The other day I'd discussed a blog that had a post about Derrida and forgiveness. Now I hadn't read the article in question which always makes life a tad more difficult. But I had a fair familiarity with Derrida and made a few comments. Well looking through my "to read" pile I was pleasantly surprised to find On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. It was one of a series of small books by Derrida I'd picked up for a ridiculously low price intending to read them. However somehow one book or an other always ended up making it to the top of the pile in their place. As an aside, for anyone interested, here are the other books. Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles, which I've actually read extended excerpts from in various readers, but which I've not read cover to cover. The other was Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. However I quickly found that one of the more difficult of Derrida's texts and wanted to review both my Hegel as well as Heidegger's history in Nazism. I actually did that to a point and then promptly forgot to go back and finish it. I really need to, but it is definitely one of those books one must read carefully and with many other books in ones reach. Anyway back to forgiveness. Since I already had the book and had wanted to read it, I did this evening. Here are some new thoughts on the matter. (I'll not bother critiquing the other bloggers nor my own suppositions)
First let me say in advance that I tend to read Derrida in very Heideggarian terms. However given the way Heidegger forms part of the context for Derrida in such an important way, I don't think that inappropriate. I think that in this little treatise the Heidegger of Being and Time is very "present," despite the at times very Levinasian language. (And of course many would say that despite his best attempts the gaps between Levinas and Heidegger is more one of perspective and terminology than significant difference) I truly believe that unless one is familiar with this Heidegger - Derrida link that a lot in the text will make little sense and will be open for misconstrual.
First, sitting there in the background, just out of reach, is Heidegger's notion of for-the-sake-of. The notion is introduced fairly early in Being and Time - in section 18. (Page 116 in Macquarrie and Robinson; 78 in Stambaugh) Interestingly given Derrida's predelictions, it is in a discussion of signs and meaning of reference. The idea is that for any ready-at-hand entity it is already involved in actual or possible tasks. Those tasks may in turn be involved in "larger" tasks. Thus a hammer as a hammer is involved in hammering. Hammering is involved in fastening. Fastening is involved in protecting against bad weather. An so on. These tasks are grounded in some reference relation which has no further involvement. This ultimate reference relation is pure possibility. It can never be considered as something actual. It is a for-the-sake-of (or for-the-sake-of-which) which is for Dasein.
I don't want to get into how this is important for understanding Dasein's being-in-the-world. I'll leave that for your own reading of Being and Time. What is important though is that entities can't be understood as present-at-hand entities without losing something significant. That relationship with Dasein. In a way these for-the-sake-of function somewhat similar to Platonic universals. They are clearly not entities within the world. (Thus avoiding Plato's error of reifying the forms) They are also clearly not ideas or concepts. (Thus avoiding the error of the middle Platonists and Augustine of seeing the forms as thoughts in God's mind) They are always extraordinary and beyond our ability to capture them fully within discourse. Hurbert Dreyfus uses the great example of a teacher. When is one a teacher? Is there a point when you can say, I am a teacher? Is there something we can say makes someone a teacher? We can talk about what makes a good teacher, but of course one need not be a good teacher to be a teacher. There are not diplomas that make one a teacher. That is merely a worldly recognition. A sign. But someone may have the diploma and not be a teacher while someone without them may be a teacher. I'll not go through Dreyfus' full discussion. But he argues that teacherness is essentially never actual. There is no definition nor "thing" one can point to and say, that is what makes someone a teacher. That's what a for-the-sake-of is.
I bring all this up because Derrida is discussing forgiveness as a for-the-sake-of. Once one keeps that in mind, then the whole treatise makes a lot more sense.
Next one ought keep in mind Heidegger's notions of authenticity and inauthenticity in Being and Time. I'll not go into those since they are so key to Heidegger's thought. The important notion to keep in mind is, however, Heidegger's notion of "the they." (Being and Time section 27) The they are not any definite individual, collection of individuals or even community. It is something like the normative behaviors and ways of thinking we find ourselves lost in. It is how the inauthentic lose themselves. We do not see ourselves as ourselves, rather we are lost in what Heidegger calls being-among-one-another. It is very tied to his criticism of the theoretical and technology. But we'll not go down that tangent. The easiest way to think of it is when one acts and thinks purely in terms of what one is given by ones culture. That's not entirely accurate, but will do for now to avoid a needless tangent.
