Derrida: Value Theory

Is justice (merely) an expression of particular values or is it to be understood as a (universal) cross-cultural standard of validity? Following the ideas of Jacques Derrida, this book provides a new answer to this question: Justice is to be explained as a process of deconstruction. To arrive at this conclusion, I proceed from a critical discussion of Martin Heidegger's approach to social philosophy in Being and Time which I connect with a detailed analysis of the implications of Derrida's writings (...) on practical philosophy aspiring to provide a variety of insights, both critical and constructive, into the cultural and normative foundations of democracy. Thematically, the book bridges the frontiers between the philosophy of law, cultural and social philosophy, ethics and political theory, focusing on fundamental questions of the constitution of normativity, responsibility and justification. In this way, my reading of Heidegger and Derrida aims to shed light on the nature of the political problems that concern our societies today. The file contains the table of contents and the first two (introductory) chapters, the introductions of the remaining chapters, as well as the concluding remarks (in German). (shrink)

There are many people who think that deconstruction has run its course, has had its day, and that it is now time to return to the important business of philosophy, or perhaps to serious ethical, social and political questions. Derrida's work, it is said, leads nowhere but a sterile philosophy of difference that in its de-politicized, de-historicized abstractness is a form of conservatism little better than the kinds of identity thinking to which it seems to be so radically opposed. In (...) short, we must go ‘beyond’ deconstruction. (shrink)

This essay first examines the issue of intersubjectivity in terms of the paradigmatic relationship between I and You. From a grammatical standpoint this relationship seems asymmetrical as well as necessarily performative: I implies the speech act of the speaker. You exists only as I's interlocutor. This helps us understand the very different status of what is called the 3rd person--and which would more accurately be called a nonperson, as Benveniste explains. This nonperson marks the position of a Third Party. I (...) propose to show that the same Third Party--whether a living being or a thing--is also involved in the traditional ceremonial gift-exchange relationship discussed by Marcel Mauss. The relationship between the partners in gift-exchange is mediated by the being or the thing given, which is for the recipient a token and substitute of the giver. What this involves is the reciprocal public recognition of the partners. In modern societies this function is performed by the law and by the institutions of the arbiter-State as they emerged in the formation of the Greek city. (shrink)

This essay addresses Jacques Derrida’s theory of metaphor, as it has been handed to literary theory and continental philosophy. Our aim is to reassess the relationship between metaphor and metaphysics, using two distinct critical lenses. We will contrast Derrida’s influential position to an anachronistic author – Giambattista Vico. Vico initiated what is now called the romantic theory of metaphor, but the details of his theory are missing from current discussions. For this reason, Vico’s view is given closer attention. Two new (...) concepts are introduced: mute metaphor and heroic metaphor. These terms help specify precisely how metaphor can be conceived as a process of consciousness rather than a grammatical rule or grammatical exception. Finally, it is suggested that Vico’s theory is preferable to Derrida’s. Vico’s vision of metaphorical language is more fruitful and less problematic than Derrida’s, both methodologically and terminologically. The romanticism espoused by Vico also suggests itself to new modes of contemporary research concerning the purpose and function of metaphor within language. (shrink)

ABSTRACT One of Derrida's most significant insights concerns the irreducibility yet interdependence of unconditioned ideal and conditioned actuality. First, relying especially on the concept of hospitality, I argue that this insight allows for the development of a powerful account of ethical and political action. Second, I show the usefulness of this account for feminist critical practice, especially with regard to the ideal of inclusion and the concept of “woman.” Third, and finally, I explore how this insight could guide feminist action (...) in relation to two specific situations: feminism's relations to transgender issues and to reproductive freedom. (shrink)

This essay makes an appraisal of the political articulations of the late Jacques Derrida in his “Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides” interview as a starting point for evaluating him as a political philosopher. Derrida having claimed in the past that he was convinced of Marxism, a critical comparison serves to illustrate where his radical-sounding pronouncements stand in relation to the Marxist perspective. Derrida turns out to be unremarkable, expounding an ambiguous and eclectic pre-Marxist prophetism.

