Derrida's Early Considerations of Historicism and Relativism

Abstract

This chapter examines Jacques Derrida's early engagement with historicism and relativism. It analyzes his 1963 “Introduction” to Edmund Husserl's “The Origin of Geometry” and his 1971 essay “The Supplement of Copula.” The chapter suggests that Derrida followed Husserl in seeking to understand how recognizing the linguistic specificity of philosophical concepts is not tantamount to a linguistic relativism. It considers how Derrida's confrontation with Emmanuel Levinas' evocation of a Judaic “other” of the philosophical tradition allowed him to extend his reflections on the exemplarity of the Greek and the European in philosophy.