Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Fleeing the Absolute: Derrida and the Problem of Anti-Hegelianism

  • Published:
Sophia Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Derrida defines différance as the “interruption of Hegelian dialectics.” Although scholars have noted that Derrida pursues his critique of Hegel by means of Hegelian concepts, the way that Derrida employs specific Hegelian concepts in his critique, such as non-positionality, self-reference, and contradiction, has not been sufficiently investigated. In this essay, I reconstruct Derrida’s critique of Hegel with special focus on the Hegelian concepts of non-positionality, self-reference, and contradiction.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Barnett, 1998, 1.

  2. Jacques Derrida, 1981, 40–41.

  3. This method is similar to Lambert, 2015, who also investigates the proximity between Derrida and Hegel by comparing Derrida’s différance to Hegel’s concept of difference.

  4. Derrida, 1981, 43.

  5. Bart Zantvoort notes that “[…] Derrida remains, in fact, in many ways very close to Hegel, building on and playing with Hegelian concepts and methods; sometimes explicitly and often implicitly, Hegel is to be found almost everywhere in Derrida’s work.” Zantvoort, 2020, 352. Regarding Derrida’s engagement with Hegel in Glas, Critchely points out that Derrida “works within - rather than with - the text.” Critchley, 1988, 29. Cohen is especially sensitive to this dimension of Derrida’s relation to Hegel, whereby Derrida is attempting “to expound in Hegel beyond Hegel.” Cohen, 2013, 255.

  6. In this paper, I mean neither to evaluate the success of Derrida’s critique, nor to provide a commentary on Derrida’s texts or his discussion of Hegel, but rather an investigation into the way he employs Hegelian concepts in this critique of Hegel. For a good commentary on Derrida’s treatment of Hegel in Glas, see Critchley, 1988. For a commentary on Derrida’s reading of Hegel from his 1964–1965 lecture course, see Gratton, 2015.

  7. Derrida, 1981, 40–41.

  8. Cohen, 2013, 250.

  9. Baugh, 2003, 120.

  10. Derrida, 1978, 80.

  11. Derrida, 1982, x.

  12. Derrida, 1982, xix.

  13. Derrida, 1982, xx. According to Derrida, Hegel, Spinoza, and Leibniz exemplify this form in various ways.

  14. Hegel, 1969, 362.

  15. Derrida, 1978, 36.

  16. Derrida, 1982, xiv.

  17. Derrida, 1978, 99, 111.

  18. Derrida, 1982, x.

  19. Derrida, 1982, xix.

  20. Derrida, 1997, 26.

  21. Barnett, 1998, 2.

  22. Barnett, 1998, 12. Indeed, Critchley is right that Derrida’s practice of reading Hegel is very careful and must be taken seriously: “When Derrida is read with the care with which he reads Hegel, his reading practice appears largely irrefutable, employing an implicit conception of truth as adaequatio between text and commentary.” Critchley, 1988, 1.

  23. Derrida, 1978, 251.

  24. Derrida, 1978, 320n.

  25. Barnett, 1998, 129.

  26. Derrida, 1978, 36–37

  27. Derrida, 1978, 31–63.

  28. Baugh, 2003, 122 (RMM 69:119/493).

  29. Derrida, 1978, 120.

  30. Barnett, 1998, 126. Levinas wants to distinguish between a desire for the other which transcends toward the Other from the Hegelian desire for recognition which desires to possess the Other’s desire. Derrida, 1978, 93. One cannot posit an Absolute Other while simultaneously treating the Other as an end for the Self who becomes present within my own selfhood as my concern.

  31. As Critchley notes, “Levinas thinks he’s stepping beyond Hegel with Rosenzweig, but Derrida shows that every attempt to step beyond Hegel falls back into the orbit of the Hegelian dialectic.” See Critchley, 2015, 2.

  32. What is more, Derrida points out that the Other cannot only be that which transcends the Self-Same, for the Other is the Same as itself, and the Same is Other to the Other. Indeed, the Other cannot be absolute external to the Same or wholly Other to the Same without ceasing to be the Other. Accordingly, the Other only is only other if it involves the Same. See Derrida, 1978, 320n91. See Levinas’ response in Levinas, 2008, 151.

