Biography

His parents were assimilated Sephardic Jews. Derrida's childhood and youth suffered from the traumatic experience of racist riots against the Jewish population. During his high school education, Derrida became interested in French existential philosophy, which was also represented through political commitment by Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1948, Derrida went to France for military service. He then studied philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris from 1952 to 1956. In 1956 he won a scholarship to study at Harvard University. In 1960, Derrida was appointed to the Sorbonne University in Paris, where he worked as a research assistant in philosophy until 1964.

At that time he developed his innovative approaches to a specific philosophy based on the strategy of deconstructionism. In 1966 he caused a sensation with his lecture on "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" at the American John Hopkins University, turning the deconstructivist approach against the prevailing structuralism. The publication of this lecture and the following text "De la grammatologie" (1967) formed the main points of reference for the post-structuralism movement that was now forming. In addition to this work, Derrida published two other major works in 1967: "La Voix et le phénomène" and "L''Écriture et la différence". In these writings, the philosopher developed his "grammatology", which was based on a writing-centered philosophy of language, which he combined with the critical practice of deconstructing texts.

His later work further developed Derrida's poststructuralist ideas. This applies to "La Dissémination" and "Marges de la philosophie", both from 1972, as well as to "La Verité en peinture" (1978), a work that relates to the field of painting. In his writings after 1967, Derrida developed a particular closeness to the field of literature: the writings "Glas" (1974) and "La Carte postale: De Socrate à Freud et au-delà" (1980) are located in the border area between philosophy and Literature. From 1964 to 1984, Derrida taught as a professor of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and at American universities such as John Hopkins University, Yale University and the University of California.

His teaching has now proven to have a great impact on neighboring academic disciplines such as political science, art theory, literary criticism and history. In 2001, Derrida was awarded the Theodor W. Adorno Prize in Frankfurt am Main.
- IMDb mini biography by: Christian_Wolfgang_Barth

Jacques and his ex-mistress, Sylviane Agacinski, have a son named Daniel, who was born in 1984.