Doing Justice to the Derrida–Levinas Connection: A Response to Mark Dooley

Philosophy & Social Criticism

Volumn 29, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 427-450

  Plant, Bob ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

contingency; guilt; Holocaust; hospitality; institutions; nature; suffering; third party; violence

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248063825     PISSN: 01914537     EISSN: 1461734X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0191453703294004     Document Type: Article

References (184)

1. Mark Dooley, ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope: a Response to Simon Critchley’, Philosophy & Social Criticism 27(5) (September 2001): 35.
2. Mark Dooley, ‘The Politics of Exodus: Derrida, Kierkegaard, and Levinas on “Hospitality”’, in R. L. Perkins (ed.) International Kierkegaard Commentary: Works of Love (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2000), p. 179.
3. Jacques Derrida, ‘Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism’, in C. Mouffe (ed.) Deconstruction and Pragmatism (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 83–4.
4. Dooley, ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope’, p. 43, p. 39, p. 42. See also pp. 49, 50, p. 37.
5. See Jacques Derrida, ‘Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility: a Dialogue with Jacques Derrida’, in R. Kearney and M. Dooley (eds) Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy(London: Routledge, 1999), p. 78.
6. See Derrida's positive remarks on Bentham's criterion of suffering in J. Derrida and E. Roudinesco, De quoi demain Dialogue (Paris: Fayard/Galilee, 2001), p. 118.
7. Dooley, ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope’, p. 49.
8. See Jacques Derrida (with A. Dufourmantelle), Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle invites Jacques Derrida to Respond, trans. R. Bowlby (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 67.
9. See Derrida, ‘Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility’, p. 66
10. Derrida's remarks in J. D. Caputo, M. Dooley and M. J. Scanlon (eds) Questioning God (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), p. 62.
11. Jacques Derrida, ‘Perhaps or Maybe’ (interview with A. G. Düttmann) in J. Dronsfield and N. Midgley (eds) ‘Responsibilities of Deconstruction’, Warwick Journal of Philosophy 6 (Summer 1997): 2.
12. See also ‘On Responsibility’ (interview with J. Dronsfield and others) in the same volume, pp. 19–20, 30.
13. See Derrida's remarks in J. D. Caputo and M. J. Scanlon (eds) God, the Gift and Postmodernism (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 77;
14. ‘Hostipitality’, in Acts of Religion (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 360, 362, 381.
15. The ‘visitation’ is a central theme in Levinas's work, as Derrida himself acknowledges in Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 62–3.
16. See Dooley, ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope’, p. 42.
17. Dooley, ‘The Politics of Exodus’, p. 169; emphasis added.
18. Derrida, ‘Hostipitality’, p. 389.
19. Jacques Derrida in Caputo, Dooley and Scanlon, Questioning God, p. 69.
20. Dooley, ‘The Politics of Exodus’, p. 177.
21. Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. M. Dooley and M. Hughes (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 44. See also p. 51;
22. Of Hospitality, p. 147.
23. See Derrida's remarks on the ‘decision’ in The Gift of Death, trans. D. Wills (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 67–8, 70–1, 95;
24. Jacques Derrida, Points … Interviews, 1974–1994, ed. E. Weber, trans. P. Kamuf and others (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 272–3, 359;
25. Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority”’, trans. M. Quaintance, Cardozo Law Review 11(5–6) (1990): 947, 961, 963;
26. Derrida, ‘Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism’, pp. 83–4;
27. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, pp. 112–13, 115;
28. Derrida, ‘Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility’, p. 66.
29. Derrida, in Caputo, Dooley and Scanlon, Questioning God, p. 69.
30. Dooley, ‘The Politics of Exodus’, p. 179.
31. Dooley, ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope’, p. 44.
32. Dooley, ‘The Politics of Exodus’, p. 169. See also p. 170, p. 178.
33. Dooley, ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope’, p. 50; emphasis added, p. 54.
34. See, for example, Derrida, in Caputo, Dooley and Scanlon, Questioning God, p. 57.
35. Derrida, The Gift of Death, p. 69, p. 85, p. 51.
36. Emmanuel Levinas, Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other, trans. M. B. Smith and B. Harshav (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), pp. 229–30, p. 203.
37. See also Levinas, ‘The Paradox of Morality: an Interview with Emmanuel Levinas’, trans. A. Benjamin and T. Wright, in R. Bernasconi and D. Wood (eds) The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 178.
38. Jacques Derrida, ‘The Villanova Roundtable: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida’, in J. D. Caputo (ed.) Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997), p. 16; emphasis added.
39. Dooley, ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope’, p. 44; emphasis added.
