This might belong in Cafe Society, or wherever factual questions on philosophy go.
If there is anybody out there well-versed in Derrida, I have some questions on his ideas. I am just starting some of his stuff and have not read the major works.
Does he reject the ideas of ‘center’ and episteme axiomatically? He seems to, but I’ve got to think that somewhere he did a systematic attack on them – could somebody point me in the right direction?
If anybody can answer that, stick around, I’ll have more questions in a few hours.
I decided I had to visit this thread since it looked so lonely (and let my tell you I’ve written a few lonely threads myself). I don’t remember much about Derrida, but I decided to do a http://www.deja.com search on the words Derrida and episteme.
All I’ve got to say is … whoa. I’d forgotten how dizzying these kinds of discussions can be. I mean, you’ve got bucketloads of philosophers in there … Foucault, Heidegger, enough for a whole Monty Python song. Lots of multi-posting debates going on there. I found it pretty hard to follow but I bet you wouldn’t…? I highly recommend usenet for this sort of thing since there are so many newsgroups vastly more specialized than the talented generalists you’ll find here.
Anyway, you’ve whetted my appetite. All I know about episteme is that it’s Greek for knowledge or understanding. In this context, I’m gonna guess that it means knowledge in a really heavy sense, i.e., absolute provable certainty about something, with no real possiblity for argument. If that’s true, it seems like Derrida’s main focus was direct critique of it.
Are you wondering whether Derrida criticized episteme by name, or whether the he implied criticism of it? Or have I missed the boat entirely?
No, it’s more just that the text I have in front of me (Structure, Sign and Play) sort of proceeds from the assumption that Knowledge doesn’t/can’t exist. And I’m wondering if he feels he established that in an earlier work, or if he just regards that as a given.
Oh, I see. I’m still in way over my head. I wonder if there is a good summary/timeline of Derrida somewhere. The kind that would say, “In this essay Derrida first outlines why believes absolute knowledge is a bogus concept” … or something.
In closing, I have a joke. It came from a list of philosophers answers to the question …
Why did the chicken cross the road?
We can never know for certain the chickens intentions, and structuralism is dead, damnit, dead!