This article investigates the work of mourning following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Combining discussions of mourning, kitsch and sentimentality, I examine the perverse transformation of grief into patriotic nationalism. Linking Freud’s description of mourning as work with Derrida’s articulation of grief as ‘a work working at its own unproductivity’, I explore how grief has been paired with icons of American nostalgia, such as Norman Rockwell, as well as kitschy souvenirs from Ground Zero (...) vendors, and, through this pairing, been transformed into a motive force for war. A central part of this operation, I argue, is the process of identification with the traumatic event. Identification, what Freud describes as a ‘binding force’, takes place across diverse fields - from White House speeches, to kitsch memorabilia made available immediately following the attacks. Identification with the event enables identification with the nation - an operation immediately reifying the official rhetoric of ‘Us against Them’ propounded by President Bush and his advisers. As grief over 9/11 is transformed into a perpetual rationale for war, that day becomes a new origin conveniently obliterating all that came before regarding the history of US nation-building and its own brand of terrorism. (shrink)

In 1990-1991 Jacques Derrida taught a seminar in Paris involving the scientific-philosophical notebooks of the German Romantic writer and thinker Novalis. The present article offers an account of that seminar, which was entitled, "The Rhetoric of Cannibalism.".

This article looks at some main stages of contemporary thought about freedom and responsibility and outlines an account of important stages of 20th century philosophy as well. Whereas the early Sartre particularly coined the notion of infinite freedom, his later writings, Levinas and Derrida discovered the conception of infinite responsibility. The article draws attention to the questions which arise out of these understandings of both responsibility and freedom and asks whether these issues can be answered from a purely secular point (...) of view. The last part is devoted to the role of God in current philosophical considerations about responsibility and freedom. (shrink)

In the large and complex landscape of pedagogy, the focus seems to have turned away from the concept of teaching and towards a stronger emphasis on learning, probably supported by neo‐liberal ideology. The teacher is presented more as part of the force of production than as an autonomous performer of a mandate given to him/her by society. He/she is supposed to supply knowledge that is considered useful to a society geared to production and consumption. During the past few decades, enlightenment (...) as a legitimising concept for education has been challenged from different angles, both by a self‐critique from within and from external forces. One angle of approach is the questioning of the relationship between the state and education, by way of a critique of modernity. Another approach comes from a critique of knowledge, which has lost most of its universal implications and is left with more pragmatic and utilitarian considerations. Into this landscape of lost legitimisation, I will make an attempt to visualise an impossible/possible position for teaching, featuring ancient, contemporary and phantom‐like figures. I am suggesting the concept of transformation as an alternative to development or improvement, which I find to be concepts with a close link to modernity and its linearity. By a careful and conscious use of the word transformation, taking Derrida's intensified focus of language into account, a possible active position might be intimated in spite of the fundamental critique, which has been directed at pedagogy and its imperialistic implications from different angles. (shrink)

Paul Smeyers’ keynote address to the PESA 2007 Conference, ‘The Entrepreneurial Self and Informal Education: On government intervention and the discourse of experts’ provides a timely call for questioning the governing of the family. This paper draws upon Smeyers’ key concerns to explore both historical and contemporary trends in clustering government agencies, under the guidance of child development experts. The guidance of two expert groups is problematised, with particular attention to an absence of commitment to Māori perspectives of education and (...) child‐rearing. Such an absence reflects, in New Zealand, a dangerous undermining of the historic treaty between the British and Māori. The paper then challenges, with brief reference to Jacques Derrida's discussions on autobiography and Freud's Legacy, the identity of expert groups advocating early intervention in the lives of families measured as a burden on economic and social progress. The paper posits that perhaps it is the developmental expert that requires some form of early intervention. (shrink)

This essay explores the treatment of violence in Derrida's ethico-political work, stressing the underlying continuity of Derrida's thinking of politics, from his first reading of Levinas to one of the last notions he developed, autoimmunity. Haddad analyzes the use to which the idea of a “lesser violence” has been put, arguing that it is incompatible with Derrida's other claims.

The topic of the relation between literature and democracy in Derrida's thinking is introduced, focusing especially on the problem of the secret, which has loomed large in Derrida's late discussions of both literature and democracy.

This essay explores the practice of hospitality as a resource for thinking about ethics post-critically. How might the practice of hospitality — rooted in the conviction that our lives are fundamentally constituted by receiving and giving — challenge a modern, critical ethic centered in the autonomous self?

