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Apories: Mourir—s'attendre aux "limites de la verite"
« Passage de la mort : au-delà. La mort est si souvent représentée comme une fin, une limite, une frontière – un voyage, un départ ou le passage d’une frontière. La mort y arrive-t-elle ? Peut-on faire l’histoire de cette frontière et de cette arrivée ? Qu’est-ce qu’un arrivant ? Et que veut dire “s’attendre”, “s’attendre soi-même”, “s’attendre l’un(e) l’autre – à la mort ?”
Pour traiter ces questions, il m’aura fallu traiter du passage et du non-passage, de l’aporie en général – et par exemple des raisons pour lesquelles une “logique” de l’aporie s’est régulièrement imposée à moi, depuis si longtemps : non pour signifier la paralysie ou l’impasse mais cela même qu’il faut endurer pour qu’une décision, une responsabilité, un événement ou une hospitalité, un don soient possibles.
Après une petite histoire autobiographique de l’“aporie”, cet essai aborde les questions que soulèvent aussi bien le projet d’une histoire culturelle ou d’une anthropologie de la mort (Ariès, Vovelle, Thomas) que, de façon apparemment plus radicale, une analytique existentiale de l’être-pour-la-mort, cette “possibilité de la pure et simple impossibilité du Dasein” (Heidegger). Un trajet que je ne peux reconstituer ici tente de justifier quelques propositions finales. »
J. D.
Pour traiter ces questions, il m’aura fallu traiter du passage et du non-passage, de l’aporie en général – et par exemple des raisons pour lesquelles une “logique” de l’aporie s’est régulièrement imposée à moi, depuis si longtemps : non pour signifier la paralysie ou l’impasse mais cela même qu’il faut endurer pour qu’une décision, une responsabilité, un événement ou une hospitalité, un don soient possibles.
Après une petite histoire autobiographique de l’“aporie”, cet essai aborde les questions que soulèvent aussi bien le projet d’une histoire culturelle ou d’une anthropologie de la mort (Ariès, Vovelle, Thomas) que, de façon apparemment plus radicale, une analytique existentiale de l’être-pour-la-mort, cette “possibilité de la pure et simple impossibilité du Dasein” (Heidegger). Un trajet que je ne peux reconstituer ici tente de justifier quelques propositions finales. »
J. D.
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First published January 1, 1993
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About the author
Jacques Derrida
650 books1,794 followersJacques 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.
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.
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July 22, 2024
There is no culture without a cult of ancestors, a ritualization of mourning and sacrifice, institutional places and modes of burial.
Despite the slim stature of the text, the ideas within are quite challenging, the titular concept appearing paradoxical and such is explored/portrayed largely through Heidegger. The idea of a border or boundary demarcating one state (in all senses) from another doesn't lend itself well to death, we're perpetually dying until we aren't, we're dead. Thus, the notion of dead-ness isn't experienced, thus it is removed or forever outside a notion like Dasein, a being-in. This book punched me in the face, and it did afford a thinking-space as such but whether I graduated or was promoted from the experience is doubtful.
Despite the slim stature of the text, the ideas within are quite challenging, the titular concept appearing paradoxical and such is explored/portrayed largely through Heidegger. The idea of a border or boundary demarcating one state (in all senses) from another doesn't lend itself well to death, we're perpetually dying until we aren't, we're dead. Thus, the notion of dead-ness isn't experienced, thus it is removed or forever outside a notion like Dasein, a being-in. This book punched me in the face, and it did afford a thinking-space as such but whether I graduated or was promoted from the experience is doubtful.
December 24, 2015
Point of departure is an incidental remark of Diderot’s regarding Seneca: “The defect of letting oneself be carried by the interest of the cause that one is defending beyond the limits of truth is such a general defect that Seneca must sometimes be pardoned for it”(2). Is the “limit” an indication that ‘truth is finite,” or that ‘truth is finished’ (1)? (All of the RSB fans of course are now chuckling about ‘IS NOT TRUTH INFINITE?’ Bakker may actually have this text in mind.)
