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Of all the aspects of Derrida's thought, his interpretation of Husserl has occasioned the most debate.₁ Although all of Derrida's critics start out wanting to understand him—none, for instance, claim to do anything as extraordinary as "deconstruction"—none adhere to one of the most basic hermeneutical rules: reconstruct the context. Because critics neglect the context, some charge Derrida with interpreting Husserlian phenomenology merely as ontologism and intuitionism, in a word, as Platonism.₂ They do this despite the fact that Derrida has repeatedly stated his allegiance to transcendental philosophy.₃ Others charge him with failing "to recognize the subtleties of Husserl's account of the interplay of presence and absence, of immanence and transcendence, of filled and empty intention,"₄ even though Derrida appropriates precisely these subtleties to criticize the so-called "metaphysics of presence" he nevertheless finds in Husserl. The one-sidedness of such charges is startling. Perhaps however the critics' negligence can be excused; to assemble all the parts of the Derridean context is an immense task. Roughly the context can be divided into two parts, and even these two do not exhaust it.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8498-2_8

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