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DOI: 10.1177/0090591707307324 2007 35: 781Political Theory
Marguerite La Cazeand Politics
At the Intersection : Kant, Derrida, and the Relation between
Ethics
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Political TheoryVolume 35 Number 6
December 2007 781-805 2007 Sage Publications
10.1177/0090591707307324http://ptx.sagepub.com
hosted athttp://online.sagepub.com
781
Authors Note: I would like to thank the Australian Research
Council for supporting myresearch; audiences at the Society for
European Philosophy conference, Reading University; theUniversity
of New South Wales philosophy seminar; Damian Cox; two anonymous
reviewers;and the editor of Political Theory for constructive
comments on earlier versions of this essay.
At the IntersectionKant, Derrida, and the Relationbetween Ethics
and PoliticsMarguerite La CazeUniversity of Queensland,
Australia
To elucidate the tensions in the relation between ethics and
politics, I constructa dialogue between Kant, who argues that they
can be made compatible, andDerrida, who claims to go beyond Kant
and his idea of duty. For Derrida, ethicsmakes unconditional
demands and politics guides our responses to possibleeffects of our
decisions. Derrida argues that in politics there must be
anegotiation of the non-negotiable call of ethical responsibility.
I argue thatDerridas unconditional ethics cannot be read in
precisely Kantian termsbecause his impossible reals can be
destructive. Moreover, Derrida expandsthe reach of ethics beyond
Kant by making all ethical demands unconditionalor perfect, yet he
does not articulate a politics that would enable us to respondto
these demands. We need to take account of these difficulties in
theorizinghow ethics should constrain politics and how politics can
provide the conditionsfor ethics.
Keywords: Kant; Derrida; ethics; politics; duties
Politics says, Be ye wise as serpents; morals adds (as a
limiting condition)and guileless as doves.1It is necessary to
deduce a politics and a law from ethics.2
Recent interpretations of Jacques Derridas work note a close
connectionwith themes found in Immanuel Kants writing.3
Nevertheless, most ofthese discussions have not focused on the
specific question of the relationbetween ethics and politics, which
is central to Derridas thought. In recentyears Derrida refers
extensively to Kants ethics and political philosophy,for example in
The Politics of Friendship and On Cosmopolitanism and
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782 Political Theory
Forgiveness and in essays on justice and law, democracy, and
terrorism.4 Onthe one hand, Derrida is influenced by Kants approach
to ethics and poli-tics, and on the other hand, he wants to go
further than Kant, saying, So Iam ultra-Kantian. I am Kantian, but
I am more than Kantian.5 Derridashyperbolic ethics goes beyond
political considerations and yet he acceptsthat we must act
according to political concerns. In Adieu to EmmanuelLevinas,
Derridas position is that it is necessary to deduce a politics and
alaw from ethics.6 Like Kant, Derrida concerns himself with
questions ofethics and politics within the state, between states,
and between individualsand states. Understanding the relationship
between Kant and Derridathrough an engagement with these questions
enables a more productiveconception of the intersection between
ethics and politics that takes seri-ously the tensions
involved.
Kant argues that ethics, or rather morality for him, and
politics do notcome into conflict because ethics places limits on
what can be done in poli-tics.7 Derrida argues similarly that
ethics must always take precedence orthat politics must be derived
from ethics. However, for Kant ethics or moral-ity is based on what
is possible, and for Derrida ethics is necessarily guidedby the
impossible. For Derrida, ethics is comprised of
unconditionaldemands, and politics of the strategies we must
develop to respond to possi-ble consequences and effects of our
decisions. On Kants account, right(those duties that can be
enforced) along with virtue (duties that cannot beenforced)
comprise morals or ethics. While Kant believes that only thosemoral
constraints that can be imposed should be part of politics, Derrida
seesthe ethical virtues as being essential to politics as well. I
argue that Derridagoes beyond Kant, as he claims, but without
explicitly acknowledging thedifficulties that arise from expanding
the influence of ethics on politics inthis way. Moreover, Derrida
simultaneously gives up on the acceptance ofany principles that
cannot be overridden, as I will demonstrate by examin-ing his
position on human rights. In this sense, he gives up a very
importantfeature of Kants position. I construct a dialogue between
Kant and Derridain order to demonstrate what is at stake in the
disagreements between themand to explore the potential conflicts
between ethics and politics that mustbe considered in any attempt
to produce an ethical politics.
The Intersection of Ethics and Politics
To understand how ethics and politics might intersect, the first
questionthat needs to be considered is whether ethics and politics
inevitably come
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into conflict. I will briefly sketch Kant and Derridas overall
views on theirrelation and then consider in more detail the
differences between them. InToward Perpetual Peace Kant argues that
morals, in terms of right, shouldbe taken much more seriously in
political decisions; in fact, it should be theoverriding
consideration. As he writes, [A]ll politics must bend its
kneebefore right.8 It should be noted that it is only the
enforceable aspect ofethics that is relevant to politics for
Kant.
The first step in Kants demonstration that there is no conflict
betweenpolitics and ethics is the view that we are always free to
act ethically. Hecontends that morals could not have any authority
if we could not act onthem.9 Kants further argument is that there
is
no conflict of politics, as doctrine of right put into practice,
with morals, astheoretical doctrine of right (hence no conflict of
practice with theory); for ifthere were, one would have to
understand by the latter a general doctrine ofprudence, that is, a
theory of maxims for choosing the most suitable meansto ones
purposes aimed at advantage, that is, to deny that there is a
[doctrineof] morals at all.10
Given that Kant sees politics as the application of morality
(that aspect ofmorality described in the doctrine of right), it
follows that any conflict inthe application would undermine the
idealism of morality and make it ego-istic or self-interested.11
Thus, complaints of conflict between politics andethics are simply
complaints of inconvenience. This is what Kant means byhis claim
that a moral politician, who makes political prudence conform
tomorals, is possible, but a political moralist, who makes morals
conform tothe political interests of a statesperson, is not.12 Any
attempt to make moralsconform to political interests, he argues,
undermines the concept of rightaltogether and replaces it with
force, so that it is no longer morals at all. Hesays there is only
a conflict between morality and politics subjectively inpeoples
self-interested inclinations,13 and he observes that the real
dangerto acting morally is self-deception that convinces us we are
justified in fol-lowing our own interests rather than duty. Kant is
of the view that follow-ing our own interests is an unreliable
business as it is difficult to calculatewhether our actions will
have the right results, but in acting according tomorals we have a
dependable guide.
While Derrida also believes that politics should be deduced from
ethics,he is not as sanguine as Kant concerning the possibilities
of conflictbetween them. This is due to the strong contrastindeed,
contradictionhe finds between unconditional ethical concepts and
their conditional pairs.Derridas account of unconditionality
emerges from the deconstruction of
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particular ethical concepts in a series of texts. He does not
provide an ethi-cal system or give an explicit or detailed answer
to the question Why bemoral? because he is not addressing the moral
skeptic. In addition to jus-tice, which for him is
undeconstructible, he deconstructs concepts such ashospitality and
forgiveness into their pure and impure or unconditional
andconditional forms. For example, pure hospitality involves a
complete open-ness and welcome of the other independent of any
invitation, whereas con-ditional hospitality depends on a wide
range of criteria concerning identity,length of stay, and so on.14
In relation to asylum seekers, one of the issuesDerrida is
concerned with, these criteria are often determined by the stateand
its laws. Conditions on hospitality may be necessary, but they are
nottrue hospitality. Thus Derrida finds a kind of ethical
imperative in the logicof the concepts themselves. Insofar as we
aspire to pure hospitality and trueforgiveness, they provide an
ethical demand by highlighting the ethicalinadequacy of conditional
hospitality and forgiveness.
