World-renowned French philosopher Jacques Derrida dead at 74
PARIS World-renowned thinker Jacques Derrida has died. He was 74. French media report Derrida died at a Paris hospital of pancreatic cancer.
Derrida was known as the father of deconstructionism, a branch of critical thought or analysis developed in the late 1960s and applied to literature, linguistics, philosophy, law and architecture.
Derrida focused his work on language, showing that it has multiple layers and thus multiple meanings or interpretations. He challenged the notion that speech is a direct form of communication or even that the author of a text is the author of its meaning.
In a statement, French President Jacques Chirac said, "With him, France has given the world one of its greatest contemporary philosophers, one of the major figures of intellectual life of our time."
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