ABSTRACT
The impression that Jacques Derrida's concern with the history of philosophy is merely playful appears to be confirmed by such works as Glas. Martin Heidegger's history of philosophy is the first and tragic repetition of Hegel's. The critique of logocentrism thus entails a new approach to the nature of history and to the history of philosophy in particular. All modes of conceptualizing history which rely on the norm or model of the self-contained expression or development of a leading theme are rendered suspicious once the commitment to logocentrism has been abandoned. Derrida's satiric or farcical account of the history of philosophy must be distinguished from the raillery of writers like Lucian or Rabelais who find philosophy and its pretensions simply ridiculous. Derrida opposes "difference" to "identity", combating logocentrism's faith in the absolute self-identity of its objects with the attempt to open up differences and distinctions both within and among things.
