ABSTRACT
The preceding pages were supposed to offer some preliminary answers to the question ‘Why Derrida?’ I tried to suggest a sense of the profound seriousness and importance of the question, as well as its more comical or absurd dimensions. Now I need to explain why the same sort of seriousness and ridiculousness is also to be found in the term ‘key ideas’. According to the template for this Routledge Critical Thinkers series, first there is a section entitled ‘Why [so and so]?’; then there is ‘the central section’ of the book, which ‘discusses the thinker’s key ideas, their context, evolution and reception’ (p. ix). As I have said, I shall do my utmost to perform this task, in my own manner, and in a manner that seeks to be faithful to the ‘critical thinker’ in question.
