GENERAL INTRODUCTION

As of the publication date of the volume for this course, Heidegger: The Question of Being and History (October 2013 for the French edition), the edition of Jacques Derrida’s seminars at the EHESS (École des hautes études en sciences sociales) comprises three titles, corresponding to three years of teaching.1 As we wrote in the general introduction to those volumes, the aim of the publication of Derrida’s courses and seminars is to give readers access to his teaching as a sort of working laboratory in which his oeuvre was developed. Here we present the new series opened by this volume: Derrida’s teaching prior to the EHESS, at the Sorbonne from 1960 to 1964, and at the ENS (Ecole normale supérieure–Ulm)2 from 1964 to 1984. Contrary to the series of EHESS seminars, these courses or seminars have lengths and formats that differ, sometimes greatly, from year to year, and their material presentation—handwritten until 1967, then typed until the move to computer in 1987—presents particular difficulties (decipherment and transcription, etc.) for those publishing them. For these reasons, the order of appearance of this part of Derrida’s teaching will not necessarily follow a chronological order.

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At the Sorbonne (1960–64), as the only assistant in General Philosophy and Logic, Derrida was, as he wrote later, “free to organize [his] teaching and seminars as [he] wished, depending only in a very abstract way on all the professors whose assistant [he] was: Suzanne Bachelard, Canguilhem, Poirier, Polin, Ricoeur and Wahl.”3 So he alone decided on subjects and syllabi; his courses were so successful that he was obliged to double or even triple the number of sections. The archive contains written-out courses, but also courses that take the form of detailed plans and lectures or model essays. The courses vary between four and seventeen sessions, not always of the same length from one year to the next. One lecture or model essay can fit into one or several sessions. As at the ENS between 1964 and 1969, some courses were given in more than one year. A list of courses given at the Sorbonne appears in table 1:4

TABLE 1. Courses given at the Sorbonne, 1960–64

Year	Course title	Number of sessions
1960–61	“‘Evil is in the world like a slave who draws the water’—Claudel”	8
	“To Think Is to Say No”	4
	“Substance”	9
	“Reason”	10
	“The Sensory”	15
1961–62	“What Is Appearance?”	8
	“The Meaning of the Transcendental”	17
1962–63	“Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation”	5
	“Method and Metaphysics”	11
	“Phenomenology, Teleology, Theology: Husserl’s God”	4
	“Can One Say Yes to Finitude?”	6
1963–64	“Irony, Doubt, Question”	15
	“Phenomenology and Empiricism”	6
	“History and Truth”	6

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In 1964–65, at the ENS, before an audience of between twenty and forty people—ENS students, university students, and auditors—Derrida began a new stage in his teaching career, after the four years spent as an assistant at the Sorbonne. At the ENS, a first period, up to 1969, contains some courses aimed not at the ENS audience, but at American students in Paris, coming from the graduate schools of Johns Hopkins University and Cornell University. During this first period—for which part of the archive has lacunae5—Derrida taught one course corresponding to the agrégation curriculum, and one course independent of that curriculum.

TABLE 2. Courses given at the ENS, 1964–69

Year	Course title	Number of sessions	Institutional context
1964–65	“Heidegger: The Question of Being and History”	9	ENS
	“The Theory of Signification in the Logical Investigations and Ideen I”	12	ENS (agrégation)
1965–66	“The Dialogues on Natural Religion and the Concept of Religion in the 18th Century”	6	ENS (agrégation)
	“Nature, Culture, Writing; or, the Violence of the Letter: from C. Lévi-Strauss to J-J. Rousseau; Writing and Civilization”	13	ENS
1966–67	“The Foundations of Critique”	5 (?)	JHU, CU (Paris)
1967–68	“Course on Hegel”	?	ENS
1968–69	“Literature and Truth: The Concept of Mimesis”	9	JHU
	“Writing and Theater: Mallarmé/Artaud”	9	JHU
Note: Tables 2 and 3 use the following abbreviations: CU = Cornell University; San Sebastián = Universidad Zoroaga, Spain; UT = University of Toronto; UM = University of Minnesota; UCB = University of California–Berkeley; UG = Université de Genève; UC = University of Chicago; NYU = New York University (Paris); FUB = Freie Universität Berlin; UZ = Universität Zürich; OU = Oxford University; JHU = Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore); YU = Yale University.

