Derrida and Rousseau

The best-known features of Rousseau's Political Philosophy are the idea that society is a corruption of the 'state of Nature', and his promotion of Government based on a 'social contract'. Given that the former seems to imply an advocacy of Anarchism, the two are easily taken as contradictory. However, the first is representative of the earlier, deconstructive, phase of his thinking, while the latter, his later, constructive, offerings. Thus, conspicuously absent from Derrida's own deconstructive study of Rousseau, which successfully targets the Atomistic premises of the latter's phonological Naturalism, is its relevance to Rousseau's later phase, and, hence, more generally, is any constructive dimension of his own efforts. So, contrary to Derrida's reputation as being in the vanguard of contemporary thinkers, he is actually a reactionary, albeit an unorthodox one. For, among the central Philosophical developments of the past half-millenium is Kant's redefinition of Humanity as 'Homo Faber', from 'Homo Sapiens', i. e.representing the asendancy of Practice over Theory. And, while Pragmatists, Marx, and the later Nietzsche were drawing out the implications of this Kantian turn, Phenomenologists, both Hegelian and Husserlian, as well as those trying to escape the shadow of the latter, notably the later Heidegger, the earlier Sartre, Levinas, and Derrida, fall short of making that turn. In contrast with Derrida, his peer Philosopher of Difference, Deleuze, understands that original Difference is a Principle of 'Becoming-Active'. Hence, unlike in Evolvementalism, with its active Principles of Difference, i. e. Becoming-Diverse, and its Individual mode, Expostion, Derrida's 'Differance' does not seem to make much of a constructive difference.