Husserl and Derrida - the origins of history

Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of the metaphysical priority of the present simultaneously validates presence as the absolute form of meaning. In order to succeed, deconstruction is bound to offer the most robust defence of transcendental phenomenology’s systematic articulation of the very constitution of experience in its absolute and irrecusably present form. Edmund Husserl’s late philosophy of history accounts for the contradiction of atemporal truth—how it is created in time, and how it is possible for the historical investigation of this truth to determine its meaning with absolute certainty. Through the necessity of an ideal and phenomenologically reduced history—not only for the work of historical investigation in its own right, but as a constituent of the meaning of any truth— Derrida explains why Husserl devotes so much effort to explicating the structure and process of the formation of ideal objects in the course of what is ostensively an explanation of the origination of the geometrical science itself out of subjective experience. The purpose of this is only ever implied in Husserl’s own work “The Origin of Geometry”, and the implications are subtle. The purpose of this thesis is to detail how the structures of Husserl’s system serve the end clearly elucidated by Derrida. It first explains how objective truth is constituted and an ideal history made possible through Husserl’s examination of their appearance in the living present, and following this it examines the problems raised by Derrida’s deconstruction itself.