  33. Derrida, 1982, xv. Also see Ch. 3 of Vernon W. Cisney, 2018, Deleuze and Derrida: Difference and the Power of the Negative, in which Cisney develops the view that Derrida is not anti-Hegelian.

  34. Derrida, 1982, xiii.

  35. Derrida, 1982, xiii.

  36. Derrida, 1982, 6.

  37. Derrida, 1981, 6.

  38. Wittgenstein, 1999, 27.

  39. Derrida, 1982, xiii.

  40. Derrida, 1982, xii.

  41. Derrida, 1982, xxiv.

  42. Derrida, 1982, xi.

  43. Derrida, 1982, xi.

  44. Derrida, 1982, xxii.

  45. Derrida, 1982, xxv.

  46. Derrida, 1978, 259. Cohen puts it well: “the Aufhebung, through its own ‘work’, reveals itself wholly otherwise than as that which it pretends to be, and thus as incessantly producing a ‘supplement’ of ‘negativity’ which can never be reappropriated through its own deployment but constantly committed to exceeding it.” Cohen, 2013, 256.

  47. Derrida, 1982, 14.

  48. Derrida, 1997, 24.

  49. Derrida, 1982, 6.

  50. Aristotle, 2002, 1006b.

  51. Derrida, 1978, 263.

  52. Non-positionality is a Hegelian concept. Because the Science of Logic is the science of the Absolute in its purely logical form, and the Absolute is not positioned vis-à-vis another, the Science of Logic is a science of what is non-positional. What is non-positional is not determinate vis-à-vis another, for it does not stand in contrast to anything else or in relation to other determinations. This non-positional and indeterminate feature of Hegel’s logic is well exhibited in the Science of Logic, specifically in its presuppositionless character, for it begins without any determination posited in advance.

  53. Cited in Baugh, 2003, 124. See Kojeve, 1980, 184.

  54. Derrida, 1981, 40–41.

  55. Derrida, 1981, 49.

  56. Derrida, 1978, 4.

  57. Derrida, 1982, 21–22.

  58. Derrida, 1982, 3.

  59. Derrida, 1982, 6, 25.

  60. Derrida, 1982, 6.

  61. Derrida, 1982, 15.

  62. Derrida, 1982, 23.

  63. Derrida, 1982, 16.

  64. Regarding the form of the contradiction, Derrida boldly claims that “One can think without contradiction, or at least without granting any pertinence to the contradiction […].” Derrida, 1982, 24.

  65. Derrida, 1982, 12.

  66. Baugh, 2003, 136.

  67. Derrida, 1967, 303.

  68. Derrida, 1982, 9.

  69. Derrida, 1982, 25.

  70. Derrida, 1982, 20.

  71. Derrida, 1982, 24.

  72. Contradiction too is a Hegelian concept. For Hegel, every concept in the Science of Logic is a definition of the Absolute (Hegel 1975, paragraph 85) and contradiction is a concept in the logic. Thus, for Hegel, contradiction is a definition of the Absolute. See Hegel, 1969, 375. McGowan acknowledges the presence of contradiction in Hegel’s concept of the Absolute and attempts to rescue Hegel from Derrida’s critique when he argues that Derrida “does not acknowledge the extent to which the absolute idea undermines any conception of self -identity.” Mcgowan, 2013, 96.

  73. Derrida, 1982, 5-6.

  74. Derrida, 1982, 23.

  75. Derrida, 1982, 6.

  76. Derrida, 1982,11.

  77. Derrida, 1995, 25.

  78. Derrida, 1982, 12.

  79. Derrida, 1982, 11.

  80. Derrida, 1982, 3. See Plato & Phaedo, 1998, 84b, for the original reference. To compare Derrida’s use of this metaphor with Heidegger, see Heidegger, 2010, 82.

  81. Derrida, 1982, 6. This initial specification of différance is inspired by Saussure and further appropriated by Derrida to undermine hierarchical oppositions.

