DERRIDA AFTER YESTERDAY
Darin Tenev
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
https://doi.org/10.53656/phil2025-02-01
Instituting Gestures, Inescapable Ways: Derrida and Zhuangzi Compared
Héctor G. Castaño
National Sun Yat-sen University (Taiwan)
https://doi.org/10.53656/phil2025-02-02
Abstract. For over 40 years, numerous scholars have engaged in comparing the philosophies of Zhuangzi and Derrida. These comparisons can either bring the two thinkers closer together or set them apart, depending on how the authors assess four key aspects: the central concepts employed by Derrida and Zhuangzi, their relationship to metaphysics, their writing styles, and the practical and therapeutic implications of their philosophies. A meta-analysis of these comparative efforts uncovers shared yet often unexamined assumptions that underpin the various comparisons. The repetition of these assumptions contributes to the consolidation of a set of fixed ideas regarding what connects and distinguishes Zhuangzi and Derrida, including their association with cultural identities shaped by philosophical nationalism. By reflecting on the insights of both Zhuangzi and Derrida regarding the processes of institutionalization within philosophy, this article argues that they both anticipated the deconstruction of the assumptions under which they have been compared.
Keywords: comparative philosophy; philosophical nationalism; philosophical institutions; deconstruction; Taoism
THE OBVIOUS UNSAID: AN INQUIRY INTO HEIDEGGER’S DOCTRINE VIA DERRIDA
Severina Stankeva
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski
https://doi.org/10.53656/phil2025-02-03
Abstract. In his essay „Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,“ Heidegger posits that a thinker’s doctrine resides not in their explicit articulations but in what remains unsaid within the said, in the gaps and interstices of their thought. This paper examines the question of Heidegger’s own doctrine through a Derridean lens, with particular attention to “Sending: On Representation.” It argues that Heidegger’s philosophy, through its various turns, remains underpinned by the conception of Being as transcending signification, which cannot be but a representational mode of thinking even if truth (ἀλήθεια) is thought of as unhiddeness. As a result, Heidegger’s doctrine emerges, paradoxically, as the very concept of doctrine – a recursive matrix mirroring his critique of metaphysics.
Keywords: Heidegger; Derrida; doctrine; truth;
Deconstruction as the Thinking of Secret
Yuji NISHIYAMA
Tokyo Metropolitan University
https://doi.org/10.53656/phil2025-02-04
Abstract: Secrecy is essential to human life, shaping personal identity and social bonds. It enables individuals to protect their inner lives and fosters intimacy and community through selective sharing. Secrecy involves ethical and political judgment, requiring decisions about what to conceal or disclose, when, and to whom. In Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive philosophy, secrecy is deeply tied to responsibility. His late seminars, especially Respond to Secrecy, explore secrecy across various domains and highlight its critical role in literature and ethics. This paper analyzes the importance of secrecy within Derrida’s thought, focusing on responsibility and key works like Passions, The Gift of Death, and Respond to Secrecy.
Keywords: Jacques Derrida; deconstruction; secrecy; responsibility
The Concept of Phantasm in the Work of Derrida
Darin Tenev
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski”
https://doi.org/10.53656/phil2025-02-05
Abstract The article offers a reconstruction of Derrida’s concept of phantasm with a stress on the discussion of the phantasm in Glas (1974) and his final seminar (2002 – 2003). I argue that the main characteristic of the phantasm is that it is placed on both sides of a border or a frontier. In this, it produces the believe that one can stand on both sides of a divide while remaining on one of them. In this way, phantasm becomes a phantasm of power, an illusion for pure auto-affectivity. Yet, the phantasm also disrupts the illusion of mastery and opens the way to the other in an unpredictable manner, becoming an event that cannot be simply opposed to reality or truth.