40. See Dooley, ‘The Politics of Exodus’, pp. 173–4.
41. Dooley, ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope’, p. 37.
42. Dooley, ‘The Politics of Exodus’, p. 178.
43. Mark Dooley, ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope’, p. 38, p. 41, p. 42.
44. See Emmanuel Levinas, ‘Ethics of the Infinite’, in R. Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The Phenomenological Tradition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), p. 61.
45. Levinas, ‘The Paradox of Morality’, pp. 176–7.
46. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence, trans. A. Lingis (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), p. 128; emphasis added.
47. Levinas, Outside the Subject, trans. M. B. Smith (London: Athlone Press, 1993), p. 158.
48. Dooley, ‘The Politics of Exodus’, p. 183; emphasis added.
49. Dooley, ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope’, p. 36; emphasis added.
50. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, p. 90.
51. Levinas, ‘The Paradox of Morality’, p. 172. I shall not discuss why this reading of Heidegger (and Darwin) is problematic.
52. Levinas, ‘Ethics of the Infinite’, p. 60.
53. Levinas, ‘The Paradox of Morality’, p. 172.
54. Simon Critchley, ‘Deconstruction and Pragmatism — Is Derrida a Private Ironist or a Public Liberal?’, in C. Mouffe (ed.) Deconstruction and Pragmatism (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 33.
55. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, p. 75.
56. Dooley, ‘The Politics of Exodus’, p. 175, p. 183. See also p. 186, p. 174, p. 176, p. 178, p. 188. See also p. 191.
57. Dooley, ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope’, p. 42.
58. Dooley, ‘The Politics of Exodus’, p. 181. See also p. 187.
59. Levinas, ‘The Paradox of Morality’, p. 175.
60. Derrida, ‘Hostipitality’, p. 380.
61. See also in Caputo, Dooley and Scanlon, Questioning God, p. 22;
62. The Gift of Death, p. 51.
63. Levinas, ‘Ethics of the Infinite’, pp. 63–4.
64. I shall not examine Levinas's account of the face. Suffice it to say that: (1) ‘[B]ad conscience … comes to me from the face of the other’ (Entre Nous, p. 148), 168–9, 186
65. Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, trans. R. A. Cohen (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1992), p. 89;
66. ‘The Paradox of Morality’, p. 169.
67. Levinas, Outside the Subject, p. 48.
68. Dooley makes a similar remark in ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope’, p. 39.
69. Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, p. 95.
70. Derrida, ‘On Responsibility’, p. 20.
71. Dooley, ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope’, p. 43.
72. See Levinas, Otherwise than Being, p. 114;
73. Levinas Ethics and Infinity, p. 96;
74. Emmanuel Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. A. Peperzak et al. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 144–5
75. Emmanuel Levinas, God, Death and Time, trans. B. Bergo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 195–6.
76. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, p. 114 emphasis added.
77. Levinas, Outside the Subject, p. 102.
78. Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, p. 97.
79. Levinas, Outside the Subject, p. 102.
80. Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings, p. 73.
81. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. A. Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1996), pp. 212–13.
82. Emmanuel Levinas, Of God Who Comes To Mind, trans. B. Bergo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 82; emphasis added.
83. Levinas, Entre Nous, p. 195.
84. Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. S. Hand (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. xiv.
85. Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings, p. 27.
86. Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, p. 83.
87. Levinas, Entre Nous, p. 106. See also p. 227.
88. Derrida, ‘Force of Law’, p. 947.
89. Levinas, Entre Nous, p. 104, p. 195, p. 106.
90. Levinas, ‘The Paradox of Morality’, p. 170; emphasis added.
91. Levinas, Entre Nous, p. 104.
92. See also Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, p. 90;
93. Derrida, ‘Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism’, pp. 83–4;
94. ‘Perhaps or Maybe’, p. 12;
95. Derrida, ‘On Responsibility’, p. 25, 27, 32;
96. Derrida, ‘Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility’, pp. 68–9.
97. Derrida, ‘Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility’, p. 68.
98. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, p. 30.
99. Levinas, Entre Nous, p. 106.
100. Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other, trans. R. A. Cohen (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1997), p. 82.
101. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, p. 158, pp. 158–9, p. 161.
102. Dooley, ‘The Politics of Exodus’, p. 180.
103. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, p. 16.
104. Levinas, ‘Ethics of the Infinite’, pp. 63–4.
105. See Dooley, ‘The Politics of Exodus’, pp. 174–5, pp. 170–1.
106. See Derrida's remarks on the ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ in Caputo, Dooley and Scanlon, Questioning God, p. 67.
107. Levinas, ‘The Paradox of Morality’, p. 175.
108. See also Derrida, Points, pp. 380–1.
