The NYT obituary is disturbing; the death of one of the world's leading thinkers is hardly the time for a hack critique and attack. There are good obits, particularly in french, available online.

Derrida has meant an enormous amount to some of us, a way of rethinking reason itself, a problematizing of theory, an odd form of symbolic materialism. My own work would be vastly different without him.

Derrida has always struck me as a continuation of exegesis, hermeneutics; many of us have silently responded to the rabbinical within him. And many of us have responded as well to his compassion for complexity, facing the difficulty of the world, acting within that difficulty, without diminishment.

- Alan

I agree with Alan. I met Derrida on several occassions and attended his seminar in Paris in 1992. American philosophers of the analytic school should stop criticizing Derrida who was a traditional philosopher, i.e. one who knew Greeek and Latin. He knew the tradition extremely well. He was generous, patient and a genius. Comments such as those by Leiter (The Leiter Reports) at Texas A& M are spurious and deceitful. Should we expect anything more from a law professor? He denies to Derrida what he himself professes to support, namely academic freedom.