Freud Sigmund (1856-1939) - Austrian psychiatrist and psychologist (Jewish by nationality). He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Vienna, worked for several years in a physiological laboratory, studying the problems of the physiology of higher nervous activity and neuropathology. In 1881 he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and in 1886 he began medical practice. Trained in France with J.-M. Charcot, whose concept of “psychic trauma” and hypnosis as a treatment method have long been the basis of Freud’s work.

By the mid-1890s. formed his own concept, called “psychoanalysis.” According to this concept, the cause of neuroses is strong inclinations that arose in early childhood and were subsequently repressed into the subconscious, primarily libido. Their discoveries and conclusions based on observation of sick neuroses, Freud gradually transferred to the whole society, to all people, to the study of all social problems.

In 1838, after the Anschluss of Austria by Nazi Germany, Freud moved to London, where he died.

Major works:"Studies in Hysteria" (1895, with Breuer),"Introduction to Psychoanalysis" (1899),“The Interpretation of Dreams” (1900), “Psychopathology of Everyday Life” (1901),“Literary creativity and revived dreams” (1907), “Leonardo da Vinci. Memories of Childhood" (1910), "Totem and Taboo" (1913),"Lectures on Introduction to Psychoanalysis" (1916–1917),“Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920), “Psychology of the Masses and Analysis of the Human Self” (1921), “I” and “It” (1923), “Dostoevsky and Parricide” (1928),"Civilization and Its Discontents" (1930); “New Lectures on Introduction to Psychoanalysis” (1933); "The Man Called Moses and Monotheistic Religion" (1939).

Jung Carl Gustav (1875-1961) - Swiss psychologist and cultural scientist, founder of analytical psychology. He began his scientific activity in Zurich under the leadership of E. Bleuler; from 1906 he switched to the position of psychoanalysis, becoming a supporter of Freud. In 1913 he moved away from orthodox Freudianism, founding his own direction. After graduating from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Basel, in 1902 he defended his doctoral dissertation. In 1916 he founded his own “Psychological Club”, from the age of 20 he traveled extensively to Algeria, Tunisia, Mexico, Kenya, Ceylon, and India, trying to test his ideas about the psyche in practice. The doctrine he developed about the collective unconscious laid the foundation for a “complex” or analytical psychology. Since 1933, the Jungian Association (International Psychotherapeutic Society) was created, headed by Jung, and in 1948, near Zurich, the first “Institute of K.G. Cabin boy".

Main works: “Essays on associative psychology” (1906), “PsychologyDementia Praecox"(1907), "Metamorphoses and symbols of libido" (1912), "Psychological types" (1921), "Relations between the Self and the unconscious" (1928), "The problem of the soul in our time" (1931), "Psychology and alchemy" (1944), “Symbolism of the Spirit” (1948), “Answer to Job” (1952).

Fromm Erich (1900-1980) - German-American philosopher, sociologist, representative of neo-Freudianism. In 1922 he received his PhD degree from the University of Heidelberg, in 1922-1924. took a course in psychoanalysis at the Psychoanalytic Institute in Berlin in 1929-1932. employee of the Institute of Social Sciences research in Frankfurt am Main. In 1933 moved to the USA, where he worked at the W. White Institute of Psychiatry, taught at Columbia and Yale Universities, in 1951-67. lived in Mexico, headed the Institute of Psychoanalysis at the National University in Mexico City, and in 1974 moved to Switzerland.

He called his teaching “humanistic psychoanalysis” and sought to clarify the connection between the individual psyche and the social structure of society. He believed that it was his method that would help free people from the illusions of their existence, allow a person to realize the inauthenticity of existence in a society of total alienation, realize his essence, and restore harmony between the individual, nature, and society. Fromm considered the ability to love as a value, which gives respect for life, a feeling of attachment to the world, unity with it, helps to move from egoism to altruism, from possession to being.

Main works: “Flight from Freedom” (1941), “Psychoanalysis and Religion” (1950), “To Have or to Be?” (1976), “Fairy Tales, Myths, Dreams” (1951), “Healthy Society” (1955), “Modern Man and His Future” (1959), “Anatomy of Human Destructiveness” (1973), etc.

A dler Alfred (1870-1937) – Austrian doctor, psychologist, psychiatrist. Doctor of Medicine, professor at Columbia University (1929), founder of individual psychology. He considered it necessary to pay attention to the social aspects of human behavior. Formulated the idea of ​​an “inferiority complex,” the overcoming of which is associated with the “striving for power” (akin to Nietzsche’s “will to power”) and the attitude of “striving for community.” Insufficient or perverted compensation of the complex leads to neuroses. In later writings he abandoned the idea that compensation and feelings of inferiority are universal sources of personality development.

ABOUT Main works: “Nervous Temperament” (1912), “Knowledge of People” (1917), “Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology” (1920), “The Science of Living” (1929), “The Meaning of Life” (1933), etc.

Sullivan Harry (1892-1949) - American psychiatrist and psychologist, one of the leaders of neo-Freudianism, creator of the concept of psychiatry as the science of interpersonal relationships. Doctor of Medicine (1917), professor, graduated from the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery (1917). In 1916 he became interested in psychoanalysis, and a year later he began psychiatric practice at St. Elizabeth's Hospital. In 1923, he took a course of didactic psychoanalysis with K. Thompson, with whom he subsequently collaborated for about 25 years. Organized and implemented group treatment for schizophrenia. After 1930, he moved away from healing and took up theoretical problems and teaching. He participated in the founding of the Washington School of Psychiatry (1936), and taught there. The only work published during his lifetime was “Concepts of Modern Psychiatry” (1947); the remaining works were published by his students and followers.

Main works: “Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry” (1953), “Psychiatric Conversations” (1954), “Clinical Research in Psychiatry” (1956), “Schizophrenia as a Human Process” (1962), “Psychopathology of Personality” (1972), etc.

Horney Karen (1885-1952) - German-American psychoanalyst and psychologist, reformer of psychoanalysis and Freudianism, one of the founders of neo-Freud ism. Born and educated in Germany, she began medical practice in 1913 and worked at the German Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1932 she emigrated to the USA and worked in New York. Believed that culture influences the unconscious, i.e. neuroses and intrapersonal conflicts are social in nature. She identified the “great neuroses” of our time: 1) obsessional neurosis (the search for love and approval at any cost); 2) power neurosis (pursuit of power, prestige, possession); 3) neurosis of submission (automatic conformism); 4) isolation neurosis (flight from society).

Main works: “The Neurotic Personality of Our Time” (1937), “New Paths in Psychoanalysis” (1939), “Self-Analysis” (1942), “Our Internal Conflicts” (1945), “Neuroses and Human Development” (1950), etc. .

Sh openhauer Arthur (1788-1860) - German philosopher, founder of a system imbued with voluntarism, pessimism and irrationalism. He studied in Göttingen and Berlin and defended his dissertation at the University of Jena. At the age of 30, he completed writing his main work, “The World as Will and Representation,” which, however, was not successful. In 1820, he became an assistant professor at the University of Berlin, quarreling with Hegel, he scheduled lectures at the same hours as him, and as a result he was left without students. The failure of all endeavors grew into a sharp rejection of the era, a hostile attitude towards the crowd, unable to understand geniuses. Success came to him in the 50s. However, Schopenhauer was ironic about the praise addressed to himself, while popularizing his main work, in which he proved the thesis that “the world is my idea,” and in itself, as a “thing in itself,” it is not fully knowable. The basis of the world is will, indifferent, meaningless, aimless. Human life is suffering, discord with everyone, loneliness, boredom. The state is a “muzzle” that prevents members of society from bringing mutual struggle to the point of complete destruction. Knowledge of the irrational world through science is impossible. The doctrine of freedom is a myth; it seems to a person that he is acting according to his own will, but in reality he is driven by this will. Self-restraint is the path to happiness.

His philosophy influenced the formation of the philosophy of life, being one of the theoretical sources of the views of Nietzsche, E. Hatman and others.

Main works: “The World as Will and Ideas” (1819), “On Will and Nature” (1826), “Two Basic Problems of Ethics” (1841), “Aphorisms and Maxims” (1851).

