Derrida and Presocratic Philosophy

Abstract

This chapter explores the correspondences between Derrida and some of his presocratic antecedents and demonstrates the ways in which his philosophical project reiterates and develops certain presocratic approaches, ideas, and concerns, such as interrogating the assumptions that ground the structure of knowledge, and the limits of linguistic discourse. This comparative analysis also focuses on Derrida's strong rapport with the Heraclitean account of the logos as the structural and dynamic principle of the cosmos, the human soul, and of linguistic signification. Their characterization of the discursive movement that produces meaning is one of the chief points of similarity: both argue that the origin of meaning is located in difference, and that meaning cannot be made or acknowledged without the passage through signification. Heraclitus' characterization of the logos in terms of a ‘harmonious tension of strife in flux’ is reiterated in Derrida's conception of differential play.