Diderot had been commenting on a particular passage of Seneca, which D summarizes as:
Some definitional matter:
H wants to ensure that the ontic is controlled by “an ontology of Dasein, an ontology that is itself preliminary, ‘superordinate,’ prior to an ontology of life” (29). Therefore “the existential analysis of death is, in turn, subordinate to a characterization of Dasein’s basic state” (id.). The existential analysis of Dasein is accordingly “an absolute priority”; the ontology of Dasein is “presupposed by an ontology of life” (id.). (We are solemnly informed that H uses ‘Dasein’ “because he does not yet allow himself any philosophical knowledge concerning what man is as animal rationale, or concerning the ego, consciousness, the soul, the subject, the person, and so forth, which are all presuppositions of metaphysics or of ontical knowledge, such as anthropo-thanatology” (id.). Oh, of course H does not yet allow himself any presuppositions! FFS.) All of these superordinate and subordinate “ontological regions” are “legitimately separated by pure, rigorous, and indivisible borders” (id.).
H is jittery that we think “what the death proper to Dasein is” (30), “the proper and authentic being-able of Dasein” (id.) (I know, right?). This develops from the somewhat silly to the outright asinine: “Demise (Ableben) is thus proper to Dasein, in any case, to what can properly die but it is not dying (Sterben). Dasein presupposes dying, but it is not death, properly speaking. ‘Dasein never perishes. Dasein however can demise only as long as it is dying.’ [internal citation to H omitted]” (38). After referring to H’s “paradoxes and chiasmi,” D pulls the motherfucking rug out from under our NSDAP greaser:
Fairly sure that the ‘ultimate aporia’ (56) is that “death is also for Dasein, Heidegger ultimately says, the possibility of an impossibility” (68). Glad that’s cleared up!
Recommended for the absolute arrivant, readers who add the conceptual demarcation to the problematic closure and the anthropological border, and persons who think the possibility of impossibility as aporia.
Diderot had been commenting on a particular passage of Seneca, which D summarizes as:
we would discover that this discourse on death contains, among many other things, a rhetoric of borders, a lesson in wisdom concerning the lines that delimit the right of absolute property, the right of property to our own life, the proper of our existence, in sum, a treatise about the tracing of traits as the borderly edges of what in sum belongs to us, belonging as much to us as we properly belong to it. (3)This consideration develops into the crossing of “the ultimate border” (8):
What is it to pass the term of one’s life? Is it possible? Who has ever done it and who can testify to it? The ‘I enter,’ crossing the threshold. This ‘I pass’ (perao) puts us on a path, if I may say, of the aporos or of the aporia: the difficult or the impracticable, here the impossible, passage, the refused, denied, or prohibited passage, indeed, the nonpassage (id.)D prefers “perishing” over “dying” because it “retains something of per, of the passage of the limit, of the traversal marked in Latin by the pereo, perire” (31).
Some definitional matter:
Aporia, rather than antimony: the word antimony imposed itself up to a certain point since, in terms of the law (nomos), contradictions or antagonisms among equally imperative laws were at stake. However, the antimony here better deserves the name of aporia insofar as it is neither an ‘apparent or illusory’ antimony, not a dialectizable contradiction in the Hegelian or Marxist sense, not even a ‘transcendental illusion in a dialectic of the Kantian type,’ but instead an interminable experience. (16)More definitional matter:
It is not necessarily a failure or a simple paralysis, the sterile negativity of the impasse. It is neither stopping at it nor overcoming it. (When someone suggests to you a solution for escaping the impasse, you can be almost sure that he is ceasing to understand, assuming that he had understood anything up to that point.) (32)D traces the term aporia, a “tired word of philosophy and of logic” (12) through its use by Aristotle inter alia (for Aristotle, it simply means “I’m stuck”). This develops into a critique of Heidegger, who diagnoses “in the whole tradition, from Aristotle to Hegel, a hegemony of the vulgar concept of time insofar as it privileges the now” (14), which D wants to work over as “the Aristotelian-Hegelian aporetic of time” (15). Heidegger becomes vulnerable to D when he “suggests a delimitation of the borders of existential analysis” (which latter term is kinda the cool kids’ way of referring to misanthropic rightwing phenomenology, I guess), which delimitation “is always the argument of presupposition” (28). For H, anything involving “the span of life and about the mechanisms of death presupposes an ontological problematic” (id.), which as we all know is the great villainy of heideggerianism, kinda how like officious intermeddlers are the great villains for the ancient common law, ultra-left trotskyite deviationists, for Stalinism, and lumpenized antisocial nihilists, for me.