Nietzsche Friedrich (1844-1900) - German philosopher. He called himself a descendant of Polish nobles, highly appreciating the Slavs, considering them more gifted than the Germans. Founder of the "philosophy of life". Nietzsche's grandfather and father were pastors. His father died in 1849, when Nietzsche was only five years old. Nietzsche wrote his first poems and essays at the age of ten. In 1858 he entered the Naumburg school in Pforte. In 1864-1868 he studied philology in Bonn and Leipzia. Already in April 1869 he received a professorship in Basel, which he was forced to leave in 1878 due to illness. Since 1871, Nietzsche's health deteriorated - he was tormented by a painful eye disease, leading to complete loss of vision. In December 1878, Nietzsche was stricken with paralysis, and soon after this he suffered from mental confusion. He was cared for (until his death) by his sister, Elisabeth Foerster - Nietzsche. Nietzsche was sickly, uncommunicative, awkward; however, ashamed of his shortcomings, he behaved with exaggerated dignity. Some of his assessments and statements are precisely connected with this (Nietzsche considered his work “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” “the most profound of all the books that humanity possesses”). Nietzsche is an excellent stylist, a brilliant philologist, his language is magnificent. Undoubtedly, Nietzsche was an outstanding critic and writer, essayist and poet, author of wonderful aphorisms. But the very style in which his works were written made it difficult to understand and irritated his colleagues, who considered his works unscientific. Indeed, they are far from the canons of rationality accepted at that time: “One cannot look for any peace in Nietzsche, in his philosophy there is neither final truth nor provisions that can be taken on faith... Nietzsche can only be correctly understood by those who have previously received systematic theoretical training who have acquired accuracy of thinking and perseverance. To philosophize after Nietzsche means to constantly assert oneself in opposition to him,” said Jaspers. Nietzsche fully understood his difference from others: “I disturb the peace of the night. There are words in me that break God’s heart...” According to one of his friends, he could only be merciless with ideas, but not with people - the bearers of ideas.

In his works, Nietzsche sought to create the ideal of a new man, a superman, designed to destroy everything that is false, painful, and hostile to life. Choosing between morality and freedom, he gives preference to freedom, but... “we must free ourselves from morality in order to be able to live morally”... His superman is a creator with a strong will, and above all, the creator of himself. He is generous, self-sacrificing, fearless and firm. Only he is able to endure the “eternal repetition of life.”

Nietzsche's ideas had a huge influence on subsequent philosophy. The drama of the “transitional era” of the 19th – 20th centuries was most clearly manifested in his work and personal destiny. On the one hand, Nietzsche is the heir to Western philosophical classics; on the other hand, the first decadent, poet-prophet, who, by the power of his talent, managed to draw attention to the irrational, dark, Dionysian principle, the “free play of vital forces.”

ABOUT Main works: “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music” (1872), “Human, All Too Human” (1878-1880), “Morning Dawn” (1881), “The Gay Science” (1882), “Thus Spoke Zarastustro” (1883- 1885), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Anti-Christian (1888), autobiographyEsse Homo"; After his death, his book “The Will to Power” (1901) was published.

Bergson Henri (1859-1941) - French writer, psychologist and philosopher (Jewish by birth). Born into a musician's family, he graduated from the Condorcet Lyceum and then the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and taught at a number of lyceums and higher educational institutions. In 1889 he defended two doctoral dissertations at the Sorbonne. In 1900 - 1914, professor at the College de France, in 1911 - 1915 he lectured in the USA, England, and Spain. In 1914 he was elected a member of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. In 1927 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Throughout his life he professed Judaism, and subsequently came to the conclusion that Catholicism continues Judaism, complementing it.

It is interesting that in the first half of the twentieth century, Bergson's ideas were more popular than Nietzsche's ideas; in the 40s, Bergson's philosophy was relegated to the background. Probably, the political moment played a role here: the fascists came to power in Germany, making anti-Semitism a state policy and declaring Nietzsche a symbol of the “German spirit,” which in itself is strange. Nietzsche believed that “the Jews are without a doubt the strongest, the most tenacious, the purest race now in Europe,” and the future belongs to the Jews and Russians. (However, Nietzsche’s sister, his self-proclaimed executor, was a passionate supporter of Nazism; she solemnly presented Hitler with her brother’s stick, which the Fuhrer respectfully accepted. The shadow of Nazism completely undeservedly fell on Nietzsche).

When Paris was occupied by the Nazis, all Jews were required to register. Berson, taking into account his literary and scientific merits, was given a great honor - he was released from registration. However, he refused this “honor”, ​​died on January 4, 1941 from pneumonia, caught a cold, having stood in line for many hours to register at the German commandant’s office.

Bergson representative "philosophy of life", he is also the creator of his own direction in philosophy - intuitionism.

Main works: “Matter and Memory” (1896), “Creative Evolution” (1907), “Spiritual Energy” (1919), “Duration and Simultaneity” (1922), “Two Sources of Morality and Religion” (1932), “Thought and moving" (1934), etc.

Dilthey Wilhelm (1833-1911) – German cultural historian and philosopher. Representative of the philosophy of life, founder understanding psychology and schools of the history of spirit. Born into the family of a priest, in 1852 he entered the University of Heidelberg (studied theology), then studied in Berlin. In 1864 he defended his dissertation, from 1868 he was a professor in Kiel, and from 1882 he was a professor of philosophy in Berlin. His works were appreciated only in the twentieth century; before that they were known only to a narrow circle of specialists.

Dilthey's philosophy was influenced by German idealism and romanticism (attention to the human world and interest in culture and history); Comte's positivism (anti-metaphysical attitude and method of psychologism); neo-Kantianism of the Baden school (confrontation between the natural-scientific and cultural-historical methods of research). He paid special attention to “comprehension” of the inner world and “understanding” of texts, which had a significant impact on the development of hermeneutics.

ABOUT Main works: “Introduction to the sciences of the spirit” (1883), “Towards a solution to the question of the origin of our belief in the reality of the external world and its validity” (1890), “Descriptive psychology” (1894), “Experience and poetry” (1905) , “Construction of the Historical World in the Sciences of the Spirit” (1910).

Spengler Oswald (1880-1936) - German philosopher, representative of the philosophy of life, one of the founders of modern philosophy of culture.

Studied natural sciences and mathematics in Munich, Berlin, Halle. In 1908 – 1911 He taught history and mathematics at a gymnasium in Hamburg, and in 1911 he moved to Munich, where he worked as a free writer. In 1918, the first volume of his main work, “The Decline of Europe,” was published, after which he became the ruler of souls for many Germans. Defeat in the First World War made the idea of ​​the imminent death or decline of European culture especially popular. In the 20s, he published a number of articles in a conservative-nationalist spirit. After the Nazis came to power, he rejected their offer of cooperation, although before that some of the provisions of the National Socialists found a response in him. The work “Years of Decision” ridiculed anti-Semitism and “Teutonic dreams”; as a result, by order of the authorities, the book was destroyed, and Spengler’s name was forbidden to be mentioned in print.

Having experienced the influence of Nietzsche's ideas, Spengler worked a lot and actively in his foundation. But in 1935, as a sign of protest against the systematic distortion of Nietzsche’s teachings, he broke off relations with this organization. In response to this, the fascists declare him a counter-revolutionary.

In the last years of his life, he moved away from political battles and took up problems of ancient history.

ABOUT Main works: “The Decline of Europe” (It. – 1918,IIt. – 1922), “Prussianism and Socialism” (1920), “Political Responsibilities and German Youth” (1924), “Restoration of the German Empire” (1924), “Man and Technology” (1931), “Years of Decision” (1933 ).

Schleiermacher Friedrich Ernst Daniel (1768-1834) - German philosopher, theologian and philologist. He studied theology at the University of Halle, after graduating he was a home teacher. Then he served for several years as a preacher in Landerberg and Berlin. This time had a very significant impact on his spiritual development; he became close to the German romantics and became friends with F. Schlegel. In 1802, due to contradictions with the Protestant Church, he was transferred to the court preacher in Scholpe (that is, he was practically sent into exile). Two years later, an offer was nevertheless received to take the place of extraordinary (here - supernumerary, not occupying the department) professor of philosophy and theology in Hull. After the closure of the university in Hall, Schleiermacher moved to Berlin, where he received a position as a preacher and professor at the university (established according to his plan). The result of his academic activity was the theological and philosophical school, which was later named after him. He was particularly interested in the history of Greek philosophy, translated Plato a lot, and stood at the origins of modern philosophical hermeneutics. His works (most of them were published after his death) are quite varied: he proposed a romantic interpretation of religion, a new reading of Plato.

