Jacques Derrida was a controversial philosopher whose writing could be fiendishly difficult to read. Nevertheless he had many followers. Here Pete Salmon, author of a recent biography of Derrida, manages to give a clear account of what Derrida meant by deconstruction. This episode was sponsored by St John's College. For more information about the college go to www.sjc.edu/podcast
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In the anglo american world, the algerian born french philosopher Jacques Derrida is probably studied more in literary theory than in philosophy departments.
Indeed, many british and american analytic philosophers are sneery about his books, which are notoriously difficult.
When he received an honorary degree at Cambridge in 1992, several leading philosophers objected.
As his biographer Peter Salmon explains, derrida is best known for his theory of deconstruction.
Peter salmon, welcome to philosophy bites.
Thanks very much.
Lovely to be here.
The topic we're going to focus on today is Derrida and deconstruction.
So who was Jacques Derrida?
Well, there's a lot of different versions of who Jacques Derrida was, depending if you're one of his acolytes or his defenders or one of your enemies.
And I just did the quotation marks in the air when I said that, which is a very deridian.
But the basic facts are he's a french philosopher who was born in Algeria.