  82. Derrida, 1982, 12.

  83. As he puts it, “there is no purely phonetic phoneme.” Derrida, 1982, 5.

  84. Although Sartre denies the existence of the unconscious, his argument for the non-positionality of pre-reflective consciousness parallels Derrida’s argument. See Sartre, 1992, lii–liii.

  85. Derrida, 1982, 18.

  86. In the Science of Logic, Hegel develops a purely ideal system of concepts that underlies and makes consciousness possible. Unlike Hegel however, given Derrida’s construal of the semiological condition of positional consciousness as différance, consciousness can never fully recover or recollect the initially unconscious condition and integrate them into a complete account of the Absolute as it occurs in Hegel.

  87. Derrida, 1978, 272. Like Derrida, Sartre understands the human being to undergo torture, but as Sartre puts it, it is because the human desires to be God, but cannot be. See Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 90.

  88. Derrida, 1982, 22.

  89. Derrida, 1982, 25.

  90. Derrida, 1982, 21.

  91. Derrida, 1982, 26.

  92. Derrida, 1982, 21.

  93. Derrida also notes that deferring is a kind of temporalization: différance belongs to a future that will never be made present. Insofar as its deferring is its difference (what it is), and its difference its deferring, Derrida speaks of the “temporalization of space” and the “spatializing of time.” Derrida, 1982, 7–8.

  94. Baugh, French Hegel, 134.

  95. Derrida, 1982, 8.

  96. Derrida, 1982,12.

  97. Derrida, 1982, 23.

  98. Derrida, 1982, 23.

  99. Derrida, 1982, 23.

  100. Derrida, 1982, 23.

  101. Derrida, 1982, 9.

  102. Derrida, 1982, 11.

  103. Baugh, 2003, 135.

  104. Hegel has many ways of expressing the logical structure constitutive of self-reference. In the Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel employs various terms such as “having turned back into itself” (Züruckgekehrtsein in sich selbst), Hegel 1975, 121, paragraph 83, “withdrawing inwards” (Insichgehen), “sinking deeper into itself” (ein Vertiefen desselben in sich selbst), ibid, paragraph 84, “return into themselves,” “back turning into themselves,” or “return-into-self” (ihrer Rückkehr in sich), ibid, paragraph 162, 225. Also see Hegel, 1969, 274. For Hegel, self-reference is a condition any concept must fulfill to be a true concept. In regard to semiotics, Derrida diverges from Hegel insofar as the self-referring sign is not merely an enabling condition of logic and does not cancel and preserve itself by signifying a distinct meaning, an ideal “signified” that itself undergoes its own autonomous development independently of the sensuous sign. Derrida takes Hegel’s insights into the self-referential aspect of thinking and develops them into a distinct semiology of self-reference.

  105. See Derrida, 1982, 7 and 23.

  106. Derrida, 1982, 20 and 23.

  107. de Boer, 2011, 601.

  108. Hegel, 1969, 276. Also see Hegel, 1986, 276.

  109. Derrida, 1982, 6.

  110. Derrida, 1982, 7.

  111. Deconstruction is the ἀρχή-writing without ἀρχή.

  112. Derrida, 1981, 43–44.

  113. Hegel is clear that there is only one principle of truth, and that is the concept: “To lay down the true shape of truth is scientific—or what is the same thing, to maintain that truth has only the concept as the element of its existence, seems I know, to contradict a view which is in our time as prevalent as it is pretentious, and to go against what that view implies.” See Hegel 2018, 4.

  114. Like Hegel, the form of Derrida’s text cannot be separated from the content of the text itself. As Critchley notes about the form of Glas, “Indeed, the text does not have an end, in the sense of an organized telos, like Absolute Knowledge, towards which the reading tends.” Critchley, 1988, 27.

  115. For more on the relationship between Hegel and Derrida’s conception of the presuppositionlessness, see Russon, 2006, 194–196.

