Many current developments in American academic life - multiculturalism, `political correctness', the growth of critical theory, rhetoric and hermeneutics, the crisis of scholarship in many humanities departments - have been closely associated with, and indeed in part inspired by, the ideas of European philosophers such as Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, and others. In Europe itself, in contrast, the influence of these philosophers is restricted to a small coterie, and their ideas have certainly contributed to none of the wide-raging social and institutional changes we are currently witnessing in some corners of American academia.
The present volume contains the principal papers from the second Monist
Colloquium, which was held to address the work of the so-called `advanced
continental philosophers' from a critical, scholarly perspective, paying
special attention to their influence in the United States. Participants
in the meeting included, besides those represented here: Geoffrey Bannister,
Myles Brand, Don Crawford, Gerald Graff, Elaine Marks, Kevin Mulligan,
Tomas Pavel, Hugh Petrie, Hendrickje E.
J. Spoor, and David Steele.
Foreword
Dallas Willard: The Unhinging of the American Mind: Derrida as Pretext
Pascal Engel: The Decline and Fall of French Nietzscheo-Structuralism
Jorge J. E. Gracia: Can There Be Definitive Interpretations? An Interpretation of Foucault in Response to Engel
David Detmer: Obstacles to Fruitful Discussion in the American Academy: The Case of Deconstruction
Ward Parks: Textual Imperialism
J. Claude Evans: The Rigors of Deconstruction
Herman Philipse: Heidegger's Question of Being: A Critical Interpretation
Newton Garver: In Defense of the French
Christopher Norris: The Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy: Kierkegaard,
Derrida and the Rhetoric of
Transcendence
Joseph Margolis: Deferring to Derrida's Difference