Main works: “Speeches on Religion to Educated People Who Despise It” (1799), “Monologues” (1800), “Doctrine of Faith” (1822), “On the Difference Between the Laws of Nature and the Laws of Morality” (1825), “Dialectics” (1839), “Aesthetics” (1842), “The Doctrine of the State” (1845), “Psychology” (1864), “Philosophy of Ethics” (1870).

Heidegger Martin (1889-1976) - German philosopher who played a significant role in the development of philosophical hermeneutics and existentialism. He studied at Jesuit lyceums in Constance and Freiburg, and listened to theology, natural sciences, mathematics, and philosophy at the University of Freiburg. His philosophical formation was influenced by Augustine, Luther, Pascal, Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Dilthey, Husserl, Jaspers.

After defending his doctoral dissertation under Rickert, Heidegger assisted Husserl and was a professor at the University of Marburg from 1923 to 1928. In 1929, he replaced the retired Husserl at the department of philosophy at the University of Freiburg. Since the 1930s, he has focused on understanding the freedom to which man is open and with which existence is first revealed in its essence. In 1933, he was elected rector of the Freiburg Institute, as a person capable of finding a way to defend university autonomy under Nazi conditions, but a year later he left the rectorship, having fewer and fewer opportunities to publish, and turned to teaching. In lecture courses on Nietzsche's "will to power" and "eternal return" (1936-1944), he explores nihilism as a way of forgetting the difference between being and existing, leading to the thoughtless conquest of the planet in the struggle for world domination, and ultimately to the devastation of the earth , on the dead plain of which a “working beast”, a man who has missed his truth, will wander. In 1944, he was subjected to a “mass conscription” and sent to dig fortifications. The French occupation authorities deprived him of the right to teach for membership in the fascist party and sympathy for Nazism, but in 1951 he resumed his activities. In the same year, having officially retired, he settled in the mountains and was engaged in research work. In the post-war period, he was interested in problems of technology, peace and language.

Main works: “Being and Time” (1927), “What is Metaphysics?” (1929), “Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics” (1929), “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth” (1942), “Letter on Humanism” (1943), “Untravelled Paths” (1950), “Introduction to Metaphysics” (1953), "What is philosophy?" (1956), “Paths to Language” (1961), “Nietzsche” (1961), “Technique and the Turn” (1962), “Landmarks” (1967).

Gadamer Hans-Georg (1900-2002) - an outstanding German philosopher, he is considered one of the founders of philosophical hermeneutics. He studied in Breslau, then in Marburg, defended his doctoral dissertation in 1929, and since 1939 he has been professor of philosophy in Leipzig, rector of the University of Leipzig (1946-1947), professor of philosophy in Heidelberg (since 1949). After the publication of Truth and Method in 1960, he became widely known. After 1968, he taught abroad for about twenty years (longest in the USA).

G Adamer gives hermeneutics a universal character, seeing its task not as developing a method of understanding (which was the case with Dilthey), but to clarify the nature of this understanding. He saw the all-determining significance of understanding in the finitude and historicity of human existence. Recognized the validity of many types of interpretation. He considered hermeneutics as ontology, the basis of which is language. The world itself expresses itself in language. The philosophical significance of hermeneutic experience according to Gadamer is that it comprehends truth that is inaccessible to scientific knowledge. In an effort to develop the concept of truth corresponding to hermeneutic experience (the forms of which are the experience of philosophy, the experience of art and the experience of history), Gadamer turns to the concept of play, considering it as an independent subject. It is not the players who play, but the game itself, drawing the players into itself and not letting them go. Gadamer extends the concept of play to hermeneutics, making this concept the starting point in comprehending the truth.

Main works: “Truth and Method” (1960), “Plato’s Dialectical Ethics” (1931), “Goethe and Philosophy” (1947), “Hegel’s Dialectic” (1971), “Dialogue and Dialectic” (1980), “Heidegger’s Way "(1983), "In Praise of Theory" (1984), etc.

Kierkegaard (Kirkegaard) Soren (1813-1855) - Danish writer, philosopher, Protestant theologian. Born into the family of a businessman, who married his maid for a second marriage. He was the seventh (last child) in the family, but five of his older brothers died, and the remaining one became a Lutheran bishop. Kierkegaard himself, at the behest of his father, became a student at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen, from which he graduated in 1840. In 1841 he received a master's degree for a dissertation on the problems of irony.

Kierkegaard was in love with Regina Olsen, they were even engaged for three years, but then he returned her wedding ring. Regina said later: “He sacrificed me for God.” And Kierkegaard once noted that many men become geniuses and heroes thanks to a woman, but never thanks to their wife. He wrote that if he had married Regina, he would never have become himself.

His ideas were formed under the influence of German Romanism, as well as the anti-rationalist reaction to Hegelian philosophy. He criticized Hegel for objectivism, believing that the desire to understand man in the historically specific form of the objective spirit places the individual under the power of the “anonymous” domination of history and deprives him of freedom. Kierkegaard pointed out that faith is illogical and paradoxical and cannot be explained. A person on the path to God goes through three stages - aesthetic, ethical and religious. An aesthetically living individual strives for pleasure and pays for it by refusing to acquire truth. Refusal inevitably leads to dissatisfaction and despair. True despair overtakes a person at the ethical stage of development. It is this that leads to sincere faith and helps to become truly free.

During his lifetime, Kierkegaard's philosophy was not popular. It became widely known only in the 20th century, finding a response in Protestant dialectical theology and existentialism. Kierkegaard's moral and religious issues are consonant with the ideas of Dostoevsky. The recognition of the impossibility of cognizing with reason the “last truths” of existence, revealed in the “suddenness of the mysterious,” brings him closer to Shestov. In general, Kierkegaard's style of philosophizing becomes a model for irrationalism.

Main works: “From the notes of someone still living” (1838), “On the concept of irony” (1841), “Instructive speeches” (1842), “Fear and Trembling” (1843), “Repetition” (1843), “Philosophical crumbs” (1844), “The Concept of Fear” (1844), “Stages of the Path of Life” (1845), “Final Unscientific Afterword” (1846), “The Work of Love” (1847), “Christian Speeches” (1848), “Sickness unto Death” "(1849), "Introduction to Christianity" (1850).

Jaspers Karl (1883-1969) - German existentialist philosopher and psychiatrist. He studied law at the universities of Heidelberg and Munich, medicine at the universities of Berlin, Göttingen, and Heidelberg. The choice of professions and interests were probably determined by: Jaspers’ father is a lawyer, director of a bank; and Jaspers himself and chalk is a congenital incurable disease of the bronchi that constantly provokes heart failure. Jaspers was diagnosed with this dangerous disease, which usually takes people to the grave no later than the age of thirty, at the age of 18. “Due to illness,” the philosopher recalled, “I could not take part in the joys of youth. Traveling had to be stopped at the beginning of the student period; it was impossible to ride, swim, or dance. On the other hand, the disease also excluded... military service and thereby the danger of dying in war... It’s amazing what kind of love for health a state of illness develops...” He was inclined to communication and friendship, but learned forced loneliness too early. However, he had friends. While still a student, he met his future wife Gertrude, who professionally studied philosophy. They married in 1910, three years later. The young people were close in spirit and loved each other. It is likely that Jaspers’ interest in philosophy arose not without the influence of his wife, and “philosophizing at the level of existence” became a serious hobby for the rest of his life.

