How to Make Impossible Decisions

Abstract

In this paper, I propose that Derrida’s writing on the impossibility of justice has the potential for fruitful dialogue with Ruth Chang’s contemporary account of practical rationality. For Derrida, making a just decision must always come with a moment of undecidability, a “leap” into the unknown with an experience of doubt and anxiety that continues to “haunt” the decision-maker. By contrast, in her work on rationality, Chang proposes that hard decisions are difficult to make because the alternatives are “on a par,” such that there are no rational differences between the alternatives that would contribute to choosing one over the other. Hard decisions are made by expressing one’s own rational agency, generating will-based reasons to commit to or “drift” into one of the alternatives. Derrida writes of anxiety, doubt, and impossibility, yet Chang writes of commitment, agency, and rationality. Despite these differences, there are important comparisons and connections between the two accounts that are worth exploring. I suggest that the moment of the decision which Derrida describes as heterogeneous to knowledge can be understood as a moment of parity in which there is a lack of given reasons, as explained by Chang. Chang’s account of rational agency provides an interpretation of how decision-making is possible despite the undecidability as described by Derrida. This notion of commitment and agency as explained by Chang is not incompatible with Derrida’s insistence that the responsible decision is haunted by anxiety and doubt. Instead, I suggest that Derrida’s writing highlights uncertainty as central to understanding the nature of hard choices and how to navigate the demands of justice.

Keywords:

• Derrida
• Ruth Chang
• decision
• hard choice
• rationality

I introduction

In his roundtable discussion during the opening of Villanova’s new doctoral programme in philosophy, Derrida speaks of the importance of retaining “something specifically philosophical,” yet at the same time “crossing the borders, establishing new themes, new problems, new ways, new approaches” (Deconstruction in a Nutshell 7). It is in this spirit of crossing borders, finding new connections and disconnections, that I propose Derrida’s writing on the impossibility of justice, and Ruth Chang’s analytic account of practical rationality can be brought together for fruitful dialogue and comparison. It might seem as if Derrida’s and Chang’s analyses of decision-making are unproductively incompatible. For Derrida, the making of a decision is a moment of “madness” that suspends knowledge, rules, norms, and laws. This moment is filled with anxiety, the realization that we are structurally unable, yet at the same time compelled, to make a decision. This anxiety and lack of assurance continues to linger even after a decision has been made. By contrast, Chang proposes that decisions are difficult to make on the basis that the alternatives of choice are, what she calls, “on a par,” such that there are no rational differences between the alternatives that would contribute to choosing one over the other. Rather than relying on given reasons, Chang claims that making a hard decision is an empowering opportunity to put one’s rational agency and commitment behind an alternative, and in this way, hard decisions can be rationally justified. Chang appeals to rationality, empowerment, and opportunities for possibility, yet Derrida writes of madness, doubt, and impossibility.

Despite these differences, I propose that there are interesting crossovers and connections between the two accounts that are worth exploring. Derrida is surprisingly clear that we cannot rest in the good conscience that we have made a “just” decision, while Chang claims that rationality gives us the opportunity to commit and confidently stand behind our choice. However, both Derrida and Chang accept that in the face of uncertainty, a decision must still be made. For Derrida, this decision is imposed by the demands of justice. As I will suggest, Chang’s notion of commitment provides an explanation of how a choice can be made in the moment of a decision, despite the anxiety and impossibility that Derrida describes as a structural condition of justice. Both Chang and Derrida highlight the importance of taking responsibility for the choices we have made; juxtaposing their different approaches allows for the potential to understand how we ought to negotiate and navigate this ethical challenge with both hesitation and affirmation.

In section II, I first outline an interpretation of Derrida’s analyses of the paradox of decision-making, whereby the just decision is made possible in virtue of its structural impossibility. In section III, I describe Ruth Chang’s account of the nature of “hard” decisions, and the way in which such decisions can be rationally justified despite the supposed lack of given supporting reasons. Finally, in section IV, I bring together these contrasting accounts and suggest that despite their differences, there is a valuable comparison to be made. I highlight two significant differences: (i) Derrida’s emphasis on the impossibility, madness, and anxiety of a just decision, as opposed to Chang’s positive claims that a hard decision is an opportunity for rational agency; and (ii) the difference in scope between their claims regarding uncertainty – for Derrida this uncertainty is a structural condition for all just decisions, yet for Chang this is only relevant when a decision is particularly “hard.” However, I also compare three aspects that are complimentary and have the potential to work together to supplement an understanding of the structure of decision-making. First, the moment of madness that Derrida describes as a suspension of knowledge can be interpreted as a moment of parity in which, as Chang explains, given reasons fail to tell us what to do. Second, Chang’s claims regarding commitment and the generation of will-based reasons can help explain how it is possible to make a decision despite the structural impossibility of decision-making as described by Derrida. Third, Chang’s notion of commitment is not incompatible with Derrida’s insistence that the responsible decision is one that comes with anxiety and vulnerability. I suggest that Derrida’s writing highlights this uncertainty and doubt as central to understanding the nature of hard choices.

