Philosopher Benson fabricates some jejune generalizsations re PoMo's Derrida, but casts l+t on D's "Cambridge Affair"

Philosophy Now pits philosopher Peter Benson against his Quinine mentors in favour of Jacques Derrida.

Here's the bombastic title:

Here's the blurb: "Peter Benson tries to clear Jacques Derrida’s unjustly infamous name, and shows how memes spread in modern academia."

Here's the opening foray by Benson:

The doorbell rings. I hurry to answer it and find, standing on the doorstep, a man and woman dressed in dark clothes, with bright smiles on their faces. “Good Morning!” they greet me, boundlessly cheerful, “We are visiting people in this area to bring you a copy of our magazine.” And they triumphantly hold aloft a flimsy publication entitled THE TRUTH! in large strident lettering.

I am immediately seized by panic. “I’m terribly sorry,” I hurriedly say, “I haven’t time to talk. I’m just in the middle of sacrificing a goat.” And I quickly close the door in their astonished faces.

I suspect that most readers of Philosophy Now would react in a similar way. Anyone who, out of the blue, wants to bring the Truth to me (or to bring me to the Truth) should be viewed with suspicion. I have got along just fine without this Truth of theirs, and I’m not so sure that I need it now. This cannot be attributed to a lack of curiosity. I am fascinated by facts of many kinds – scientific facts, historical facts, biographical facts – and I am well aware that I still have much to learn. Numerous truths, of various varieties, await my discovery. It is only when I am offered The Truth (with a capital ‘T’), singular and domineering, that I become wary.

I feel equally suspicious when a book of philosophy sets out to tell me Why Truth Matters (Continuum, 2006). On the face of it, this is not a mysterious puzzle. When we ask a question (such as “Where is the nearest railway station?”) we would generally prefer a true answer to a false one. The reasons are fairly obvious! But the authors of this book (Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom) are convinced that Truth is under siege, that its importance is widely denied, and that they need to come to its aid. Ought we perhaps to regard them with the same caution as we would bring to our pair of doorstep preachers?

So, this is a book review, after all.

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Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom,
Why Truth Matters (Continuum, 2006)
reviewed by Peter Benson
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Is Ophelia B. of any direct relation to Peter B?

The aims of the book may seem admirable enough, as the authors catalogue various examples of ideological prejudice and political correctness overriding established facts. These examples are mostly drawn from such fields as sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies. Yet the authors clearly believe that the original well-spring of such challenges to truth lies within philosophy. They declare their principal targets to be “Postmodernism, epistemic relativism, anti-realism…. And so on.” (p.18) And they later suggest that the origin of these fashionable ideas may have been, in part, “just a brain wave in the head of Jacques Derrida” (p.167) They may be surprised, therefore, to learn that in the book he wrote in collaboration with Catherine Malabou ( Counterpath, Stanford University Press, 2004) Derrida speaks of attending “a meeting on ‘Postmodernism and Religion’ – two things which are foreign to me.” (p.95). Many similar disavowals can be found in his works.

But other perhaps even contradictory themes tells us that religion at least is not so absolutely "foreign" to Derrida, after all, as Catholic philosopher Caputo and Reformational philosopher Olthuis can attest.

Many books and articles in recent years have announced a desire to defend Truth against Postmodern attack. But who exactly are these postmodern philosophers, who treat Truth so lightly? And what exactly is postmodernism?

I've only read one book by Derrida, Of Grammatology which comes with a 70-page introduction by the translator that sets an ideological frame around the book that it isn't really justified. It was that book with that frame which blazed its way thru the American literary scholarship, starting within Yale University's litcrit culture of identity politics. Tho, there it wasn't emphasized how much Derrida was influenced by James Joyce whom the French-educated Algerian Jew read when he was 18, during an exchange year at Harvard. Something like that.

John Caputo (emeritus Villanova), the Augustinian Catholic philosopher-befriender of Derrida, and Caputo's colleague, James Olthuis (emeritus Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto) a reformational Christian philosopher, have written searchingly on Derrida and the religionality or not, of his philosophy and piety as an honest, playful human creature philosophizing. One of Olthuis' students, Jamie K.A. Smith, has become a big Derrida-booster at Calvin College, where he is a professor.

See also: Deconstruction-and-religion