He became a doctor of medicine in 1909, a doctor of psychology in 1913, a professor of psychology in 1916, a professor of philosophy since (1922) at Gedelbedi (1916-1937, 1945-1948) and Basel (1948-1961) universities. The range of his scientific interests is very diverse. His first major work, “General Psychopathology” (1913), which he defended as a doctoral dissertation in psychology, was based on the method of descriptive philosophy of the early Husserl and the “understanding psychology” of Dilthey. Jaspers was attracted by the problem of the psychology of characters and talents, as well as the pathography of outstanding personalities (gr. pathos - suffering, illness; grapho - writing, i.e. description of pathology - a very fashionable topic in those days - genius and illness). Subsequently, he published several works on Strindberg and Van Gogh, on Swedenborg and Hölderlin, and on Nietzsche. Later (in 1919) “The Psychology of Worldviews” was published, which touched upon philosophical themes proper and brought the author wide fame. “The Psychology of Worldviews” was written largely under the influence of M. Weber. “No thinker was (then and to this day) as important to my philosophy as Max Weber,” Jaspers later wrote. What they had in common was a cruel separation of ideological values ​​and scientific benefits, the consideration of philosophy as a spiritual attitude that presupposes transcendence and “I don’t know the latter,” distinguishing it from other sciences. The philosophers were brought together by their passion for the works of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, as well as their interest in politics. The Jaspers family took an active part in public life: Jaspers’s grandfather and father, as well as his mother’s two brothers, were deputies of the Landtag in Oldenburg; In addition, my father was the chairman of the Oldenburg magistrate for a long time. Jaspers himself was a supporter of political freedoms and an ardent opponent of totalitarianism in all its manifestations. In 1937, for his beliefs, he lost the right to teach at the university and publish his works in Germany. His marriage to a Jewish woman actually put the philosopher “outlawed” in the fascist state. For more than 8 years he wrote “on the table,” expecting arrest every day. Only in 1945, after the defeat of Nazism, did Jaspers return to teaching. During these years, he was interested in the problem of overcoming the ideological and political upheavals of Western civilization of the twentieth century (“On Truth” (1947), “The Question of Wine” (1946), “On the European Spirit” (1946), “The Origins of History and Its Purpose” ( 1948), "Philosophical Faith" (1948)). He thought about how to save humanity, plunged by totalitarianism in the twentieth century into bloody wars and destructive revolutions. He saw a way out in turning to humanistic traditions and acquiring philosophical faith.

Jaspers’ existential philosophy is colored by personal intonation, it is a free reflection on vital issues, which brings it closer to the works of humanist writers of the Enlightenment (Lessing, Herder, Humboldt, Goethe), as well as to the “philosophy of life” and “philosophy of culture” of Simmel, Spengler, Huizenga.

Jaspers was attracted to the works of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard; he repeatedly noted that philosophy cannot be purely objective (strictly scientific) knowledge, because cannot be distracted from the inner world of the philosophizing.

The subject of Jaspers' philosophy is man and history (as the original dimension of human existence). The key concept in his analysis of existence is the situation, the unique conditions that define the historical uniqueness of a certain human destiny, in its pain, joy, hope, guilt. Jaspers called all this “time”, “epoch”; and the world was for him “actual reality in time.” He viewed history as a situation - a general, typical or “historically determined, one-time situation.” He created the concept of "axial time". Recently, Jaspers' idea that philosophy destroys the dogmatism constantly cultivated by science and the ambitious claims of scientists is finding more and more support all over the world.

Main works: “Reason and Existence” (1935), “Philosophy”: T.1. “Philosophical orientation in the world”, Vol.2. – “Clarification of Existence”, T.3. – “Metaphysics” (1931-1932); “Where is the Federal Republic of Germany heading” (1967), “The origins of history and its purpose” (1948), “Our future and Goethe” (1947), “Reason and anti-reason in our era” (1950), “On the conditions and possibilities of a new humanism” (1962), “The Meaning and Purpose of History” (1949).

WITH arthr Jean-Paul (1905-1980) French writer and philosopher, one of the largest representatives of existentialism. In 1924-28 studied in Paris at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Ecole Normale), where he studied philosophy. From 1931 to 1933 he was a teacher in Le Havre and Lyon. From 1933 to 1934, he received a special scholarship from the Institute of France and studied the works of Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, and Jaspers in Berlin (Sartre was personally acquainted with all of them). From 1937 to 1939 he worked as a philosophy teacher at the Pasteur Lyceum in Paris. In 1939, during the war with Germany, he was drafted into the army. From 1940 to 1941 he was in captivity, then was released and returned to Paris, where he took part in the Resistance movement and was quite strongly influenced by the ideas of Marxism. In 1948 he took an active part in the creation of the “Revolutionary Democratic Association, Middle Class”. His wife was the talented writer Simone de Beauvoir.

In 1950 he tried to create a left-wing political movement by founding the magazine “New Times”; in the 60-70s. became an ideologist of the rebellious movement (mainly youth), was fond of the ideals of Maoism and the Chinese “cultural revolution”. In those same years, he met with Fidel Castro, Che Guevvara in Cuba, and N. Khrushchov in Moscow.

His role as the inspirer of political unrest, demonstrations, protest rallies, riots, etc. was well known to the police. The Minister of Police once even approached the French President, General de Gaulle, for permission to arrest Sartre. De Gaulle refused, uttering the historical phrase: “France does not arrest Voltaires!” (Although Voltaire himself was arrested at one time).

Sartre became an idol of youth, often making specific statements in newspapers. For example, he said that a “true cultural revolution” would follow China in Europe and that he himself, without hesitation, would burn the Mona Lisa and do the same with university professors. He declared the head of the Soviet government N. Khrushchev a “revisionist.” At the same time, he declared solidarity with Israel in the fight against the Palestinians. His funeral in April 1980 became the largest demonstration of the “left”. But after that the movement began to decline.

He, along with Heidegger, is usually considered a representative of atheistic existentialism. Sartre wrote that his ethical concept does not depend on the recognition of God: if a person is initially free, then God can influence his existential choice as little as the laws of nature. He argued that “existentialism is nothing more than an attempt to draw all conclusions from a consistently atheistic position.”

Main works: “Transcendence of the Ego” (1936), “Sketch for a Theory of Emotions” (1939), “Imagination. Phenomenological psychology of imagination" (1939), "Being and Nothingness. Essay on phenomenological ontology" (1943), "Existentialism is humanism" (1946), "Critique of dialectical reason. In 2 volumes. (T.1 - 1960, T.2. - 1980).

TO Amy Albert (1913-1960) - French philosopher and writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1957). Born in the small town of Mondovi in ​​French Algeria, into a family of agricultural workers. At the very beginning of the First World War, his father, Lucien Camus, died in the Battle of the Marne. And his mother (by the way, Spanish by birth) had to raise her two sons. To feed her children, she moves to the city of Algiers, the capital of the department of the same name, and gets a job as a laundress. Albert's elder brother, as is usually the case in such families, begins to earn his bread early. Camus managed to leave his circle and become an idol of intellectuals, the ruler of souls. In 1924, he graduated from primary school in Belcourt, one of the poorest areas of Algeria, and after a short apprenticeship was expected to join the ranks of the workers. But the teacher of this school, Louis Germain, drew attention to the gifted teenager and obtained a social scholarship for him at the Lyceum. The French Lyceum provided good humanitarian training and the right to enter the university without exams. He studied well and went in for sports. Once, after a football match, I caught a cold, pneumonia turned into tuberculosis. This illness prevented many of Camus' plans.

After graduating from the Lyceum, he entered the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the local university. He was interested in the problem of the relationship between Christian morality and pagan thought. Camus did not receive a religious upbringing; he was not a believer. Throughout his life he maintained respect for ancient and medieval heresies, for the Gnostics, Manichaeans, Cathars - and rejection of Catholicism. But Camus did not share Nietzsche’s contempt for Christianity; he came from a poor background and Nietzsche’s speeches against the “vile rabble” were alien to him. Camus considered such dogmas as original sin, retribution after death and salvation to be myths that reconcile man with earthly injustice.

During his student years he was a member of the Communist Party, from which he left in 1937, nevertheless continuing to participate in fundraising for the Spanish Republic, etc. At the beginning of the Second World War, Camus volunteers at a recruiting station, but due to illness he does not enlist in the army. He was expelled from his job, military censorship prohibited his publications. However, despite the persecution, Camus teaches Jewish children expelled from schools by the new regime and participates in the Resistance.

After the war, Camus continued his work as a journalist and writer, collaborating with the Combat newspaper, one of the most popular in those years. Raymond Aron, a prominent journalist, economist and political scientist, recalled: “In that era, Combe had the highest reputation in the literary and political circles of the capital. Albert Camus's editorials were an unprecedented success: a genuine writer commented on the events of the day. The editorial board consisted of intellectuals who had left the ranks of the Resistance and had not yet returned to their usual activities...” One of the most interesting publications in Combat was Camus’s series of articles “Neither Victims nor Executioners” (1946). Many political and philosophical questions of “The Rebel Man” were already raised here.

