Philosophical Responsibility

Abstract

This essay advances the thesis that Derrida’s ethics consists in the practice of philosophical responsibility. I contend that philosophical responsibility is the historical and ethical task of establishing a critical relation to one’s tradition which deliberately avoids passively and naively taking it for granted by questioning its origin and revealing its historicity. Further, I show that Derrida learns the task of philosophical responsibility from Husserl’s own version of philosophical responsibility, which he later transforms with the help of Husserl’s own methodological tools. I maintain that the difference between Husserl’s and Derrida’s respective tasks is the injunction they are responding to and, concomitantly, the sense each gives to historicity. Whereas Husserl is responding to the principle of reason so as to reawaken the historicity of universal truth and its foundation, that is, the telos of Reason, Derrida is responding for the principle of reason with the purpose of disclosing the historicity of signification – différance – whose operation reduces the telos of Reason.

Keywords:

• Husserl’s transcendental history
• philosophical responsibility
• Derrida’s ethics
• différance
• reduction

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Europe does not refer to a geographical space, but to a way of thinking and living. Husserl says, “‘Europe’ clearly refers to the unity of a spiritual life, activity, creation, with all its ends, interests, cares, and endeavours” (“Vienna Lecture” 273).

2 I have deliberately left out Heidegger’s influence on Derrida’s deconstruction for three reasons. First, Heidegger, as Kaarto says, “adopts an optional phenomenological stance, which Derrida does not advocate as such” (17), even if some of Derrida’s criticisms of Husserl are inspired by Heidegger’s work. Second, Derrida does not adopt Heidegger’s phenomenological stance because, according to Derrida, Heidegger’s problematics “presupposes the set of problems defined and resolved by Husserl” (Derrida, Problem of Genesis 138). Third, deconstruction’s “methodological schema,” which helps Derrida fulfil his philosophical responsibility, is owed to Husserl: “Husserl […] taught me a certain methodological prudence and reserve, a rigorous technique of unravelling and formulating questions” (Derrida, “Deconstruction and the Other” 109). This Husserlian heritage is evident in that Derrida, as Peter Dews affirms, “employs a vocabulary of ‘conditions,’ ‘effects,’ and logical priorities which is alien to Heidegger” (42).

3 Derrida stated that the Introduction and Speech and Phenomena are the two sides of the same work. Cf. Derrida, Positions 5.