Derrida develops his position concerning the relation between
ethics andpolitics most explicitly in Ethics and Politics Today,15
although he returns tothis question in a number of other works,
including Adieu to EmmanuelLevinas. What he focuses on is the
responsibility to understand these concepts:
[R]esponsibility of course requires that any answer be preceded
in principleby a slow, patient, rigorous elucidation of the
concepts that are used in dis-cussion. . . . For each of the words
ethics and politics, but also for all of thewords that one
immediately associates with them.16
Nevertheless, in spite of this need for seemingly endless
elucidation,Derrida says that all ethical and political decisions
are structured by urgency,precisely because we have to take
decisions without any certainty about therightness of what we do.
He writes that in ethics and politics, this structure ofurgency is
simultaneously the condition of possibility and the condition
ofimpossibility of all responsibility.17 For Derrida, ethics and
politics also havein common that they are answering the question
What should I do? andthat we should give thoughtful and responsible
answers to the question.Nevertheless, ethics and politics appear,
at least, to be very different. Derridacharacterizes these
perceived differences between ethics and politics.
Because ethical responsibility appeals to an unconditional that
is ruled bypure and universal principles already formalized, this
ethical responsibility,this ethical response can and should be
immediate, in short, rather simple, itshould make straight for the
goal all at once, straight to its end, withoutgetting caught up in
an analysis of hypothetical imperatives, in calculations,
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in evaluations of interests and powers. . . . Whereas, on the
contrary, stillaccording to the same appearance, political
responsibility, because it takesinto account a large number of
relations, of relations of power, of actual laws,of possible causes
and effects, of hypothetical imperatives, requires a time
foranalysis, requires a gamble, that is, a calculation that is
never sure and thatrequires strategy.18
This rich description of the fundamental difference between
ethics and pol-itics reflects Kants distinction between the
dependability of ethics and theunreliability of mere hypothetical
imperatives. Ethics is seen as occupyinga higher and more
impractical realm whose unconditional principles meanthat one can
respond immediately, whereas politics is seen as concernedwith
day-to-day practical strategies that need to be carefully planned
out.
However, Derrida immediately notes that these characteristics
are onlyapparent, and that politics can be understood as more
urgent than ethics. Heargues that there must be a negotiation of
the non-negotiable, so in thatsense the political is always
inscribed in the ethical.19 For example, whenhostages are taken, a
refusal to negotiate is an acceptance of the risk to thehostages on
the basis that it will save others in the future. Similarly, a
deci-sion to negotiate with the hostage takers is a decision to try
to save thehostages in the hope that it will not be detrimental to
others lives. In bothcases Derrida writes, the political imperative
and the ethical imperativeare indissociable.20 This example is
quite convincing as both alternativescan be understood in ethical
terms. Those who refuse to negotiate believe itis more ethical to
risk these hostages lives than to allow a practice ofhostage taking
to go on. Similarly, negotiating with hostage takers does notshow
that one has abandoned ethics, unless one takes the extreme view
thatsimply communicating with such people is unethical. Thus
political deci-sions inevitably involve ethical considerations on
Derridas account. and incases like this they are difficult to make
because the outcome is uncertainand the risks great.
Derrida famously claims in Force of Law that [j]ustice in
itself, if sucha thing exists, outside or beyond law, is not
deconstructible.21 He sees justiceas primarily an ethical concept
and it is contrasted with law, or right, whichis a concept that is
deconstructible. In Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, Derridadiscusses the
Torah in Jerusalem as an exemplification of the problem ofethics
and politics. According to him, the problem is fundamentally one
ofnegotiation between the demands of ethics and the realities of
politics. TheTorah is read by Levinas in Cities of Refuge as
justice: The Torah is jus-tice, a complete justice . . . because,
in its expressions and contents, it is acall for absolute
vigilance.22 Derrida says that the Torah in Jerusalem
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must still inscribe the promises in the earthly Jerusalem. And
henceforthcommand the comparison of incomparables (the definition
of justice, of theconcession made, out of duty, to synchrony,
co-presence, the system, andfinally, the State.) It must enjoin a
negotiation with the non-negotiable so asto find the better or the
least bad.23
The complete justice of ethics must be inscribed in concrete
politics and law.In general Derrida distinguishes between the
formal injunction to
deduce politics from ethics, which is absolute and
unconditional, and thequestion of content that we have a
responsibility to determine for ourselvesin each particular case.
In this sense we can see that Derrida agrees withKant that ethical
considerations always have a role in politics, but they donot
constrain politics in quite the same way. Rather than providing a
limitto what is possible, they set up an impossible injunction that
politics canonly aspire to, rather than follow. To understand this
difference between thetwo on the intersection of ethics and
politics more thoroughly, we need tosee the ways in which Kant
takes seriously potential conflicts betweenethics and politics.
Tensions between Ethics and Politics
Kants understanding of politics as bending its knee before
ethics maysuggest that he has no conception of the reality of
politics. Yet in some wayshis view shows more awareness of the
complexities of politics thanDerridas. Kant notes that following
ethical imperatives should be com-bined with political wisdom or an
understanding of how best to institute orwork toward perpetual
peace.24 This is what it means to be as wise as a ser-pent.
Furthermore, Kant sees it as important to explain why there is a
per-ceived conflict between ethics and politics and to make some
caveats andexceptions to his general view.
First, adherence to political maxims must derive from the
concept of theduty of right. Within states, these rights are to
freedom, equality, and inde-pendence, which are the principles upon
which states should be estab-lished.25 For morals in the form of
right to be applied in politics, Kantmaintains that rights must be
able to be made public. His transcendentalformula of public right
is All actions relating to the rights of others arewrong if their
maxim is incompatible with publicity.26 The key idea is thatactions
that affect the rights of others are unacceptable if they need to
bekept secret. However, the reverse is not held to be trueactions
that areconsistent with publicity are not necessarily right, as
Kant observes, because
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a very powerful state can be quite open about its maxims.27 The
power ofsuch a state means it does not have to be concerned about
opposition orresistance to its maxims. Kant argues for this
principle of public right asfollows:
For a maxim that I cannot divulge without thereby defeating my
own pur-pose, one that absolutely must be kept secret if it is to
succeed and that Icannot publicly acknowledge without unavoidably
arousing everyones oppo-sition to my project, can derive this
necessary and universal, hence a prioriforeseeable, resistance of
everyone to me only from the injustice with whichit threatens
everyone.28
This principle is both ethical (part of the doctrine of virtue)
and juridical(related to right), and Kant attempts to show how it
is relevant to civil,international, and cosmopolitan right. First,
civil right concerns rightwithin a state. Kant upholds the right of
human beings to respect by thestate, saying, The right of human
beings must be held sacred, howevergreat a sacrifice this may cost
the ruling power.29 Nevertheless, withregard to the rights of
people against the state, Kant argues that rebellionis shown to be
wrong by the fact that publicly revealing a maxim of rebel-lion
would make it impossible, whereas a head of state can
publiclydeclare their willingness to punish rebels.30 I will say
more about this pointfurther on. Kants view is that systems of law
are justified by their foun-dation. Once they are founded, however,
they should not be overthrown. Incontrast, Derrida believes that a
system of law can only be justified bywhat comes after its
institution.31 Second, international right is the rightof nations.