For the purposes of this paper, it is important to note that I do not intend to make a claim as to the overall plausibility of either Derrida’s or Chang’s analyses of the nature and ethics of decision-making. There may be significant deficiencies in either of these accounts, or they may fail to acknowledge other aspects of decision-making and rationality (or lack thereof) that are of interest. Instead, my claim is limited as a comparative analysis of the two. I propose that irrespective of whether one considers Derrida or Chang to offer a “correct” or extensionally adequate theory of decision-making or rational choice, the seeming differences between the two accounts can be fruitfully brought together in conversation with each other. In so doing, this demonstrates similarities in their analyses with regards to the responsibility, freedom, and uncertainty that comes with making a decision, but also highlights an important difference with regards to the scope of their claims, or so I will argue.

II derrida’s impossibility of just decisions

Derrida writes of justice as a concern for the “singularity” and “alterity” of the other. When making a decision about what is just, the decision must respect and reflect that each situation, person, or object that is caught up in the decision is its own case, irreplaceable and irreducible (Derrida, “Force of Law” 17). This irreducibility of the other speaks against the reliance of rules, laws, and norms to determine how one ought to make a just decision. As Derrida writes in “Force of Law,” “[…] each decision is different and requires an absolutely unique interpretation, which no existing coded rule can or ought to guarantee absolutely” (23). For Derrida, if a decision is made by subsuming the particular under a rule or norm, it not only destroys the singularity of the other, but negates one’s own freedom and responsibility that is a structural necessity for the decision.¹ If one merely follows preordained rules or principles, these would already provide a calculation for what we ought to do. Because one would already know what to do based on some already existing rule, there would no longer be a decision to make, no freedom to make a choice, and no need to take responsibility for the choice that is made (Derrida, Rogues 85). It is this freedom and responsibility that is generated by a break from rules, norms, and laws – when we do not yet know what to do – that is for Derrida the very possibility of a just decision. In Negotiations, Derrida writes that if we know what to do when faced with a decision, “if my theoretical analysis of the situation shows me what is to be done […] then there is no moment of decision, simply the application of a body of knowledge, of, at the very least, a rule or norm” (231). The making of a decision is therefore only structurally possible due to its heterogeneity with knowledge or laws, rules, and norms.

Derrida writes of an inescapable paradox at the heart of what it is for a decision to be just. Even though one cannot make a decision by relying on rules and laws, in the end one does have to choose. Derrida writes that a decision is urgently required and imposed by justice itself: “But justice, however unpresentable it may be, doesn’t wait. It is that which must not wait […] a just decision is always required immediately, ‘right away’” (“Force of Law” 26).² The result of this paradox is that the instant in which a decision is made involves a moment of “madness,” a cessation, suspension, and interruption of knowledge (ibid.). This madness is neither a moment of rationality nor irrationality, but indicates the alterity of the decision in relation to any consideration of rationality. The madness is a-rational, in the sense that it involves a “leap” that “frees itself” from any calculable process (Derrida, Politics of Friendship 69).³

At the same time as being a structural necessity of the decision, Derrida writes that the madness which occurs when making a decision prevents any further consideration, deliberation, or reflection; once a decision has been made, it closes the possibility for further deliberation, as well as the potential for any other choice to have been made (Derrida and Beardsworth 37–38). As such, the decision is a necessary feature of justice that at the same time is said to “immediately betray justice”; making a choice is to subsume aspects of the decision under a rule, to subject them to calculation, and so the decision can no longer be called “just” (Derrida, “Force of Law” 10). Even if one was to reject the calculation of the rule, this would nonetheless be an adherence to another kind of rule, a rule against following a rule, a norm against following a norm, a law against following a law: “the counter-rule is still a rule” (Derrida, “Passions” 9). This structural paradox of the decision renders justice impossible, undecidable:

There is apparently no moment in which a decision can be called presently and fully just; either it has not yet been made according to a rule, and nothing allows us to call it just, or it has already followed a rule. (Derrida, “Force of Law” 24)

This means that justice is, for Derrida, constantly unrealizable, implying “endless inadequation, infinite transcendence” for which the call is “never, never fully answered” (Deconstruction in a Nutshell 17).