H wants to ensure that the ontic is controlled by “an ontology of Dasein, an ontology that is itself preliminary, ‘superordinate,’ prior to an ontology of life” (29). Therefore “the existential analysis of death is, in turn, subordinate to a characterization of Dasein’s basic state” (id.). The existential analysis of Dasein is accordingly “an absolute priority”; the ontology of Dasein is “presupposed by an ontology of life” (id.). (We are solemnly informed that H uses ‘Dasein’ “because he does not yet allow himself any philosophical knowledge concerning what man is as animal rationale, or concerning the ego, consciousness, the soul, the subject, the person, and so forth, which are all presuppositions of metaphysics or of ontical knowledge, such as anthropo-thanatology” (id.). Oh, of course H does not yet allow himself any presuppositions! FFS.) All of these superordinate and subordinate “ontological regions” are “legitimately separated by pure, rigorous, and indivisible borders” (id.).
H is jittery that we think “what the death proper to Dasein is” (30), “the proper and authentic being-able of Dasein” (id.) (I know, right?). This develops from the somewhat silly to the outright asinine: “Demise (Ableben) is thus proper to Dasein, in any case, to what can properly die but it is not dying (Sterben). Dasein presupposes dying, but it is not death, properly speaking. ‘Dasein never perishes. Dasein however can demise only as long as it is dying.’ [internal citation to H omitted]” (38). After referring to H’s “paradoxes and chiasmi,” D pulls the motherfucking rug out from under our NSDAP greaser:
This articulated set of distinctions (between perishing and dying, but also, within the existential field of Dasein, between death properly speaking and demise) thus presupposes Dasein. (40)Down my way, we refer to this type of aporetic as Boom Headshot. As though that weren’t sufficient, D continues: problematic closure occurs when “the same methodological presuppositions concern the ‘metaphysics of death.’ The existential analysis of death is also anterior, neutral, and independent with regard to all the questions and all the answers pertaining to the metaphysics of death: the questions and answer that concern survival, immortality, the beyond, or the other side of this side” (52). H will have already dogmatically declared that “the ontological interpretation of death precedes all ontical speculation operating beyond, on the other side” (54).
It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of what is being decided, so authoritatively and so decisively, at the very moment when what is in question is to decide on what must remain undecided. (54)D notes two things here: declaring existential analysis superordinate has “no limit” (54), and it is insufficient to point out that H privileges “the ‘this side,’” but rather “it is the originary and underivable character of death, as well as the finitude of the temporality in which death is rooted, that decides and forces us to decide to start from here first” (55). This “decision to decide from the here of this side is not simply a methodological decision, because it decides on the very method” (56).
Fairly sure that the ‘ultimate aporia’ (56) is that “death is also for Dasein, Heidegger ultimately says, the possibility of an impossibility” (68). Glad that’s cleared up!
Recommended for the absolute arrivant, readers who add the conceptual demarcation to the problematic closure and the anthropological border, and persons who think the possibility of impossibility as aporia.
July 3, 2015
An interesting investigation into the aporia or non-passage of the passage that is dying; the crossing (or non-crossing) of the limit of death that is no limit; the ever shifting border or margine dividing/uniting life and death, the proper and improper (eigentlich and enteigentlich).
Heidegger meets Derrida awaiting him at the end, just as he finds himself, and Derrida himself and the other.
Heidegger meets Derrida awaiting him at the end, just as he finds himself, and Derrida himself and the other.
Read
June 25, 2025as últimas páginas foram só palavras pra mim, mas os últimos três parágrafos foram bonitos. tenho dúvidas sobre a minha capacidade de falar alguma coisa sobre esse texto (a possibilidade da impossibilidade de dizer a aporia?) então sexta deve ser interessante, me aguardem.
July 3, 2015
I chose to read this book for my final research paper in an upper level existentialism and phenomenology course at my college. We had read some of Derrida's Negotiations earlier in class, as well as some Heidegger, and I found myself very interested in aporias, Dasein, 'nothing,' and differance.
If you enjoy -- perhaps it would be better to say if you are interested in -- Heidegger's philosophy and want Derrida's opinion on Heidegger, this is the book for you to read. It is not terribly long, but it is best read slow, like most Derrida and Heidegger is. I'd advise taking detailed notes to review later since Derrida I believe actually gave this book as a talk for a conference, so it can sometimes be repetitive or ordered in a confusing way. Notes will help you to navigate the messy parts.