This right, Kant says, must be an enduring free associationbetween
states.32 Cosmopolitan right is the right to hospitality or the
rightto visit all the countries in the world.
On Kants account, politics can be made commensurable with
moralityonly within a federative union of states that maintains
peace:
Thus the harmony of politics with morals is possible only within
a federativeunion (which is therefore given a priori and is
necessary by principles ofright), and all political prudence has
for its rightful basis the establishment ofsuch a union in its
greatest possible extent, without which end all its sub-tilizing is
unwisdom and veiled injustice.33
This point suggests, reasonably, that so long as states are at
war or are notwilling to pursue peace, political practice and
morality are likely to conflict.
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Although Kant believes that politics can be made commensurable
withmorality, he concedes that practical circumstances or
conditions can makeit difficult to bring this ideal into effect and
that it may be brought aboutgradually. For instance, states may
have to wait to introduce reforms untilit can be done peacefully.34
In her book Kants Politics, Elisabeth Ellis dis-cusses the role
that provisional right, or right that acknowledges the diffi-cult
circumstances under which we are likely to be applying morals,
playsin Kants account of politics.35 She notes that Kant recommends
that evenin the midst of war, for example, we should act in
accordance with princi-ples that always leave open the possibility
of . . . entering a rightful con-dition.36 In this way, Kant
provides guidance to those making decisions inless than ideal
conditions.
While Kant is confident about ethics and politics agreeing,
there aresome complicated exceptions he mentions in the essay On
the commonsaying: that may be correct in theory but it is of no use
in practice.37 Heobserves that sometimes unconditional or perfect
and conditional or imper-fect duties might conflict. This sense of
imperfection refers to the latitudeallowed in fulfilling the duty
rather than a state of imperfection in societiesthat are not yet
governed ideally, which provisional right is concerned with.Kant
defines a perfect duty as one that admits no exception in favor
ofinclination (1996a, 4:422), whereas an imperfect duty is one that
is virtu-ous and worthy to fulfill but it is not culpable not to do
so unless that ismade into a principle (1996a, 6: 390). I should
note here that this distinc-tion between perfect and imperfect
duties divides the virtues. Duties of thevirtue of respect to
others are perfect, whereas duties of love are not, or, inother
words, we have discretion as to when we should follow them.38
Suchduties may conflict
if it is a matter of preventing some catastrophe to the state by
betraying a manwho might stand in the relationship to another of
father and son. This pre-vention of trouble to the former is an
unconditional duty, whereas preventingmisfortune to the latter is
only a conditional duty (namely, insofar as he hasnot made himself
guilty of a crime against the state). One of the relativesmight
report the others plans to the authorities with the utmost
reluctance,but he is compelled by necessity (namely, moral
necessity).39
In this case, the duty to prevent catastrophe to the state
clearly trumps theduty to prevent misfortune to a relative provided
the relative is actingtreacherously. However, Kant does not discuss
a case where preventinggreat misfortune to the state would conflict
with a duty to prevent a violation
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of the rights of the relative or indeed any other person.
Although it is a dif-ficult practical problem that he does not
examine in depth, he is quite clearthat such rights should never be
violated and he does touch on the issuebriefly.
In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant says that there is a
categoricalimperative, Obey the authority who has power over you
(in whatever doesnot conflict with inner morality).40 Morals can
conflict with political prac-tice if a leader demands we do
something unethical, and when they do wemust obey morals. However,
here and elsewhere, as I noted, Kant con-demns revolutions, a
condemnation that seems counter to his own theory. Itis rarely
observed that Kant had an ingenious caveat to his view on
revolu-tions. In his notes concerning the Doctrine of Right, he
comments,
Force, which does not presuppose a judgment having the validity
of law[,] isagainst the law; consequently the people cannot rebel
except in the caseswhich cannot at all come forward in a civil
union, e.g., the enforcement of areligion, compulsion to unnatural
crimes, assassination, etc.41
The implication appears to be that if such acts were generally
forced upona people, they could not properly be in a civil union.
Therefore, tyrannicaland totalitarian regimes may well not count as
civil unions for Kant. Thenrevolution could be ethical in the sense
that such a revolution would be cre-ating a civil union. Thus such
examples of conflict between duties to thestate and other duties
that could be brought against Kant would beaccounted for by this
caveat. However, revolution for such reasons as poorgovernment or
inequity would still be excluded as they could occur in acivil
union.
Cases where the state tried to prevent philanthropy provide
other exam-ples of conflict between politics and morality, this
time relevant to the doc-trine of virtue. Kant also believes that
politics and virtue should agree, butnotes that philanthropy is an
imperfect duty, or in other words that how it isfulfilled is to a
great extent a matter of discretion. In any case, his view isthat
politics easily agrees with this sense of morality in order to
surrenderthe rights of human beings to their superiors.42 What he
has in mind hereis that politics, or rather those in power, like to
pretend that perfect dutiesof right are imperfect duties that they
bestow only as benevolence and soare very ready to claim they are
moral in that sense. This distinctionbetween perfect and imperfect
duties, a distinction rejected by Derrida, isimportant to
conceiving an ethical politics, I argue.
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Derridas account of the relation between ethics and politics
treats thesecomplications in a different way from Kant, as one
might expect, becausehe relies on the idea of negotiation to
overcome these complications. Oneof the criticisms of Derridas
deconstructive ethics is that it does not give usany guidance as to
how to make decisions. For example, Simon Critchleywrites, I would
claim, with Laclau, that an adequate account of the deci-sion is
essential to the possibility of politics, and that it is precisely
this thatdeconstruction does not provide.43 Derridas view that we
must negotiatebetween ethics and politics leaves us with the
question of how far towardeach we should tend in our negotiations.
Ethics with its unconditionaldemands is impossible to satisfy for
Derrida, and politics must be limitedby ethics. They seem to act as
constraints on each other such that the deci-sion, and the action,
will always lie somewhere between the two. There isan in-between
position or many in-between positions that Levinas gesturestoward
in Politics After!:
So there would be no alternative between recourse to
unscrupulous methodswhose model is furnished by Realpolitik and the
irritating rhetoric of a care-less idealism, lost in utopian dreams
but crumbling into dust on contact withreality or turning into a
dangerous, impudent and facile frenzy which pro-fesses to be taking
up the prophetic discourse.44
Levinass presentation of a case against ethics in politics often
put explic-itly or implicitly highlights its absurdity and the need
to sketch out alterna-tive in-between positions. This is what
Derrida attempts to do.
Derrida claims that there are no rules to determine what would
be thebetter or least bad alternatives. Another way that Derrida
expresses theproblem is by writing The hiatus, the silence of this
non-response con-cerning the schemas between the ethical and the
political, remains. It is afact that it remains, and this fact is
not some empirical contingency, it is aFaktum.45 It is not clear
how to deduce politics from ethics. However, healso says that
politics and law must be deduced from ethics, in order todetermine
that democracy is better than tyranny and political civiliza-tion
remains better than barbarism.46 Derridas promotion of democracyand
respect for international law (as well as reflection on its
foundations)parallels Kants concern with republicanism and
establishing a cosmopoli-tan world order.47 He accepts with Kant
and Hannah Arendt that a worldgovernment is not desirable, and yet
believes we need to go beyond theirviews to think of a democracy to
come (la dmocratie venir) that willunite law and justice.48 The
reason Derrida is so positive about the concept
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of democracy is that it is the only one that welcomes the
possibility ofbeing contested, of contesting itself, of criticizing
and indefinitely improv-ing itself.49 This democracy to come is not
intended to refer to a future stateof democracy but to a call for a
militant and interminable political cri-tique.50 This democracy is
envisioned by Derrida to challenge the author-ity and sovereignty
of the state and, on an international scale, to emerge innew
institutions such as the International Criminal Court. Further on
in theessay, I will show how Derridas ideas about democracy stand
out from hisoverall account of negotiating between ethics and
politics.