TABLE 3. Courses given at the ENS, 1969–84

Year	Course title and institutional context	Number of sessions	Agrégation topic
1969–70	“Theory of Philosophical Discourse: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy” [ENS]	10	“Language”
1970–71	“Theory of Philosophical Discourse” [ENS]	5
	“Lautréamont” [JHU (Paris)]	8
	“Psychoanalysis in the Text” [ENS, JHU]	11	“Matter”
1971–72	“Hegel’s Family” [ENS, JHU, OU]	14	“Right and Politics”
	“Philosophy and Rhetoric in the 18th Century: Condillac and Rousseau” [ENS, JHU, UZ]	8
1972–73	“Religion and Philosophy” [ENS, UZ, JHU]	8	“Religion and Philosophy”
1973–74	“Art (Kant)” [ENS, FUB, NYU, JHU (Paris)]	8	“Art”
1974–75	GREPH (“The Concept of Ideology in the French Ideologues”) [ENS, JHU, YU]	10	“Society”
	“Life Death” [ENS, YU, UG, UCB]	14	“Life and Death”
1975–76	“The Thing (Heidegger/Ponge)” [ENS, YU]	3
	“Theory and Practice” [ENS, YU]	9	“Theory and Practice”
	GREPH (“Seminar on Gramsci”)	1
1976–77	“Benjamin” [YU Paris, ENS]	3
	“The Thing (Heidegger/Blanchot)” [ENS, YU]	6
	“Blanchot—Thomas the Obscure” [YU Paris, ENS]	8
1977–78	“The Thing (Heidegger and Heidegger’s Other)” [ENS, YU, UCB, ENS]	4	“The Idea of Order”
	“To Give—Time” [ENS, YU, UC]	15
1978–79	“The Right to Literature” [ENS, YU, UCB, UT]	6	“Time”
1979–80	“Hegel’s Aesthetics” [= “Representation”]	?	“Art and Nature”
	“The Concept of Comparative Literature and the Theoretical Problems of Translation” [ENS, YU, TU, UCB, UM]	6
1980–81	“Respect” [ENS, YU]	12	“Morality”
	“Representation” [ENS, YU]	8
1981–82	“The Language and Discourse of Method” [ENS, YU, San Sebastián]	13	“Method”
1982–83	“University Reason” [ENS, YU, CU]	13	“The Rational and the Irrational”
1983–84	“The Right to Philosophy”	4	“Right”

In the second period, from 1969–70 to 1983–84, the title of the course refers to the topic specified in the agrégation curriculum for that year, although Derrida was completely free in how he chose to develop it.6 During these same years, Derrida taught for several weeks at Yale, usually before the beginning of the ENS academic year. He would repeat at Yale the previous year’s ENS teaching, but would sometimes present a new research seminar conceived especially for the Yale audience. For example, in 1979–80, he presented “The Concept of Comparative Literature and the Theoretical Problems of Translation.”7 What also changes is the number of other institutions at which Derrida presents his teaching.8 Further seminars at the ENS take place in the framework of the GREPH (Groupe de recherche sur l’enseignement philosophique).9

The period during which Derrida taught at the ENS-Ulm coincides with major publications, especially in 1967, which saw the appearance of De la grammatologie, La voix et le phénomène, and L’écriture et la différence. Even though the teaching and writing form two different fields, several analyses will be found in the courses taught during this period that will inform or prepare works such as Glas, La Vérité en peinture, or La Carte postale. When it is possible to establish a link between a course, or part of a course, and subsequent publications, we systematically point this out.

Geoffrey Bennington

Marc Crépon

Marguerite Derrida

Thomas Dutoit

Peggy Kamuf

Michel Lisse

Marie-Louise Mallet

Ginette Michaud

Jean-Luc Nancy