Derrida is mainly concerned with borders, limits, and the idea of death in relation to a broad ontology of borders, and much more. Of course, it is far more complicated than this, but death is the main subject in the book. I would suggest reading John Russon's essay "The Self as Resolution: Heidegger, Derrida and the Intimacy of the Question of the Meaning of Being" as well as consulting the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's Derrida and Heidegger pages so that ideas like aporia, differance, the arrivant, and all the Heideggerian jargon do not overwhelm you. Russon's essay helps lay a solid basis for many of the ideas I just mentioned. You can also read Hakhamanesh Zangeneh's essay "An Impossible Waiting—Reading Derrida's Reading of Heidegger in Aporias" as a supplemental text to help distill Derrida's main points about Heidegger. After all, it would be a shame to read this book and forget most of what it says only a few days later.
I hope my suggestions help, since I know continental philosophy can be some of the most cryptic subject matter. But I really believe that if you are interested in Heidegger this is a great book to both test your knowledge of his philosophy and expand your perspective on that titanic work of 20th century philosophy, Being and Time.
Tread carefully!
If you enjoy -- perhaps it would be better to say if you are interested in -- Heidegger's philosophy and want Derrida's opinion on Heidegger, this is the book for you to read. It is not terribly long, but it is best read slow, like most Derrida and Heidegger is. I'd advise taking detailed notes to review later since Derrida I believe actually gave this book as a talk for a conference, so it can sometimes be repetitive or ordered in a confusing way. Notes will help you to navigate the messy parts.
Derrida is mainly concerned with borders, limits, and the idea of death in relation to a broad ontology of borders, and much more. Of course, it is far more complicated than this, but death is the main subject in the book. I would suggest reading John Russon's essay "The Self as Resolution: Heidegger, Derrida and the Intimacy of the Question of the Meaning of Being" as well as consulting the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's Derrida and Heidegger pages so that ideas like aporia, differance, the arrivant, and all the Heideggerian jargon do not overwhelm you. Russon's essay helps lay a solid basis for many of the ideas I just mentioned. You can also read Hakhamanesh Zangeneh's essay "An Impossible Waiting—Reading Derrida's Reading of Heidegger in Aporias" as a supplemental text to help distill Derrida's main points about Heidegger. After all, it would be a shame to read this book and forget most of what it says only a few days later.
I hope my suggestions help, since I know continental philosophy can be some of the most cryptic subject matter. But I really believe that if you are interested in Heidegger this is a great book to both test your knowledge of his philosophy and expand your perspective on that titanic work of 20th century philosophy, Being and Time.
Tread carefully!
Read
June 4, 2023Aporias is sometimes billed as the start of D's big heideggerean turn, where husserl is more firmly put into the past & we have texts like specters & politics arise. (imo levinas is JUST AS central to D's development as heidegger , if not slightly more so ,,., ,. but I'm a controversial figure). After a little diderot intro, this text is effectively a response to one of Heidegger's footnotes in Being & Time,,, it makes me want to reread that one too
this is a lovely text , on death. im very excited to reread it. Strong development on the pas (the step, pace, the not)/passage/departure/passione & the threshold, our place to pause, where we have aporias in blocked doors, undone borders, and total subsumption into the Other.... beautiful ,.,.. (also, there's a real tension with the hymen, as described in Disseminations but it's never referred to explicitly. it seems super relevant to the ways that D is talking about departure-into & passing-over,,,,, {also note the gift of death} idk why it wasn't mentioned. anyway)
with Archive Fever I text dumped my two favourite paras but I have about 15 screenshots on my desktop from Aporias & I won't subject you to that
"the aporia can never simply be endured as such. The ultimate aporia is the impossibility of the aporia as such"
this is a lovely text , on death. im very excited to reread it. Strong development on the pas (the step, pace, the not)/passage/departure/passione & the threshold, our place to pause, where we have aporias in blocked doors, undone borders, and total subsumption into the Other.... beautiful ,.,.. (also, there's a real tension with the hymen, as described in Disseminations but it's never referred to explicitly. it seems super relevant to the ways that D is talking about departure-into & passing-over,,,,, {also note the gift of death} idk why it wasn't mentioned. anyway)
with Archive Fever I text dumped my two favourite paras but I have about 15 screenshots on my desktop from Aporias & I won't subject you to that
"the aporia can never simply be endured as such. The ultimate aporia is the impossibility of the aporia as such"
October 9, 2008
I found this easier to read than The Gift of Death. Transcendent and problematizing in the best way - in only a way Derrida can do, he opens up the concept of the limit and the beyond, bringing the reader to a place of possibility in life, love, art, language.
