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Derrida, Philosopher of the Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Cornelia Vismann

Extract

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Does Derrida's death justify a special issue of this Journal, preceded immediately by a special edition on human rights? Can death justify anything at all? And what does this mean for the authors of this volume; are their texts doomed to remain unjustified, if no authority steps in to legitimate our endeavour to gather texts by friends in the name of Derrida?

Type
Articles: Special Issue: A Dedication to Jacques Derrida – Introduction
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 1: Articles: Special issue - A Dedication to Jacques Derrida , 01 January 2005 , pp. 5 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 Derrida, Jacques, Force of Law, 11 Cardozo Law Review 919-1045 (1990).Google Scholar

2 For further details on this point, see Cornelia Vismann, Jurisprudence: A Transfer-Science, 10 Law and Critique 279-286 (1999).Google Scholar

3 See Elisabeth Weber, Petra Gehring, and Drucilla Cornell in this issue.Google Scholar

4 In her contribution to this issue Petra Gehring shows convincingly that there is a constant and consecutively followed line in Derrida's thought, despite the “shift” towards the ethical, which can be observed on the surface.Google Scholar

5 See Jacques Derrida, Who is afraid of Philosophy? Right to Philosophy I 33 (2002).Google Scholar

6 Id. at 37.Google Scholar

7 See Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmatelle, De l'hospitalite (1997).Google Scholar

8 See Die Ethik der Gabe. Denken nach Jacques Derrida (Michael Wetzel ed., 1993). On pardoning, see Jacques Derrida and Michael Wieviorka, Jahrhundert der Vergebung, 14 Lettre International 14 (2000). On this subject, see also Peter Krapp's text in this issue.Google Scholar

9 See Derrida, supra note 5 at 46.Google Scholar

10 For a critique of the absence of deconstruction's lack of historical studies, see Friedrich Balke in this issue.Google Scholar

11 Mohnhaupt, Heinz, Der Entwicklungsgang von den wohlerworbenen, konzessionierten Rechten und Privilegien zu den dem Menschen zugehörigen Grundrechten, Europäische Grundrechte-Zeitschrift (EuGRZ) 604-611 (2004).Google Scholar

12 So, even if there is a certain playfulness in Derrida's theory, which Allan Hutchinson has pointed out in his contribution to this issue, it is not coupled with wit and irony but rather with the sincerity of a game, which one does not want to loose. Only Derrida knows that it remains undecided – because: who should play the arbiter?Google Scholar

13 Teubner, Gunther, The King's Many Bodies: The Self-Deconstruction of Law's Hierarchy, 31 Law & Society Review 763-787 (1997).Google Scholar

14 Derrida, Jacques, Mochlos, L'oiel de l'Université, in Du droit a la philosophie (1990) (German translation: Mochlos oder Das Auge der Universität (2004)).Google Scholar

15 Derrida, id. at 64.Google Scholar

16 Derrida, id.Google Scholar

17 Derrida, supra note 5; Jacques Derrida, The Eyes of the University, Right to Philosophy II (2004) (German translation: Privileg. Vom Recht auf Philosophie I (2003); Mochlos oder Das Auge der Universität. Vom Recht auf Philosophie II (2004)).Google Scholar

18 For an analysis of Derrida's notion of sovereignty in his latest book (Schurken), see Friedrich Balke in this issue.Google Scholar

19 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft 2. Abt., 1. Buch, 2. Abschnitt, B 379.Google Scholar

20 Jacques Derrida, Die unbedingte Universität 17 (2001).Google Scholar

21 See id. at 45.Google Scholar

22 Id. at 63, 76.Google Scholar

23 Derrida, supra note 5 at 27.Google Scholar

24 See Dirk Baeckers article in this volume.Google Scholar

25 Derrida, Jacques, Chôra, in Über den Namen 123-170 (2002).Google Scholar

26 See Peter Goodrich's article in this volume.Google Scholar

27 Derrida, supra note 5 at 25.Google Scholar

28 Christoph Riedweg, Pythagoras, Leben, Lehre, Nachwirkung 156 (2002).Google Scholar

29 Kittler, Friedrich, Vom Appell des Buches and Mousa or Litteratura, manuscripts with the author.Google Scholar

30 For an account of the complicated relationship with Heidegger, who is one of the few who never benefited from Derrida's politics of friendship, see Derrida's rather harsh dissociations form Heidegger. Derrida, supra note 5. Here, I would like to translate passages from a recent letter written by my father, Dieter Vismann:Google Scholar

“Derrida states in 1972 that nothing that he tries would have been possible without the opening (Eröffnung) of Heideggerian questions (see, Jacques Derrida, Positionen 18 (1986)). He is of course not an epigone of Heidegger. Derrida wants to analyze the ambivalences in Heidegger's project of overcoming metaphysics. This project had a constructive aim: to demarcate metaphysics in its positive possibilities, and that also means in its limits (see, Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit § 6 (7th ed. 1953)). This constructive drive can also be found in Derrida, which is yet not accompagnied by the same pathos, dem Walten des Seinsgeschickes. Compared with that pathos Derrida's deconstruction has the air of demythologizing Heidegger. […] According to Heidegger should the destruction of ontology finally give access to the primordial springs, ‘den ursprünglichen Quellen […], in denen die ersten und fortan leitenden Bestimmungen des Seins gewonnen wurden’ (Heidegger, id.) This is the attempt to objectify the ontological way of thinking and to arrive beyond the tradition's obstructions of Sein at the eigentliche (true) essence of Sein. […] Derrida sees here a metaphysical dualism in that opposition of ursprünglich/abgeleitet and eigentlich/uneigentlich, that slipped Heiddegger's attention in his search for a neue Ursprünglichkeit. […] Derrida is searching more explicit than Heiddegger for a primordial difference, which differs beyond Sein und Seiendes and lays the traces for this difference. This difference, that cannot be drawn together in the word Eigentlichkeit or Nähe, is Derrida's focus…”Google Scholar

31 For the delimiting effects of limits, see the introduction to Drucilla Cornell's contribution to this issue.Google Scholar