Deconstruction as a Barren epistemology in Jacques Derrida

Subject Areas : Epistemological researches

Hossein Zohdi Sehat ^{1 *}

1 - Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Malayer National University, Malayer, Iran

Received: 2025-07-30 Accepted : 2025-10-20 Published : 2025-11-22

Keywords: Jacques Derrida, epistemology, differance, deconstruction, other.,

Abstract :

The implicit epistemological positions in Derrida's philosophy have been largely neglected. One of the aims of the present work is to use an analytical-critical method to illuminate this implicit epistemological world and to put it into question. Derrida's epistemology is tied to the concepts of "deconstruction", "difference", "otherness" and "signifier and signified". This deconstructionist epistemology is like a wasteland that implies an epistemological will directed towards power as nothing; grammatology becomes a nihilism because it always ends with the claim of another "I cannot"; in the sense that we "cannot" determine, decide and understand any subject under discussion. Derrida rejects stable meanings on the grounds that signifiers and signifieds are dependent on what they are not, and the different nature of the sign destabilizes meaning in a way that prevents us from escaping the endless game of signifiers and leaves epistemology without a place and anchor. In Derrida, distrust of the historical framework is important for the search for meanings and truths; in his opinion, historical humanity has always made this mistake in the name of moving from error to truth. In terms of the historical approach of thought, Derrida is neither a nihilist, nor a relativist, nor a true perspectivist; but his positions would plunge epistemology into the abyss of nihilism or Barren.

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