How Will Tomorrow Be: A Dialogue Between Jacques Derrida and Elisabeth Roudinesco

Author: Jacques Derrida
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-11-01
Features: Victor Hugo once asked in his poetry collection Songs of Autumn,"What will tomorrow be like?" He pointed out, "Today, everything, whether spiritual or material, social or personal, is shrouded in autumn. What will the outcome be? What will the future hold?" To answer this question, a philosopher and a historian engaged in a 30-year dialogue. Starting in the late 1960s, this long dialogue began to unfold. At that time, Ludinеску was still a young university student, while Derrida, 15 years her senior, was a renowned deconstructionist philosopher. As time passed, Ludinеску grew into a heavyweight figure in academia, while Derrida's deconstructionism had already spread globally, profoundly shaping the intellectual landscape of an entire generation. This was a special dialogue. The "uncompromising" Derrida and Ludinеску engaged in Socratic-style debates, with their opinions not always aligning. The exchange was sharp-witted, provocative, and brimming with intellectual sparks... The topics ranged from whether the family would continue to exist, to whether human will would still be respected, from how manifestations of ethnic hatred would evolve, to whether the death penalty could be completely abolished... The dialogue covered perspectives on philosophy and the entire human condition, sincere and moving, brilliant and captivating.