A Commonplace Book

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Limited Inc 8Derrida 9

 

These things are difficult, I admit; their formulation can be disconcerting. But would there be so many problems and misunderstandings without this complexity and without these paradoxes?

One shouldn't complicate things for the pleasure of complicating, but one should also never simplify or pretend to be sure of such simplicity where there is none.

If things were simple, word would have gotten around...

There you have one of my mottos, one quite appropriate for what I take to be the spirit of the type of "enlightenment" granted our time.

Those who wish to simplify at all costs and who raise a hue and cry about obscurity because they do not recognize the unclarity of their good old Aufklärung are in my eyes dangerous dogmatists and tedious obscurantists. No less dangerous (for instance, in politics) are those who wish to purify at all costs.
-- Jacques Derrida. Limited Inc. [afterword] p.119 [1977, 1988] translated by Samuel Weber.
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