The impossibility and unrealizability of justice render the moment of the decision not only as a madness, but one that is experienced as an “ordeal,” as an “anxiety ridden moment” in which we must confront the aporia of the decision, caught between the rejection and destruction of the rule, yet at the same time invoking and conserving it (Derrida, “Force of Law” 20–23). This anxiety, for Derrida, is a structural condition for the possibility of justice: without it “one might as well give up” (Specters of Marx 65). The “terrible choice” that comes with having made a decision in the face of undecidability, having made an impossible decision, continues to “haunt” and linger beyond the decision, as a “ghostliness” that is “caught” within it (Derrida, Negotiations 195; “Force of Law” 24). Derrida writes that once a decision is made, we cannot rest with the assurance or certainty that we have made the “just” choice. To rest in good conscience is to admit that the decision has been decidable, possible, and requires reliance on some rule or norm by which to judge whether it is accurate or right (Derrida and Beardsworth 39). This is the difference between being “right,” which relies on rules and norms, and being “just,” which relies on the aporia of the decision: “I cannot know that I am just. I can know that I am right. I can see that I act in agreement with norms, with the law” (Derrida, Deconstruction in a Nutshell 17). Derrida warns that the confidence of making a decision in good conscience is incompatible with the possibility of a responsible decision, and transforms the risk involved in making a decision into the mere calculation or “technical application of a rule or norm” (Aporias 19).

The impossible decision, then, requires the rejection of an already determined programme, a refusal to be subsumed under a rule or law. This does not mean, though, that the moment of decision is random or ignorant. Even though the instant in which a decision is made is a madness that is heterogeneous to knowledge, Derrida does not advocate that a decision will “end up deciding anything at any moment” (Derrida and Beardsworth 37). The decision frees itself from calculation, but also requires calculation so as not to be arbitrary: “incalculable justice requires us to calculate” (Derrida, “Force of Law” 28). Justice is said to necessitate rigorously gathering information and deliberating carefully in the light of this information, so that we are as prepared as possible for the decision that is to be made. Derrida repeatedly makes this point in several different texts, highlighting the importance of information, knowledge, and norms for making responsible decisions.⁴

The decision is, for Derrida, made possible by both the acquisition of knowledge and also the eventual separation with it. Because the possibility of a just decision rests on the freedom and responsibility that comes with a separation from rules and norms, the moment in which the just decision is made is structurally distinct from the deliberation that has come before it as preparation. The madness of a decision is the recognition that “there is a point or limit beyond which calculation must fail,” which generates the inescapable and paradoxical negotiation between the calculable and incalculable, the general and singular, the rule and the other (Derrida, Deconstruction in a Nutshell 19). This, for Derrida, is the challenge of justice: how does one conserve the law, yet also destroy it? How does one decide, yet leave room for the undecidable?⁵

III ruth chang’s hard choices

In her work on practical rationality, Chang proposes a distinctive view on the nature of what she calls “hard choices.” These kinds of choices, Chang claims, can be seemingly unimportant ubiquitous decisions, such as whether to choose ice cream or chocolate cake for dessert, but can also include the most important personal decisions that we will ever have to make, such as a choice between different career paths, where to live, or whether to have children (“Hard Choices”). Significantly, many of the paradigmatic examples of hard choices in the way that Chang describes, are ethical decisions or decisions about what is just: whether to spend your leisure time mentoring disadvantaged children or campaigning for your favourite non-corrupt politician’s re-election; whether to, with your yearly bonus, buy a new car or donate money to charity; whether to take a new job in a different city and so disrupt your children’s stability in their current school, or to stay in your current city and continue working in an unfulfilling job (“Are Hard Choices”). This means that Chang’s analysis of hard choices has the potential to provide a framework for diagnosing why ethical decisions can often be so difficult to make.