In the next section, I examine the differences between Kants
regulativeideals and the categorical imperative and Derridas idea
of unconditionalethical demands that motivate his conception of an
ethical politics. This dis-cussion will clarify their very
distinctive accounts of unconditionality.
Unconditional Ethics, Regulative Ideals, and theCategorical
Imperative
The central features of Derridas ethics, namely, the linking of
ethicswith politics, the setting up of unconditional ideals, and
his concern withcosmopolitanism, make him sound very Kantian. This
interpretation hasbeen both encouraged and resisted by Derrida. For
instance, in Limited,Inc., Derrida says that he uses the term
unconditionality not by accidentto recall the character of the
categorical imperative in its Kantian form, andit is independent of
every determinate context, even of the determinationof a context in
general.51 However, Derrida does not characterize theinjunction
that recommends deconstruction in Kantian terms because
suchcharacterizations seemed to me essentially associated with
philosophemesthat themselves call for deconstructive questions and
he has reservationsabout thinking of the unconditional as a
regulative idea or ideal.52 It is impor-tant to clarify this idea
because it sheds light on Kants and Derridas under-standing of
ethical action.
One problem with Derridas disclaimer here is that a regulative
ideal inKants sense does not appear to relate to unconditionality.
As Derrida notes,this term is used too loosely in philosophical
discourse.53 Kant discusses thenotion of regulative ideas in the
Critique of Pure Reason.54 These regulativeideas are that of the
existence of the human soul, an independent world, andGod. These
ideas cannot be proven; nevertheless we should posit them asthey
play an important role in our thinking by directing our studies of
psy-chology and physics in the case of our ideas of the soul and
the world. The
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idea of God provides the sense that everything in the world is
part of anorganized unityas if all such connection had its source
in one single all-embracing being, as the supreme and
all-sufficient cause.55 In contrast,Derridas unconditional concepts
are not ideas that we posit as useful fortheorizing but concepts we
take seriously as action guiding, although wecannot fulfill their
demands.
In a detailed discussion of justice and duties in Philosophy in
a Time ofTerror, Derrida outlines three reservations about aligning
what he calls hisimpossible reals with Kants possible ideals.
First, Derrida says, his impos-sible is what is most undeniably
real in its urgency and its demands.56 Thiscan be seen as in
contrast to a possible ideal that we work toward, like
Kantscosmopolitan ideal. Unlike Kants dictum that ought implies
can, Derridasdictum is that ought implies cannot. This is an
important differencebetween the two. On Derridas account, one can
take imperatives to be realeven if one does not think they can be
reached or satisfied. I would note thatideals can also be real in
the sense of being urgent and making demands. Atone point, Kant
says that virtue is an ideal and unattainable, while yet con-stant
approximation to it is a duty.57 The fundamental difference is that
Kantbelieves that we can fulfill our duty in this approximation,
but Derrida holdsthat such approximation is in no sense a
fulfillment of duty.
Like Kant, Derrida sees autonomy as the foundation of any pure
ethics,of the sovereignty of the subject, of the ideal of
emancipation and of free-dom, but unlike Kant he believes that this
autonomy will always beimposed on by heteronomy or the imperative
of the other, of politics, of theconditional, and there must be a
transaction between these two impera-tives.58 The unconditional
imperative demands that we go beyond duty. Theunconditional
imperative of justice contrasts with law, as
unconditionalhospitality and forgiveness contrast with their
conditional pairs.59 In everycase the unconditional tempers the
conditional and must be taken intoaccount when making decisions.
Derrida presents his understanding as ananalysis of the logic of
these concepts, which, when deconstructed, splitinto these doubles.
The result is that Kants imperfect duties, which allowsome latitude
in how we fulfill them, become perfect duties on Derridasaccount.
They are perfect in the sense that we cannot put limits on what
itis to fulfill them, although we will inevitably fall short of
their demands.
Second, Derrida says that his notion of responsibility is one of
goingbeyond any rule that determines my actions. Here, Derrida
seems to beshifting from Kants metaphysics, where the regulative
ideas or postulatesof world, God, and the soul play a role, to his
ethics, where the categorical
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imperative and maxims play the central role.60 He says that as a
quasi-synonym for unconditional, the Kantian expression of
categoricalimperative is not unproblematic; we will keep it with
some reservations.61The concern with needing to go beyond a rule
that determines actions is onethat requires some discussion, and I
will return to this issue after brieflyconsidering Derridas third
reservation.
Derridas third reservation returns to Kants metaphysics, saying
that ifwe were to take up the term regulative idea we would have to
subscribeto the entire Kantian architectonic and critique.62 This
point is rather anexaggeration, yet I believe he is right to reject
the notion that he under-stands unconditional demands as regulative
ideas. As I have pointed out,the concepts function very
differently. Finally, I can also see why Derridarejects a Kantian
reading of his unconditional ethics in the case of hospi-tality,
because whereas Kants categorical imperative is something we canaim
to act on even if we cannot be confident of achieving it,
Derridasunconditional hospitality is not only impossible but also
positivelydestructive since if we are completely open to any kind
of visitation wegive up our sovereignty and therefore our capacity
to offer hospitality.While it can be held up as an impossible real
to improve our politics andethics, we do not want to come too close
to it. Nevertheless, forgivenessand justice seem not to be
destructive in the same way as hospitality. Andjustice, as Derrida
says in Force of Law, is not deconstructible. Thus theanswer to the
question of whether Derridas unconditional ethical conceptsare like
those of Kants ethical imperatives can only be answered by look-ing
at particular examples. A further difference is that Kant accepts
thathospitality is conditional and that forgiveness is an imperfect
duty. SoDerrida is going beyond Kant in making conditional and
imperfect dutiesinto unconditional and perfect ones, albeit duties
that have to be negotiatedwith their conditional equivalents.
What Derrida does not say is how we can or should negotiate
betweenethics and politics, between unconditionality and
conditionality. A consid-eration of the issue of rule following,
mentioned above, provides some indi-cations. He hints that there is
a connection with Kants ethics when he notesthat if we simply apply
a rule when acting, I would act, as Kant would say,in conformity
with duty, but not through duty or out of respect for the
law.63Thus, the problem of negotiation appears to become a question
of how tomake a decision or reach a judgment. Derridas claim is
that
[w]ithout silence, without the hiatus, which is not the absence
of rules but thenecessity of a leap at the moment of ethical,
political, or juridical decision,
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we could simply unfold knowledge into a program or course of
action. Nothingcould make us more irresponsible; nothing could be
more totalitarian.64
Derrida sees Kant as both irresponsible and totalitarian in
prescribing rulesfor action as if we were nothing more than
calculating machines.
