The Jossey-Bass social and behavioral science series

The Searle–Derrida debate is a famous intellectual dispute opposing John Searle and Jacques Derrida, after Derrida responded to J. L. Austin's theory of the illocutionary act in his 1972 paper "Signature Event Context". In his 1977 essay Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida, Searle argued that Derrida's apparent rejection of Austin was unwarranted, but later refused to let this 1977 reply be printed along with Derrida's papers in the 1988 collection Limited Inc—in which a new text by Derrida responded to Searle's positions on the topic. In the 1990s, Searle clarified why he did not consider Derrida's approach to be legitimate philosophy. Commentators have sometimes interpreted the seemingly failed nature of the exchange between Searle and Derrida as a prominent example of a confrontation between analytical and continental philosophy, some having considered it a series of elaborate misunderstandings while others have seen either Searle or Derrida gaining the upper hand. While the fundamental opposition between the two philosophers lay in their different understanding of intentionality, the debate is famous for its degree of mutual hostility, which can be seen from Searle's statement that "It would be a mistake to regard Derrida's discussion of Austin as a confrontation between two prominent philosophical traditions", to which Derrida replied that that sentence was "the only sentence of the 'reply' to which I can subscribe".