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Biography of Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida is a famous French philosopher.

Childhood and early years

Jacques Elie Derrida, born in Al-Biar, Algeria, then a colony of France, was the third of five children in the family of Chaim Aaron Prosper Karl Derrida and Georgette Sultana Esther Safar. The boy’s parents had Sephardic roots.

On the first day, Jacques was expelled from the Lyceum as a result of the French officials’ execution of anti-Semitic laws of the Vichy regime. The boy misses the whole academic year, instead taking part in football matches, as he dreams of becoming a professional football player.

In adolescence, Jacques is read by the writings of Rousseau, Nietzsche and Gide. He receives a master’s degree in philosophy, after which he enrolls at Harvard University, where he will study from 1956 to 1957.

Scientific activity

From 1957 to 1959, Derrida, freed from military service, teaches military children English and French. The following

year, he is invited to teach at the Sorbonne, where he also becomes assistant to Suzanne Bashler.

In 1964, he joined the staff of the Higher Normal School, where he will serve for the next twenty years.

Derrida is a member of the society of intellectuals and philosophers-theoreticians, known as “Tel Quel”. October 21, 1966, at the Johns Hopkins University, he reads his lecture “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Humanities,” thanks to which it acquires worldwide fame.

In 1967, Derrida first published the book “Letter and Differences.” Behind her there is “Voice and Phenomenon, and other works on the theory of the Husserl sign,” as well as his most famous work “On Grammatology.”

Derrida will create a number of significant works: in 1974 the book “Glas” is published, and six years later – “Postcard: from Socrates to Freud and Further.” Around the same time, he becomes one of the representatives of the intelligentsia who signed the law “against the officially established age of majority”.

1983, together with Francois Chatelet, he founded the International College of Philosophy in Paris, which he himself headed. Three years later, Derrida becomes a professor of humanities at the University of California at Irvine, where she will be taught almost until her death.

In October 1987, one of his most significant lectures was published: “On the Spirit: Heidegger and the Question.”

Until recently, Derrida was invited to speak at various universities, including Johns Hopkins University, New York University, the European Institute for Advanced Studies, Yale University and the University of Stony Brook.

In 1990, all of Derrida’s works were combined into a collection entitled “On the Right to Philosophy”. Next year, the book “From another test” will be published, in which the author discusses the concept of individuality.

In 1993, Derrida publishes a purely autobiographical work “Full Recognition.”

In 1999, he starred in the film biography “In Anyway – Derrida”, and in 2002, appears again in the documentary “Derrida”.

Numerous articles written by him during his entire life were summarized in the collection “Works of Mourning”, published in 2001.

The main works

Jacques Derrida presented his philosophical ideology in three books written in 1967: “Voice and Phenomenon,” “On Grammatology,” and “Writing and Distinguishing.” In them the author explores and pays tribute to Western philosophical thought. It is these works that are considered his most significant contribution to philosophy, as well as the best works on the “phenomenology” of Edmund Husserl. These books have elevated their author to the rank of influential philosophers and gave him world fame.

Awards and achievements

Derrida was an honorary doctor of Columbia University, Essex University, Silesian University and the New School of Social Research in New York.

In 2001, he was awarded the Theodor Adorno Prize.

Personal life and heritage

In 1957, Jacques Derrida was married to a psychoanalyst, Margarita Okuturie. In the family, two sons were born.
In 1985, the son of Derrida and Sylviana Agasinski was born.

At the very end of life, Derrida diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which will cause his death.

Derrida passed away on October 9, 2004.

Helen Sixx, Jean-Luc Nancy, Richard Rorty, Rosalind Krauss, Gary Peller, Alan Hunt, Hayden White – this is not a complete list of authors whose works were greatly influenced by Derrida’s own vision of the theory of human destructiveness.

Interesting Facts

In 1983, the famous French philosopher Jacques Derrida, along with director Ken McCallen, was working on the film “Ghost Dance”. He not only starred in the tape, but also takes part in writing a script for her.