At the same time, Camus also wrote works larger than articles. His story “The Stranger” and the essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” were published; in 1947, the novel “The Plague” was published, and then the plays “State of Siege” and “The Righteous Man”. Camus also worked in the theater; immediately after the war, his play “Calligula” was staged with Gerard Philippe in the title role, which only strengthened the success. In the 50s, Camus staged several of his own dramatizations, in particular “Requiem for a Nun” by Faulkner and “The Demons” by Dostoevsky. “The Rebel Man” is his last and most significant work, “The Fall” is his last novel. In 1957, Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature, which gave rise to the Swedish Speeches, which aroused interest throughout the world. Among the journalistic works, it is worth noting “Reflections on the Guillotine,” which contained a passionate appeal to abolish the death penalty.

On January 4, 1960, Albert Camus accepted the offer of his friend and publisher M. Gallimard to return to Paris not by train, but by car. The car went off the road and crashed into a tree, Camus was killed. The novel “The First Man” was just begun, but notebooks and a youth novel “A Happy Death” were published posthumously.

ABOUT Main works: “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1941), the story “The Stranger” (1942), “Letters to a German Friend” (1943-1944), the novel “The Plague” (1947), the essay “The Rebel Man” (1951), the story "The Fall" (1956), "Swedish Speeches" (1958).

Deleuze Gilles (1916-1995) French philosopher, historian of philosophy. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. Professor at the University of Paris VIII. Committed suicide.

Main works: “Empiricism and Subjectivity” (1952), “Nietzsche and Philosophy” (1962), “Proust and Signs” (1964), “Bergsonism” (1966), “Sacher-Masoch and Masochism” (1967), “Spinoza and the problem of expression" (1968), "The Logic of Sense" (1969), "Francis Bacon: the Logic of Feelings" (1981), "Foucault" (1986), "Criticism and the Clinic" (1993), etc. Together with Guattari - two-volume work “Capitalism and schizophrenia”: vol.1. - “Anti-Oedipus” (1972), vol. 2. - “A Thousand Plateaus” (1980), “Kafka” (1974), “What is Philosophy” (1991).

Rorty Richard (b. 1931-2007) American philosopher, since 1982 professor at the University of Virginia. Known for his project of “destruction” of all previous philosophy.

ABOUT Main works: “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature” (1979), “The Meaning of Pragmatism” (collection of essays 1972-1980, published in 1982), “Philosophy after Philosophy: Chance, Irony and Solidarity” (1989), “Philosophical Writings” (vol. .1. “Objectivity, Relativism and Truth,” vol. 2. “Essays on Heidegger and Others” (1991).

Derrida Jacques (1930-2004) French philosopher, literary and cultural critic, intellectual leader of the “Paris School” (80-90s of the twentieth century). He taught at the Sorbonne (1960-1964), the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and the Higher School of Social Research. He organized a “research group in the field of philosophical education” and was one of the initiators of the creation of an international college of philosophy (1983).

Main works: “On Grammatology” (1967), “Voice and Phenomenon” (1967), “Fields of Philosophy” (1972), “Dispersion” (1972), “Positions” (1972), “Death Knell” (1974), “Spurs. Nietzsche's Styles" (1978), "Postcard. From Socrates to Freud and Beyond" (1980), "Psyche: Inventions of the Other" (1987), "Ghosts of Marx" (1993), etc.

DERRIDA

DERRIDA

La voix et le phenomene, P., 1967; De la grammatologie, P., 1967; L "icriture et la differentiation, P., 1967; Marges de la Philosophie, P., 1972; La verite" en peinture, P., 1978; Eperons: Les styles de Nietzsche, ., 1978.

Avtonomova N. S., Philos. problems of structural analysis in the humanities, M., 1977; Filippov L., Grammatology Zh.D., “VF”, 1978, JV5 1; Ecarts. Quatre essais a propos de Jacques Derrida, P., 1973; "L" Arc, 1973, No. 54; Politiques de la Philosophie. Chatelet, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Ser-res, ed. D. Grisoni, P., 1976.

Philosophical encyclopedic dictionary. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. Ch. editor: L. F. Ilyichev, P. N. Fedoseev, S. M. Kovalev, V. G. Panov. 1983 .

DERRIDA

DERRIDA Jacques (July 15, 1930, El Biar, Algeria) is a French philosopher, representative of poststructuralism, postmodernism. He taught at the Sorbonne (1960-64), at the École Normale Supérieure, collaborated in the magazines “Critic” and “Tel Kel”, was one of the initiators of the creation (in 1983) of the International Philosophical College (Paris) and its first director. He teaches at the School of Higher Studies in the Social Sciences (Paris), as well as at a number of universities in the United States, where the ideas of deconstruction have given rise to one of the main areas of research at the intersection of literary criticism and philosophy. Among the significant predecessors of Derrida are Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger. Derrida's concept echoes the Anglo-American philosophy of logical analysis, however, all his contacts with philosophers of this direction (Austin, Searle) did not indicate a search for mutual understanding, as, indeed, his contacts with representatives of various versions of modern continental philosophy (Gadamer, Ricoeur, etc. .).

Derrida’s first dissertation is devoted to Husserl’s phenomenology (“The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy,” published only in 1990). Derrida emerged as a philosopher already in the 1960s. Thus, 1967 was marked by the publication of three works by Derrida: “Voice and Appearance.” “Writing and Difference”, “On Grammatology”, in which an application was made for a new philosophical position - secondary in material (philosophical), but innovative in implementation (reading philosophical texts as rhetorical-metaphorical). We are talking about dismantling and assembling written texts of the philosophical (and literary) tradition, about identifying in them the supporting concepts of “logocentric” metaphysics, which puts the presence, presence, givenness (of concepts, sensory impressions, experience, etc.) at the forefront and about their criticism.

In the 1970s bright literary experiments (such as “Voice”) coexist with more “philosophical” texts (“Edges of Philosophy”; “Dispersion”). In the 1980s and especially the 1990s. One can note somewhat more ethical and political issues (political documents, as well as human feelings, states, relationships associated with the paradoxes of friendship, hospitality, testimony, gift, etc.). In general, the general principles of working with the material remain very similar throughout its entire research path. The differences relate rather to the relative weight of philosophical or literary texts, although he constantly mixes up both. Main fields of study: philosophy (Rousseau, Condillac, Plato, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Nietzsche, Heidegger. Levinas, Searle, Austin, Marx), literature (Mallarmé, Ponge, Celan, Blanchot, Genet, Sophocles, Baudelaire, Joyce, V . Benjamin, Sollers, Flaubert), humanities (Mauss, Malinowski, Freud, P. de Man, R. Barth, Benveniste).

In the same text one can find biographical and autobiographical moments, quotes, allusions, paradoxes of various kinds, neologisms, etymological research, fiction, comments, parodies, of various genres and styles. Among the cross-cutting themes identified during the deconstruction of texts of the philosophical tradition are the paradoxes of name and naming; self-referentiality and the beginning of reasoning; signatures and social contracts; “proper” and constant mutual transformations of proper and common noun, proper and other; repetition as originality; eventfulness and singularity; translation and much more. All of them one way or another come down to the impossibility of showing systems through the internal elements of the system itself - or, in other words, undecidability in an approximately Gödelian sense.

Derrida has almost no “own” concepts: as a rule, he takes them from other people’s texts, and therefore, in any case, they are difficult to generalize, do not form systems and remain a series of strings. By definition, he does not have solid large books on one topic; the most complete among them is the book “On Grammatology”. It most clearly defines the basic concepts of deconstruction used in “reading” (and extracted from reading) Plato, Husserl, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Rousseau. These concepts are writing, proto-writing, distinction, trace, proto-trace, articulation, graphy, graphics, gram, program, recording, etc. The main thing here is writing. Logocentric philosophy did not notice writing (behind speech, spirit, living word, presence, logos) or saw in it something artificial, secondary. For Derrida, writing is a supporting concept. It is not overwritten by habitual usage, and does not have negative associations in modern philosophy (Husserl or Barth, who were interested in writing, are good precedents). At the everyday level, writing also has its advantages: it is more durable than speech, it allows you to “communicate” with people without directly communicating with them, as did, for example, the main character of “Grammatology” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who preferred to “hide and write.” Writing before speech is, of course, not writing in the proper and narrow sense of the word, but rather “proto-writing” (archi-écriture) - writing as a metaphorical designation of the very possibility of any divisions and articulations. Another main concept of Grammatology as a discipline. aimed at identifying basic cultural articulations or writing in the broad sense of the word - difference, distinction. Unlike difference in structuralism, difference in Derrida is not included in a system of oppositions and does not have a meaning-distinguishing role: it is a difference in dispersion. Semantically close to it is “difference” (diffërance): it is distinguished from “difference” only by graphics, which are in no way perceptible by ear. Since it is not given directly, here and now, then everything is represented only by its significant absences, traces, notches, scratches, marks. Everything is delayed in time and arranged, separated in space, and we, therefore, are called upon to see and take into account this interval, gap, separation. If you ask, the gap between what and what? the separation of something from something? will probably either be considered meaningless, or will receive a completely traditional answer: it is about the separation of being from meaning, of man from the meaning of his existence.

