An appreciative Remark on Derrida

Thus in order to be an original, he is obliged to contribute to the ruin of a language, which a century sooner he would have helped to improve. Though such writers may be criticised, their superior abilities must still command success. The ease there is in copying their defects, soon persuades men of indifferent capacities, that they shall acquire the same degree of reputation. Then begins the reign of subtil and strained conceits, of affected antitheses, of specious paradoxes, of frivolous turns, of far-fetched expressions, of new-fangled words, and in short of the jargon of persons whose understandings have been debauched by bad metaphysics. The public applauds: frivolous and ridiculous writings, the beings of the day, are surprisingly multiplied." --Condillac, An Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, 

In Condillac the "frivolous" is that "which seems worthless" (Commerce and Government. {Condillac is one of the great eighteenth century economists.})

Let's grant his enemies that Derrida's writings and social consequences instantiate such a reign of "subtil and strained conceits, of affected antitheses, of specious paradoxes, of frivolous turns, of far-fetched expressions, of new-fangled words, and in short of the jargon." According to Condillac, "bad metaphysics" is a science that enters into the "nature and causes" of things. (2) We can make the analogy work if we allow that Derrida's followers are the product  of a scientific age (or Husserlian phenomenology). Yet, the passage from Condillac would also exonerate Derrida in a certain sense; he would be the product of a historical circumstance--he would be born too late to contribute to the improvement of his language.

The passage that I quoted at the start of this post is quoted by Derrida in a long footnote to his (1973) The Archeology of the Frivolous. (p. 68 n. 11.) In a work seemingly devoted to exploring (in the fashion of Foucault, who -- as Derrida notes -- treats Condillac as deficient and a source of "epistemic myths") the system of rules governing the seeming worthless, Derrida anticipates his own future and reception. In doing so, Derrida rejects Foucault's notion of archeology; he prefers to inscribe his archeology onto Condillac's understanding of greatness (In Derrida no false modesty), one that in following "the rules of analogy" deviates "from them as little as possible." (Later Derrida writes, "Philosophy deviates from itself and gives rise to the blows that will strike nonetheless from the outside." (132))

My interpretation 'works' if Derrida's "language" is philosophy, and philosophy is the seeming worthless. 

If self-understanding (about one's own role in life) is the mark of wisdom, then Derrida is wise.

(As an aside,  no scholar of the period "Leibniz to Kant" ought to skip Derrida's The Archeology of the Frivolous, it is a beautiful reading of Condillac--who is treated like the analytical philosopher of language he was.)

Now consider this passage:

If Philosophy--theoretical metaphysics, the general method--is essentially historical, that is because it always comes after the practice of cognition, after the upshot or the discovery of a science. Philosophy is always late with respect to an operation of cognition and occurrence.--Jacques Derrida, The Archeology of the Frivelous (p. 40 in Leavey's translation.)

On the surface there are three options here: (i) philosophy just is always late; (ii) philosophy is not historical; (iii) historicity is a merely contingent fact of philosophy. If (i) holds then by Derrida is lucky to have arrived late  on the scene. If (ii) holds our analytic metaphysicians are in business (and a future historian might be tempted to write, "in no small part because deconstruction killed the linguistic turn"); if (iii) holds the future great may retrace philosophy by way of the imagination  to historical self-understanding.

Finally, it is to be remarked that there are (at least) two other options: (iv) philosophy is not essentially theoretical metaphysics; (v) philosophy should be early.