March 2, 2025
One of the aporias giving title to this book is the formulation « possibility of the impossibility for existence (Dasein) to be there », in a crucial development of Martin Heidegger’s « Being and Time », known as being-unto-death or being-towards-death, as it was arrived at in the existential analytic or fundamental ontology. This latter’s specificity is analyzed, followed, deconstructed. Sein zum Tode is more commonly referred to as finitude: mortality figured as, firstly, graphic delimitation, secondly, passage.
These two figures are relied upon by Derrida in his commentary: the limit finds cognates in peras, terma, finis, border, or even gramme, trace, trait. And passage or crossing in pas, march, approach, transgression. Both are condensed in the Greek word aporia, which means no-passage, impasse, and is made equivalent to phenomenological epokhe into the ontological revelation.
(Quand quelqu'un vous propose une solution pour sortir de l’impasse, vous pouvez être à peu près sûr qu'il commence à ne plus comprendre, à supposer qu'il l'ait fait jusque-là.) (65/32)
Of the more remarked motifs one finds: arrivant, restance, secret, testimony (how can one attest or be witness to death which is non-appearance or strictly speaking not?), Marrano, crypt.
Eloquent meditation on death, its significance as the most significant—ownmost yet other. Adds nicely to Derrida’s deconstruction of time twenty four years earlier in « Ousia and Gramme ». It is a genius explanation of immortality: because death cannot be experienced as such, be it the ownmost and Dasein’s most proper, it is a limit and a beyond that has always already been eclipsed, transcended. And inasmuch as experience is the wake of the witnessing of this impossibility, while it lasts, my death can neither arrive nor appear.
These two figures are relied upon by Derrida in his commentary: the limit finds cognates in peras, terma, finis, border, or even gramme, trace, trait. And passage or crossing in pas, march, approach, transgression. Both are condensed in the Greek word aporia, which means no-passage, impasse, and is made equivalent to phenomenological epokhe into the ontological revelation.
(Quand quelqu'un vous propose une solution pour sortir de l’impasse, vous pouvez être à peu près sûr qu'il commence à ne plus comprendre, à supposer qu'il l'ait fait jusque-là.) (65/32)
Of the more remarked motifs one finds: arrivant, restance, secret, testimony (how can one attest or be witness to death which is non-appearance or strictly speaking not?), Marrano, crypt.
Eloquent meditation on death, its significance as the most significant—ownmost yet other. Adds nicely to Derrida’s deconstruction of time twenty four years earlier in « Ousia and Gramme ». It is a genius explanation of immortality: because death cannot be experienced as such, be it the ownmost and Dasein’s most proper, it is a limit and a beyond that has always already been eclipsed, transcended. And inasmuch as experience is the wake of the witnessing of this impossibility, while it lasts, my death can neither arrive nor appear.
October 26, 2017
The good: Interesting and compelling from an ethical perspective. Where Wittgenstein early in his career proposed the "dissolution" of insoluble philosophical problems, Derrida's overall point seems to be that doing philosophy mandates an ethical commitment to experiencing those insolubilities, to simultaneously going in circles and being stuck, and admitting it.
The bad: Repetitive, and English translation clearly suffers from the lack of evocative translations of not only various French but German terms as well, since it's primarily a riff on Heidegger. In particular, there's a distinction between "dying," "demising" and "perishing" that doesn't work very well in English, especially if you're accustomed to the American legal English usage of "demise" as a verb.
The bad: Repetitive, and English translation clearly suffers from the lack of evocative translations of not only various French but German terms as well, since it's primarily a riff on Heidegger. In particular, there's a distinction between "dying," "demising" and "perishing" that doesn't work very well in English, especially if you're accustomed to the American legal English usage of "demise" as a verb.
