After a brief account of Derrida’s youth in Algeria, his
family and his early reading, I describe in this chapter the
major philosophical figures that Derrida encountered when he
arrived in France in 1949 , at the age of nineteen. The first is
Jean-Paul Sartre, whom Derrida reacted against. Repelled by
Sartre the psychologist, and the theatrical scenarios that were
necessary to Sartre’s version of philosophical inquiry, Derrida
pursued a purer, more abstract form of thinking, Edmund
Husserl’s phenomenology. G. W. F. Hegel rivals Husserl as an
epitome of metaphysics, but he includes history whereas
Husserl does not: so Derrida’s choice of Husserl over Hegel in
his early work can also be seen as a purification of philosophy.
Both Sartre and Hegel (the latter long dead, the former
very much alive in 1950 s Paris) strongly influenced the fash-
ionable Marxism of the École Normale Supérieure, where
Derrida was first trained in philosophy. By breaking with these
figures, and specifically with their engagement in politics and
history, Derrida declared his intellectual independence.
Derrida’s first work is an admiring account of Husserl’s
essay on the origins of geometry. But as Derrida develops his
skepticism, his suspicion of metaphysical certainty, he turns
against Husserl. He misreads Husserl as a one-sided exponent
of logocentrism and a resister of différance. Such distortion is
necessary in the blindness and insight model that Derrida fol-
lows: skepticism is always bound to metaphysics as its oppo-
nent and satirist, and as a result it exaggerates metaphysical
vices. Conscious of the limits of this hyperbolic dialogue, Der-
rida begins, in the mid-sixties, to explore the possibility of an
outside realm, an “other” to philosophy. He searches for this
realm in the prophetic announcements of Nietzsche and the
ethical imperatives of Emmanuel Lévinas. (These develop-
ments are explored in chapter 2 .)
12 From Algeria to the École Normale