Online research in philosophy

This article offers a close reading of Derrida's response to the events of 11 September 2001, in the interview he conducted immediately afterwards with Giovanna Borradori in the text Philosophy in a Time of Terror (2003). I argue that this text is significantly different from previous philosophical responses to horrific political events (such as those by Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt) insofar as it invites us to contest radically the assumption that philosophy's role is to envision and to (...) realize the `good'. Instead, Derrida's response provokes us to acknowledge that philosophy's role was only ever to criticize itself, that this is the absolute limit of what philosophy can or should do, and that this work is both genuinely risky and crucially important, because in undertaking a critique of itself philosophy intervenes for democracy, without rules or guarantees, in the very determinations that are the material of political life. Key Words: 9/11 • Theodor Adorno • critique • deconstruction • democracy • Jacques Derrida • futurity • philosophy • terror • to-come. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates that when the concept of ethicalpolitical responsibility is taken in its modern sense as a decision or outcome based on the protocols of reason, responsibility is neither simply possible nor simply impossible. Paradoxically, it appeals to a demand that it cannot fulfil; responsibility is thus (im)possible. Moreover, insofar as a deconstructive demonstration of this aporia is itself a response to reason’s own demand, deconstruction cannot be characterized as simply responsible or irresponsible. Rather, deconstruction inscribes itself as the (...) interior limit of the order of ethics, of responsibility, as such. Deconstruction is thus characterized best as an (ir)responsible interrogation of the very principle of reason to which political philosophers such as Habermas appeal when they invoke responsibility. To this extent deconstruction enacts the strange responsibility of interrogating critically precisely what is deemed ‘just’. Key Words: critique • deconstruction • Derrida • Enlightenment • ethics • Habermas • justice • modernity • reason • responsibility. (shrink)