ABSTRACT
The central theme of postmodern political thought is the need to create a new politics of identity in place of the traditional liberal democratic politics of rights and toleration. In fact, M. Heidegger insists, people existence is pervaded to its very core by historicity. Despite Jacques Derrida‘s modest disclaimer, however, the overall outcome of the Heideggerian Destruktion project, especially when extended into postmodern deconstruction, is a revolutionary change in the western conception of human identity. The most powerful critique of E. Levinas’ version of the politics of difference comes, however, from a fellow postmodern philosopher. A liberal ironist is one who is ‘sufficiently historicist and nominalist to have abandoned the idea that [his or her] central beliefs and desires refer back to something beyond the reach of time and chance.’