How do these relate to Derrida? Well Derrida often speaks of the for-the-sake-of and Dasein in terms of the impossible or the interruption or even the extraordinary. These are different ways of expressing, I believe, the basic phenomena of the uncanny. It is the experience that draws us out of being lost in the everydayness of being absorbed in the they. That is being buried in the objects and events of everyday life. (Being and Time section 42)
What I think Derrida wishes to do is to show that there are two senses of forgiveness. The first is the forgiveness of pure repetition. The "there is nothing outside of the text." Nothing outside of context. This is the forgiveness of pure historical situatedness. It is the forgiveness of norms. (Norms, normalicy, normalizing, and so forth all being inauthentic and lost in the they) We must experience forgiveness as forgiveness. That is as something uncanny and impossible. It is a rupture and thus expansion of "the text." Forgiveness is wrapped up in what Heidegger calls care.
Allow me one of the better passages in "On Forgiveness" that I think help demonstrate these aims of Derrida. This is from early on in the treatise.
I shall risk this proposition: each time forgiveness is at the service of a finality, be it noble and spiritual (atonement or redemption, reconciliation, salvation), each time that it aims to re-establish a rnomality (social, national, political, psychological) by a work of mourning, by some therapy or ecology of memory, then the 'forgiveness' is not pure - nor is its concept. Forgiveness is not, it should not be, normal, normatitive, normalising. It should remain exceptional and extraordinary, in the face of the impossible: as if it interrupted the ordinary course of historical temporality. ("On Foriveness", 31-2)
Now there is one other passage I wish to mention, because it relates to what I said earlier about for-the-sake-of being for Dasein. Now Dasein is often misinterpreted by uncareful readers of Heidegger. It is all too frequently treated simply as a human ego. (I think that's how Sartre, for instance, ends up reading Heidegger) This Cartesianism is most pernicious, especially after all the trouble Heidegger goes through to repudiate it in Being and Time. I think the simplest way to think about Dasein is as the humanity that makes us human. It is not humanity simply as the collection of humans. Nor is it any particular individual mind or ego. Now keeping in mind that notion of humanity and the grounding of for-the-sake-of in Dasein, consider Derrida's discussion of crimes against humanity and how that relates to forgiveness. He introduces this very early into the treatise.
For if, as I believe, the concept of a crime against humanity is the main charge of this self-accusation, of this repenting and this asking forgiveness; if, on the other hand, only a sacredness of the human can, in the last resort, justify this concept (nothing is worse, in this logic, than a crime against the humanity of man and against human rights);... (ibid, 30)
Now there are two other important plays in the treatise which I'll get to next time. They are opened up by the topic of crimes against humanity which is a global phenomena. What is this globalization? How is it tied to authority? To sovereignty? Recall that all these questions are wrapped up in the question of forgiveness of these massive almost unforgiveable crimes in places like South Africa, in Germany after World War II, in Bosnia, and in so many other places. It is this sense of forgivenss as tied to humanity is such a way that it brings out a recognition of the very phenomena of forgiveness in such a way that we can't help but see it as forgiveness. As I mentioned above, it is a way of seeing forgiveness in an authentic manner. Derrida's deconstruction is always aimed at this experience of the phenomena. In a way, each is fashioned as a different argument, but achieving similar aims that Heidegger's analysis of death did.
Excellent summary, Clark.
Not surprisingly, the logic here (only the unforgiveable can be forgiven) parallels Derrida (and Kierkegaard, and possibly Tertullian) on belief (only the unreasonable can be believed on faith).
Do you make a distinction here that Derrida does not?
That's a really interesting question Michael, the relationship between for-the-sake-of and belief (and thus how belief is grounded in Dasein).
I'll try and write up some thoughts on that this weekend. (Make it ready for when the Philosopher's Carnival is up here) I'll try to bring in some Peirce as well, given that belief is so important in his thought. (As opposed to knowledge as in most post-Cartesian philosophy) I tend to see relating Peirce and Derrida offers a lot of interesting insights into each.
I've just noticed that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has recently added an article on Fideism, which seems germane to this and several other discussions we've had here.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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