Publication Details

Abstract

The paper depicts the problem of representation as decisive for the deconstructivist reading of Plato, Descartes and Rousseau. Derrida does not admit any difference between construction of meaning in Descartes and its critical destruction in Rousseau. He argues that both of these thinkers operate in order of representation. Despite of their evident disagreement, both of them are involved in the same contradictory building of the metaphysics of presence. On the author’s view, the principle of representation gives their propositions about meaning a double impulse, which simultaneously denounces the mechanism of metaphysics of presence and underlines its philosophical inevitability. That’s why deconstruction intends neither to construct, nor to destroy, but to postpone the meaning. It’s due to his way of reading, that Derrida “traces” precisely this double metaphysical gesture of representation.