The Double Gesture

Abstract

Derrida’s views on the university are complex and can easily be misunderstood. A typically reactionary response to his position is that he offers an “irrational” or “anarchist” critique of the Kantian university by annihilating its philosophical grounds. But, Derrida unequivocally affirms what he calls “a new university Enlightenment [Aufklärung]” (Eyes of the University 132), as well as “the imperative[s] of professional rigor and competence” (150). It cannot therefore be said that Derrida encourages faculty to derail the historical project of the Enlightenment, as Jürgen Habermas has famously suggested, or that he seeks to undermine the Kantian architectonics of the modern university. On the contrary, Derrida suggests that today’s faculty fail in their basic duties to their students by refusing to assume responsibilities that have historically defined teaching and philosophy in the West. Derrida’s views, in this regard, echo those of Heidegger in his 1929 lecture “What is Metaphysics?”; that is, both Derrida and Heidegger suggest that the modern university has become oblivious to metaphysics itself, or to the originary question of Nothingness in Heideggerian terms, or différance in Derridean terms.