Keywords: Derrida; phantasm; life; death; child
A Commitment to Irresponsibility: ON Derrida’s Passions: ‘An Oblique Offering’
Johan de Jong
Leiden University, The Netherlands
https://doi.org/10.53656/phil2025-02-06
Abstract. In accounts of deconstruction’s concern with responsibility, what is often overlooked is its commitment to specific forms of irresponsibility as not just unavoidable but necessary. This article traces that necessity, through a reading of Derrida’s “Passions: ‘An Oblique Offering’”, in the logics governing invitation, hospitality, and literature, and how this irresponsibility is expressed performatively in the “oblique” character of Derrida’s textual experimentation. I argue for this irresponsibility as not destructively opposed to responsibility but as part and parcel of deconstruction’s ethical commitment. This irresponsibility distinguishes deconstructive ethics not just from the relativism long ascribed to ‘postmodernism’, but also from an ethics of responsibility of a Levinasian type. Finally, I argue for this commitment to irresponsibility against contemporary criticisms that deem deconstruction symptomatic of a 1990’s-style ironizing that one supposedly can no longer afford, given the challenges of today.
Keywords: Derrida; Irresponsibility; Responsibility; Deconstruction; Commitment
Blindness and Insight of Reading Deconstruction Between Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man
Yusuke Miyazaki
Senshu University, Japan
https://doi.org/10.53656/phil2025-02-07
Abstract. This paper reexamines the complex relationship between Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man by focusing on their divergent approaches to deconstruction, particularly through readings of Rousseau’s Confessions. While de Man emphasizes a “philological” mode of reading grounded in the text’s self-deconstructive structure, Derrida interrogates the epistemological and performative distinctions underpinning de Man’s approach. By analyzing Derrida’s misreading of de Man’s modulation between confessional modes, the paper clarifies the implications of de Man’s claim regarding the undecidability between excuse and truth-statement. It concludes that de Man’s “thinking of the law” makes a decisive contribution to the ethico-political trajectory of Derrida’s deconstruction in his later works.
Keywords: Derrida; Paul de Man; deconstruction; Rousseau; excuse; blindness of reading
Derrida and Kristeva Play Sollers’ Numbers (A Gamer’s Mode d’emploi)
Miglena Nikolchina
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
https://doi.org/10.53656/phil2025-02-08
Abstract. Jacques Derrida’s influential essay “Dissemination” (1969) offers a detailed commentary and subtle response to Philippe Sollers’ novel Numbers (1968), which he calls a “textual machine.” Elaborating some of her most fascinating concepts, Julia Kristeva’s essay on Numbers “Engendering the Formula” appears almost simultaneously with Derrida’s text. In terms of dialogical contiguities but also in terms of irreducible specificities, this unique crossing of perspectives is indicative of the 1960s intellectual efforts to surmount the technocratic pressures on the humanities. Addressing the novel and the essays as an “ensemble” – as different replays of a quasi “video game” – the present study foregrounds the performative aspects of the three authors’ formidable artistic and theoretical encounter. Their employment of quotation, numerology and levels of meaning are approached through their intertextual play with each other as well as, among other things, Dante’s work, Kabbalah, and I ching, the Chinese Book of Changes. In the face of the unprecedented flattening and automatization of language we are facing today, the Numbers exchange provides a powerful vindication of writing as a supernumerary and multi-dimensional non-linear process.
Keywords: Intertextuality; numerology; levels of meaning; Dante; video game
O tu che leggi, udirai nuovo ludo.
Dante, Inferno, Canto XXII
CONCEPTUAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HERMENEUTICS
Valentin Kanawrow
South-Western University
https://doi.org/10.53656/phil2025-02-09
In early 2025, the prestigious German publishing house LIT published Andrzej Przyłębski’s monograph Hermeneutik. Von der Kunst der Interpretation zur Theorie und Philosophie des Verstehens (Hermeneutics. From Art of Interpretation to Theory and Philosophy of Comprehension).
The Problem of Religious Diversity: A Philosophical Approach
Nikolai Mihailov
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
https://doi.org/10.53656/phil2025-02-10
BACHEV, M., 2024. Unity and Diversity of the Spirit: The Problem of Religious Pluralism. Sofia, Propeller, ISBN: 978-954-392-769-8, 346 p.
