French Philosopher Jacques Derrida

French philosopher Jacques Derrida

Philosopher with French nationality of Sephardic Jewish origin, Jacques Derrida was born in Algeria, on July 15, 1930, where due to the repression of the Vichy government he was expelled from his Algerian Institute at the age of 12, a fact that will mark his thought so muchphilosophical as a politician towards absolute responsibility for the respect of the other as another. In 1959 he moved back to France, where he taught at the Liceo de Le Mans until in 1965 he obtained the position of Director of Studies of the Department of Philosophy of the École Normale Supérieure, where he works friendship with Georges Canguilhem and Michel Foucault. In 1964 he participated in a meeting on the French sciences in Baltimore with Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Jean Hyppolite, Lucien Goldman or Georges Poulet, which will be decisive for his international recognition. 

In 1967, three capital works of his thinking are published simultaneously such as grammatology, a systematic analysis of the origin of language in the works of Saussure, Rousseau and Lévi-Strauss, writing and difference, a collection of articles written between 1963 and1967 in which Foucault, Levinas, Husserl, Heidegger, Hegel, Bataille and Artaud, and the voice and the phenomenon, a sharp criticism of Husserl’s work, aimed at showing the immediate non -presence of consciousness andThe irrecusable mediation of the voice. 

Regarding its institutional and political activism, it is worth highlighting its participation in the foundation of the International College of Philosophy in 1983, the Directorate of the School of High Studies in Social Sciences from 1984 until the day of his death, or the collaboration inThe foundation of the Jan Hus association in support of the dissident intellectuals of Czechoslovakia, collaboration that would be worth the imprisonment in Prague after imparting clandestine seminars of philosophy in 1981.

In general, he always publicly opposed the war, whether the Vietnam War during May 68, or the Iraq war in 2003. He participated in cultural activities in favor of Nelson Mandela or for the release of both the African -American journalist Mumia Abu Jamal (for whom he came to write a letter to the US President. UU. Bill Clinton) as for the leader of the Rural Workers Movement (MST) by Brazil José Raihna. He died on October 8, 2004 in Paris due to pancreatic cancer.