Derrida and ethics: hospitable thought

Abstract

To situate Jacques Derrida's contribution to the understanding of religion in its complex relation to ethics and politics, one must begin by recalling first Emmanuel Levinas's and then Immanuel Kant's definition of these three terms. Following Derrida's philosophical itinerary, one moves almost invisibly from an engagement with Levinas to a confrontation with Kant. Only by carefully comparing the radically distinct yet intimately related philosophical projects for which the proper names “Levinas” and “Kant” stand can one begin to situate the convoluted thematic and argumentative approach to ethics, politics, and, in particular, religion that Derrida unfolds in increasing detail and consequence in the philosophical trajectory running from his earliest to his latest writings. His discussions, first of Levinas (in “Violence and Metaphysics,” arguably the most powerfully argued chapter of Writing and Difference , and “At This Very Moment in This Work Here I Am,” arguably the most enigmatic essay in Psyché ) and subsequently Kant (especially in Truth in Painting, Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy, Du droit à la philosophie [(Of the) Right to Philosophy] , and Politics of Friendship ), set the tone for a remarkable recasting of our understanding of the ethical and the political in light of the religious, its chances and its perils.

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