Hume Reads Freud: Empiricism as Rhetorical Event

The two competitive currents in French philosophy initiated by Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze tackle the difference between empiricism and idealism in contrary motion. In Derrida, the move is toward a critique of representation. In Deleuze, it is toward recovery of the real. Nevertheless, this paper nominates their meeting in a kind of ‘radical empiricism’. Both Derrida and Deleuze engage with empiricism at certain points in their work, although many who go by that label would be surprised to hear it.