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Wittgenstein writes that there seem to be two ways of explaining the meaning of a word: through 'verbal' and through 'ostensive' definitions. A verbal definition explains a statement with the help of another statement. An ostensive definition is, in the words of McGinn, 'an act of giving the meanin…

Wallace reproaches Ellis for failing to offer any alternative, or any insight in addition to what he mocks and ridicules as the 'darkness of the time'. This critique is directly in line with Kierkegaard's view of irony, and the need for realizing a positivity in its wake.

Thus American Psycho …

[...] Derrida and Barth's goals are not to destroy what they regard as both illusory and indispensable notions, but to maintain their unresolvability, endlessly revoking, postponing the determination of meaning.

Here, in this endless cycle of affirmation and undermining, we can readily see that …

According to Derrida, the most fundamental notions of Western thought--that is, the notions of metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that tries to contemplate the deepest ground, the first causes of existence--are based on illusions. The illusion that dominates Western thought, and that therefore i…

[...] one of the main features of deconstruction seems to be the impossibility of a message, text, or philosophy having a clear unequivocal meaning. This means that Derrida's philosophy of deconstruction, as Eddo Evink formulates it, 'cannot be discussed as "Derrida's philosophy" without opposing t…