Furthermore, Derrida criticizes Kant for conflating right and
virtue orassuming that politics can be deduced from ethics. One
commentator,Olivia Custer, finds this reading of Kant as emerging
most clearly inDerridas discussion of hospitality, where Derrida
criticizes Kant forimposing restrictions on hospitality, thereby
turning an ethical concept intoa juridical one.65 However, I
interpret Derridas insistence on hospitality asan ethical concept
as one that is not fully adequate to the realities faced bythose
seeking asylum, a concrete case to which he believes his account
ofhospitality is relevant. As I argue in another essay, Derridas
emphasis onhospitality as an ethical concept makes practical
measures for asylum seek-ers and refugees dependent on goodwill,
rather than putting a set of struc-tures, based on right, in
place.66 This makes his conception of unconditionalethical duties,
once negotiated with political realities, at most ameliorativeof
the worst excesses of inhospitable or otherwise unethical
governments.
As I noted earlier, for Kant virtue is that part of morality or
ethics thatcannot be enforced or made part of politics. Thus, the
accusation that Kantthinks one can deduce politics from ethics,
understood as politics deducedfrom virtue, is inaccurate. Kant did
not think that virtue and right were nec-essarily co-implicated but
instead had a hope that people would live accord-ing to the virtues
of love and respect once right restrained politics. In fact,Derrida
himself brings virtue into politics by emphasizing the importanceof
ethical concepts such as unconditional hospitality and forgiveness
to pol-itics. Yet he avoids suggesting what hospitality would
amount to or in whatcircumstances we should forgive.67
Kants further distinction between perfect and imperfect duties
demon-strates the problems with Derridas reading. While perfect
duties appear toprovide a rule for action, imperfect duties allow
leeway concerning whatacting out of duty means. When I attempt to
act from the duty of benefi-cence, for example, I need to consider
the time, the context, those whowould benefit, and the
appropriateness of my action.68 Thus Derridas crit-icism of Kants
notion of duty could only apply to the perfect duties ofrespect.
The duties of love do not follow determinate rules. There can
alsobe conflicts between our imperfect conditional duties that we
would haveto resolve for ourselves in the absence of rules. It is
Derridas transforma-tion of imperfect duties into perfect ones that
makes duties of love seem as
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if they could involve rule following. This is one of the
paradoxical aspectsof Derridas thinking. While he makes imperfect
duties into perfect ones,their status as such is undermined by his
view that they are impossible.They appear to be reminders of our
inadequacy as ethical actors.
Particular judgments, for Derrida, are always made in relation
to anunconditional injunction. While in judging, one must
reinterpret and reaf-firm existing rules; the judge is not just if
he or she
doesnt refer to any law, to any rule or if, because he doesnt
take any rulefor granted beyond his own interpretation, he suspends
his decision, stopsshort before the undecidable or if he improvises
and leaves aside all rules,all principles.69
Such a process of judgment involves the recognition of the
specificity ofparticular cases, something like Kants notion of a
reflective judgment thatbegins with the particular, but it does not
require the creation of new prin-ciples. Derrida acknowledges that
new judgments can conform to existinglaws but they must reaffirm
them. How I understand his point is as the needto consider each
situation afresh even when applying a law or principle.This point
is reasonable, but more difficult to accept is Derridas idea
ofnegotiation and the impossibility of unconditional demands. I
would sug-gest that most ethical choices are not impossible,
although political lifetends to provide more of such dramatic
choices than private life. For Kant,we are able to formulate moral
laws for ourselves and act on them. He saysthat it takes only
common human reason to work out our duty and that Ido not . . .
need any penetrating acuteness to see what I have to do in
orderthat my volition be morally good.70 Kant notes, however, that
we can neverbe completely sure that our motives are pure.71 In the
next section I willshow how Kants account fares better in relation
to human rights, as anexample of true non-negotiability, and how
Derrida goes beyond Kant, ashe claims, in introducing virtue to
politics.
Reconstructing Human Rights
I am critical of both Kant and Derrida and find insights in both
theirwork. On the issue of human rights, Kants overall framework is
more pro-ductive than Derridas even though he identifies
inconsistencies in Kantsaccount. Kants argument provides an
important step toward an ethicalpolitics, in spite of his
unappealing condemnation of revolutions and lack
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of consideration of conflicts between human rights and duties to
the state.Such a politics is one where at the very least certain
human rights arerespected. It should be noted that Derrida refers
to the Declaration ofHuman Rights as a means of challenging the
sovereignty of states.72However, even these rights, which we need,
must be subject to negotiationor transaction with the conditional
and must be questioned. He writes,
To take this historicity and perfectibility [of human rights]
into account in anaffirmative way we must never prohibit the most
radical questioning possibleof all the concepts at work here: the
humanity of man (the proper of manor of the human, which raises the
whole question of nonhuman living beings,as well as the question of
the history of recent juridical concepts or perfor-matives such as
a crime against humanity), and then the very concepts ofrights or
of law (droit), and even the concept of history.73
In one sense, what Derrida is saying is that we need to reflect
more on allthe concepts related to human rights, and in that sense,
there is no problemwith that kind of questioning.
However, it is when this idea is combined with Derridas view
that wehave to negotiate with the unconditional that his position
becomes moredifficult. If such things as human rights are always
potentially negotiable,then they cannot be relied on as principles
to guide ethical or politicaldecisions. Questions of the death
penalty, denaturalization, treatment ofrefugees, and conduct of
war, for example, are not subject to any limitationsas such. Any
unconditional demands are always weighed up against condi-tional
exigencies. So, for instance, even torture might be justifiable if
it canbe negotiated or exchanged for some other value or in the
light of condi-tional considerations. This is the implication of
Derridas claim that theTorah must enjoin a negotiation with the
non-negotiable, quoted earlier.74It is also the implication of
unconditional demands, such as hospitality, thatare themselves
destructive. Derridas comments on democracy are quiteuseful for
thinking about political systems, as he says that democracy
ispreferable to other systems because it opens onto a future and is
per-fectible.75 These criteria may enable us to determine
preferable courses ofaction in some circumstances and could be seen
as parallel to Kants sug-gestion that in difficult circumstances
such as war we should act in such away as to always leave open the
possibility of . . . entering a rightful con-dition.76 What I mean
by this is that in relation to the political organizationof states
(at least) Derrida concedes that democracy really is preferable
toother forms of government, and we can take the freedom and
equality on
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which it is based as guiding principles. However, I do not
believe that thisexception resolves the problems in Derridas views
on human rights.
I am not suggesting that Kants understanding of human rights is
prefer-able to Derridas in every respect. Certainly Kants account
of the details ofthe principles of right leaves much to be desired,
particularly that of inde-pendence as a citizen, as he excludes
women and nonproperty ownersfrom the role of active citizens.77
Nevertheless, one could extend this prin-ciple in an inclusive way.
Another problem I see in Kants account of rightis his acceptance of
capital punishment for the crimes of high treason andmurder.78 This
acceptance appears to be in conflict with the categoricalimperative
to treat everyone as ends in themselves and with the whole tenorof
the Kantian view that we should treat others with respect. However,
asNelson Potter argues, in both these cases Kant can be revised in
a mannerthat makes his view more consistent, particularly since
Kant himself wasoffering a critique of the contemporary cruel
punishments often carried outas well as arguing for a limitation on
the crimes capital punishment shouldbe applied to.79 These are
reconstructions that would be necessary for gen-uine compatibility
between ethics and politics, in my view.
