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From différance to justice: Derrida and Heidegger’s “Anaximander’s Saying”

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Abstract

Considerations of Jacques Derrida’s oeuvre, and of deconstruction as theory and practice, are bound to revolve around Derrida’s key notion of différance, developed at the outset of his career. However, Derrida’s conception of justice, which started to make its presence felt in his work in the late 1980s, should also be considered to play a major role, not least when bearing in mind his declaration, made in 1989, that “deconstruction is justice.” In this paper, the relation between différance and justice is explored against the background of Martin Heidegger’s essay “Anaximander’s Saying” which, it is argued, played a formative role in the development of Derrida’s thinking. Derrida’s analysis of justice as being comprised of three aspects—justice as idea, as law or right (droit) and as deconstruction—is shown to bear a strong resemblance with the conceptual scheme drawn from Anaximander in Heidegger’s essay. The parallels between Derrida’s différance and the notion of usage (Brauch), described by Heidegger as “the early word for Being,” are also brought out.

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Notes

  1. Derrida (2005, p. 39). Translation altered.

  2. Derrida (2002, p. 243).

  3. Heidegger (2002, pp. 242–281); Heidegger (1950, pp. 321–373). Henceforth referred to as AS and SA respectively.

  4. Relatively little attention has been given to Derrida’s reading of Heidegger’s Anaximander text. For two exceptions, see Protevi (1994) and de Ville (2009).

  5. Derrida (1982, pp. 1–27); Derrida (1994). Other texts where Derrida turns his attention (albeit more briefly) towards Heidegger’s essay are Derrida (1982, pp. 29–67), Derrida (1993b), Derrida (2002, pp. 42–101) and Derrida (2008).

  6. Derrida (2005, p. 88).

  7. Derrida (1981, p. 44).

  8. For recent accounts of the relation between Heidegger and Derrida, see Dastur (2011), Backman (2012).

  9. de Boer (1997, p. 152).

  10. Quite a lot has been written on Heidegger’s essay. Apart from Karin de Boer’s excellent paper, quoted above, the reader will benefit from Dastur (2000), Korab-Karpowicz (2002), Oppermann (2003) and Kleinberg-Levin (2007).

  11. For the sake of completeness, let us reproduce Heidegger’s German translation as well: “Aus welchem aber das Entstehen ist den Dingen, auch das Entgehen zu diesem entsteht nach dem Notwendigen; sie geben nämlich Recht und Buße einander für die Ungerechtigkeit nach der Zeit Anordnung” (SA 329)—Let us also note that in the acknowledged English sourcebook of Pre-Socratic thought, Kirk and Raven translate the phrase in question as follows: “And the source of coming-to-be for existing things is that into which destruction, too, happens, ‘according to necessity; for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of Time’ […]” (Kirk and Raven 1976, p. 117).

  12. No wonder that Heidegger finds it pertinent at this stage to refer his reader to Nietzsche’s aphorism about the “highest will to power” consisting in the effort to “stamp becoming with the character of being” (AS 250)—surely, such a formulation counts as the very epitome of “the stubborn pose of persistence”.

  13. For the sake of completeness, and in light of the intricate wordplay at stake here, let us reproduce Heidegger’s German as well: “Δίκη, aus dem Sein als Anwesen gedacht, ist der fugend-fügende Fug. Ἀδικία, die Un-Fuge, ist der Un-Fug” (SA 357).

  14. Cf. Dastur (2000, p. 187).

  15. The German reads as follows: “… entlang dem Brauch; gehören nämlich lassen sie Fug somit auch Ruch eines dem anderen (im Verwinden) des Un-Fugs” (SA 372).

  16. Derrida (1982, p. 9).

  17. Ibid.

  18. Derrida (1982, pp. 7–9).

  19. Derrida (1982, p. 8).

  20. Derrida (1982, p. 11).

  21. Ibid.

  22. Derrida (1982, p. 13).

  23. Derrida (1982, p. 11).

  24. Ibid.

  25. Derrida (1982, p. 12).

  26. Hamlet, Act I, Scene V.

  27. Derrida (1994, p. 11).

  28. Derrida (1994, p. 12).

  29. Derrida (1994, p. 10).

  30. Derrida (1994, pp. xviii–xix).

  31. Derrida (1994, p. xix); Derrida (1993a, p. 15). Translation altered.

  32. Derrida (1994, p. xix).

  33. Derrida (2002, p. 237).

  34. On Derrida’s relation to the concept of the oblique, see Derrida (1992, pp. 12–13).

  35. Derrida (2002, p. 233).

  36. Derrida (2002, p. 254); cf. Derrida (2002, p. 257).

  37. Let us note that Derrida (2002, p. 254) distinguishes (albeit with a certain degree of ambiguity) the type of justice that he has in mind from regulative ideas in the Kantian sense.

  38. Derrida (2002, pp. 242–243).

  39. Derrida (2002, p. 243).

  40. Derrida (2002, p. 244).

  41. Derrida (2002, p. 233).

  42. Derrida (1976, p. 71); Derrida (1967, p. 104).

  43. Derrida (1982, p. 67).

  44. Derrida (1982, p. 22).

  45. Ibid.; Derrida (1972, p. 23).

  46. For a similar reading of the parallels between différance and Heidegger’s concept of Austrag, see Backman (2012).

  47. Derrida (1994, p. 22).

  48. Cf. Dastur (2000, p. 186).

  49. Cf. de Boer (1997, pp. 163–164).

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Thorsteinsson, B. From différance to justice: Derrida and Heidegger’s “Anaximander’s Saying”. Cont Philos Rev 48, 255–271 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-015-9326-4

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