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Edward Baring sheds fresh light on Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential yet controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century.
List of contents
Introduction; Part I. Derrida Post-Existentialist: 1. Humanist pretensions: Catholics, Communists and Sartre's struggle for existentialism in post-war France; 2. Derrida's 'Christian' existentialism; 3. Normalization: the École Normale Supérieure and Derrida's turn to Husserl; 4. Genesis as a problem: Derrida reading Husserl; 5. The God of mathematics: Derrida and the origin of geometry; Part II. Between Phenomenology and Structuralism: 6. A history of différance; 7. L'ambiguité du concours: the deconstruction of commentary and interpretation in Speech and Phenomena; 8. The ends of man: reading and writing at the ENS; Epilogue.
About the author
Edward Baring is Assistant Professor of Modern European Intellectual and Cultural History at Drew University. Educated at the University of Cambridge and Harvard University, his work was awarded the Harold K. Gross Prize by Harvard University in 2010. He has won fellowships from the DAAD, ACLS and Mellon Foundation.
Summary
Baring sheds fresh light on Derrida, one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Drawing on new archival sources, Baring provides an intellectual history of the philosophies, institutions and movements of post-war France and a new interpretation of one of the most vibrant intellectual moments of modern times.