  116. Derrida, 1982, 11.

  117. Derrida, 1978, 14.

  118. Derrida, 1978, 256.

  119. Derrida, 1978, 252.

  120. Derrida, 1982, 6.

  121. Derrida, 1982, xxii.

  122. Thinking—conceived as the unsettling motion that displaces absolute positionality, certainly does not begin with Derrida—but is already pre-figured in many thinkers, such as Schelling. See for example Schelling’s Über die Natur der Philosophie als Wissenschaft, where the task of free-thinking is conceived as the self-unsettling of all concepts of the Absolute. See Schelling, 1927a, 219.

References

  • Aristotle. (2002). Metaphysics (J. Sachs, Trans.). Green Lion Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, S. (Ed.). (1998). Hegel After Derrida. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baugh, B. (2003). French Hegel. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cisney, V. W. (2018). Deleuze and Derrida: Difference and the Power of the Negative. Edinburgh University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, J. (2013). The event of a reading: Hegel ‘with’ Derrida. In L. Herzog (Ed.), Hegel’s Thought inEurope: Current, Crosscurrents, and Undercurrent (pp. 250–263). Palgrave Macmillan.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Critchley, S. (1988). A Commentary upon Derrida’s Reading of Hegel in Glas. Bulletin ofthe Hegel Society of Great Britain, 9(2), 18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Critchley, S. (2015). The Problem with Levinas (A. Dianda, Ed.). Oxford, UP.

  • de Boer, K. (2011). Différance as negativity: The Hegelian Remains of Derrida’s Philosophy. In S. Houlgate & M. Baur (Eds.), A Companion to Hegel (pp. 594–610). Blackwell Publishing.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, J. (1967). L'écriture et la difference. Éditions du Seuil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, J. (1978). Writing and Difference (A. Bass, Trans.). University of Chicago Press.

  • Derrida, J. (1981). Positions (A. Bass, Trans.). University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, J. (1982). Margins of Philosophy (A. Bass, Trans.). University of Chicago Press.

  • Derrida, J. (1995). On the Name (T. Dutoit, Ed. & D. Wood, Trans.). Stanford UP.

  • Derrida, J. (1997). Of Grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). John Hopkins University Press.

  • Gratton, P. (2015). The Spirit of the Time: Derrida’s Reading of Hegel in the 1964–65 Lecture Course. The New Centennial Review, 15(1), 49–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hegel, G.W.F. (1969). Science of Logic (A. V. Miller, Trans.). Humanity Books.

  • Hegel, G. W. F. (1986). Wissenschaft der Logik II. Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, M. (2010). Country Path Conversations (E. Davis, Trans.). Indiana UP.

  • Kojeve, A. (1980). Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. (A. Bloom, Ed. & J. Nichols, Trans.). Cornell University Press.

  • Lambert, R. (2015). Reconsidering a point of almost absolute proximity: Hegel and Derrida. Hegel Jahrbuch, 15, 1.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levinas, E. (2008). Otherwise than Being (A. Lingis, Trans.). Duquesne University Press.

  • Mcgowan, T. (2013). The presence of phenomenology: Hegel and the return to metaphysics Mosaic. An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, 46(1), 95–111.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plato. (1998). Phaedo (E. Brann, P. Kalkavage, & E. Salem, Trans.) Focus Philosophical Library.

  • Russon, J. (2006). Reading: Derrida in Hegel’s understanding. Research in Phenomenology, 36, 181–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sartre, J-P. (1992). Being and Nothingness, Introduction, the Pursuit of Being (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). Simon and Schuster.

  • Schelling, F. W. J. (1927). Über die Philosophie als Wissenschaft. In M. Schroeder (Ed.), Schelling’s Werke, Fünfter Hauptband. D.H. Beck’sche Buchhandlung.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wittgenstein, L. (1999). Tractatus (C. K. Ogden, Trans.). Dover.

  • Zantvoort, B. (2020). Arrested development: On Hegel, Heidegger and Derrida. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 28(3), 350–369.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China

    Gregory S. Moss

Authors
  1. Gregory S. Moss
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gregory S. Moss.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

The author declares no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Moss, G.S. Fleeing the Absolute: Derrida and the Problem of Anti-Hegelianism. SOPHIA 63, 99–120 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-023-00979-8

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-023-00979-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation