Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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underlying, unspoken and implicit, assumptions and frameworks that form the author’s
thoughts and beliefs.
American postmodernist, Richard Rorty, does not believe humanity can escape its
linguistic heritage in examining the world. We [necessarily] see the world through a
conceptual framework imposed by language. Even if our doubts are put to rest, our
knowledge of an alleged external reality is obscured linguistically. He follows
Wittgenstein’s observation that language cannot describe its own limits, which is to say;
we cannot describe a reality beyond the limitations of language (Rorty, 1991:59).
Jacques Bouveresse in France and Jürgen Habermas in Germany severely criticized
Derrida, as did many British and American philosophers. To them, Derrida’s work was a
regression into irrationalism, for the anti-foundationalism the deconstructionists promoted
inevitably leads to the rejection of every [rational] development to that point in history.
Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida and others, who employ deconstruction, judge all
[philosophical] work before them as erroneous, placing themselves over all other thinkers
in history -- the height of arrogance.
Derrida and other deconstructionists perform a radical critique of the Enlightenment
project and of metaphysics in the Western tradition. They especially focused on texts by
Plato, Rousseau and Husserl, but were certainly not limited to them. Derrida, in
particular, sought to undermine, or deconstruct, the metaphysical assumptions of Western
philosophies, unveiling and deconstructing the Western metaphysical hegemony over
others. Michel Foucault later added his thinking about the misuse of power, especially as
a means of manipulating others. Fredric Jameson’s neo-Marxist ideas further undermined
traditional concepts.
Derrida’s, Of Grammatology (1967), examines the relationship between speech and
writing, and investigates the way speech and writing develop as forms of language.
Derrida argues that traditionally writing has been viewed as an expression of speech,
leading to the assumption that speech is closer than writing to the truth, or logos, of
meaning and representation. He contends that the development of language actually
occurs via the interplay of speech and writing, that neither can properly be described as
more important to the development of language. According to Derrida, ‘logocentrism’
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa