ABSTRACT
Does Derrida’s work constitute a line of demarcation running through the development of Western thought in a manner analogous to Kantianism, which separated dogmatic from critical philosophy? Are we once again at the end of a naivety, an unsuspected dogmatism that slumbered in the depths of what we took to be the critical spirit? We may well ask ourselves that question. The Idea, as the end of a series that begins in intuition but is unable to reach its end within it – the Idea ‘in the Kantian sense of the term’ as it is called – is, according to Derrida, operative at the heart of intuition itself. A transcendental semblance, engendering a metaphysics, produces an illusion at the heart of presence itself, which is incessantly lacking to itself. Is this a new break in the history of philosophy? It would also show its continuity. The history of philosophy is probably nothing but a growing awareness of the difficulty of thinking.