109. In fact, both Levinas and Derrida owe something to Martin Heidegger's analysis of Conscience and Guilt in Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1999), §§56–60. I shall not develop this point here.
110. Emmanuel Levinas, The Levinas Reader, ed. S. Hand (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996), p. 291.
111. See Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, p. 6.
112. Levinas, God, Death, and Time, p. 12, p. 17.
113. See also Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence, trans. M B. Smith (London: Athlone Press, 1999), p. 162.
114. Levinas, The Levinas Reader, p. 82.
115. Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, p. 120.
116. Levinas, The Levinas Reader, p. 82.
117. Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence, p. 21.
118. Derrida, in Caputo, Dooley and Scanlon, Questioning God, p. 43.
119. See also ‘Hostipitality’, p. 388.
120. Blaise Pascal, The Pensées, trans. J. M. Cohen (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961), §231.
121. Levinas cites this passage in, among other places, Ethics and Infinity, p. 22
122. Entre Nous, pp. 130, 144, 216.
123. Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence, p. 22.
124. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. R. Rosenthal (London: Abacus, 1998), p. 62.
125. Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings, p. 91, p. 89.
126. Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence, p. 23.
127. Levinas, Outside the Subject, p. 94, p. 158.
128. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 75.
129. Levinas, ‘The Paradox of Morality’, p. 170.
130. Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings, p. 102.
131. Levinas, Outside the Subject, p. 102.
132. Derrida, ‘Hostipitality’, p. 383, p. 388.
133. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, p. 21.
134. Derrida, ‘Hostipitality’, p. 364, p. 362.
135. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, pp. 152–3, 157, 153, 156, 170, 158, 157, 162, 160, 153, 162, 163, 157, 170–1, 172–3.
136. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, p. 112.
137. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 155, p. 156, p. 154, pp. 56–7.
138. Derrida, ‘Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility, p. 71.
139. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, p. 8.
140. Derrida, ‘Perhaps or Maybe’, p. 5.
141. Although Levinas also refers to the ‘perhaps’ in Basic Philosophical Writings, p. 75, it figures prominantly in the pyrrhonian scepticism of Sextus Empiricus.
142. See, for example, Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings, pp. 54, 59.
143. Jacques Derrida, ‘Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility’, p. 70.
144. See Derrida, Of Hospitality, p. 25, p. 51.
145. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 171.
146. See also Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, p. 45.
147. Levinas, Entre Nous, p. 111;
148. Levinas, God, Death, and Time, p. 161.
149. Jacques Derrida, Aporias, trans. T. Dutoit (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 10.
150. See Derrida, in Caputo and Scanlon, God, the Gift and Postmodernism, p. 72.
151. Jacques Derrida, On the Name, ed. T. Dutoit trans. D. Wood et al. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 74.
152. Derrida, ‘Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility’, p. 69, p. 70.
153. Derrida, ‘Perhaps or Maybe’, p. 8.
154. Derrida, ‘Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility’, p. 70.
155. Jacques Derrida, Monolinguism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. P. Mensah (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 89, n. 9.
156. See Derrida, Points, p. 198;
157. The Gift of Death, p. 68;
158. ‘Perhaps or Maybe’, p. 10;
159. ‘On Responsibility’, pp. 23, 28–9;
160. Monolinguism of the Other, p. 62;
161. ‘Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility’, pp. 70–1;
162. Caputo and Scanlon, God, the Gift and Postmodernism, p. 72.
163. Derrida, Aporias, p. 12.
164. Jacques Derrida, remarks in ‘Arguing with Derrida’, Ratio (new series), XIII (4) (December 2000): 353.
165. See Derrida, Of Hospitality, p. 61, 125.
166. Levinas, God, Death, and Time, p. 188.
167. See also Otherwise than Being, p. 77.
168. Derrida, ‘Perhaps or Maybe’, p. 9.
169. Dooley, ‘The Politics of Exodus’, p. 169.
170. Derrida, ‘Perhaps or Maybe’, p. 9.
171. See also Derrida, Points, pp. 198, 387;
172. Derrida in Caputo and Scanlon, God, the Gift and Postmodernism, pp. 132–3.
173. See Derrida, The Gift of Death, pp. 107, 111–12;
174. On the Name, p. 74, 133;
175. ‘Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism’, p. 86;
176. Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, p. 48.
177. Jacques Derrida, ‘I Have a Taste for the Secret’, in J. Derrida and M. Ferraris, A Taste for the Secret, ed. G. Donis and D. Webb trans. G. Donis (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), p. 90.
178. Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. P. Kamuf (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 63–4.
179. See Levinas, Entre Nous, p. 19;
180. Derrida, Of Hospitality, pp. 53–4, 59–61.
181. Derrida, Of Hospitality, p. 79. See also pp. 147–8., p. 81.
182. Derrida, Given Time, p. 7. See also pp. 122–3;
183. ‘Arguing with Derrida’, p. 353.
184. Dooley, ‘A Civic Religion of Social Hope’, p. 54, 38.