One of France’s pre-eminent thinkers, Jacques Derrida, has died of cancer at the age of 74.
Founder of the deconstructionist school of philosophy, he had been diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas in 2003.
Derrida's prolific writings, criticised by some as obscure and
nihilist, argue that in literature there are layers of meanings not necessarily intended or even understood by the creator of the work.
Born in Algeria in 1930 Derrida went to France's celebrated
Ecole Normale Superieur in 1952, then became an assistant professor at Harvard in the United States and the Sorbonne in Paris.
Among the influences on his thought were the German phenomenologist Martin Heidegger and the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
