This thesis begins from an analysis of Derrida's specific readings of Plato and Platonism, identifying there a modernist bias, which interprets these metaphysical systems as if they were coextensive with Cartesian rationalism. Against Derrida, I argue for a repositioning of Plato and Platonism in the context of an ancient-modern quarrel. In replacing Descartes's "clarity and distinctness" with a pre-modern emphasis on "faith" (pistis), I am seeking to challenge Derrida's diagnosis of a perplexity or impasse (aporia) which cannot be overcome by (...) philosophy. With specific reference to the Meno and the Phaedrus, one can locate a three-tiered Platonic dialectic beginning with an assertion of knowledge, followed by a necessary deconstruction of this knowledge with, thirdly, a tentative reconstruction of philosophy based on faith rather than knowing. In later chapters, I examine this dialectic as it is developed in the Neo- and Christian- Platonist traditions, particularly through the work of Plotinus, Boethius and Augustine. On my interpretation, deconstruction remains at the second level of the Platonic dialectic, that of impasse and perplexity (one of Derrida's most recent texts is in fact entitled Aporias). Again with reference to an ancient-modern quarrel, it is my contention that Derrida's unstinting stress on the "aporetic" is due to an overemphasis of the Cartesian paradigm. Derrida identifies the exhaustion of what Deeley calls "the classical modern paradigm" with the exhaustion of philosophy per se. But this identification of philosophy with Cartesianism can be seriously challenged through a renewed foregrounding of the premodern philosophical resources which Descartes (and now Derrida) have sought to obscure. (shrink)

RésuméBien que Hegel soit parfaitement conscient du fait que l'activité de penser nepuisse devenir ce qu'elle est que dans etpar le langage, on peut dire qu'ila préservé une distinction hiérarchisée entre la pensée et le langage dans lequel elle s'exprime. Dans le but de clarifier ce qu'il veut dire exactement lorsqu'il distingue entre, d'un côté, la totalité des concepts purs et, de l'autre, le langage, la première partie du présent article—qui en est aussi la plus longue—fournit une interprétation deplusieurs textes (...) de Hegel sur le rapport entre la pensée pure et le langage, et montre pourquoi la conception qu'il se fait de cette relation est plus difficile à critiquer qu'on ne l'a souvent cru. L'article part de la conception hégélienne du concept absolu et, après avoir briévement esquissé la relation entre la Logique et la philosophic de la nature et de l'esprit, examine divers passages sur le langage, tirés, entre autres, des leçons sur la philosophic de l'histoire mondiale. La deuxième partie de l'article propose—dans une veine heideggérienne—une perspective à partir de laquelle une déconstruction des présupposés de base de cette conception pourrait avoir quelque chance de succès. (shrink)

“One of the most dangerous of ideas for a philosopher is, oddly enough, that we think with our heads, or in our heads.” Wittgenstein… aber wir sprechen das Allgemeine aus;” Hegel“Hegel is the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing.” Derrida“Linguistic turn”, “pragmatic paradigm”, “Destruktion”, “deconstruction”, “condition postmoderne”, “pensiero debole” are not only philosophical labels. They are not only indices of intellectual positions which have inscribed themselves, as consequences as well as preconditions, in the end of (...) traditional metaphysics. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”, Nietzsche'sGenealogy of Moralsannounces, describing the empty space which the metaphysical concepts have left; and in doing so opening up a seemingly boundless dimension for new developments of thoughts. The dilemma of these developments of modernity is that the vacuum they left, caused by their ruthless critique, cannot be refilled. So the outlook of modernity remains necessarily heterogeneous and unstable, meandering towards the colourful and fashionable-macabre extremes of postmodemity which gain from the tragic certainty of rien ne va plus the happy imperative of anything goes. But these are also ciphers of a particular philosophical-historical constellation, a work situation, in which the potencies of reason, being verhimmelt for a long time, now are going to be situated into their real contexts. Only, as Habermas puts it, “under the premises of an unexcited postmetaphysical thinking”, the once heroic concept of theory, which was meant to explain the world of human beings and their history as well as Nature out of onto-theleological principles of rationality, falls to pieces. (shrink)