Bioethics tends to be dominated by discourses concerned with the ethical dimension of medical practice, the organization of medical care, and the integrity of biomedical research involving human subjects and animal testing. Jacques Derrida has explored the fundamental question of the “limit” that identifies and differentiates the human animal from the nonhuman animal. However, to date his work has not received any reception in the field of biomedical ethics. In this paper, I examine what Derrida’s thought about this limit might (...) mean for the use/misuse/abuse of animals in contemporary biomedical research. For this, I review Derrida’s analysis and examine what it implies for scientific responsibility, introducing what I have coined the “Incompleteness Theorem of Bioethics.”. (shrink)

Through an attentive reading of his essay, “Psychoanalysis Searches the States of Its Soul,” it is possible to pursue Derrida's thinking about psychoanalysis and cruelty in terms of the distinction he makes between Nietzsche and Freud, whereby the latter maintains an “opposable term” to cruelty. This article explores the status and significance of such an “opposable term” as one possible source of a Freudian future beyond Freud, and in a postscript carries its reading into the question of the “side of (...) life” and of death in Derrida's H.C. for Life. (shrink)

This article will theorize how Derrida’s deconstruction signifies a fundamental ontological alterity. We will examine the use of both the tropes of “sacred” and ‘faith” as tropes to express this possibility. Wewill articulate how deconstruction, as a development of phenomenology, provides a theoretical nexus where the alterity of things and persons may be thought. We will arrive at the paradoxical formulation of“ontological alterity” as a key moment in deconstructive thinking. Essentially we will argue that deconstruction offers the resources to think (...) the relation between other person and things in the world asmotivated by a firm radicalization of Heideggerean worldliness and Levinasian alterity. (shrink)

I address the question of the origins and historical meaning of art. Analyzing suggestions from Marx, Derrida, Winnicott, and Todorov, I claim that art doesn’t simply represent conscious, historical events but is also the continuing presentation of the prehistorical break-up of our “original” human family. Indeed,perpetuating yet distancing this archaic scene of community and violence in tension, art performs this mediation not just in history but also as history, as a secretive historiography of splitting and meaning-making. To this end, I (...) analyze some tribal tattooing and scarring practices. Literally carving a world of metaphorical significance out of our disidentification with mother nature and with each other in turn, art speaks hieroglyphically of persistent primitive loss. (shrink)

Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism is central to the project of decoloniality. It is a critical reflection on the European civilization project that gives expression to the disenchantment with European modernity that began to be felt in many places after the Second World War. This essay describes the overcoming of Cartesian reason through the “decolonial gift,” which makes possible an opening toward transmodernity, an alternate response or pathway in view of the declining geo-political and epistemological significance of Europe and the (...) United States. (shrink)

The epigraph from Adieu. À Emmanuel Levinas for this issue is here throughout the linchpin, the Triebfeder or the spring, the feather of impulse, of drive or of desire, out of which this paper attempts to formulate the relation, “in Derrida,” of desire and obligation, sexual pleasure and moral law, Emmanuel Levinas and Immanuel Kant, the letters b + l, mourning and melancholy, but and butt, rams and rebellion, rebellion and oblivion, good conscience and good unconsciousness, and, ultimately, non-reading and (...) reading. (shrink)

This essay argues that, in the first Critique, the need for unity leads Kant to re-inscribe the subject in a situation of multiplicity and undecidability. The result, however, is not a relativization that negates the meaning of the subject’s existence, but rather a contextualization that makes meaning possible. This reading clarifies some of the connections between Kant and contemporary postmodernism, especially the work of Jacques Derrida.

