Abstract
In this paper I shall inquire to what extent there may be good reasons for holding (or rejecting) Derrida’s view on the existence and nature of ideal being or universals. That is, is his view true or is it false? And are there considerations which can be stated in the form of propositions (indicative sentences) that can be known to be true and that logically entail, or render significantly probable, either the view of ideal being which Derrida maintains or its negation? What would be the results of an appraisal of Derrick’s position on this matter from the viewpoint of standard logic? I share Newton Garver’s “... worry... that Derrida may not have left himself any ground on which to stand and may be enticing us along a path to nowhere….”1
Certainly, there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting Freewill in thinking as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers ofthat kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients.
(Of Truth, Francis Bacon).
Promise me that all you say is true. That’s all I ask of you.
(Phantom of the Opera, a musical).
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References
In his “Preface” to the English edition of Jacques Derrida Speech and Phenomena, translated by David B. Allison, (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), xxviii. Hereafter cited as “SP.”
SP 99 and J. Derrida, Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: An Introduction, translated by John P. Leavey, Jr., (Stony Brook, NY: Nicolas Hays, Ltd, 1978), 66, hereafter cited as “/OG.”
“wjy” refers to J. Derrida, Writing and Difference, translated by Alan Bass, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
“MP” refers to the English edition of J. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, translated by Alan Bass, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
“G” refers to the English edition of J. Derrida, OfGrammatology, translated by Gayatri C. Spivak, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1976).
Page references to Ideas I are to the Boyce Gibson translation, (London: George Allen & Urwin Ltd, 1931).
See, for example, his Microcosmus, Part IX, chapter 1, subsection #3.
Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, two volumes, translated by J. N. Finlay, (New York: Humanities Press, 1970). All page references are to this edition.
My “The Paradox of Logical Psychologism: Husserl’s Way Out,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 9.1 (January 1972), 94–100; and my Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge, (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1984), 143–66.
Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Rezensionen (1890–1910), Husserliana XXII, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), 156–57.
See my Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge, 186–193.
OG 66ff.
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Willard, D. (1995). Is Derrida’s View of Ideal Being Rationally Defensible?. In: McKenna, W.R., Evans, J.C. (eds) Derrida and Phenomenology. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8498-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8498-2_2
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