Description: In this powerful new study Edward Baring sheds fresh light on Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential yet controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century. Reading Derrida from a historical perspective and drawing on new archival sources, The Young Derrida and French Philosophy shows how Derrida's thought arose in the closely contested space of post-war French intellectual life, developing in response to Sartrian existentialism, religious philosophy and the structuralism that found its base at the École Normale Supérieure. In a history of the philosophical movements and academic institutions of post-war France, Baring paints a portrait of a community caught between humanism and anti-humanism, providing a radically new interpretation of the genesis of deconstruction and of one of the most vibrant intellectual moments of modern times.
Brief description: Edward Baring is Assistant Professor of Modern European Intellectual and Cultural History at Drew University. Educated at the University of Cambridge and Harvard University, his work was awarded the Harold K. Gross Prize by Harvard University in 2010. He has won fellowships from the DAAD, ACLS and Mellon Foundation.
Review Quotes: "The Derrida that Baring reconstructs is not the one we thought we knew. His reconstruction is so persuasive that the book succeeds in revising interpretations that have become truisms in Derrida scholarship ... The book impresses at every level ... Baring is diligent at getting things right."
Carolyn Dean, Modern Intellectual History