Critique of Derrida (Part One)

Jacques Derrida was the founder of twentieth-century French deconstructionism and one of the principal representatives of post-structuralism. The core of his philosophy is deconstruction: the thorough dismantling of the "logocentrism" that had dominated Western philosophy for more than two thousand years, thereby overturning the traditional metaphysical framework of binary oppositions. The central concept of deconstruction is différance. Derrida argues that the meaning of every sign is generated only through its differences from other signs and is perpetually deferred in an endless process of interpretation. There is no fixed, immutable, self-sufficient ultimate essence that requires no further explanation. This perpetual difference and deferral is what Derrida calls différance. Consequently, the "ultimate truth" pursued by traditional philosophy is itself an unattainable illusion. One can never finally grasp it, because it always awaits further interpretation in yet another sign. This amounts to a direct denial of the legitimacy of the entire metaphysical enterprise that has occupied Western philosophy for the past two millennia. In this paper, I shall examine Derrida's famous concept of différance in detail and argue that he failed to grasp the true nature of signs. Consequently, all of his conclusions are mistaken. Contrary to Derrida's claim, the meaning of signs is neither constituted through difference nor forever in flux. In this way, the entire philosophical foundation of deconstructionism can be overturned, and the legitimacy of the two-thousand-year philosophical tradition can be reestablished.