Excellent point. I had a philosophy professor who let us know that it was neither his position nor purpose to indoctrinate us regarding the soundness of ideas. He very consistently stuck to his guns and gave every argument presented to the class the the best treatment he could, and no one ever figured out what position he took personally on any of them.

I asked if he did not consider the purely rational method he embodied a form of indoctrination itself. He smiled, and very considerately ceded the point that it might very well be the case and that if so, he was not aware of it.

All my other philosophy professors were folks who - for some reason - became angry when asked questions like that.

That's what University is supposed to be like. Unfortunately, it's a dying ethos...

> Rarely is it taken a step further - to question deconstruction itself

That hasn't really been the case for a long time. Deconstruction was officially declared off-message in the aftermath of 9/11: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/89-CRITICAL-I... . It's had something of a rehabilitation in the post-financial-crisis world of the new wokeness, though.

It really disturbed me how many people went through that "this changes everything" transformation at the time. Even if I disagreed more with their former position, it makes me seasick. It's like, there must be something profound missing from people who have such definite views and then a switch flips and they see the world completely differently. I mean, the WTC was attacked before! So how could a thinking person not allow for the possibility of a successful attack? How could it fundamentally be a surprise that upends your worldview? Yet that seemed to be the effect on an awful lot of people.

Understanding the purpose of having a construction and the call into the human soul to demand a narratival and binding meaning is something that is simply inadequately done in this long afternoon of Modernity. Trite answers don't suffice, nor do pompous ones.

Maybe we're just supposed (in the sense of evolutionary/mimetic/entropic fitness) to be in conversation with all forms of structure; between order and disorder... like a devil's advocate or a high-confident grey [1] -- maybe we're supposed to stake the middle ground: build when it's rubble and tear it down when it's cathedral :)

[1]: https://www.ted.com/talks/mariano_sigman_and_dan_ariely_how_...