Who’s Afraid of Philosophy?: Right to Philosophy 1

by Jacques Derrida, Jan Plug (Translation)

This volume reflects Jacques Derrida's engagement in the late 1970s with French political debates on the teaching of philosophy and the reform of the French university system. He was a founding member of the Research Group on the Teaching of Philosophy (Greph), an activist group that mobilized opposition to the Giscard government's proposals to "rationalize" the French educational system in 1975, and a convener of the Estates General of Philosophy, a vast gathering in 1979 of educators from across France. While addressing specific contemporary political issues on occasion, thus providing insight into the pragmatic deployment of deconstructive analysis, the essays deal mainly with much broader concerns. With his typical rigor and spark, Derrida investigates the genealogy of several central concepts which any debate about teaching and the university must confront. Thus there are essays on the "teaching body," both the faculty corps and the strange interplay in the French (but not only the French) tradition between the mind and body of the professor; on the question of age in teaching, analyzed through a famous letter of Hegel; on the class, the classroom, and the socio-economic concept of class in education; on language, especially so-called "natural languages" like French; and on the legacy of the revolutionary tradition, the Estates General, in the university. The essays are linked by the extraordinary care and precision with which Derrida undertakes a political intervention into, and a philosophical analysis of, the institutionalization of philosophy in the university.

Genres: Philosophy

240 pages, Hardcover

First published March 5, 2002

About the author

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher best known for developing deconstruction, a method of critical analysis that questioned the stability of meaning in language, texts, and Western metaphysical thought. Born in Algeria, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he was influenced by philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl, and Levinas. His groundbreaking works, including Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Speech and Phenomena (1967), positioned him at the center of intellectual debates on language, meaning, and interpretation.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions—such as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion—that falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of différance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida’s ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.

Reviews

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of Derrida's most practical series of reflections; while he correctly identifies many pitfalls of contemporary academia, his suggestions seem anti-climactic and ultimately not fully satisfactory, though there are some useful conceptual deconstructions here.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a preliminary statement on this book, which I read as "adjunctification" is becoming the norm in US institutions of higher ed, let's say this: How remarkable is it that a philosopher, one working with a group that not only opposed the government's reduction of philosophy education but offered a politically popular argument for its extension, could write, "If one thinks of what dominates the scene or the market ... with its naive, precritical paucity of thought, ignorant to the point of barbarity, smug and gloating to the point of buffoonery, or even, for us, for me in any case, unforgivably boring--if one thinks of all this, then one may indeed be bothered by the appearance of using it as an argument to prove that philosophy is booming" (180)?

What, in all seriousness and all gaiety, could scholars in the US, particularly those distressed by the defunding of public (higher) education and the economic and pedagogical situations faced/caused by contingent faculty, learn from this?