Derrida and the Time of Decision

Abstract

Derrida’s description of the aporia of decision-making is herein used to demonstrate how ethico-political concerns can already be found within the articulation of time and space as they are experienced by mortal beings, broadly understood.

Keywords:

• mortality
• ethics
• politics
• sovereignty

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 This is not meant to suggest that there are, strictly, equivalences between these. Rather, in the same way that, as Geoffrey Bennington explains, “A consistent argument for the non-originarity of identity can hardly propose a single name for the ‘origin’ of that non-originarity” (12), the fields in which this non-originarity play out are also not singular. I am concerned, therefore, with how these different fields might relate to one another. I also note that this is an argument for consistency in Derrida’s work. That is, the turn in Derrida’s later work amounts to a difference in emphasis.

2 This oft-used formulation of Derrida’s can, as François Raffoul has noted, be understood as describing a structure of susceptibility to exteriority: “impossibility does not mean: that which cannot be, but rather: that which happens outside of the anticipating conditions of possibility of the egological subject” (286) which is why it “is the welcome of the event of the other” (288).

3 We may note a complication, itself part of the ethico-political aporia. As we have seen, politics is calculation, manifested through law, backed by force. This can reach a point of its own attempted self-enclosure, which would render politics an arbitrary mechanism for control and power: politics without justice. However, politics with justice, as noted, requires keeping in mind the singularity of the Other (the ethical call) during these necessary calculations. The justice of politics would appear to be ethics itself. This is an important point that Robert Bernasconi has elaborated on, namely, that Derrida’s use of “justice” in “Force of Law” draws on an anomalous and idiosyncratic use of that word in Levinas, which he would more ordinarily call “ethics” (61–62). Furthermore, we can note in passing that Derrida begins “Force of Law” by making a distinction between justice and law, precisely so that he can discuss how the former is not necessarily a part of the latter. Schematizing this, we can say that politics is an ordering by law, and this ordering may or may not be just depending on whether or not it keeps in mind the ethical call that first demanded its calculation.

4 We already begin to see how the ethico-political meets the temporo-spatial. In this description of Zeus triumphing over Cronos, we have an end to time that is brought about by the sovereign choice. What political sovereignty wants, it seems, is an ultimate ordering in which time would end since deferral would no longer be necessary as the perfect justice would have come. No more time would exist where there is a “perfect” justice and a “perfect” politics; only a “perfect” ordering of timeless space. The deferral of time, then, is associated with the imperfect decision which, as soon as it is made, already asks for a repetition since it has not – and never will – meet the unconditional demand that motivates it. The unconditional demand of ethics requires time.

5 The fact that the infinite responsibility towards the Other is described by Derrida in terms of the gift, hospitality, and so on certainly suggests that it is something like the face of the Other in Levinas which, although an oversimplification, is connected to the Other’s exposure to death and the impossibility of taking this away. That is, we are responsible, ultimately, for the life of the Other and all this entails. For an analysis of the face in Levinas in these terms, see Larios.

6 These descriptions cannot, of course, be taken in isolation. The time that defers, defers something just as the space that differs, differs within time. As soon as one is on the scene, so too is the other. This indissociability is, after all, the point of différance and spacing.