Jacques Derrida, one of France's most famous philosophers, has died at the age of 74, it has been announced. From the BBC
Derrida died in a Paris hospital on Friday night, news agency AFP reported. He suffered from pancreatic cancer.
The Algerian-born philosopher is best known for his "deconstruction theory" - unpicking the way text is put together in order to reveal its hidden meanings.
Fellow academics have charged that Derrida's writings "deny distinction between reality and fiction".
Derrida is one of the most influential philosophers of the late 20th Century.
In his long career, he taught at the Sorbonne and at several American universities.
Multiple layers
The deconstructionist school of philosophy he heralded holds that the meaning text is not definite and unchanging - it depends on how each reader interprets it.
Derrida's prolific writings - including Speech and Phenomena, and Of Grammatology - argue that in literature, as well as in art, music, architecture, there are multiple layers of meanings not necessarily intended or even understood by the creator of the work.
The academic community has often taken exception to this interpretation, correspondents say.
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".
Jacques Derrida also campaigned for the rights of immigrants in France, against apartheid in South Africa, and in support of dissidents in communist Czechoslovakia.
He was so influential that lat year a film was made about his life - a biographical documentary.
At one point, wandering through Derrida's library, one of the filmmakers asks him: "Have you read all the books in here?"
"No," he replies impishly, "only four of them. But I read those very, very carefully".
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