Abstrakt
If there is one thing that Husserl's successors, from Heidegger to Derrida, agree on, it is that "[f]rom Parmenides to Husserl, the privilege of the present has never been put into question." What happens when we contest this privilege, when, in Derrida's words, we turn from "a philosophy of presence" to "a meditation on non-presence"? From the perspective of Husserl's successors, we reform and renew philosophy. In their view, the interpretation of being as presence fails to grasp the special nature of the subject or its relation to its world.
From a Husserlian perspective, to contest presence is to contest evidence. It is to enter into a performative contradiction, where, in arguing for your position, you undercut the evidence you present for it.
In this article, I examine this Husserlian response. In doing so, I shall trace out what Derrida calls the "metaphysics of presence" inherent in Husserl's position.