Jacques Derrida, a very influential thinker, was born in France. During the 1940s he experienced a deep crisis in his life. He was imprisoned in Algeria during the occupation of that period, and during the war he worked in the resistance. After the Resistance he wrote a number of influential works, most of which are important in understanding postmodernism, or the ideology of post-modernism.
Deconstruction is a methodology for understanding the relation between meaning and text. He was born in Algeria, where he lived and died. It was developed by the influential philosopher Jacques Derrida (also during the 1940s), who explained the word variously through his work. In his book, “A Structural Interpretation of postmodernism”, Derrida argued that meaning is no longer a matter of ideas, but of specific sites, which can be understood only from their relation to each other. This helps him to develop a view of text as a mode of communication, whose meanings are determined by its relationship to certain other texts, their historicalicity and their aesthetic value.
Derrida’s idea of meaning independent of language is a crucial element of his philosophy. In his postscriptions he said that no philosophy can give an adequate explanation of the meaning of a text, because it is not a language. He further added that the attempt to do so impairs the ability of a text to communicate. He therefore says that any attempt to establish the exact meaning of a text is a false move, for it amounts to an affirmation of the loss of language.
The postmodernism of Jacques Derrida is related, however, to developments that occurred later in the twentieth century in the West, particularly in the thinking of some of the more prominent philosophers. It is also connected to developments that took place in various cultural circles in the East, especially in Japan. The more critical currents that developed in postmodernism strove to attack the foundations of the contemporary liberal society and to provide a more radical critique of that society. In this vein, some of the poststructuralist philosophers like Leo Tolstoy adopted a more doctrinaire view of philosophy.
The theories of postmodernism diverged from traditional philosophy in various aspects. Most significantly, however, they did not accept the traditional view that logic forms the basis of all intellectual activity. For them, all theories in regard to the real were postulates about things that can be seen.
The poststructuralism of Jacques Derrida is also associated with the related tendency to emphasize the existence of a multitude of hidden elements, or ‘sub-elements’, hidden in the very structure of reality. These elements, which are supposed to exist in opposite positions, yet are necessarily connected, constitute the substrate on which the reality we experience has its foundation. The poststructuralists maintained that all these elements have their origins in the structures of Difference and Abundance. These elements are then manipulated and brought into play in the generation of the text.
Unlike most philosophers before him, who denied the influence of language, Derrida saw the positive effects that language had on the generation of ideas. For him, language and its forms, and their use, have a decisive influence on the formation of philosophy. For him, there is no denying that logic and the idea of a transcendental subject are integral aspects of poststructuralism. The theories of Derrida therefore become intertwined with his ideas of Language and Thought. He claims that the attempt of a philosophical text to describe the essence of a phenomenon, or to give a meaning to an idea, presupposes the necessity for a grammatical analysis of the idea as such. This view is at variance with the traditional view that linguistics deals only with the formal structure of languages.
For him, the task of a philosopher is not so much to discover the truth but to contribute to the betterment of a situation by suggesting ways of clarifying its deeper workings. In his poststructuralism, Jacques Derrida does not subscribe to any particular theory of philosophy. Rather, he perceives philosophy as a structure that evolves through history and with the change in its surroundings. This view underlines the claim that a Philosophy of Difference can offer a richer way of understanding poststructures and their philosophical theories. A Philosophy of Difference may thus provide the foundation for a more realistic understanding of philosophical theories.