Derrida does not address this question of how important Kant
takes thedeath penalty to be, although he emphasizes Kants
connection of the justalionis (law of retribution) to the basis of
criminal justice.80 I would arguethat one could retain this
conception of punishment but still maintain anabolitionist stance,
although it would be preferable to have a different viewof
punishment as well.81 Kants ideas of rights need to be
reconstructed ina number of ways, some of which they already have
been in practice (atleast widely), to include women as active
citizens, and some of which theyhave not, to exclude capital
punishment, for example. An ethical politicsshould make an explicit
commitment to certain rights and work out howthey can be
established and upheld. While Derrida is doubtless against cap-ital
punishment, for example, he does not set out the principles on
whichthat opposition is based, but says that both the death penalty
and abolition-ist discourse are deconstructible.82 This analysis
suggests that the deathpenalty is negotiable, and that raises an
issue about how his view could bemade compatible with a commitment
to human rights.
Conclusion
This engagement between the two philosophers is interesting in
itself,yet my aim in pursuing this encounter between Kant and
Derrida is also to
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illuminate the difficulties that arise in conceiving an ethical
politics.Derridas demanding view of ethics highlights some of the
gaps in Kantsvision. Derrida is right to claim that he goes beyond
Kant. I contend that inraising the importance of virtue as well as
right to politics, his view is animportant advance on Kants.
Derridas focus on unconditional ethicsbrings the imperfect duties
of Kant to the forefront of politics. This insis-tence on the
importance of unconditional ethical demands to politics forcesus to
think more carefully about the role of these demands and about
theresponsibility of both ethics and politics to each other.
Derridas workreminds us how significant ethical virtues involved in
hospitality, friend-ship, and forgiveness, for example, are to
public life. Nevertheless,although his account demonstrates the
significance of ethics to politics, itdoes not clarify how
important ethics should be or suggest what conditionswould
facilitate the negotiation between ethics and politics.
Preciselybecause Derrida goes further than Kant by bringing up the
importance ofthe virtues, he should have more to say about what
would make them flour-ish. However, Derrida does not account for
the conditions that will supportan ethical politics and make
ethical living more likely, perhaps because hebelieves that any
specific suggestions would be totalitarian. The idea of ademocracy
to come involves some important suggestions for
internationalinstitutions but does not articulate changes that
would be needed to assistgroups and individuals to meet those
demands. His emphasis on uncondi-tional ethical concepts such as
forgiveness and hospitality places the onuson the individual to try
to live up to unconditional demands. Yet a distinc-tion should be
made between unconditional demands that are necessarilydestructive
if fulfilled, such as hospitality, and those which are not
neces-sarily destructive in the same sense, such as
forgiveness.
While Derrida goes beyond Kant in emphasizing the importance
ofvirtue or imperfect duties, he does not advance beyond Kant by
suggestingwhat kind of political structures would enable the
flourishing of thesevirtues. His transformation of Kants imperfect
duties into perfect dutiesalso makes the development of such
enabling structures even more unlikely.Thinking of the virtues as
perfect duties sets us on a path to construing eth-ical politics as
a utopian dream and could justify the careless idealismLevinas
warns against or quietism in the face of impossibility.
Derridasemphasis on the impossibility of following unconditional
ethical demandsis likely to lead to the undermining of the
authority of ethics that Kant wasconcerned about. While Kant was
probably a little too confident about theease with which we act
ethically (although without being sure that we aredoing so),
ethical demands need to be within the realms of possibility for
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us to be able to cultivate ethical responses and to construct
political struc-tures that support the ethical life. Kant expresses
a vision where one focuseson enforcing what needs to be enforced
while leaving the other aspects ofethics to look after themselves,
whereas I argue that we should also con-sider how to at least
encourage virtue. These are the problems I believeneed to be
addressed in conceptualizing an ethical politics.
What emerges is that the most credible conception of the
relationbetween ethics and politics is one that considers both the
norms of right thatKant outlines and the virtues, in Derridas
sense, such as forgiveness, gen-erosity, and hospitality. What I
mean is that the limits to action set up byKant should be
acknowledged (and in some instances extended) and thatpolitical
organization should take account of the need for practical
benevo-lence and ethical responses. Understanding the intersection
of ethics andpolitics in this way requires a sense of what it is to
act with respect andbenevolence for others, so that all decisions
have these ethical standards astouchstones to judgment. In order
for Derridas suggestion of an expansionof the ethical realm to make
sense, political life would involve creating thebest conditions for
ethical relations to ourselves and to others, in additionto the
constraints Kant believes ethics should place on politics. While
weshould acknowledge the special circumstances of politics,
politics shouldbe ethical in more than one sense.
There are risks here in the possibility of interference in
private or ethi-cal relations to the self, which Arendt and
Foucault, for example, fear.83However, I disagree with Kant that we
should simply hope that virtue fol-lows in the wake of right or, to
think of it another way, that love will followrespect because every
aspect of our lives is affected by political decisions.Such
decisions could play a role in ensuring at an institutional and
individ-ual level that we are able or more likely to carry out
imperfect duties to our-selves, such as the duty to perfect
ourselves, and the imperfect duties ofbenevolence to others. To
give priority to ethics as Derrida conceives it, thevirtues of
respect and of love would have to be encouraged and form thebasis
of politics. These ethical considerations are relevant to the
threespheres that Kant discussesrelations within states, between
states, andbetween states and individuals. It is also relevant to
relations between indi-viduals. Thus, the complexities of including
the virtues in an ethical poli-tics would have to be carefully
considered with regard to all these relations.
These features of an ethical politics involve both basic human
rights asadvocated by Kant and the cultivation of virtues as
suggested by Derrida.Furthermore, pursuit of the virtues itself can
facilitate a transformation of pol-itics and political conditions,
and I take this point to be implicit in Derridas
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focus on unconditional ethical demands. Nevertheless, the
freedom impliedby the notion of an imperfect duty, where there is a
great deal of discretion asto particular ethical decisions, should
be retained. Between Kants possibleideals and Derridas impossible
reals, there is a possibility of ethical andpolitical action that
is not simply ameliorative. Politics must be conceived ina way that
makes negotiating with ethics a more promising affair.
Notes1. Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, trans. Mary J.
Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), 8:37.2. Jacques Derrida, Adieu to
Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael
Naas (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 115.3.
See, for example, Christopher Norris, Whats Wrong with
Postmodernism: Critical
Theory and the Ends of Philosophy (Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press, 1990), 194-207, for a discussion of Derridas
relation to Kants epistemological project; Irene Harvey,Derrida and
The Economy of Diffrance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1986), whois concerned with the influence of Kants notion of
critique and conception of the limits of rea-son; and Philip
Rothfield, ed., Kant after Derrida (Manchester, UK: Clinamen,
2003), whichis a collection of essays on a range of Kantian
themes.
4. Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, trans. George
Collins (London: Verso,1997); and Jacques Derrida, On
Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. Mark Dooley andMichael
Hughes (London: Routledge, 2001).
5. Jacques Derrida, Questioning God, ed. John Caputo, Mark
Dooley, and Michael J.Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2001), 66.
6. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, 115. Levinass influence
on Derridas ethics hasbeen explored more thoroughly than Kants.
This work includes Simon Critchley, The Ethicsof Deconstruction:
Derrida and Levinas (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University
Press,1999); Simon Critchley, Ethics, Politics, and Subjectivity:
Essays on Derrida, Levinas, andContemporary French Thought (London:
Verso, 1999); Diane Perpich, A Singular Justice:Ethics and Politics
between Levinas and Derrida, Philosophy Today 42, supp. (1998):
59-70;and Miriam Bankovsky, Derrida Brings Levinas to Kant: The
Welcome, Ethics, andCosmopolitical Law, Philosophy Today 49, no. 2
(2005): 156-71, who also considers therelation of both to Kant.
