Pulled this one out of my drafts folder and thought I’d finally post it.
If you want to read Derrida, read the works below in the following order before you start:
Plato: Phaedrus, Phaedo, Ion, Republic: Book VII
Descartes : Meditations
Spinoza: Ethics
G.W. Leibniz: Theodicy, Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics. See Dewey on Leibniz.
Rousseau: Essay on the Origins of Language, Confessions, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, The Social Contract
Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, The Critique of Judgment
Hegel: Phenomenology of Mind (“Spirit” in some translations)
Schelling: “Ideas on a Philosophy of Nature…” (1803), “Deduction of a Universal Organ of Philosophy” (1800), “Philosophical Investigations in the Essence of Human Freedom and Related Matters” (1809)
Kierkegaard: Concept of Irony, Either/Or, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Concept of Anxiety
Stéphane Mallarmé: Selected Poems, Essays and Letters (see this collection)
Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy, The Case of Wagner, Thus Spake Zarathrusta, The Twilight of the Idols
Edmund Husserl: Ideas
Martin Heidegger: Being and Time, Kant and the Question of Metaphysics
Claude Levi-Strauss: Structural Anthropology
Jean Rousset: Forme et signification, essais sur les structures littéraires de Corneille à Claudel
The Philosophy of Contemporary Song 