waltondammerung

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)

Since everyone else has been eulogizing Derrida on their blogs, I thought I'd join the chorus. To Derrida, who, among many other things, can be said to have been one of the more intellectually honest secular philosophers of our age (later tendencies toward Jewish mysticism aside).

"No more of talk where God or angel guest
With man, as with his friend, familiar used
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast, permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblamed: I now must change
Those notes to tragic; foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal on the part of man, revolt,
And disobedience: on the part of heaven
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given,
That brought into this world a world of woe,
Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery
Death's harbinger: sad task, yet argument
Not less but more heroic than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall"

-Paradise Lost
Book IX, lines 1-16