Derrida founded deconstruction, a mode of reading that shows how texts undermine the very hierarchies and oppositions - speech over writing, presence over absence, nature over culture - they explicitly assert. In "Of Grammatology" (1967) he argued Western philosophy has been structured by "logocentrism," the assumption that meaning is grounded in a fully present origin such as spoken voice or self-conscious intention, and coined "différance" to describe how meaning is instead produced through an endless play of differences between signs, never fully present or fixed.
Intellectual setting
Derrida developed deconstruction in 1960s France alongside structuralist linguistics and anthropology, using and radicalizing structuralism's own methods against its assumption of stable underlying structures, and his later work increasingly engaged ethics and politics through a sustained dialogue with Levinas on hospitality, justice, and mourning.
Key ideas
Différance
Derrida's coined term (playing on "to differ" and "to defer") describes how the meaning of any sign arises only through its differences from other signs and is endlessly deferred rather than ever fully present in a fixed, self-identical origin.
Deconstruction and the critique of logocentrism
Derrida argued that Western metaphysics has systematically privileged presence, speech, and self-identical origins over absence, writing, and difference, and that deconstructive reading exposes how a text's own rhetorical structure destabilizes these hierarchies from within.
Legacy
Derrida became one of the most influential and widely debated philosophers of the late twentieth century; deconstruction transformed literary theory, architecture, and legal theory as well as philosophy, and his later ethical and political writings shaped subsequent continental political thought.