Dominik Busch offers a systematic examination of the famous dispute between Jacques Derrida and John R. Searle regarding the foundations of speech act theory. From his analysis, he develops a far-reaching thesis on the ethics of philosophy. No other debate in philosophy stirred up as much controversy in the late 1970s and early 1980s as the conflict between John R. Searle and Jacques Derrida. What began as a dispute over the correct interpretation of John L. Austin's speech act theory expanded into a discussion of fundamental philosophical questions: about the identity of the subject, the role of speaker intention in the meaning of a statement, the possibility of distinguishing between normal and parasitic language use, the scope of a philosophical theory, and the structure of events. The author examines the underlying assumptions.