Derrida on formal logic : an interpretive essay / David A. White.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

White, David A., 1942-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Derrida, Jacques.

Logic.

Physical Description:

xv, 271 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Md. : Lexington Books, [2011]

Summary:

In Derrida on Formal Logic, David A. White presents a critical analysis of Jacques Derrida's thinking on formal logic derived from Derrida's seminal article on James Joyce's Ulysses. For Derrida, it is incumbent on contemporary philosophical activity to remedy the effects of the unconsidered hegemony of basic logical principles. To assist in accomplishing this deconstructive end, Derrida suggested close reflection on the function of the imagination. This kind of analysis would contribute to greater appreciation and understanding of what the Western metaphysical tradition had progressively concealed, especially within its reliance on the formal structures of logical concepts and principles.

White attempts to fulfill Derrida's suggestion by tracking the principles of identity and contradiction through the work of major commentators on Derrida, as well as Derrida himself, specifically exploring the apparent formal necessity these two principles exhibit with respect to the practice of rationality. He presents a critical analysis developing implications resident in this thematically connected body of thought and a provisional account describing the imagination as generated from the text of Ulysses but based on approaches not considered by Derrida and applied to identity and contradiction. The purpose of this imaginative variation is to determine to what extent it is possible to reconfigure the conceptual foundations of these logical principles without sacrificing the formal correctness in thinking and reasoning that, according to the Western tradition, these principles provide. White presents formal logic as a liberating rather than stultifying element in philosophy's ongoing quest to confront the world and its problems. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction The Question of Philosophy and Literature 1

Chapter 1 Ulysses, Language and the Transcendental Turn 21

Chapter 2 Ulysses and the Possibility of Metalanguage 41

Chapter 3 Unity: Necessity and Context 59

Chapter 4 Diff?rance and Difference 77

Chapter 5 Fictive Worlds: Imagination and the Boundaries of Literary Language 101

Chapter 6 The Metaphysical Scope of the Imagination 121

Chapter 7 Reading, Rigor, Contradiction 137

Chapter 8 The Deployment of Logic: Critique 151

Chapter 9 The Redeployment of Logic: Play 177

Chapter 10 Imagination, Logic and Metaphysics 201.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780739149256

0739149253

OCLC:

724673507