How does one comprehend this differentiated and deferred reality? How does, for example, the comprehension of nature by cultural means, the transition of nature into culture occur, how can we understand these concepts, terms, their semantic relationships? The answer may be different: separate the values ​​(formal logic); remove one meaning from another (dialectical logic); build a binary opposition “nature-culture” according to the criteria of the structural method; to mediate this opposition with specific mediators according to the criteria of mythological thinking, etc. Taking from Rousseau the word “supplement” (in Russian - application, addition, addition, etc.). we get the logic of paradoxical completion, involving the relations of internal and external, distant and close, mental and physiological, immediately given and never given. “The forces of signification, teased and lured outward,” are woven into such a tangle that the impossible replenishment of nature with culture is not only accomplished, but, it turns out, takes place initially (otherwise there would not be the integrity and perfection that it appears in Rousseau) and at the same time remains unrealized, since the addition of nature with culture appears as a substitution, as a result of which a shortage begins to “experience” and the whole chain of substitutions and substitutions seems to turn back. And this, in fact, is a general process that occurs everywhere, both in life and in knowledge.

The common denominator of such work is deconstruction, and this word sometimes characterizes Derrida as a whole. There are versions of understanding de construction that in some ways complement each other. In the famous “Letter to a Japanese Friend” (1985; published in Psyché: Inventions de l'autre. P., 1987, p. 387-394; Russian translation - “VF”, 1992, No. 4, pp. 53-57 ) Derrida describes the various stages of the search for a word, term, principle. At first, the word “deconstruction” was a variant of the translation of two German words (Destruktion and Abbau), but Derrida did not like this French concept with the predominance of negative meaning. The search in French explanatory dictionaries continued, until in one. of them (Becherel) the necessary, rare word for the French language “deconstruction”, understood as a translation practice, was not found: “deconstruction” is, accordingly, the breaking of a foreign word when searching for an equivalent in the native language, and “construction” is its re-creation T. Thus, the only French meaning of the term acceptable to Derrida was associated with the import of the foreign and foreign into one’s culture.

At the same time, Derrida rejects in advance all traditional approaches to deconstruction: it is not analysis (because it does not lead to the simplest elements), not, not a method, not an act, not. Deconstruction for Derrida is a “motive, a stratagem” (from the Greek stratagem, a stratagem). All attempts to resolve the question of what deconstruction is, according to the traditional formula of a logical judgment (S is P), are recognized in advance as incorrect, and all judgments in the form of a statement (i.e. made in the third person singular of the present indicative mood) are invalid . It is possible to understand the meaning of deconstruction only in a specific context, when working with a series of terms, partly already named, partly added after reading other texts (letter, trace, distinction, suplement, hymen, pharmakon, parergon, etc.) - this series is by definition open and not finished.

So, the concepts that belong, relatively speaking, to the deconstructing series are fragmentary, fractional, contextually dependent, dissolved in many facets and shades of meaning. If we turn to the concepts of the deconstructed series, we will see that, on the contrary, they are over-generalized. The presumption of logocentric “guilt” obviously rests on all analyzed concepts of Western thought. Accordingly, the result of deconstruction will be this presumption, this intuition, which seems more and more justified with each new case of discovery of “presence” behind any concept - from the Pre-Socratics and Plato to Melanie Klein, Jacobson or Foucault. The origins of the very concept of “presence” can be found in both Husserl and Heidegger, but this over-generalized interpretation of presence can only be found in Derrida. His construction of “presence” covers vast territories (intellectual operations, sensory, being in general) and includes essentially all the individual concepts of “logocentric metaphysics” (being, essence, eidos, telos, substance, subject, etc., etc. ). Thus, apparently, a dissymmetry arises between the “object” and the “technique” of its processing: super-differentiated means of analysis are applied to the super-united object.

The deployment of ingenious thought allows us to reveal subtle shades of meaning, modalities of statements, identifying many diverse paradoxes in texts, reminding philosophy that it needs to constantly be aware of the original metaphorical nature of its abstractions and be ready for self-revision. Where does philosophy get the means for this - from outside or from within? Rather, from the outside (from literature, art, psychoanalysis, politics, the humanities, from material unclaimed by logic), but in a sense, from the inside - this requires a special angle of view on one’s own material and its textual nature. Deconstruction reminds us that, in principle, the material of philosophy can be “anything,” and in this sense, it grows from any “garbage,” just like poetry. But at the same time, deconstruction misleads us: philosophy, unlike poetry, does not grow “like burdocks and quinoa,” it requires strict self-discipline and not just working with language, but polishing language as a means of thought.

And here we find ourselves at the very center of the problem. For Derrida, a true philosopher is a “philosopher-artist” (this is what he valued in Nietzsche). He is not interested in the texts themselves that he analyzes: what is more important to him is what is personal to the texts, woven into the reading of the text, as well as his own style of such work, the recognition of his own style of writing, its dissimilarity from all other manners and styles. Deconstruction does not pretend to pose a clear question and does not offer any solutions, but it makes its own - bright and artistic - an object worthy of attention. It is important to understand why and under what circumstances philosophy takes its turn and places the essay form at the center, which presupposes a certain freedom in the development of argumentation. And if the aesthetic component has always been in philosophical reasoning (as, indeed, in any step of reason that is not identified with reason), then why is it now becoming the main one?

And this question is appropriate, because Derrida always clearly distinguished between the question of the “limits of metaphysics” and the question of the “end of philosophy.” Moreover, when in France a danger loomed over the system of school philosophical education (schoolchildren there study philosophy in the last class of the lyceum and write “reasoning in philosophy” as the main exam for the matriculation certificate), Derrida organized skillful resistance to this danger, defending a fairly traditional institution . But he also organized something else - the International College of Philosophy in Paris - a place for unconventional work, where philosophy could comprehend itself in direct collision with other branches of culture - art, literature, science, politics. At the same time, we note that in France all sorts of experiments testing the boundaries of philosophy are all the more permissible and appropriate because philosophy has a “solid core”: it consistently participates in cognitive and educational processes, in the functioning of academic institutions, in the “rational” system of division of labor. Derrida is often compared to the later Sophists. An aesthetic turn in philosophy is posing the question of the conditions of human perception, of how to make metaphor a truly conceptual resource. But this apparently applies to the sphere of logical and non-logical semantics. We now have a huge material of philosophical and other cultural texts that have been deconstructed. The question is, what to do with them next, how to ensure that the aesthetic view of the text gives its conceptual and philosophical result?

Language has already acted as a means of rhetorical transformation of philosophy, but now it can be a means of criticism or, more precisely, criticism of criticism.

Works: L'origine de la géométrie de Husserl. P., 1962; La voix et la phénomène. P., 1967; L'écriture et diflërence. P., 1967; De la grammalogie. P., 1967; La dissemination. P., 1972; Marges-de la philosophie. P., 1972; Positions. P., 1972; Glas. P., 1974; L "archéologie du frivole. P., 1973; Eperons. Les styles de Nietzsche. P., 1978; La vérité en peinture. P., 1978; La carte postale: De Socrate à Freud et au-delà. P., 1980 ; D "un ton apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie. P., 1983; Autobiographies. L'enseignement de Nietzsche et la politique du nom propre. P., 1984; Parages. P., 1986; Schibboleth - pour Paul Celan. P., 1986; Psyché: Invention de l'autre. P., 1987; Ulysses gramophone. Deux mots pour Joyce. P., 1987; De l "esprit. Heideggeret la question. P., 1987; Signeponge. P., 1988; Mémoires pour Paul de Man. P., 1988; Limited Inc. P., 1990; Le problème de la genèse dans la philosophie de Husserl . P., 1990; P., 1991; Donner le temps. I. La fausse monnaie. P.. 1991; Saufle nom. Galilee, 1993;Khora.P„ 1993; Passions. P., 1993;Spectresde Marx. P.. 1993; Poliliquesde l'amitié. P., 1994; Force de loi. P., 1994; Mal d'archivé. P., 1995; Le monolinguisme de l "autre. P., 1996; Apories. Mourir-s" entendre aux “limites de la vérité”. P., 1996; Resistances de la psychanalyse. P., 1996; Adieu-à Emmanuel Levinas. P., 1997; De l "hospitalité. P., 1997; Cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un effort! P., 1997; Demeure. Maurice BIanchot. P., 1998; Donner la mort. P., 1999; The beginning of geometry. M.. 1996; Positions. K., 1996; Spurs: Nietzsche’s styles. - “FN”, 1991, No. 3-4; Essay on the name (Passion, Besides the name. St. Petersburg, 1998; About grammatology). .

