Derrida had explored the skeptical response to metaphysical
statements about the certainty of meaning. How could ethical
imperatives exist in a world where all meanings were uncer-
tain? Derrida was forced, however covertly, to admit a role for
moral revelation: for the idea that certain values, once dis-
closed to humanity, cannot easily be retracted (for example,
the commandment to care for one’s neighbor, or the prohibi-
tion against murder).
Edmund Husserl provides the original stimulus for Derrida’s
skepticism. Husserl is the perfect target for Derrida: a diehard
logocentrist who quests after clarity. Husserl wants to prove
his thinking, render it certain. Derrida, in opposition to this
metaphysical ideal, becomes the champion of the undecidable.
He argues the indeterminacy of meaning, and seizes on
the contingent, the random, the fragmented—everything that
Husserl abhors. Yet Husserl is a necessary starting place for
Derrida because he tries (and fails) to bridge the gap between
the contingent and the absolute. As Derrida occupies himself
with Husserl’s “Origin of Geometry,” what fascinates him is
Husserl’s attempt to understand the historical genesis of West-
ern thought. Husserl grapples with the ideas of objectivity and
abstraction that are basic to Western scientific and philosoph-
ical consciousness. Where do these ideas come from? Husserl’s
answer is: a particular time and place, ancient Greece. But the
conjunction of universality and particularity remains an in-
soluble problem for him. (In Hegel, by contrast, universal
ideas are incarnated without difficulty in particular historical
moments.) Derrida takes from Husserl the notion of an in-
escapable, but permanently puzzling, relation between univer-
sal truth and the occasion when it arises.
As his career develops, Derrida the skeptic drifts far away
36 From Algeria to the École Normale