The Young Derrida and French Philosophy, 1945-1968

Edward Baring is Assistant Professor of Modern European Intellectual and Cultural History at Drew University. Educated at the University of Cambridge and Harvard University, his work was awarded the Harold K. Gross Prize by Harvard University in 2010. He has won fellowships from the DAAD, ACLS and Mellon Foundation.

• Introduction; Part I. Derrida Post-Existentialist: 1. Humanist pretensions: Catholics, Communists and Sartre's struggle for existentialism in post-war France; 2. Derrida's 'Christian' existentialism; 3. Normalization: the École Normale Supérieure and Derrida's turn to Husserl; 4. Genesis as a problem: Derrida reading Husserl; 5. The God of mathematics: Derrida and the origin of geometry; Part II. Between Phenomenology and Structuralism: 6. A history of différance; 7. L'ambiguité du concours: the deconstruction of commentary and interpretation in Speech and Phenomena; 8. The ends of man: reading and writing at the ENS; Epilogue.

'In The Young Derrida, we find a careful reconstruction of the intellectual and political climate in which Jacques Derrida developed his famous idea of deconstruction. In particular, Baring shows us how the development of deconstruction is involved in the history of humanism in postwar France going up to the May '68 uprisings. Indeed, Baring's readings of Derrida's early books on Husserl's phenomenology are exemplary. With an elegance rarely seen, Edward Baring has managed to weave cultural history with philosophy. The Young Derrida is a magnificent book.' Leonard Lawlor, Sparks Professor of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University