70 ideas
| 21887 | Derrida focuses on other philosophers, rather than on science [Derrida] |
| 21888 | Philosophy is just a linguistic display [Derrida] |
| 21896 | Philosophy aims to build foundations for thought [Derrida, by May] |
| 21893 | Philosophy is necessarily metaphorical, and its writing is aesthetic [Derrida] |
| 21892 | Interpretations can be interpreted, so there is no original 'meaning' available [Derrida] |
| 20925 | Hermeneutics blunts truth, by conforming it to the interpreter [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
| 20934 | Hermeneutics is hostile, trying to overcome the other person's difference [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
| 21895 | Structuralism destroys awareness of dynamic meaning [Derrida] |
| 8210 | Deconstructing philosophy gives the history of concepts, and the repressions behind them [Derrida] |
| 8211 | The movement of 'différance' is the root of all the oppositional concepts in our language [Derrida] |
| 6840 | Derrida came to believe in the undeconstructability of justice, which cannot be relativised [Derrida, by Critchley] |
| 21934 | The idea of being as persistent presence, and meaning as conscious intelligibility, are self-destructive [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| 21883 | Sincerity can't be verified, so fiction infuses speech, and hence reality also [Derrida] |
| 21882 | Sentences are contradictory, as they have opposite meanings in some contexts [Derrida] |
| 8216 | Deconstruction is not neutral; it intervenes [Derrida] |
| 21881 | We aim to explore the limits of expression (as in Mallarmé's poetry) [Derrida] |
| 8213 | I try to analyse certain verbal concepts which block and confuse the dialectical process [Derrida] |
| 4756 | Derrida says that all truth-talk is merely metaphor [Derrida, by Engel] |
| 21877 | True thoughts are inaccessible, in the subconscious, prior to speech or writing [Derrida] |
| 21889 | 'I' is the perfect name, because it denotes without description [Derrida] |
| 21878 | Names have a subjective aspect, especially the role of our own name [Derrida] |
| 21879 | Even Kripke can't explain names; the word is the thing, and the thing is the word [Derrida] |
| 14329 | Some dispositional properties (such as mental ones) may have no categorical base [Price,HH] |
| 21890 | Heidegger showed that passing time is the key to consciousness [Derrida] |
| 9032 | Before we can abstract from an instance of violet, we must first recognise it [Price,HH] |
| 9035 | If judgement of a characteristic is possible, that part of abstraction must be complete [Price,HH] |
| 9034 | There may be degrees of abstraction which allow recognition by signs, without full concepts [Price,HH] |
| 9036 | There is pre-verbal sign-based abstraction, as when ice actually looks cold [Price,HH] |
| 9037 | Intelligent behaviour, even in animals, has something abstract about it [Price,HH] |
| 9033 | Recognition must precede the acquisition of basic concepts, so it is the fundamental intellectual process [Price,HH] |
| 21880 | 'Tacit theory' controls our thinking (which is why Freud is important) [Derrida] |
| 10645 | We reach concepts by clarification, or by definition, or by habitual experience [Price,HH] |
| 9030 | Abstractions can be interpreted dispositionally, as the ability to recognise or imagine an item [Price,HH] |
| 9029 | If ideas have to be images, then abstract ideas become a paradoxical problem [Price,HH] |
| 10644 | A 'felt familiarity' with universals is more primitive than abstraction [Price,HH] |
| 10646 | Our understanding of 'dog' or 'house' arises from a repeated experience of concomitances [Price,HH] |
| 9031 | The basic concepts of conceptual cognition are acquired by direct abstraction from instances [Price,HH] |
| 21894 | Madness and instability ('the demonic hyperbole') lurks in all language [Derrida] |
| 21932 | 'Différance' is the interwoven history of each sign [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| 21886 | Meanings depend on differences and contrasts [Derrida] |
| 21930 | For Aristotle all proper nouns must have a single sense, which is the purpose of language [Derrida] |
| 21884 | Capacity for repetitions is the hallmark of language [Derrida] |
| 21935 | The sign is only conceivable as a movement between elusive presences [Derrida] |
| 21933 | Writing functions even if the sender or the receiver are absent [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| 8212 | Everything that is experienced in consciousness is meaning [Derrida] |
| 21929 | Derrida focuses on ambiguity, but talks of 'dissemination', not traditional multiple meanings [Derrida] |
| 21931 | 'Dissemination' is opposed to polysemia, since that is irreducible, because of multiple understandings [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| 21885 | Words exist in 'spacing', so meanings are never synchronic except in writing [Derrida] |
| 21891 | The good is implicitly violent (against evil), so there is no pure good [Derrida] |
| 21936 | A community must consist of singular persons, with nothing in common [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| 21937 | Can there be democratic friendship without us all becoming identical? [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| 23125 | Most good social changes are incremental, rather than revolutionary [Gopnik] |
| 23126 | Conservatives often want peace, prosperity and tolerance, but not social fairness [Gopnik] |
| 23132 | Conservatives believe obedience and rank are essential to social order [Gopnik] |
| 23142 | People are fallible, so liberalism tries to distribute power [Gopnik] |
| 23143 | Liberals have tried very hard to build a conscience into their institutions [Gopnik] |
| 23128 | The opposite of liberalism is dogmatism [Gopnik] |
| 23141 | Left-wingers are inconsistent in their essentialist descriptions of social groups [Gopnik] |
| 23124 | Liberal community is not blood ties or tradition, but shared choices, and sympathy for the losers [Gopnik] |
| 23127 | Liberal community includes flight from the family, into energetic reforming groups [Gopnik] |
| 23129 | Right-wingers attack liberal faith in reason, left-wingers attack its faith in reform [Gopnik] |
| 23133 | Cosmopolitan liberals lack national loyalty, and welcome excessive immigration [Gopnik] |
| 23138 | Modern left-wingers criticise liberalism's control of culture [Gopnik] |
| 23139 | Liberalism's attempt to be neutral and colour-blind erases cultural identities [Gopnik] |
| 23135 | Classic Marxists see liberalism as the ideology of the bourgeoisie [Gopnik] |
| 23140 | Environmental disasters result not from capitalism, but from a general drive for growth [Gopnik] |
| 23130 | Popular imperialism gives the poor the belief that their acts have world historical meaning [Gopnik] |
| 23131 | Patriots love their place, but nationalists have a paranoid ethnic hostility [Gopnik] |
| 23136 | Liberal free speech is actually paid speech [Gopnik] |
| 23134 | A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik] |