The Hebraism of Postmodernism, 2

James Smith offers this summary of one strand of Derrida’s essay, “Violence and Metaphysics”: “since philosophy is ‘primarily Greek,’ ‘it would not be possible to philosophize, or to speak philosophically, outside this medium.’ . . . But could one conceive philosophy otherwise? This, Derrida will show, is precisely what Levinas suggests – and he outlines the possibility of another philosophy by exposing philosophy to its other: the Hebrew. The Hebraic thought of the prophetic ‘summons us to a dislocation of the Greek logos.’ . . . Thus, Derrida reads Totality and Infinity as an exercise in exposing philosophy to its other, exposing the Greek to teh Jew. But again, this is a constructive project: It is not about abandoning the Greek. ‘Nothing can so profoundly solicit the Greek logos – philosophy – than this irruption of the totally-other; and nothing can to such an extent reawaken the logos to its origin as to its mortality, its other.’”