SOURCE: "Truth and Consequences," in The New Republic, Vol. 197, No. 14, October 5, 1987, pp. 31-6.

Nehamas is a Greek-born American educator and critic whose philosophical study, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (1986), was widely praised as one of the most important book-length interpretations of Nietzsche. In the following essay, he outlines and critiques the main themes of Derrida's philosophy.

Jacques Derrida has been the focus of furious controversy ever since he startled his audience, at a conference in 1966 intended to mark the coming of age of structuralism in America, by arguing that it was already too late, that structuralism was already effectively dead. In the years that followed, Derrida became an institution in his own right. His lectures attract huge crowds. At least 13 of his books have been published in English, including these newly translated, though not so recently written, works [Glas, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, and...