Abstract

If humans are the creators of meaning and value, rather than the subjects of some higher or prior authority, how must we act in order to be true to this principle? Does justice consist in being as peaceful as possible towards others, thus letting them live out their natures as meaning creators, or do we do justice to meaning creators by engaging them in discursive war, fighting to propagate our values and meanings over the counter-claims of other persons? To answer these questions I examine the positions of Jacques Derrida, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Thomas Hobbes. Although all three consider humans to be the creators of meaning, Derrida and Nietzsche each use that premise to yield mutually incompatible, individually paradoxical, solutions about the nature of justice. Derrida argues that in our political and personal relations we must be as peaceful as possible to others by allowing them to speak with their own independent voices and create their own meanings and values. Nietzsche, on the other hand, claims that we act out our human nature most accurately when we "struggle against one another as gods" by each striving to become the dominant creator of meaning and value in the world. Derrida and Nietzsche disagree about the appropriate extent of this inevitable violence, but they both agree that the nature of humans as meaning creators renders at least some violence unavoidable. Thomas Hobbes' story of the social compact shows how this paradox of interwoven violence and peacefulness plays out as persons force each other to recognize that they are meaning creators who demand a voice in the foundation and conduct of political living. It is therefore my position that doing justice to all persons, including oneself, as meaning creators requires the recognition that both violence and peacefulness are inevitable and necessary in both public and private affairs.