Lit.: Les fins de l'homme. A partir du travail de Jacques Derrida. P., 1981; Ryan M. Marxism and deconstruction. Baltimore - L, 1982; Marx after Derrida. - “Diacritics”, a review of contemporary criticism Winter 1985; Gaschê R. The Tain of the Mirror. Cambr. (Mass.) L., 1987; Bruxelles, 1994; Kofman Lectures P., 1984; ed. by J. Sallis. Derrida and Deconstruction, ed. L., 1989; Redrawing the lines. Analytic Philosophy, Deconstruction, and Literary Theory. Minneapolis, 1989; “Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger.” P., 1990, no. 2; Sienneninglon G.. Derrida J. Jacques Derrida. P., 1991; Zima P. La deconstruction. Une critique. P., 1994; Le passage des frontières. Autour du travail de Jacques Derrida. P., 1994; Farrel F. B. Subjectivity, Realism and Postmodernism. Cambr., Wb."MalabouC., Derrida J. La contre-allée. P., 1999; L"animal autobiographique. Autour de Jacques Derrida. P., 1999; Autonomy N. S. Philosophical problems of structural analysis in the humanities. M., 1977; Jacques Derrida in Moscow. M., 1993; Sokolov B. G. Marginal

In 1964 he began teaching philosophy. Derrida became a notable figure in French philosophy in 1967, when three of his books were published: Voice and phenomenon (La Voix et le phenomène), Letter and difference (L'Écriture et la différence) And Grammatology (De la Grammatologie). From 1968 to 1974 he constantly taught at Johns Hopkins University, and after 1974 at Yale University.

“Deconstruction” by Jacques Derrida demonstrates how a particular philosophical position is undermined, destroyed by the text itself or in the very discourse that affirms it. Western philosophy, according to Derrida, is based on what he calls “logocentrism,” according to which there is a certain fundamental authority of meaning, truth, logic (logos). This assumption gives rise to hierarchical distinctions such as meaning/form, essence/accident, serious/frivolous, literal/figurative, transcendental/empirical, where the first concept is seen as primary, and the second is derivative, complicating or revealing the first. To deconstruct these oppositions means first of all to reverse the hierarchy, showing that the qualities attributed to the second concept are such that it is the first concept that should be interpreted as a variant of the second, and not vice versa: for example, that the literal is nothing more than a special case of the figurative (literally “forgot” about its figurativeness).

The decisive example for Derrida is the case of speech and writing, which is discussed in Grammatology. Thinkers interpreted speech as a natural, direct form of language and underestimated writing, seeing in it only a derivative form, a surrogate for living speech. In doing so, they pushed into the background the most important properties of language in order to base its understanding on an idealized model of speech, especially on the experience of one's own speech, when meaning seems immediately present. Writing was left aside as an impersonal and empty recording technique; however, it can be shown that this seemingly empty repetition is a condition for the existence of any signs, and speech itself should be considered a version of writing - writing in the general sense, which is a condition of both speech and writing in the narrow sense. Such an inversion undermines the logocentric hierarchy and reveals those properties of language that have been repressed and suppressed.

Let us summarize what Derrida did in his works in the following five points. (1) Derrida demonstrates the persistence of logocentrism in Western thought and the intractability of its paradoxes, as well as the improbability of overcoming it, since any criticism of logocentrism is ultimately based on logocentric concepts. (2) Derrida points out the importance of seemingly marginal elements and the dependence of systems on what they repress and repress. (3) Derrida develops a technique of interpretation that is unusual in philosophy because it uses the resources of the rhetoric of the text, and productive for literary criticism, which studies language and its paradoxical nature. (4) Although Derrida does not offer his own theory of language, his deconstruction of other theories shows that meaning is a product of language, not its source, and that it can never be completely definite because it is the result of contextual forces that cannot be limited. (5) Finally, Derrida's work calls into question various concepts on which we are accustomed to base ourselves, such as origin, presence, the human self, showing that they are results rather than pure givens or foundations.

The philosophy of J. Derrida was part of the post-war “spirit of the times”, which rejected modernism and structuralism - in other words, the idea of ​​progress and the existence of real entities.

Derrida is known primarily as the creator of deconstructionism, the main opponent of which is dialectics.

Derrida is best known as the creator of deconstructionism. However, he became such not so much of his own free will, but thanks to American critics and researchers who adapted his ideas on American soil. Derrida agreed with this name for his concept, although he is a strong opponent of emphasizing the “main word” and reducing the entire concept to it in order to create another “-ism”. Using the term "deconstruction", he "did not think that it would be recognized as having a central role." Note that deconstruction does not appear in the titles of the philosopher’s works. Reflecting on this concept, Derrida noted: “America is deconstruction,” “its main residence.” Therefore, he “resigned himself” to the American baptism of his teaching.

At the same time, Derrida tirelessly emphasizes that deconstruction cannot be limited to the meanings that it has in the dictionary: linguistic, rhetorical and technical (mechanical, or “machine”). In part, this concept, of course, carries these semantic loads, and then deconstruction means “the decomposition of words, their division; dividing a whole into parts; dismantling, dismantling a machine or mechanism.” However, all these meanings are too abstract; they assume the presence of some kind of deconstruction in general, which in fact does not exist.

In deconstruction, the main thing is not the meaning or even its movement, but the very shift of displacement, the shift of shift, the transfer of transmission. Deconstruction is a continuous and endless process that excludes any conclusion or generalization of meaning.

Bringing deconstruction closer to process and transmission, Derrida at the same time warns against understanding it as some kind of act or operation. It is neither one nor the other, for all this presupposes the participation of a subject, an active or passive principle. Deconstruction, on the other hand, is more like a spontaneous, spontaneous event, more like an anonymous “self-interpretation”: “it gets upset.” Such an event requires neither thinking, nor consciousness, nor organization on the part of the subject. It is completely self-sufficient. The writer E. Jabès compares deconstruction with the “spread of countless fires” that flare up from the collision of many texts of philosophers, thinkers and writers whom Derrida touches.

From what has been said, it is clear that in relation to deconstruction, Derrida argues in the spirit of “negative theology,” pointing out mainly what deconstruction is not. At one point he even sums up his thoughts along these lines: “What is deconstruction not? - Yes to everyone! What is deconstruction? - Nothing!”

However, his works also contain positive statements and reflections on deconstruction. He, in particular, says that deconstruction takes on its meaning only when it is “inscribed” “in a chain of possible substituents,” “when it replaces and allows itself to be defined through other words, for example, writing, trace, discernibility, addition, hymen, medicine, lateral field, cut, etc.” Attention to the positive side of deconstruction is intensified in the philosopher’s latest works, where it is considered through the concept of “invention” (“invention”), covering many other meanings: “to discover, create, imagine, produce, install, etc.” Derrida emphasizes: “Deconstruction is inventive or not at all.”

Undertaking the deconstruction of philosophy, Derrida criticizes, first of all, its very foundations. Following Heidegger, he defines current philosophy as a metaphysics of consciousness, subjectivity and humanism. Its main vice is dogmatism. It is such due to the fact that from the many well-known dichotomies (matter and consciousness, spirit and being, man and the world, the signified and the signifier, consciousness and the unconscious, content and form, internal and external, man and woman, etc.) metaphysics, as a rule, gives preference to one side, which most often turns out to be consciousness and everything connected with it: subject, subjectivity, man, man.

Giving priority to consciousness, i.e., meaning, content or signified, metaphysics takes it in its pure form, in its logical and rational form, while ignoring the unconscious and thereby acting as logocentrism. If consciousness is considered taking into account its connection with language, then the latter acts as oral speech. Metaphysics then becomes logophonocentrism. When metaphysics devotes its full attention to the subject, it views him as an author and creator, endowed with “absolute subjectivity” and transparent self-awareness, capable of complete control over his actions and actions. Giving preference to man, metaphysics appears as anthropocentrism and humanism.

