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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

Derrida & Heidegger #2 « Previous | |Next »
October 4, 2004

I struggle on with Derrda's text on Heidegger deconstructing Geist---Of Spirit. Heidegger and the Question, (Chicago 1989, I have come to a section about Heidegger linking Geist to destiny of the West as a spiritual force. This is very appropriate to the clash of civilizations thesis of the conservatives, where the freedom loving Anglo-American peoples take on Islamic civilization.

This is what Derrida says:


"What is the price of this strategy? Why does it fatally turn back against its "subject"---if one can use this word, as one must, in fact? Because one cannot demarcate oneself from biologism, from naturalism, from racism in its genetic form, one cannot be opposed to them except by re-inscribing spirit in an oppositional determination, by once again making it a unilaterality of subjectivity, even if in its voluntarist form. The constraint of this program remains very strong, it reigns over the majority of discourses which, today and for a long time to come, state their opposition to racism, to totalitarianism, to nazism, to fascism etc., and do this in the name of spirit, and even of the freedom of the spirit in the name of an axiomatic, for example, that of democracy or 'human rights' - which, directly or not, comes back to this metaphysics of subjectivity. All the pitfalls of the strategy of establishing demarcations belong to this program, whatever place one occupies in it. The only choice is the choice between the terrifying contaminations it asssigns. Even if all the forms of complicity are not equivalent, they are irreducible. The question of knowing which is the least grave of these forms of complicity is always there - its urgency and its seriousness could not be over-stressed - but it will never dissolve the irreducibility of this fact. This fact, of course, is not simply a fact. First, and at least, because it is not yet done, not altogether: it calls more than ever, as for what in it remains to come after the disasters that have happened, for absolutely unprecedented responsibilities of 'thought' and 'action'... In the rectorship address, this risk is not just a risk run. If its program seems diabolical, it is because, without there being anything fortuitous in this, it capitalizes on the worst, that is on both evils at once: the sanctioning of nazism, and the gesture that is still metaphysical." (p. 39-40)

What is missing from this text is any consideration by Derrida of Heidegger's radical reforms of the university in response his criticisms of the academic staus quo.

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| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:05 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)
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