Like many of his contemporaries, Derrida’s philosophy was reactionary, responding to the structuralist and modernist theories that dominated the first half of the 20th century. He recognized and was troubled by the way modernism attempted to create grand narratives and to solidify concepts through binary thinking. Derrida resisted seeing the world in absolutes. In language in particular, he saw nuances that structuralist arguments failed to explain.

In Of Grammatology, Derrida suggests that humans understand the meaning of the signified through its relationship to its binary opposite. That is, a word only makes sense when considered through its relationship to other words. For example, reason is understood through its relationship to passion, masculinity to femininity, profit to generosity, etc. One cannot fully understand what light is without also understanding the nature of darkness. The metaphysics of presence, in addition, always champions one side of the binary over the other. In the examples above, for example, reason, masculinity, generosity, and light have historically been ranked higher than their counterparts. Today’s readers may immediately question this hierarchy, as contemporary sentiments challenge the preference of one over the other. However, Derrida’s critique that privileging one side of a binary over the other is innately flawed was revolutionary during the mid-20th century.