After the Birth/Death of Kant/Derrida

Abstract

In this paper I explore some points of cross-over (as well as points of difference) between Kant’s framing of critique and Derrida’s deconstruction of this frame. I begin by situating the question concerning “where we stand now” in terms of some of Kant’s late (unpublished) thoughts on metaphysics and “Fortschritt” (stepping-forward and progress) in his “What Real Fortschritte has Metaphysics Made in Germany since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff?” I show how Kant inadvertently tears open a deconstructive space at the center of critique (a framing of a metaphysics of the future, of the to-come [Zukunft] which never properly comes) while eschewing an attempt to walk through it. With this in mind, I then read Derrida’s picking up of this tear in his discussions of the Parergon, Ergon and the hors d’oeuvres—the starter outside and before the main work—in The Truth in Painting. My aim is to unravel a view in which we can say simultaneously, perhaps metaphorically but also methodologically, that Derrida’s death frames Kant’s birth, and that the birth of deconstruction frames the death of critique.