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Derrida I: Deconstruction in Our Time

Professor Steven Taubeneck will present.

In this series on Jewish thinkers of otherness, or alterity, we have encountered three strikingly different approaches to the question of the other.

Martin Buber’s short but powerful book from 1923, I and Thou, considers otherness in two dimensions. First, there is the “I-It” relation with objects and things. The “I-thou” relation between people, on the other hand, goes far beyond the Cartesian subject–object model. Buber’s work is intensely personal. And through this outlook (or out-feel) it also attempts to establish a kind of poetic, nearly mystical communication with others.

Hannah Arendt’s works, from The Origins of Totalitarianism to The Human Condition, Eichmann in Jerusalem, and The Life of the Mind, mount a sustained, profound attack on the tendency to conformity in modern society. For her, otherness or difference are to be valued and celebrated, despite the levelling practices of our current time. Arendt was often controversial, as in her comparison of Hitlerism and Stalinism in Origins, and her critique of “the banality of evil” in Eichmann. But throughout her career, in both her life and works, she emphasized the Kantian call to “think for oneself.”

The thought of our third writer, Emmanuel Levinas, revolves around the concept of “the other” as central to human existence and ethical responsibility. Levinas’s writing criticized the existentialist and structuralist tendencies of his time, and focused on questions of justice, accountability and responsibility.

All three of the thinkers we have seen so far stress the importance of philosophy for questioning the conflicts, discontinuities and uncertainties of our time.

Now comes Jacques Derrida, the fourth and last writer in our tradition, most famous as the inventor of “deconstruction.” We will consider his life and works in two meetings.

  • Part I — The first will deal with his contributions from 1953 to 1980.
  • Part II — In the second meeting, we will look at his thought from 1980 to 2004.

Far from being the “nihilist” that he has often accused of being, we will show that Derrida’s “deconstruction” is not only a philosophy of critique and historical reflection, but also an accurate name for our time. If we live in the age of deconstruction, in which all certainties can be put into question, then … Who am I, in the first place? And who are you?

METHOD

  • The movie, Derrida (2002), is finally up and playing. Because their offices closed at Greenwich time on Friday, we weren’t able to secure the rights to construct the venue until early Monday morning (today). You can watch it at your convenience in our newly constructed full-width theater. (Please read the safety notes before watching the film.)
  • Synchronicity Alert: A version of “Otherness” just appeared in TIME magazine. See the “Bonus Materials” at the bottom of this page.
  • We have all the key texts uploaded to THORR already, and a timeline will be uploaded this evening.
  • Summaries, notes, event chatlogs, episode transcripts, timelines, tables, observations, and downloadable PDFs of the episodes we cover can be found here:
  • THORR (The High Ontology Reading Room)

ABOUT PROFESSOR TAUBENECK

Professor Taubeneck is professor of German and Philosophy at UBC, first translator of Hegel’s Encyclopedia into English, and SADHO CΦO. Most impressively, he has also been wrestling with the core texts of 20-cent. phenomenology and existentialism for over 30 years, and has worked and collaborated with Gadamer, Derrida, and Rorty.

View all of our coming episodes here.

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