Chang claims that hard choices are hard in virtue of a structural feature of the choice situation, particularly in how the alternatives of that choice situation relate to each other (“Hard Choices” 4). This means that Chang rules out the nature of hard choices as being explained by epistemic limitations, such as uncertainty or ignorance regarding the relevant information that would determine the reasons for choosing one alternative over another (“Are Hard Choices” 108; “Hard Choices” 4). A choice may be difficult to make if we have not gathered the essential information, but this merely points to an inability or negligence on our part as epistemic agents. It might be that we have all the relevant information at our disposal, are able to understand and process this information successfully, yet still be undecided about which alternative to choose. For example, even if we have successfully researched the projects, finance reports, and effectiveness of two different charities, and have certainty over the accuracy and relevance of the information (what Chang calls “practical certainty”), we still might be uncertain as to which charity we should donate our inheritance (Chang, “Hard Choices” 5).

Already there is an initial similarity here with Derrida’s analysis of the decision: even though we must deliberate and gather as much information as possible, the moment of the decision itself comes with uncertainty. For Derrida this uncertainty is a structural moment of all decisions if they are to be just, yet for Chang this uncertainty only arises in the event of a decision being particularly hard.

In order to diagnose why a decision is hard in this way, Chang claims that uncertainty arises in virtue of the alternatives in the choice situation being structurally “on a par,” such that there are no substantive differences between them that would rationally contribute to choosing one alternative over the other (“Hard Choices” 11). This means that the given reasons for choosing an alternative effectively “run out.” However, just because the reasons do not point to one alternative being chosen over the other, this does not mean that the alternatives are equally as good as each other with respect to the relevant features of the choice. Chang gives two reasons for this.

First, if alternatives in the choice were equally as good as each other, then a small improvement in one of the alternatives would mean that it is now better than the others (Chang, “Hard Choices” 15). For example, faced with the equal alternatives of donating one’s inheritance to Charity A or Charity B, upon finding out that your donation will be 2 per cent more effective in saving lives all other things being equal if you donate to Charity B, then the reasons should point in favour of donating to that charity. But even if this were so, the 2 per cent difference in financial effectiveness might not be as attractive to you because of the qualitative difference in Charity A’s projects and values. In this case, the small financial improvement that comes with giving to Charity B does not make it such that this option is better than the other. Chang claims that in this respect the alternatives are not equally good (because one clearly has a small improvement), but neither is one alternative better than the other (for other reasons different to the small improvement). Secondly, if the alternatives were equally as good as each other then there would be no reason to “choose” one over the other, and instead one could arbitrarily “pick” based on some other consideration not directly relevant to the aspects of the choice situation (Chang, “Are Hard Choices” 117). In effect, the choice could be made by flipping a coin, using chance as a rationally appropriate way to pick one of the alternatives. But given the significance that many ethical decisions will have on our and others’ lives, the possibility to leave such a decision to chance mischaracterizes the phenomenology of what it is like to make them, involving deliberation, uncertainty, and engagement.⁶

For Chang, then, a choice is hard in virtue of the parity of the alternatives, understood as “a fourth possible basic way comparable items can relate beyond the standard trichotomy of being better than, worse than, and equally good” (“Hard Choices” 11). A decision is difficult to make because the given reasons for why one ought to favour one alternative over the other “run out” – they cannot help to determine what one ought to do (Chang, “Are Hard Choices” 107). For example, when deciding which of your students’ dissertations should win the prize this year, it might be that the standard of each dissertation is on a par; some dissertations may be better in some relevant aspects of what makes a good dissertation, whilst other dissertations might be better in other relevant aspects. Yet these qualitative differences mean that with respect to “goodness as a dissertation,” each one is not as equally good as the other – it would be misguided to merely “pick” a winning dissertation, and a small improvement in one dissertation will not necessarily result in it being better than the others overall given the differing importance of evaluation criteria. In this case, choosing a winning dissertation would be considered a hard choice due to the parity of the alternatives.

When the given reasons of a decision run out so that the alternatives in a choice are on a par, Chang suggests that as rational agents we generate “will-based” reasons to determine what we have an all-things-considered reason to do. According to Chang, will-based reasons are created by our own normative power, by putting one’s agency or will “behind some feature of one of the options,” so that we “commit” or “stand for” one of the alternatives (“Hard Choices” 16). In this way, Chang claims that “agents can make it true that they have most reason to do one thing rather than another directly through an activity of their own wills,” and so when someone commits to one of the alternatives in a choice situation, it is their agency – “the very activity of committing” – that determines what they ought to do (17). The rationality of making hard decisions lies in the way that the decision-maker dedicates themselves to the choice they have made, confidently committing their agency to that choice and so determining how they constitute and exercise their rational agency.

