This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

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There's surely no figure from the 20th century who so divides philosophers.

Some Anglo-American philosophers insist he was a charlatan and claim his writings were intentionally

obscure. There was a huge fuss when Cambridge University decided

to award him an honorary doctorate. But Jack Dereda also has numerous admirers and disciples. He was born into an Algerian Jewish family and moved to France in 19- and approach to philosophy, deconstruction. His best-known book on grammatology was published in

1967, but here Derada Specialist Robert Smith discusses a theme from another of his works

on cosmopolitanism and forgiveness. is a on forgiveness. I wonder if you could say a little bit about who Jacques de deredar was.

Sure, Jacques de dereder is a French philosopher. He was born in Algeria in 1930. He died in the early part of the 21st century.

He came to Paris as a young man of 19 where he studied the Ecol-Nomal Superior and ended up taking a series of posts in Paris ending with a position at the

Echold des Otetude en sosial. And he's most associated with deconstruction.

That's right. It's a word that he inherited partly from Heidegger, but I also say just a word or two to clarify what D'Erede did or didn't mean by deconstruction. There is a myth about Deretta out there that deconstruction is a form of 20th century nihilism

that it suggests that there's no such thing as meaning, that everything is about text and language.

I think that's a rather peculiar case. that everything is about text and language.

I think that's a rather peculiar caricature of what Derrada's work is around.

And I would describe that version of his work.

That's the version that was taken up in the United States into literary criticism as deconstructivism let's call it.

And on the other side I'd put something which we'll call deconstruction which encapsulates many more things

including work on language but also as we'll go on to describe, work on forgiveness and other matters.

So what did Derrida say about forgiveness?

His starting point was to observe that the rhetoric of forgiveness was becoming all the more prominent in the world as politicians

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