Derrida states that deconstruction is not a critique in the Kantian sense. This is because Kant defines the term critique as the opposite of dogmatism.
For Derrida it is not possible to escape the dogmatic baggage of the
language we use in order to perform a pure critique in the Kantian
sense. For Derrida language is dogmatic because it is inescapably metaphysical. Derrida argues that language is inescapably metaphysical because it is made up of signifiers
that only refer to that which transcends them – the signified. This
transcending of the empirical facticity of the signifier by an ideally
conceived signified is metaphysical. It is metaphysical in the sense
that it mimics the understanding in Aristotle's
metaphysics of an ideally conceived being as that which transcends the
existence of every individually existing thing. In a less formal version
of the argument it might be noted that it is impossible to use language
without asserting being, and hence metaphysics, constantly through the
use of the various modifications of the verb "to be". In addition
Derrida asks rhetorically "Is not the idea of knowledge and of the
acquisition of knowledge in itself metaphysical?"
By this Derrida means that all claims to know something necessarily
involve an assertion of the metaphysical type that something is
the case somewhere. For Derrida the concept of neutrality is suspect and
dogmatism is therefore involved in everything to a certain degree.
Deconstruction can challenge a particular dogmatism and hence desediment
dogmatism in general, but it cannot escape all dogmatism all at once.
