Post-Derridean View: A Study of the Selected Writings of Richard Rorty

ABSTRACT

In the postmodern era after the World War 11, Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) revolutionized the philosophical theories on art and literature. He is known for developing a method of semiotic interpretation famous as deconstruction and this philosophical idea is discussed in his various works such as Speech and Phenomena (1967), Of Grammatology. Al these writing of Derrida greatly impacted the philosophical thoughts of the contemporary thinkers. Derrida published more than forty books and delivered a large number of lectures and influenced social sciences including philosophy, psychoanalysis and politics.  He came in contact with prominent cultural critics and thinkers of his time such as Louis Althusser and studied Edmund Husserl and James Joyce. He was invited to deliver a lecture in John Hopkins University where he read a paper on Deconstruction. Derrida is a founding father of Deconstruction; a strategy of critical questioning directed to expose the metaphysical assumptions and internal contradictions in philosophy. In his Of Grammatology, Derrida expounds and elucidates the main ideas of deconstruction. Derrida’s critical tool serves to interpret the western thought by reversing “binary oppositions” that provides its foundation. Philosophers of hermeneutic tradition are Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Lyotard, Deluze and Jameson.. In contrast to Derrida, Rorty has discussed the issues of media and time philosophy in passing. He rejected many ideas of Derrida and evolved his own neo-pragmatic philosophy. Rorty directs his views against the epistemological mainstream which determines the tradition of modern philosophy.

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