If I were to come into a large sum of money, I would probably go back to school and get a degree in Philosophy. I took some in college, but it never caught fire with me, and I did poorly in it. At the time, I found it difficult to wade through the texts, and I thought a lot of the ideas to be absurd. In recent years however, I find myself immensely interested in Philosophy and read a ton of it; perhaps more that than anything else.
More than any single philosopher, Jacques Derrida was the reason I started reading the subject again. Sadly, Derrida died last week in France.
Without a doubt, Derrida's writing was difficult to wade through and follow in many cases, but his ideas were brilliant, and I think he was a genius. While I wouldn't say I have the hots for Post-Modernism generally speaking, I think Derrida made a more persuasive case for it than anyone I knew of, and I believed 90% of what he had to say about language. Mostly, I like his idea that language is simply representational, and you can usually drive a truck through the difference between what the word is, and the thing actually represented by the word.
To be honest, I was fascinated by his idea of Deconstruction because once I read a few definitions of it, I realized that this is exactly what my mother has been doing to me in arguments ever since I was a kid. It was totally frustrating and impossible to deal with. Much like having my mother successfully deconstruct anything I ever said she didn't like to the point where I could do nothing, I think many people have been taken aback by this bulldozing approach to language which ol' Derrida brought forth.
He had some little books where he would take a single word, and show how one drives that truck. My favorite is on the word "forgiveness", in which he essentially makes a case that the only thing that is actually forgivable is that which is unforgivable (if you can forgive it, then it you do so for yourself, not the person seeking forgiveness, which is contrary to the concept of forgiveness as being applied to someone other than yourself.)
In this example, you might see why Derrida was derided often by many philosophers and culture watchers. He did have a certain delight in the obscure, he did use simple "word-play" on occasion, and he had an irrational gravitation to Marxism. While I ultimately ended up enamored with American Neo-Pragmatism and its off-shoots, I got to it from first picking up on Derrida and meandering around the stuff that he talked about. He is also how I got to Foucault, who I also think was a genius.
A Linguistics major friend of mine is constantly shaking his head in disgust because I like Derrida, since it is "French Bad Boys" such as he and Foucault that started screwing things up for serious Philosophers. Whether or not everyone in the field thinks that way, I can't say, but I think that is how I will try to think of him now that he is gone. I probably won't try to wade through too many more of his works since, as I said, I have kinda moved on from him, but this was one philosopher who may not have been a household name, but was very important to the way Western Culture has progressed, especially over the last 10-20 years.
Postscript: I went down to see the Derrida documentary that is running in memory of his passing. The documentary itself wasn't much, but seeing him was cool. Toward the end I got a tug from the wild little beast that is trying to have his moment at the wheel...it told me to go back to school, and live like a pauper and write like a madman. Trek all over the globe and simply live, and write it all down, and then hopefully find yourself a weathered, tan old man with a wild crop if stark white hair like he had.
The wild thing is odd. I have given over to it in the past and have been happy as I can be. The only real barrier for me is that I still need health insurance. Until I am finally not sick everyday, I can't do it, I must have meds or I won't make it.
Anyway, I am sad to see him go. In the movie, there was a section highlighting his "forgiveness" thing I like so much. That was gratifying. It made more sense in this context than it does in the written version...the only real forgiveness is the kind that has no self-interest in it, and he says this is impossible. I tend to agree, although following his thinking in these things is like being the frog that can only jump half-way home everytime, and thereby, never gets there. Sometimes I feel like he is missing something...the only way I can express it is to say that .33repeating does actually equal 1/3; you can't cut a pie by .33repeating, but you can cut it into a 1/3. There is leakage in representation, but it doesn't highlight a corresponding problem in practice.
I get stranger by the day.