Adorning the cover of Mourning Becomes the Law is a replica of Gathering the Ashes of Phocion, a painting by Nicholas Poussin. An Athenian beyond reproach, Phocion had been put to death by tyrants who had taken control of the city, his ashes left on the pyre. In the darkened foreground, Phocion’s wife gathers her husband’s ashes on her hands and knees while her female attendant shields her from the view of the city, which rises up behind them. With its (...) glittering architecture and recreating citizens, the city seems impervious to this scene of mourning. Yet, Rose warns, there is not an unmediated opposition of individual love and worldly injustice here; rather, this act by Phocion’s wife is a finite act of justice that will have its bearing on the political life of the city. Mourning, “which draws on transcendent but representable justice”, becomes the law. Mourning Becomes the Law is the philosophical counterpart to Love’s Work, a memoir in which Rose reflects on the deaths of loved ones and, ultimately, her own impending death from cancer. Yet, while death haunts Love’s Work, she does not succumb to melancholia, but, rather, reaffirms her commitment to “staying in the fray.” In Mourning Becomes the Law, her final work, Rose again grapples with the meaning of death, but this time only as part of a broader theme that has preoccupied her for many years, namely, the nihilistic implications of postmodernism. Rose seeks to reveal the incoherence of postmodernism’s search for a “new ethics” that is divorced from the metaphysical inquiries of the tradition. By tearing ethics from metaphysics to give “the other” its absolute due, she argues, postmodernism has deprived itself of the resources necessary for an ethical project, and has thus “condemned itself to impotence and failure.” These resources, which are only to be found “in the politics which has been disowned, and in the theology which has been more thoroughly suppressed,” are drawn upon by Rose herself, who would “renew and reinvent” classical reflection “on the analogies between the soul, the city and the sacred”. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to analyze the way in which multicultural studies and theory, two academic areas that traditionally have been at odds, both manifest a distinctly similar stance on the constructedness of identity in Western society and how it affects intercultural relations. Jacques Derrida’s The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe and Edwidge Danticat’s The Book of the Dead both influence the way being is perceived in society. The first is a political speech intended to open the (...) minds of Europe’s political elite to what is perhaps the root of intercultural straggle in Europe. The second is a short story intended to shed light on the trials of a Haitian-American immigrant family as they come to terms with their homeland’s sociopolitical unrest and try to integrate into a new cultural environment. Together, these texts facilitate a protean examination of the rhetoric of the essential that permeates Western culture, and provide insight into a way of conceiving of being that is both dynamic and prismatic. (shrink)

The article explores Jacques Derrida’s view of the secular as the field of the socio-political. It focuses on his argument as to why religion and politics cannot be strictly separated as in the classical modern paradigm. By engaging Derrida’s later writings, this article shows that the secular domain cannot be purified of all faith and is best thought of as theologico-political, where ‘theologico-political’ indicates the interrelatedness and distinction between the theological and the political. The article’s central claim is that by (...) opening up to some form of the theological that is not reducible to traditional conceptions, and to a faith that is not necessarily religious, Derrida provides significant resources for understanding the secular today in more complex and critical ways than usual approaches offer. (shrink)

Psychology doesn’t seem to be really interested in the theme of gift; in the last decades it focus on the central role of recognition in the psyche building up. The authors underline Chiara Lubich’s original intuition linking profoundly the them of gift and recognition.

The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, by Marcel Mauss, is an important reference in Social Sciences for thinking about the theme of the gift, proposed in this congress. This brief work has as goal to present a rereading of The Gift by contemporary authors that try to think today’s society under this perspective. It’s a literature review of books and articles by Allain Caillé, Jacques Godbout and some Brazilian authors: Eric Sabourin, Marcos Lanna, Paulo Henrique Martins (...) and Jorge Luiz Villela. It is important to emphasize, according to Caillé, 1998, that “the paradigm of the gift is not a machine for blowing solutions, but for inspiring questions”. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The contemporary philosophical debate about "gift" brought into light above all by French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, brought about new and live discussions regarding what gift is and what is its nature. The present article analyses whether or not love can be regarded as a gift or, rather, follow the same problem showed by Derrida. According to him, every gift carries an internal contradiction and can never be and, therefore, will never be gift. A gift is impossible. (...) What is as gift to people, is, actually a commodity, an economical circle for Derrida. This article seeks to inquire whether can or cannot love follow the same gift pattern or if it, rather, builds his own path and follows its own internal logic. Is it possible to analyze love following on the footsteps of phenomenology? If love can be analyzed in a phenomenological fashion - reduction of love - then a new horizon will be opened. RESUMO O problema do debate filosófico contemporâneo acerca do dom, trazido à tona sobretudo pelos filósofos franceses Jacques Derrida e Jean-Luc Marion, trouxe novas e vivas discussõets sobre o que é e qual a sua natureza. O presente artigo analisa se o amor pode ser considerado como um dom ou se segue o mesmo problema sublinhado por Derrida. Segundo o autor, todo dom tem uma contradição interna e não pode ser considerado como tal. O que é dom para as pessoas, para Derrida é uma commodities, um círculo econômico. Em outras palavras, o dom é impossível. A análise que se faz neste artigo é se o amor segue este paradigma, portanto é impossível, ou se ele constrói um caminho próprio e segue sua própria lógica. É possível analisar o amor seguindo os passos da fenomenologia? Reduzindo o amor a fenômeno, então a análise se abre a novos horizontes. (shrink)