“From the same to the other. Two lessons on Husserl, 1963”, by Jacques Derrida, Seuil, “Bibliotheque Derrida”, 220 p. 24.50 euros, digital 18 euros (in bookstores on November 8).
We tend to forget that many thinkers belonging to the same generation as Jacques Derrida, described as “critical” or “radical” for their political commitments, were also patient readers and admirable teachers. We rediscovered it with the publication of the two lectures in 1963 dedicated to the German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and delivered at the Sorbonne, while Derrida, at the age of 33, began his career as a professor, already endowed with his own thinking. . This era is marked by a relative exhaustion of phenomenology, the path outlined by Husserl for philosophy, and these two hitherto unpublished texts constitute an important milestone in this discussion.
Husserl intended to establish phenomenology as a method of an understood philosophy, as opposed to metaphysics, as “rigorous science”. According to this method, the true and the absolute are found exclusively in consciousness, which, far from being passive, constitutes what is presented to it. In this way, the classical distinction that, from Plato to Kant, opposed the “phenomenon” (confused with appearance) to the “thing in itself” is questioned – Husserl himself describes his theoretical gesture as “go back to the same things”. This world is systematically reduced to a ” ego “a self that is not confused with that of individuals, is achieved through “parenthesis” of reality. But this search for the truth collides with the threat of “solipsism”. If there is no reality other than that of the thinking subject alone, how can there be a truth valid for everyone?
This persistent question preoccupied the late Husserl and led most of his French disciples, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas in particular, to explore paths other than his own. The reflection of the first Derrida is part of this review where, from the outset, he will adopt an original position. In fact, these courses are among his first published texts: Introduction has The origin of geometry (PUF, 1962), the widely commented translation of a text by Husserl – and the respectful criticism that he addressed to Emmanuel Levinas in a voluminous article from 1964. As famous as it is essential for anyone who wants to understand Derridrian’s first paths, this The text is titled “Violence and Metaphysics” (reprinted in Writing and differenceSeuil, 1967), and some of its elements are developed in the courses at the Sorbonne.
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