Chang qualifies, though, that using one’s normative power to commit to a choice is only one of the ways in which a decision-maker can respond to a hard choice. The other option is to merely “drift” into one of the alternatives (Chang, “Hard Choices” 19). One could, for example, choose one of the alternatives because it is the one that your parents want you to choose, one that involves less of an emotional or financial risk, or one that merely involves less effort. Even though drifting does not involve “committing” to an alternative, it is still, according to Chang, rationally permissible provided that the alternatives in hard choices are on a par and there are no given reasons that you would be acting against (because the reasons have simply “run out”). And so, practical rationality permits us to either commit or drift when making a hard choice, and both responses will determine how one constitutes and exercises one’s rational agency.⁷

Importantly, what this analysis of hard choices implies is that responding to hard choices is an exercise of rational agency rather than a non-rational or a-rational response. Given that hard choices are paradigmatically the kinds of choices that involve the most important personal and ethical decisions we have to make, Chang claims that they “present opportunities for exercising our rational capacities to the fullest” (“Are Hard Choices” 118). Rather than making a decision for no reason at all (such as an instinctual or emotional response), we do so by either committing to or drifting into one of the alternatives, and these are both rational responses if alternatives are on a par. The main justification Chang gives for this is the intuition that the paradigmatic kinds of hard choices should not be decisions that are made non-rationally or a-rationally. If decision-making in response to hard choices was not an exercise of rational agency, then Chang claims this would be counter-intuitive, resulting in many of our life choices being “significantly nonrational” (119). And so, for Chang, making a hard choice is an exercise of rational agency, and the choice itself can be understood as rationally justified insofar as one opts to commit to or drift into one of the alternatives.

IV the moment of madness – making impossible decisions

What seems to separate Derrida’s and Chang’s accounts of making a hard or just decision is the way in which the decision falls either within or outside the scope of rationality. For Derrida, the moment in which the just decision is made is an a-rational moment of “madness” that is heterogeneous to and discontinuous with the necessary calculation, deliberation, and information gathering that comes before it. For Chang, however, hard decisions are made within the scope of practical rationality, as a commitment to a choice or by drifting into one of the alternatives. For Derrida, the lack of rationality in the moment of a decision provides the very condition of the possibility for justice,⁸ yet for Chang, hard decisions are those which paradigmatically provide the possibility to constitute and explore one’s own rational agency (“Hard Choices” 19).

A further point of contention between the two accounts is the way in which the decision-maker is said to respond to the “hardness” (in Chang’s case) or “impossibility” (in Derrida’s case) of the decision. For Derrida, the aporia of the decision results in an anxiety that continues to “haunt” and linger after the decision has been made. The experience of the ordeal and a lack of “good conscience” is part of the structural impossibility of justice, and must come with any decision that is said to be ethical or just. For Chang, however, even though a hard choice is one in which given reasons “run out,” the decision is made by generating a will-based justification for the choice that is made, committing to or drifting into the decision as if the right choice has been made. This confidence is misplaced in Derrida’s writing; believing that one has acted in good conscience is the mark of someone who has not made an ethical decision, who has negated the freedom and responsibility that is necessary to attend to the singularity of the other. For Chang, the confidence of commitment signals the very responsibility and freedom that generates the source of one’s rationality; for Derrida, responsibility and freedom are only respected through the impossibility of rationality in the moment of the decision. Chang’s account specifies confidence and agency, yet Derrida writes of doubt and aporia.

I propose that it is in these seemingly substantial differences that an intervention and conversation between the two authors can be found. I suggest that Chang’s account offers a way to interpret Derrida’s moment of madness as a structural feature of the decision in which the given reasons “run out” and the alternatives are “on a par.” Despite the calculation, deliberation, and knowledge that are a pre-requisite for a non-arbitrary decision, and no matter how certain we may think we are given our theoretical reflection on the reasons that point in favour of one alternative over the other, eventually a decision must be made. In this moment, Chang’s theory of practical rationality tells us that the given reasons of the choice fail to provide a prescription, rule, or calculation that will tell us what to do. For Derrida, the moment of decision is a “leap” that disconnects with rationality, insofar as subsuming the particular under the rule amounts to a negation of the alterity and singularity of the other. This suspension of knowledge is structurally necessary because, in Chang’s terminology, the given reasons for making a decision one way or the other “run out” – the ethical norms and rules and laws fail to give us certainty that our decision is indeed just. Derrida’s “mad” discontinuity with knowledge can be translated as Chang’s lack of given reasons. The difference that lies between the two accounts at this point is the scope of this claim: for Chang the lack of given reasons is only relevant when a decision’s alternatives are on a par, yet for Derrida the discontinuity with reason is a structural part of what it is to make any just decision.

