The Teaching of Philosophy and the Life-Death of the Academy: On Canguilhem as Derrida’s ‘philosophical super-ego' w. Chris O'Neill

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The Teaching of Philosophy and the Life-Death of the Academy: On Canguilhem as Derrida’s ‘philosophical super-ego'
Dr Christopher O’Neill

In Benoît Peeters’ 2013 biography of Jacques Derrida, we learn that Derrida was known to refer to the French philosopher of science Georges Canguilhem as his “philosophical super-ego”. Given that Derrida and Canguilhem are generally considered to ‘belong’ to quite distinct traditions of thought, the apparent significance of Canguilhem as a philosophical influence upon Derrida is perhaps surprising. While Canguilhem is best known for his philosophy of vital normativity, he was also maybe the most significant teacher of philosophy in post-war France, counting Derrida among his many celebrated pupils. In this talk I propose that Canguilhem is a crucial rather than incidental or even simply oppositional figure for understanding Derrida’s thinking and critique of the ‘life-death’ of the academic institution. Although Derrida and Canguilhem were to become exceptionally critical of each other’s (teaching) philosophies, they were both equally critical of a notion of teaching as the simple transmission of knowledge, of the role of the teacher as a repeater of certain formulae, and of the teaching of philosophy as oriented around the fulfilment of a given ‘programme’ of thought. Drawing upon materials from the Canguilhem archives (CAPHÉS - École Normale Supérieure) and the Derrida archives (University of California – Irvine), I argue that it is through considering the institutional stakes of the pair’s respective philosophies of the living and of ‘life-death’ that we can understand the ambiguous nature of Derrida’s tribute.