Originally published in 1995, Advances was first written by Jacques Derrida as a long foreword to a book by one of his most promising former students, the philosopher Serge Margels Le Tombeau du Dieu Artisan (The Tomb of the Craftsman). What Derrida uncovers for us is Margels own unique theory of the promise in relation to an an-archic, pre-chronological temporality, in conjunction with Margels radical rereading of Platos Timaeus. As Derrida states right away, Margels reading is a new one, a new reading of the Demiurge. A new promise. A new advance. In this magisterial late essay by Derrida, what the reader soon discovers is in part a conversation with his former student, as well as an opening for a new reflection on our current ecological and political crises that are all the more urgent today where the possibility of giving ourselves death as a human race and the end of the world is now, within an era of climate change, more real than ever. As part of Univocals Pharmakon series, this essay, itself published in advance, becomes a brief but powerful light pointing toward Univocals forthcoming publication of the translation of Serge Margels Le Tombeau du Dieu Artisan. Once again the Timaeus, of course, but a different Timaeus, a new Demiurge, I promise.