Derrida discusses Levinas in Jacques Derrida, Writing
andDifference, trans. Alan Bass (London: Routledge, 2001); and in
Derrida, Adieu to EmanuelLevinas. On Kant and Derrida on
hospitality, see Marguerite La Caze, Not Just
Visitors:Cosmopolitanism, Hospitality, and Refugees, Philosophy
Today 48, no. 3 (2004): 313-24.Beardsworth analyses the relation
between Kant and Derrida on law and violence in RichardBeardsworth,
Derrida and the Political (London: Routledge 1996), 46-70.
7. I prefer the term ethics to morality as it seems less focused
on individual mores to thecontemporary ear.
8. Immanuel Kant, Toward Perpetual Peace, in Kant, Practical
Philosophy, 8:380.9. This position follows from his view that ought
to implies can in Immanuel Kant,
Critique of Practical Reason, in Kant, Practical Philosophy.
Kant says that our awareness ofthe moral law when we construct
maxims of the will leads us to the concept of freedom.Furthermore,
our experience confirms this concept of freedom when we remember
that we
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can act against our strongest desires and even our love of life
in order to act ethically (ibid.,5:30). By contrast, in the
Groundwork (in Kant, Practical Philosophy), Kant argues thatbecause
we are autonomous we are bound by the moral law: If, therefore,
freedom of the willis presupposed, morality together with its
principle follows from it by mere analysis of itsconcept (ibid.,
4:447). Elsewhere, in a review of Schulzs [a]ttempt at an
introduction to adoctrine of morals, he asserts that without this
possibility of freedom, any imperative is absurdand the only
position we can adopt is fatalism (ibid., 8:13).
10. Kant, Practical Philosophy, 8:370. Kant defines right as the
sum of the conditionsunder which the choice of one can be united
with the choice of another in accordance with auniversal law of
freedom (ibid., 6:230). He further distinguishes between natural or
privateright, which includes rights to property, rights to
contracts, and domestic right, and public orcivil right, which
concerns the rights of a state, the rights of nations, and
cosmopolitan right.The doctrine of virtue includes duties to
ourselves and the duties to others of love and respect.
11. The doctrine of right concerns the a priori basis of ethical
laws. One might disagreewith Kants view that politics is the
doctrine of right put into practice and argue, for example,that
ethics and politics are two separate spheres, as Arendt does in
Hannah Arendt,Responsibility and Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn (New
York: Schocken, 2003), 147-58.
12. Kant, Practical Philosophy, 8:372.13. According to Kant, the
aims of moral evil are self-contradictory and self-destructive,
whereas those of moral goodness are consistent and conducive to
happiness, so evil gives wayto the moral principle of goodness
(Kant, Practical Philosophy, 8:379). See Kants discussionof radical
evil in Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone,
in Religionand Rational Theology, trans. and ed. Allen W. Wood and
George di Giovanni (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,
1996).
14. Richard Kearney and Mark Dooley, Questioning Ethics:
Contemporary Debates inPhilosophy (London: Routledge, 1999),
70.
15. Jacques Derrida, Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews,
1971-2001, trans. ElizabethRottenberg (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 2002), 295-314. The essay was firstgiven as a
talk in 1987.
16. Ibid., 295.17. Ibid., 298.18. Ibid., 301.19. Levinas also
believes that we have to negotiate between ethics and politics.
Robert
Bernasconi says that Levinas is not concerned to resolve
conflicts between ethics and politics,yet the task of negotiating
in practice the conflicting demands under which I find
myself,involves the use of reason, that is, the third person
perspective; Robert Bernasconi, TheThird Party: Levinas on the
Intersection of the Ethical and the Political, Journal of the
BritishSociety for Phenomenology 30, no. 1 (1999): 81. In his view,
while Levinas favors ethics overpolitics, they are not in
opposition for him.
20. Jacques Derrida, Ethics and Politics Today, in Jacques
Derrida, Negotiations(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
2002), 305. Both these approaches have been usedin response to the
taking of foreign hostages in Iraq. In that circumstance, I think
it would behard to justify a refusal to negotiate as there is not
enough order for one to argue that suchnegotiation would create a
precedent.
21. Jacques Derrida, Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of
Authority, trans. MaryQuaintance, in Deconstruction and the
Possibility of Justice, ed. Drucilla Cornell, MichelRosenfeld, and
David Gray Carlson (London: Routledge, 1992), 14.
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22. Emmanuel Levinas, Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and
Lectures, trans. Gary D.Mole (London: Athlone, 1994), 46. For
another reading of Levinass essay, in relation to theidea of
political utopianism, see Oona Eisenstadt, The Problem of the
Promise: Derrida onLevinas on the Cities of Refuge, Cross Currents
52, no. 4 (2003): 474-82.
23. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, 112. Levinass idea of
justice appears to be verydifferent from Derridas. For Derrida,
justice is the ultimate ethical ideal, the undecon-structible, that
goes beyond particular laws (Derrida, Force of Law, 14). For
Levinas, justiceis the political necessity of weighing different
competing claims, contrasted with the infiniteresponsibility for
the particular other that is the ethical relation. In Derridas
outlook, justicetakes this concern with singularity.
24. Kant, Practical Philosophy, 8:377.25. In On the common
saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in
prac-
tice, Kant defines the principles of a civil state as (1) the
freedom of every member of thesociety as a human being, (2) his
equality with every other as a subject, and (3) the indepen-dence
of every member of a commonwealth as a citizen (ibid., 8:290); and
likewise inImmanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (in ibid.,
6:314), and in Immanuel Kant,Perpetual Peace, Kant says that the
principles of a Republican state are freedom, equality, andthe
dependence of all upon a single common legislation (as subjects)
(in ibid., 8:350). Acomparison of Kants republicanism with Derridas
idea of democracy is one I do not have thespace to pursue here.
26. Ibid., 8:381. The second transcendental principle of public
right is as follows: Allmaxims which need publicity (in order not
to fail in their end) harmonize with right and pol-itics combined
(ibid., 8:386). Kants argument for this principle is that if maxims
can only besuccessful through publicity, they must correspond to
the universal public end, which is hap-piness, and for him this is
what politics must do.
27. Ibid., 8:385.28. Ibid., 8:381.29. Ibid., 8:380.30. There has
been a great deal of interest in Kants condemnation of rebellion
here, par-
ticularly since he is a well-known supporter of the French
Revolution; ibid., 6:320-23. See, forexample, Kimberly Hutchings,
Kant, Critique, and Politics (London: Routledge, 1996), 46;and
Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kants Political Philosophy, ed. Ronald
Beiner (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1982), 44-51.
31. Derrida, Force of Law, 35.32. Kants examples of ethical
constraints on politics between states include the non-
acquisition of existing states, the abolition of standing
armies, no national debts with regardto external affairs,
non-interference with the governments of other states, and not
using duplic-itous means in war; definitive articles recommend
republicanism for all states, a federalism offree states, and the
cosmopolitan right of hospitality. Kant examines three cases of
apparentconflict between politics and morals in international right
and presents their resolution: whereone nation promises to aid
another nation but decides to release itself from the
promisebecause of the effects that keeping the promise would have
on its own well-being, where lessernations could not make public
the idea that they intend to attack a greater power
preemptively,and where a large nation could not make it known that
it would absorb smaller nations if itthought that necessary to its
preservation (Kant, Practical Philosophy, 8:383-84). Third,
Kantsays that cosmopolitan rights maxims work by analogy to those
of international right.Cosmopolitan right is interesting since the
power imbalance between individuals and states isenormous.
