Derrida studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he taught the history of philosophy from 1965. His first work was a translation, with introduction, of a section of a work on geometry by Edmund Husserl, followed in 1967 by a study of Husserl called Speech and Phenomena, the essays, Writing and Difference and, probably his most important work, Of Grammatology.

In line with the post-modern current of which he is part, Derrida rejects the search for certainty or meaning in the world. Derrida coined the word “Deconstruction,” which is a development of the work of Roland Barthes, a method of literary criticism which seeks to undermine an writer’s argument by uncovering unstated assumptions within the text, and in particular focusses on “binary” determinations which are challenged with the effect of calling the meaning of the text into question.

At its heart is the notion that each word and by extension each text contains layers of meanings which have grown up through cultural and historical processes. A writer may not know it, but what he puts on paper has all kinds of other significance than the obvious and this can be "deconstructed" by the expert.

Derrida, who was born into a Jewish family in Algeria, published his ground-breaking work in the 1960s and went on to achieve enormous influence in academic circles, especially in America.
But in 1992, staff at Cambridge University in the UK protested against plans to award him an honorary degree, denouncing his writings as "absurd doctrines that deny the distinction between reality and fiction". Fellow academics have charged that Derrida's writings are "absurd", but his mark on modern thinking is undisputed, correspondents say.
In 1949, Derrida left Algeria for Paris to further his education, receiving an advanced degree in philosophy from the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure in 1956. He later taught philosophy at the Sorbonne University from 1960-64 and at the Ecole des Hautes Etude en Sciences Sociales from 1984-99.

He also taught in the United States, at the University of California at Irvine, The New School for Social Research and at Johns Hopkins and Yale universities.
Jacques Derrida could claim to be one of the few philosophers of the late 20th Century who people other than students of the subject had actually heard of, says Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield.
See his article Speech & Writing according to Hegel and an excerpt from Specters of Marx in which he argues against Marx from the standpoint of Hegel.
His later works include Glas (1974), Truth in Painting (1978), and The Postcard (1980).
Derrida also campaigned for the rights of immigrants in France, against apartheid in South Africa, and in support of dissidents in communist Czechoslovakia.
French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres called Derrida "profoundly humanist," saying the philosopher spent his final years working for the "values of hospitality," particularly between Europe and the Mediterranean.
"He wanted to build an open idea of Europe," a ministry statement said.
As Derrida grew ill, death haunted him. In a Le Monde interview in August, Derrida said that learning to live means learning to die.
"Less and less, I have not learned to accept death," he was quoted as saying. "I remain uneducable about the wisdom of learning to die.