Since this person is usually a man, the metaphysics is phallocentrism.

In all cases, metaphysics remains logocentrism, which is based on the unity of logos and voice, meaning and oral speech, “the proximity of voice and being, voice and the meaning of being, voice and ideal meaning.” Derrida discovers this property already in ancient philosophy, and then in the entire history of Western philosophy, including its most critical and modern form, which, in his opinion, is the phenomenology of E. Husserl.

Derrida hypothesizes the existence of a certain “arch-writing,” which is something like “writing in general.” It precedes oral speech and thinking and at the same time is present in them in a hidden form. “Archiletter” in this case approaches the status of being. It underlies all specific types of writing, as well as all other forms of expression. Being primary, “writing” once gave way to oral speech and logos. Derrida does not specify when this “fall” occurred, although he believes that it is characteristic of the entire history of Western culture, starting with Greek antiquity. The history of philosophy and culture appears as a history of repression, suppression, repression, exclusion and humiliation of “writing”. In this process, “writing” increasingly became a poor relative of rich and living speech (which, however, itself was only a pale shadow of thinking), something secondary and derivative, reduced to some kind of auxiliary technology. Derrida sets the task of restoring violated justice, showing that “writing” has no less creative potential than voice and logos.

In his deconstruction of traditional philosophy, Derrida also turns to Freud's psychoanalysis, showing interest primarily in the unconscious, which occupied the most modest place in the philosophy of consciousness. At the same time, in his interpretation of the unconscious, he significantly differs from Freud, believing that he generally remains within the framework of metaphysics: he considers the unconscious as a system, admits the presence of so-called “psychic places”, the possibility of localizing the unconscious. Derrida more decisively frees himself from such metaphysics. Like everything else, it deprives the unconscious of systemic properties, makes it atopic, that is, without any specific place, emphasizing that it is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. The unconscious constantly invades consciousness, causing confusion and disorder in it with its play, depriving it of imaginary transparency, logic and self-confidence.

Psychoanalysis also attracts the philosopher because it removes the rigid boundaries that logocentrism establishes between well-known oppositions: normal and pathological, ordinary and sublime, real and imaginary, familiar and fantastic, etc. Derrida further relativizes (makes relative) the concepts included in this kind of opposition. He turns these concepts into “undecidable” ones: they are neither primary nor secondary, neither true nor false, neither bad nor good, and at the same time they are both one and the other, and the third, etc. Others In other words, the “undecidable” is at the same time nothing and at the same time everything. The meaning of “undecidable” concepts unfolds through a transition into its opposite, which continues the process ad infinitum. “The undecidable” embodies the essence of deconstruction, which lies precisely in the continuous displacement, shift and transition into something else, for, in the words of Hegel, every being has its own other. Derrida makes this “other” multiple and infinite.

The “undecidables” include almost all basic concepts and terms: deconstruction, writing, discernibility, dispersion, grafting, scratch, medicine, cut, etc. Derrida gives several examples of philosophizing in the spirit of “undecidability.” One of them is the analysis of the term “tympanum”, during which Derrida considers its various meanings (anatomical, architectural, technical, printing, etc.). At first glance, it may seem that we are talking about searching and clarifying the most adequate meaning of a given word, some kind of unity in diversity. In fact, something else is happening, rather the opposite: the main meaning of the reasoning lies in avoiding any specific meaning, in playing with meaning, in the movement and process of writing itself. Note that this kind of analysis has some intrigue, it captivates, is marked by high professional culture, inexhaustible erudition, rich associativity, subtlety and even sophistication, and many other advantages. However, the traditional reader who expects conclusions, generalizations, assessments, or simply some kind of resolution from the analysis will be disappointed.

The goal of such an analysis is an endless wandering through a labyrinth, from which there is no Ariadne thread to exit. Derrida is interested in the pulsation of thought itself, not the result. Therefore, filigree microanalysis, using the finest tools, gives a modest microresult. We can say that the ultimate task of such analyzes is the following: to show that all texts are heterogeneous and contradictory, that what the authors consciously conceived does not find adequate implementation, that the unconscious, like Hegel’s “cunning of the mind,” constantly confuses all the cards, sets all sorts of traps that fall into authors of texts. In other words, the claims of reason, logic and consciousness often turn out to be untenable.

One of the most famous modern French philosophers, literary critic and cultural critic. Intellectual leader of the “Paris School”, taught at the Sorbonne, the Ecole Normale Supérieure, the Higher School of Social Research, and the initiator of the creation of the “International College of Philosophy”.

Main works: “On Grammatology” (1967), “Voice and Phenomenon” (1967), “Writing and Difference” (1967), “Fields of Philosophy” (1972), “Positions” (1972), “Spurs. Nietzsche's Styles" (1978), "Postcard. From Socrates to Freud and Beyond" (1980), "Ghosts of Marx" (1993), "Chora" (1993), "Monolingualism of the Other" (1996) and many others. etc. (about 40 books).

Jacques Derrida is a powerful and original thinker who defines his own set of concepts, vocabulary, language and way of speaking, while changing the perspective of all philosophy. Derrida introduces many new concepts into philosophy and culture, since established philosophical concepts do not reflect the main ideas of his philosophical concept.

One of the basic terms is différance, which stands on the border between two French words - difference (difference) and différe (put aside). Thus, the meaning of différance is at the same time the establishment of a difference and a postponement, a postponement. Difference becomes the main thing for genuine philosophy, as opposed to classical philosophy, for which the main thing is identity, unity, and integrity. However, focusing on the theme of differences, or rather differences, should not lead to unity being lost sight of. It is impossible to reduce one phenomenon or state to another, to equalize or smooth out the shades of their dissimilarity and opposition.

For a philosopher, it is important to be able to conduct a constructive debate, where differences and the ability of the interlocutor to take into account the position of the other come to the fore.

Within the framework of the “philosophy of difference,” the concept of “writing” or “proto-writing” comes to the fore, which represents a refutation of logocentrism as the identity of logos and voice in Western culture. An oral sign is a sign of a thing, and writing is a sign of a sign. The letter is thus a trace indicating the presence of content that requires disclosure and is capable of disclosure. Derrida called the philosophical discipline that studies writing in a special way and reveals traces grammatology. The way of working in grammatology is deconstruction—disassembly and reassembly—of the Western philosophical tradition of reason.

Derrida associates the need to develop a new way of working in philosophy with the fact that in a situation where human life becomes more complicated, it becomes increasingly difficult to reach the truth. Language becomes an increasingly complex medium. The area of ​​the given and the undoubted, “presence” (“presence” is the way of being of everything that exists), is moving further and further away. Between “presence” and man there is a series of steps, too long to reach “presence.” At the same time, the steps leave “traces” for a person (“a trace” is the main form of “non-presence”). “Trace” is distinguished from “trace” by “distinction” (“distinction” is the opposite of presence as identity and self-sufficiency), the method of implementation of which is “writing”. The world appears before us in becoming, and not in being, which makes the “traces” incomplete. Each particle of the world correlates both with itself in the past and future, and with its neighbors in the synchronous present. This correlation is called “replenishment”: a single and complete presence is unattainable, it has dissolved in a multiplicity of traces. Infinity cannot be centered, hierarchized, “logocentric” (Logocentrism is a way of presenting presence within Western philosophy). The presence of a center for Derrida implies interference in the game of interchanges between the elements of the structure. Thus, the general mechanism of functioning of the above concepts lies in the logic of completion, which is different from the logic of identity.

For Derrida, it is important to break out of the captivity of Eurocentrism, for which he shows interest in non-European cultures. He also criticizes the desire of European philosophy for a serious search for the principle of all principles, the center. The struggle against the principle of “centring” is only one moment within the framework of the “deconstruction” of metaphysics.

To realize the idea of ​​deconstruction, Derrida introduces original concepts such as trace, dispersion, scratch, veil, application, grafting, smuggling, etc. He turns to drafts, notes, footnotes, marginalia. Metaphors, symbols, and word usage outside the usual context are used.

Derrida's philosophy enjoys wide international recognition, there are endless debates around his work, his work is multifaceted and ambiguous, there is no doubt that the impact of his ideas on modern philosophy is enormous.