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Near the end of a lengthy TLS review of a posthumously published series of interviews with Jacques Derrida ( Apprendre a vivre envin <\/em> ), reviewer Ramona Fotiade quotes several intriguing selections from the interview. Derrida admits that life is \u201cirreducible to what I say\u201d and goes on to concede that \u201ceverything I oppose, so to speak, in my texts, everything that I deconstruct \u2013 presence, living, voice and so on \u2013 is exactly what I\u2019m after in life. I love the voice, I love presence, I love . . . ; there is no love, no desire without it.\u201d Though he is \u201cconstantly denying in my life what I\u2019m saying in my books or my teaching,\u201d this does not mean \u201cI don\u2019t believe in what I write.\u201d <\/p>\n This appears to point to two conclusions: First, that Derrida is (as he recognized) engaging in an Augustinian \u201cinterrogation over the living contraditions of the self,\u201d though, crucially, without knowing Augustine\u2019s God. Second, that he remains, as James KA Smith pointed out in a different context, far more withint the Greek\/Platonic framework than his works on Plato would suggest. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Near the end of a lengthy TLS review of a posthumously published series of interviews with Jacques Derrida ( Apprendre a vivre envin ), reviewer Ramona Fotiade quotes several intriguing selections from the interview. Derrida admits that life is \u201cirreducible to what I say\u201d and goes on to concede that \u201ceverything I oppose, so to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy"],"yoast_head":"\n
Fotiade asks the obvious question: Why deconstruct then, and answers \u201cStrangely, Derrida\u2019s answer echoes the premiss of the entire tradition of philosophical thinking which he so adamantly strove to dismantle: because of the unsurpassable pronouncement of the Greek ANANKE, Necessity itself, that \u2013 as Aristotle said \u2013 \u2018cannot be persuaded to change.\u2019\u201d Derrida himself puts it this way: \u201cI try to understand why there is what I call Necessity, and I write this with a capital \u2018N\u2019 \u2013 Necessity, as if it were someone, perhaps a woman, a Necessity which compels me to say that there is no immediate presence, compels me to deconstruct . . . . I take into account this Necessity and I obey, I account for, this Necessity. Nevertheless, in my life, I do the opposite. I live as if it were possible . . . to be presence with voice, or vocal presence.\u201d <\/p>\n