The Deconstruction of Time is the first book to examine what has become the fundamental, even defining, project in Continental philosophy: double rethinking. Begun by Edmund Husserl, this area of inquiry in part seeks to rethink time in terms of our experience of it; a second aspect, begun by Martin Heidegger, is an attempt to rethink ourselves (and philosophy itself) in terms of the results of that initial rethinking.

Using Jacques Derrida as his point of reference, David Wood undertakes a critical reformulation of double rethinking through discussions of Friedrich Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger. But The Deconstruction of Time is more than a critical history of the development of the topic: it includes important contributions to the phenomenology of time (as "cosmic," "dialectical," "phenomenal," and so on) and a rereading of Derrida. In recent years, considerations of Wood's themes have grown in importance. The Deconstruction of Time is a groundbreaking study of a topic that has become vital in Continental philosophy.