Benue State University, Makurdi

A Study of Derridian Reading of Descartes' Meditation

Joseph Penlong Nietlong and Gideo Kato

Abstract

This study is an examination of the Derridian reading of Descartes's Meditations, which is already itself an answer to, and in conversation with Foucault's reading of the same text. The thrust of this paper will consider the relation of Descartes's argument of doubt to fiction in the Discourse on the Method, and the redefinition of their relation in the hyperbolic doubt argument in the Meditations. This study will demonstrate how questions of doubt are resolved through the strategic use of fiction. The contention is that fiction, defined either in terms of feint in the Discourse, or explicitly figured through the persona of the evil genius in the Meditations, constitutes the ground of the debate both in the Cartesian text and the Foucault-Derrida debate.

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