Derrida's responsibility

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

Volumn 28, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 287-303

  Peterson, Keith ^a  

^a DEPAUL UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85070121528     PISSN: 00071773     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00071773.1997.11007206     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992). The author would like to thank John Protevi for his perspicacious comments and shrewd editorial suggestions regarding earlier versions of this paper. Of course, the author is solely responsible for its deficiencies.
2. In Du Droit à la Philosophie (Paris: Galilée, 1990), pp. 397–438; trans. Richard Rand and Amy Wygant in Logomachia: The Conflict of the Faculties (NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), pp. 1–34, hereafter M. In all references within the text the abbreviation for the English translation (given at the first full citation of each text) will be followed first by the English, and then by the French or German page numbers.
3. In the Cardozo Law Review 11 (1990), 919–1043, in French and English on facing pages, hereafter FL.
4. L'Autre cap, suivi de la démocratie ajournée (Paris: Minuit, 1991); trans. Michael Naas and Pascale-Anne Brault (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), hereafter OH.
5. “Les pupilles de l'Université. Le principe de raison et l'idée de l'Université”, in Du droit à la philosophie (Paris: Galilée, 1990); trans. C. Porter and E. Morris, Diacritics 13 (1983), 3–20, hereafter PR.
6. De l'espirit: Heidegger et la question (Paris: Galilée, 1987); trans. G. Bennington and R. Bowlby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), hereafter OS.
7. p. 955. See also Levinas' Totalité et Infini (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961; trans. A. Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), hereafter TI), pp. 244/222 for the “increase” in responsibility “in the measure that it is assumed”.
8. Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (London: Oxford University Press, 1973 [1952]), pp. 79–81.
9. Genealogy of Morals, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Random House, Inc., 1966); page numbers for Modem Library Edition of Basic Writings (1992), hereafter GM.
10. “Given a certain techno-political structure of knowledge, the status, function and destination of the university would no longer stem from the juridical or ethico-political language of responsibility. No longer would a subject, individual or corporate, be summoned in its responsibility” (M 9/406).
11. See Reiner Schürmann's Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987 [1982]).
12. Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1957); trans. Reginald Lilly as The Principle of Reason (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), hereafter PR.
13. Compare Lévinas: “Perhaps the possibility of a point of the universe where such an overflow of responsibility is produced ultimately defines the I” (TI 245/222).
14. A good discussion of the philosophical importance of the “example” throughout Derrida's work, from the early Husserl pieces to the present, is given by Michael Naas in his introduction to The Other Heading.
15. Sein und Zeit (GA 2) (Frankfurt an Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977); trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1962), BT.
16. Heidegger privileges the individual Dasein in his discussion even though the analysis has brought others on to the scene. See BT 328/375, 332/380. This is consistent with his program, but these movements (and exclusions) as “strategy” would have to be taken into account for a more thorough reading of a Heideggerian “ethics”. This at least to mark the difference with both Lévinas and Derrida in their respect for the Other, and this respect as primary, placing the Other before myself (see TI 73/45).
17. See The Question Concerning Technology, trans. W. Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1977).
18. The full quote: “For we cannot leap out of the present age that is held in the sway of the fundamental principle of rendering sufficient reasons. But at the same time we may not desist from holding to the ‘because’ when we listen to the word of being as the word of ground/reason. We must do one thing: follow the force of the fundamental principle for all cognition; we may not abandon something else: pondering what is all-powerful in the word of being” (my emphasis; PR 128).
19. Compare Totality and Infinity, pp. 63, 72, 82–3, 298, among others.
20. In L'Ecriture et la différance (Paris: Seuil, 1967); trans. Alan Bass, Writing and Difference (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1978), pp. 79–153.
21. See “Privilege”, in Du Droit à la Philosophie (Paris: Galilée, 1990), pp. 9–108.
22. For a defense of Heidegger in face of Lévinas’ criticisms, see Derrida's “Violence and Metaphysics” cited above.
23. On death and the alterity of the future see Time and the Other (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987).
24. “Justice consists in recognizing in the Other my master” (TI 72/44).
25. One might compare this notion with what Derrida calls the “apostrophe” or the “mystical” in “Force of Law” above.
26. Compare TI 241/218, 271/248.
27. Critchley focusses his discussion of the “ethical demand” of deconstruction on the text which stands as the “Afterword” to the text Limited Inc, (trans. Samuel Weber, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988). He argues that there is an “unconditional categorical imperative” or affirmation which is both the source of deconstruction and is produced through deconstructive reading. That is, there is always an imperative “clause” of non-closure in any reading of any text to which we are obligated to respond. Ethics arises within the undecidable oscillation of the alternatives to either read the text logocentrically, and so “close” it, or “clôturally”, recognizing its “clause” or trace of irreducible openness. Compare the “il faut” which is discussed below.
28. In Psyché: Inventions de l'autre (Paris: Galilée, 1987); trans. Ken Frieden in T., Foshay and H., Coward, eds., Derrida and Negative Theology (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), HAS.
29. See “Différance”, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
30. See Of Grommatology, trans. G. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), pp. 61–63.
31. See John Caputo's, Against Ethics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).
32. See John Llewelyn, The Middle Voice of Ecological Conscience: A Chiasmic Reading of Responsibility in the Neighbourhood of Levinas, Heidegger, and Others (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991).