Reconsidering Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. Christopher Peys

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СКАЧАТЬ our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web.” [Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto, “Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring,” in Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women’s Lives, eds. Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990), 40; Joan Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (London: Routledge, 1993), 103. Original emphasis.]

      57. Hannah Arendt, “What Is Existential Philosophy?” in Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1994), 179.

      58. Joshua D. Broggi, Sacred Language, Sacred World: The Unity of Scriptural and Philosophical Hermeneutics (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 31.

      59. Ibid. Original emphasis.

      60. William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,” in The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Modern Critical Edition, ed. Gary Taylor et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 2040.

      61. Martin Heidegger, Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (London: Routledge, 2011), 3.

      62. Arendt, “What Is Existential Philosophy?” 179. Here, Arendt references Heidegger: “The question of the ‘who’ of Dasein has been answered with the expression of ‘Self.’” [Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1962), 312.]

      63. Arendt, “What Is Existential Philosophy?” 179.

      64. Heidegger, Being and Time, 313.

      65. Ibid., 313 and 354.

      66. Martin Heidegger, The Concept of Time, trans. William McNeill (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1992), 20E–21E.

      67. Heidegger, Being and Time, 416. Original emphasis.

      68. Ibid. Original emphasis.

      69. Arendt, “What Is Existential Philosophy?” 179.

      70. Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark, “Rediscovering Hannah Arendt,” in Love and Saint Augustine, eds. Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 124.

      71. Hannah Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine, eds. Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 51.

      72. Scott and Stark, “Rediscovering Hannah Arendt,” 181. See also: Kattago, “Why the World Matters,” 172.

      73. Scott and Stark, “Rediscovering Hannah Arendt,” 181.

      74. Arendt, The Human Condition, 179. Emphasis added.

      75. Arendt, “The Crisis in Culture,” 208. Emphasis added.

      76. Arendt, “On the Nature of Totalitarianism,” 358.

      77. Arendt, “What Is Existential Philosophy?” 179.

      78. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 327.

      79. Arendt, The Human Condition, 243.

Chapter 1

       Derrida

       On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness

      In On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (2001), a text that was published as part of Simon Critchley and Richard Kearney’s co-edited book series, “Thinking in Action,” Derrida critiques global political affairs through his deconstructions of the notions of forgiveness and cosmopolitanism.¹ The text is comprised of two distinct sections, the first is based on an address given to the International Parliament of Writers in Strasbourg (1996)—a speech entitled, Cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un effort!—and the second is based on answers Derrida gave in an interview on the subject of forgiveness for the French journal Le Monde des débats (December 1999). Presenting deconstructions of two ideas with conceptual roots deep in le héritage, which is to say, the Western tradition, Derrida responds—with his distinctive philosophic approach—to events and phenomenon taking place around the globe.

      In the first part of his book, Derrida critically evaluates the legacy of cosmopolitan thought, doing so not simply as an exercise in abstract theorizing, but in the mode of a pointed criticism of the rising anti-immigrant sensibility in France during the 1980s and 1990s.² The second part of the book presents his deconstruction of the notion of forgiveness, in a manner congruent with his examination of cosmopolitanism, calling into question instances of political (re)conciliatory action that were, increasingly, a prominent part of global public life. Because it was “not only individuals, but also entire communities, professional corporations, the representatives of ecclesiastical hierarchies, sovereigns, and heads of state” who were now asking for “forgiveness,” Derrida saw fit to deconstruct the concept of forgiveness as a means of critically considering its association with the cases of repentance, confession, and apology that were “multiplying” on the “geopolitical scene” during the final years of the twentieth century.³ More than a form of detached, apolitical analysis, the deconstructivist approach practiced by Derrida in On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness reveals the conceptual underpinnings supporting these two notions in a manner that allows him to engage actively—or to intervene philosophically—in global political affairs.

      What precisely, however, does Derrida mean when he speaks and writes about “deconstruction”? And in what ways, specifically, does this form of philosophic thought allow him to take action, and to intervene ethically and politically in the realm of human affairs? At first glance, we might wonder whether—given the similarities between Derrida’s notion of deconstruction and Heidegger’s practice of reading the history of Western metaphysics destructively (as in Destruktion)—a deconstructivist approach is incommensurable with a care-centric mode of thought, especially one which prioritizes the conservation and re-construction of the world within which we live, move, and act politically. Furthermore, in concluding that the purpose of deconstruction is not simply to destroy ideas, concepts, themes, and so on in what ways does it facilitate more positive, regenerative action? How does a Derridean deconstruction of cosmopolitanism and forgiveness contribute to the (re)creation of what might be considered a better—arguably more just—world through its thoroughly critical, destructive mode of engaging with the basic structures, concepts, and beliefs that inform, constitute, and condition the human experience of being in the world? It is in seeking answers to these questions that I begin my reflections on cosmopolitanism and forgiveness, doing so not because there is a need to rethink the practice of deconstruction in and of itself, but because a Derridean deconstructivist approach reveals the conceptual logic undergirding each of these notions: informing the Derridean experience of justice that I reconsider in terms of the “world.”

      Divided into three sections, I first provide an overview of Derrida’s deconstructive approach, before turning to his deconstructions of forgiveness and cosmopolitanism specifically. Accordingly, section one highlights how deconstruction is a genealogical form of criticism animated by a hyperbolic sense of justice. The second and third sections of this chapter investigate the conceptual logics inherent to the notions of forgiveness and cosmopolitanism, respectively, with Derrida’s deconstructions facilitating an exposition СКАЧАТЬ