March 5, 2021
I wish I was the student I used to be. This book is gorgeous but I did not have the patience to be with the words and follow the arguement to its conclusion. The first page of the second section was a pearl: " . . . . Culture itself, culture in general, is essentially, before anything, even a priori, the culture of death. Consequently, then, it is a history of death. There is no culture without a cult of ancestors, a ritualization of mourning and sacrifice, institutional places and modes of burial . . ." One thing that I misssed (which reflects my philosophical ungroundedness) was a meditation on how humanity is an accumulation of humans. Death is for just one person. Is beling also about many, at once, over long stretches of time, and who is the witness for this? There is aporia in this too? So -- even for the uneducated this book filled me with questions and wonder.
May 31, 2025
This is the first book I have read by Derrida himself. I had planned on starting with 'The Margins of Philosophy' but was turned away when I saw the length of it. I hadn't read anything by Derrida himself so I opted for a shorter but no less punchy text to begin with.
Aporias was a joy to read, but definitely dense. Stylistically it takes the form of a more 'traditional' western philosophy text, but with a distinctness, lucidity, and depth that is characteristic of Derrida, at least from what I've read about him. This was a beautiful illustration of how Derrida deconstructs texts to open them up to alterity while not denegrating nor undermining the texts themselves. His treatment of Heidegger's and Aries' notions of death were deeply respectful and graceful in the way he untangled the presuppositions and unseen axioms that were embedded in each figure's respective thinking and writing.
I am definitely more motivated to jump into more of his texts regardless of length and brevity.
Aporias was a joy to read, but definitely dense. Stylistically it takes the form of a more 'traditional' western philosophy text, but with a distinctness, lucidity, and depth that is characteristic of Derrida, at least from what I've read about him. This was a beautiful illustration of how Derrida deconstructs texts to open them up to alterity while not denegrating nor undermining the texts themselves. His treatment of Heidegger's and Aries' notions of death were deeply respectful and graceful in the way he untangled the presuppositions and unseen axioms that were embedded in each figure's respective thinking and writing.
I am definitely more motivated to jump into more of his texts regardless of length and brevity.
December 13, 2025
twas okay
December 14, 2014
One of the best of Derrida's corpus. [Others are Margins of Philosophy and On the Name]
December 28, 2019
I am a huge fan of Derrida's work, admiring the way he melds creativity and rigor. But this conference paper turned book seems to lack both. Heidegger's existential analyses of Dasein and death are fertile ground to challenge boundary concepts and conceptions of boundaries, but Derrida phones it in with lackluster, slippery associations while touching on themes that are examined more thoroughly in other works. And performatively the journey isn't very enjoyable; usually Derrida's turns of phrase and clever neologisms are entertaining to the fault of sometimes covering over the depth of insight that they indicate, but in this case I just didn't find much that caught my attention. Too bad, since death is indeed a provocative problematic which can elucidate the aporetic features of experience, thinking, culture, etc.
October 25, 2024
Let me break this down really quick:
Ontological Dif -> "as such" privation -> Dasein animality -> Modes of "dying" -> Possibility / im-possibility
Derrida's attempt (in the construal of the structural motion) to deconstruct the modal dyad, if successful, would essentially destabilize distinctions resulting from ontological difference. So think about that next time you use the phrase "as such"!
Ontological Dif -> "as such" privation -> Dasein animality -> Modes of "dying" -> Possibility / im-possibility
Derrida's attempt (in the construal of the structural motion) to deconstruct the modal dyad, if successful, would essentially destabilize distinctions resulting from ontological difference. So think about that next time you use the phrase "as such"!
November 30, 2020
Excellent little piece about the (im)possibility of dying where Derrida discusses the trespassing of passing away through three aporias (limits/impossibilities): (1) problematic closure, (2) anthropological border, and (3) conceptual demarcation. Interesting stuff about duty, responsibility for the Other, arrivant vs. revenant, animal vs. man, etc.!
January 27, 2021
The first Derrida I’ve read that got me excited.
May 6, 2021
Uste ensayo viene a ser como una clave y guía para pensar la retórica aporética del discurso del «último» Derrida.
November 6, 2007
I recently finished this quick book (funny to call anything by Derrida "quick). He begins a treatment of what it means to "live" poststructural philosophy and takes as his starting point the idea of death and the trace. Fascinating book, but it makes you contemplate your own life.
April 23, 2011
Interesting book. I completely agree with his take on Heidegger. I especially liked the end (but I won't spoil it for you)
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews