Continental Exam

These are the essay questions for the take-home exam.  You will write on the Heidegger essay, and the Derrida essay (A or B) of your choice.

See the instructions page for the due date, format, length and other important instructions.

Heidegger

Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 41:

“To ask:  how does it stand with Being?—this means nothing less than to repeat and retrieve {wieder-holen} the inception of our historical-spiritual Dasein, in order to transform it into the other inception.”

(1)  Explain the above quote from Heidegger.  Be sure to take into account “Anaximander’s Saying” as well as Introduction to Metaphysics.  (2)  Analyze and/or comment on Heidegger’s philosophy in terms of the above quote.  Provide arguments in support or as critique of Heidegger’s work (or both).

Derrida

Essay A:

“Differance” (Margins, p. 22):

“Further, to prepare, beyond our logos, for a differance so violent that it can be interpellated neither as the epochality of Being nor as ontological difference, is not in any way to dispense with the passage through the truth of Being, or to “criticize,” “contest,” or misconstrue its incessant necessity.  On the contrary, we must stay within the difficulty of this passage, and repeat it in the rigorous reading of metaphysics, wherever metaphysics normalizes Western discourse, and not only in the texts of the “history of philosophy.” (1) Explain this quote, and its meaning for Derrida’s philosophical project.        (2)  Analyze and/or comment on Derrida’s philosophy in terms of the above quote.  Provide arguments in support or as critique of Derrida’s work (or both).

Essay B:

“Differance” (Margins, p. 25):

“How to conceive what is outside a text?  That which is more or less than a text’s own, proper margin?  For example, what is other than the text of Western metaphysics?”  (1)  Explain these questions, and in doing so, be sure to explain what Derrida means by  (at least) three of the following four terms:  metaphysics, text, other, proper.  How is Derrida’s work a response to these questions?  (3)  Analyze and/or comment on Derrida’s philosophy in terms of the above terms and questions.  Provide arguments in support or as critique of Derrida’s work (or both).