From Voice to Supplement: Derrida, Nietzsche, and the Critique of Logocentrism
The Academy. AI art Introduction From Plato to Rousseau, including Hegel and Husserl, Western philosophical tradition has long upheld a hierarchy that privileges speech over writing. This preference is not merely technical or historical—it reflects a metaphysics of presence, where speech is associated with truth, origin, and being. In Of Grammatology , Jacques Derrida names this structure phonocentrism and subjects it to radical critique. However, as this article will argue, Friedrich Nietzsche had already begun to subvert these values, not through a theory of signs, but through a genealogy of culture and thought. His reading of tragic art, the rise of rationalism, and the figure of Socrates anticipates crucial insights of Derrida’s deconstruction. This article outlines a philosophical trajectory that connects both thinkers in their critique of the structural violence inherent in logocentric reason. Derrida and Phonocentrism: A Metaphysical Structure Derrida observes that Wester...
