Hegel and Derrida on Spirit’s Temporality

ABSTRACT This paper confronts G.W.F Hegel and Jacques Derrida in terms of their insights regarding the temporality of spirit. The context for the confrontation is Derrida’s deconstruction of the Husserlian phenomenology. It is argued that Derrida conflated Husserl’s and Hegel’s theories of meaning and teleology under the banner of the metaphysics of presence. The main purpose of this undertaking is to challenge Derrida’s interpretation of Hegel as well as his vision of the history of ontology. This is accomplished by first bringing Derrida and Hegel closer together by showing the affinity of their accounts of the spectral genesis of sense, and then demonstrating discrepancies in their conclusions regarding teleology. As a result, both the differential character of dialectics and the metaphysical nature of deconstruction are shown, which in turn allows the author to confront Hegel with Derrida in terms of virtuality.