Who's Afraid of Philosophy

Right to Philosophy 1

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by Jacques Derrida,

Translated by Jan Plug

Stanford University Press

Due/Published April 2002, 240 pages, paper

ISBN 0804742952

This volume reflects Jacques Derrida's engagement in the late 1970s with French political debates on the teaching of philosophy and the reform of the French university system. He was a founding member of the Research Group on the Teaching of Philosophy (Greph), an activist group that mobilized opposition to the Giscard government's proposals to "rationalize" the French educational system in 1975, and a convener of the Estates General of Philosophy, a vast gathering in 1979 of educators from across France.

While addressing specific contemporary political issues on occasion, thus providing insight into the pragmatic deployment of deconstructive analysis, the essays deal mainly with much broader concerns. With his typical rigor and spark, Derrida investigates the genealogy of several central concepts which any debate about teaching and the university must confront.

Thus there are essays on the "teaching body," both the faculty corps and the strange interplay in the French (but not only the French) tradition between the mind and body of the professor; on the question of age in teaching, analyzed through a famous letter of Hegel; on the class, the classroom, and the socio-economic concept of class in education; on language, especially so-called "natural languages" like French; and on the legacy of the revolutionary tradition, the Estates General, in the university. The essays are linked by the extraordinary care and precision with which Derrida undertakes a political intervention into, and a philosophical analysis of, the institutionalization of philosophy in the university.

Series: Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics

"This book is of extraordinary importance. It collects one of the most important and underappreciated aspects of Derrida's work--his investigations into the institutions of philosophical research and teaching--in a definitive and comprehensive volume. These essays are crucial to an understanding of Derrida, and their publication in English is a milestone."--Thomas Keenan, Bard College

Review

"Who has the right to philosophy today, in our society? To which philosophy? Under what conditions? In which private or public space?" – Some of the questions Derrida poses in Who's Afraid of Philosophy

In the 1970s Jacques Derrida and other members of the French philosophical community began to write about and speak out against the Haby Reform. Named after René Haby, the former French minister of education, the reform proposed to curtail the teaching of philosophy in high schools and universities. The proposals were never implemented but did occasion some of Derrida's most interesting writing on the institutions and teaching of philosophy.

The essays in Who's Afraid of Philosophy? not only address specific political and educational issues but also speculate on broader, more philosophical questions concerning the teaching of philosophy. The work's more pragmatic moments reveal the ways in which deconstruction can be "put to work" to address specific issues. In his more creative or Derridan moments, Derrida explores the meaning of the "teaching body," as it refers to the faculty corps, the strange interplay between the teacher's mind and body, the role of socio-economic backgrounds in the classroom, the revolutionary legacy in French schooling, and, through a creative reading of a letter by Hegel, the question of the age of the teacher. The essays, written from 1974-1990, also offer a trenchant analysis of the political nature of teaching and educational institutions.