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33. Ibid., 8:385.34. Another example Kant gives is that
it cannot be demanded of a state that it give up its
constitution even though this is adespotic one (which is, for all
that, the stronger kind in relation to external enemies),so long as
it runs the risk of being at once devoured by other states; hence,
as for thatresolution, it must also be permitted to postpone
putting it into effect until a morefavorable time. (Ibid.,
8:373)
Thus, it is reasonable to wait until the state is secure from
invasion before rectifying injusticeif that injustice is protecting
the state.
35. Elisabeth Ellis, Kants Politics: Provisional Theory for an
Uncertain World (NewHaven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005),
112-54.
36. Kant, Practical Philosophy, 6:347.37. Ibid.38. Another way
Kant puts this point is that although respect is a mere duty of
virtue, it
is regarded as narrow in comparison with a duty of love, and it
is the latter that is considereda wide duty; ibid., 6:450.
39. Ibid., 8:301.40. Ibid., 6:371.41. Immanuel Kant, Doctrine of
Right, in The Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Mary Gregor
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), XIX, 594-95,
quoted in Robert J. Dostal,Judging Human Action: Arendts
Appropriation of Kant, Review of Metaphysics 37 (1984): 732.
42. Kant, Practical Philosophy, 8:386.43. Critchley, The Ethics
of Deconstruction, 200. In a later essay, Critchley presents
Derridas account of the decision more sympathetically by
describing it as non-foundationalbut non-arbitrary and necessarily
contextual; Simon Critchley, Remarks on Derrida andHabermas,
Constellations 7, no. 4 (2000): 461-62.
44. Levinas, Beyond the Verse, 194.45. Ibid., 116.46. Derrida,
Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, 114-15. Another way that Derrida
expresses this
problem is by writing, as shown above in the text, The hiatus,
the silence of this non-responseconcerning the schemas between the
ethical and the political, remains. It is a fact that itremains,
and this fact is not some empirical contingency, it is a Faktum
(ibid., 116).
47. Quoted in Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of
Terror: Dialogues with JrgenHabermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2003), 114-15.
48. Ibid., 120.49. Ibid., 121.50. Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on
Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005), 86.
Critchley has a very good, albeit brief,discussion of what Derrida
means by democracy to come in Remarks on Derrida andHabermas,
463-64.
51. Jacques Derrida, Limited, Inc., ed. Gerald Graff (Evanston,
Ill.: NorthwesternUniversity Press 1988), 152.
52. Ibid., 153.53. Derrida, Rogues, 83.54. Immanuel Kant, The
Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London:
Macmillan, 1986), A669-704, B697-732.
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55. Ibid., A686, B714.56. Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of
Terror, 134. Derrida also says he hesitates to con-
flate his idea of justice with a Kantian regulative idea
(Derrida, Force of Law, 25). Herepeats his reservations in Derrida,
Rogues (83-85), in a discussion concerning democracy.
57. Kant, Practical Philosophy, 6:409.58. Borradori, Philosophy
in a Time of Terror, 131-32.59. Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and
Forgiveness.60. Kants description of moral ideas in the Critique of
Practical Reason also seems helpful:[I]f I understand by an idea a
perfection to which nothing adequate can be given inexperience, the
moral ideas, are not, on that account, something transcendent, that
is,something of which we cannot even determine the concept
sufficiently or of which itis uncertain whether there is any object
corresponding to it at all, as is the case withthe ideas of
speculative reason; instead, the moral ideas, as archetypes of
practicalperfection, serve as the indispensable rule of moral
conduct and also as the standardof comparison. (Kant, Practical
Philosophy, 5:127).
Here Kant is referring to moral virtues such as wisdom and
holiness. This idea seems quiteclose to Derridas in the fact that
they are impossiblenothing in experience can matchthembut are not
transcendent, and can be used as a standard.
61. Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmentelle Invites
Jacques Derrida toRespond, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 2000), 81.
62. Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, 135.63. Derrida,
Force of Law, 17.64. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, 117.65.
Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, 21-22; and Olivia
Custer, Kant after
Derrida: Inventing Oneself out of an Impossible Choice, in
Rothfield, Kant after Derrida,171-204.
66. La Caze, Not Just Visitors.67. See Marguerite La Caze,
Should Radical Evil Be Forgiven? in Forensic Psychiatry:
Influences of Evil, ed. Tom Mason (Totowa, N.J.: Humana Press,
2006), 273-93, where I arguethat Derridas view of forgiveness
implies that the onus is on the victim to forgive, althoughhe does
not argue for it explicitly.
68. See Kant, Practical Philosophy, 6:452-55.69. Derrida, Force
of Law, 23.70. Kant, Practical Philosophy, 4:403. Kant observed
that even experts could lack judg-
ment in his essay on theory and practice:
[T]here can be theoreticians who can never in their lives become
practical because theyare lacking in judgment, for example,
physicians or jurists who did well in their school-ing but who are
at a loss when they have to give an expert opinion. (Ibid.,
8:275)
He thinks that this is due to a lack of the natural talent of
judgment. But, as Kant makes clear,this difficulty in judgment
applies to certain professional fields, not to ethics.
71. Ibid., 4:407-8.72. Derrida, Rogues, 88.73. Borradori,
Philosophy in a Time of Terror, 133.74. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel
Levinas, 112.75. Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror,
113-14.
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76. Kant, Practical Philosophy, 6:347.77. Ibid., 6:314-15. Kant
makes a distinction between active citizens, who are
independent
and can vote, and passive ones, who he argues are dependent on
the will of others.78. Ibid., 6:320, 6:333.79. Nelson Potter, Kant
and Capital Punishment Today, Journal of Value Inquiry 36, nos.
2/3 (2002): 267-82.80. Jacques Derrida and Elisabeth Roudinesco,
For What Tomorrow . . . a Dialogue, trans.
Jeff Fort (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004),
148.81. I do not have the space to argue for my position here, but
I think it is important to indi-
cate the points where I think Kant is misguided. Of course there
are other points, such as hisview of the status of wives and
servants (Kant, Practical Philosophy, 6:277, 6:315), which
aredeeply problematic; I have only focused on two important
issues.
82. Derrida and Roudinesco, For What Tomorrow, 148.83. Arendt
contends that ethics involves a concern with the self whereas
politics involves
a concern with the world; Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment,
153. Michel Foucault believesthat subjects must be free to practice
ethical relations with themselves and others; MichelFoucault,
Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, vol. 1, ed. Paul Rabinow
(London: Penguin,1997), 281-301.
Marguerite La Caze is an Australian Research Fellow (2003-2007)
in philosophy at theUniversity of Queensland working on a major
project on Wonder and Generosity as Guidesto the Ethics and
Politics of Respect for Difference. She has research interests and
numerouspublications in European philosophy and feminist
philosophy. Her publications include TheAnalytic Imaginary
(Cornell, 2002); Integrity and the Fragile Self, coauthored with
DamianCox and Michael Levine (Ashgate, 2003); and recent articles
with a focus on the work of Kantand Derrida in Philosophy Today
(2004) and Contemporary Political Theory (2006).
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