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Derrida’s Deconstruction Contra Habermas’s Communicative Reason

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Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory

Introduction

In 1985, Jürgen Habermas (1929–) published a number of very critical comments on Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) in his book The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Derrida reacted by saying that Habermas had either misread him or perhaps not even read him at all. In 1988, Derrida replied briefly yet informatively in an interview published by Autremen 102 (Derrida 2006), after which both parties remained silent until the end of the 1990s. (Derrida also wrote two lengthy footnotes in the 2nd English edition of Memoires for Paul de Man, note 44 and, in Limited Inc, note 9. See Derrida 1988, 1989.) It was then that Derrida and Habermas met at a party and Habermas proposed a friendly discussion. Derrida and Habermas actually set aside their differences and concentrated on themes upon which they both agreed. Before Derrida died, they jointly published one book and several articles.

In spite of temporarily finding common ground, Habermas and Derrida never did achieve a common...

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Huttunen, R. (2015). Derrida’s Deconstruction Contra Habermas’s Communicative Reason. In: Peters, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_305-1

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