What Do We Mean by Rationality? The Question Behind the Accusation

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"One of the fears, I think, that many of the so-called critics of deconstruction have had is that it in some way undermines the rationality of the subject, or the thought that the subject could commit himself or herself, with clear conscious intent, to some rationally undertaken project".

—Alan Montefiore, Talking Liberties, interview with Jacques Derrida.

1. The Charge of Irrationality

What happens when deconstruction is accused of undermining rationality?

In a 1992 interview with Alan Montefiore, later published as “Talking Liberties,” Derrida was asked whether deconstruction undermined “the rationality of the subject” and, with it, the possibility that a subject might consciously commit itself to a rational project.

Derrida does not begin by defending himself against the charge. His first response is almost disconcertingly direct: “I’m not here to reassure anyone.” Rather than accepting the task of defending an established conception of rationality, he turns to the assumptions behind the accusation.

They say that deconstruction undermines rationality, he explains, but they “refer to a certain set of norms they call reason [or] rationality.”

This remark matters. Derrida is not simply denying the charge and defending an unproblematic idea of reason. He is drawing attention to the particular conception already contained in the accusation. What is being called reason may itself be a historically specific set of norms.

The question therefore shifts. Before asking whether deconstruction threatens rationality, we have to ask what conception of rationality is being defended.

2. When Rationality Becomes a Question

Derrida makes the historical point explicitly:

“our rationalism today cannot be the same as rationalism [...] in the 18th century.”

This does not mean that rationality is merely relative, or that any belief can be declared rational. It means that what counts as rational is historically articulated. The standards by which a period distinguishes reason from unreason, legitimate argument from unacceptable speculation, or knowledge from error are not simply given once and for all.

This is why it is useful to distinguish between rationality and a concept of rationality. The first concerns what counts as rational within a practice or form of inquiry; the second concerns the historically situated way in which those criteria are defined and related to other ideas.

Once a particular conception of reason becomes an object of inquiry, it can no longer simply be treated as self-evident. We can ask where it comes from, what assumptions sustain it, and what it allows us to recognize or leaves outside its field.

Concepts have histories, but they do not have histories one by one. They belong to configurations in which their significance depends partly on their relations to other concepts, distinctions, and norms.

The important question, then, is not simply how rationality has changed over time. It is what conception of rationality is operating here, what relations sustain it, and what it excludes or cannot yet accommodate.

That question brings us to the subject itself.

3. The Subject Is Part of the Configuration

The accusation against deconstruction concerns rationality, but it is framed through another notion: the subject. Derrida addresses that notion just as directly:

“a subject is not simply consciousness [...] not simply the ego.”

He continues by invoking psychoanalysis: “there is repression,” and sometimes “a split subject, a multiplicity within the individual.”

This is not a new definition of the subject offered in place of an old one. Derrida is pointing to the limits of a familiar conception: the subject as a unified consciousness, identifiable with the ego and fully present to itself.

That conception does not stand alone. It is connected to other ideas about what a person can consciously intend, decide, or be responsible for. We might represent the relation schematically: subject → consciousness → intention → responsibility → rationality

The point is not that these terms form a simple chain. It is that they occupy related positions within a conceptual arrangement. A particular understanding of the subject makes possible particular understandings of agency, intention, and responsibility.

Once the subject is no longer simply identified with a unified consciousness, those relations become open to examination as well.

This is why Derrida’s position is more precise than the claim that “there is no subject.” The issue is what happens when a conception of subjectivity that has supported other concepts can no longer be taken for granted.

Psychoanalysis provides the concrete test. It is there that Derrida can show what follows when the traditional picture of the subject encounters phenomena it cannot simply absorb.

4. Psychoanalysis as the Test Case

Psychoanalysis gives Derrida a concrete case in which the implications of this difficulty become visible. Once repression, the unconscious, and the possibility of a divided or multiple subject are taken seriously, the traditional picture of consciousness can no longer remain unchanged.

Derrida puts the point plainly:

“when you take this into account [...] you have to transform your approach.”

He immediately draws the larger consequence:

“you have to transform the very concept of reason.”

The force of the example lies in the connection between the two. Psychoanalysis does not simply add another fact about human beings to an otherwise stable picture. It challenges the conception of the subject on which that picture has been built. If consciousness does not exhaust the subject, then concepts such as intention and responsibility have to be reconsidered in relation to a subject whose inner life is not completely transparent to itself.

What requires reconsideration is therefore not one isolated notion. The difficulty extends to the relations among the concepts organized around it. A conception of responsibility based on complete conscious self-presence, for example, cannot simply be transferred unchanged to a subject marked by repression and internal division.

This is what makes psychoanalysis a useful test case. It shows why questioning a concept can have consequences beyond that concept itself. The issue is not that the subject disappears, or that rationality becomes impossible. Rather, an inherited conceptual arrangement has encountered something that puts its organization under pressure.

Derrida’s point is consequently more demanding than a rejection of the traditional subject. The question is what our concepts must become capable of addressing once that subject can no longer be understood in the same way.

5. Not Less Rationality, but a Different Demand on Rationality

This leads to the apparent paradox at the heart of Derrida’s answer. If an inherited conception of reason can itself be questioned, does that amount to abandoning rationality?

Derrida’s conclusion is almost the reverse:

“it’s in the name of [...] a new rationalism that deconstruction is necessary.”

The examples he gives—psychoanalysis, physics, biogenetics, bioethics, and other emerging problems—serve to clarify what he means. New forms of knowledge do not simply add information to an unchanged framework. They can force us to reconsider the concepts through which we understand what is rational in the first place.

The aim, however, is not to replace one closed definition with another. Once a concept has been opened to questioning, its future cannot be settled in advance by installing a new final formulation.

This is where Derrida’s idea of the concept to come becomes relevant. The phrase points to a concept that remains open to further questioning and re-articulation rather than being closed by a definitive answer.

To question a concept is not necessarily to abolish it. It may be to open it to what its existing configuration could not yet accommodate.

The “new rationalism” Derrida invokes is therefore not a rejection of rationality. It is a demand that reason remain capable of confronting what its inherited forms have not yet fully accommodated.

6. What Derrida Is Actually Questioning

We can now return to the accusation with which the interview began. Deconstruction, the objection runs, questions rationality. Derrida’s response is more precise: Which rationality?

And when the issue is the subject: What kind of subject?

These are not questions that dissolve their objects. They ask us to examine the historical and conceptual conditions under which those objects have acquired their apparent stability.

That is what this fragment of Derrida’s interview makes unusually clear. Deconstruction does not begin by declaring concepts meaningless. It asks how they have come to occupy the positions they occupy, what relations make those positions intelligible, and what those arrangements may leave unresolved.

A concept is not an isolated definition. It belongs to a conceptual configuration. To question it is therefore to reopen the relations through which it has become intelligible—and to leave open what that concept may yet become.

References:

Montefiore, A. (1992). Interview with Jacques Derrida [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B-gzOQLzJk&t=296s

Derrida, J., & Montefiore, A. (2001). Talking liberties: Jacques Derrida’s interview with Alan Montefiore. In G. J. Biesta & D. Egéa-Kuehne (Eds.), Derrida & education (pp. 176–185). Routledge.