The necessary experience of doubt and anxiety that Derrida describes as haunting the decision has the potential to lead to impotence, an inability to make a decision, stuck and powerless in the moment of “terrible” undecidability between the calculable and incalculable. But as Derrida also writes, justice requires a decision to be made, and Chang’s notions of “commitment” and “drifting” give us an understanding of how it is possible to make a choice in the face of an impossible decision. In other words, I suggest that Chang’s account helps to explain why, for Derrida, we can and should be affirmative, despite the denial and negation of possibility. Although Chang and Derrida differ in their accounts of how a decision either promotes rational agency (for Chang) or momentarily suspends it (for Derrida), they need not be mutually exclusive.

When given reasons run out, Chang suggests that it is our agency and freedom that gives us the normative power to choose one alternative over the other. This agency also enables us to take responsibility for the decision made; we did not rely on pre-ordained laws, norms, or rules, or on the deliberation and calculation that we engaged in before making the decision, but rather our own sense of self, what we stand for, and what we value – we have generated the reasons for the choice ourselves. Making a hard decision requires that in face of inevitable uncertainty, doubt, and anxiety, we ultimately commit to or drift into one of the alternatives, and this gives us will-based reasons that explain why we made that particular decision. Importantly, if we commit to a decision then we have exercised our rational agency to a higher degree than if we have merely drifted. Chang highlights the empowering way a lack of given reasons can generate rational agency so that a choice can be made.

Even though Chang suggests that commitment enables a decision to be rationally justified with the reasons created by one’s will, this does not entail that it is ethically or normatively justified, that one can rest in good conscience that one has chosen the “just” alternative. I take it that Chang does not imply that a commitment necessarily entails unwavering confidence that we have willed the right decision, or a blind acceptance of what we have chosen without further deliberation. When we commit to a loved one, for example, this commitment is not characterized by one decision moment that we unquestioningly accept or cannot escape from, but is often a constant process of decision-making. We are entitled to, and we are free to reflect, change our mind, re-make our choice, and admit when we have got it wrong.

Chang claims that commitment to a choice “transforms” the decision-maker, the act of choice is the act of creating “new reasons for ourselves,” and these new reasons have the potential to determine and shape our normative characters, our sense of who we are, and what we stand for (“Transformative Choices” 242, 275). This goes some way to explain the normative response to the impossibility of the decision that Derrida describes – the anxiety, the doubt, the terrible experience of the ordeal. We feel the normative character of this experience not merely because the decision is structurally (rationally) impossible, but because we must choose in the face of this impossibility. This choice, such that it breaks free from our given reasons, is one that we will necessarily have to take responsibility for, and one that will shape our sense of who we are, what we stand for, and what we have committed to. Not only is commitment to a choice compatible with the anxiety that is felt in the undecidability of justice, but it can point to why this anxiety lingers on to question our own normative agency even after the decision is made. Because we must choose, and this requires and is in part constitutive of our agency, the moment of decision is a moment of risk. It shapes our sense of who we are, what we value, and what we commit to. We don’t want to get it wrong, but inevitably we cannot be sure that we won’t.

Chang’s account of decision-making presupposes a subject who is defined in terms of agency, freedom, and will. The commitment generates, defines, and transforms the agency of the decision-maker, producing the reasons by which to rationally justify the choice that is made. By contrast, to maintain the irreducibility and possibility of the other, Derrida considers the decision as an interruption of the agency of the decision-maker, as a hiatus of any absolute assurance that “I” am making a just decision. Derrida writes of the event of justice not as a moment of empowering agency, but as an arrivance, one that would “surprise” the decision-maker due to it’s being a choice that is impossible to make. The decision cannot be made by “me,” because

if it is something “possible” for me, if it is only the predicate of what I am and can be, I don’t decide […] That is why I often say, and try to demonstrate, how “my” decision is and ought to be the decision of the other in me, a “passive” decision, a decision of the other that does not exonerate me from any of my responsibility.⁹ (Derrida and Roudinesco 52–53)

For Derrida, the decision is made possible because I suspend my agency and rationality, because I stop calculating and accumulating knowledge, because I have interrupted “myself.” This break with agency seems inconsistent with the generation of agency and reason that comes with Chang’s account: Derrida writes of the disruption of agency, whereas Chang promises the generation of it.

Yet despite this divergence, there is still a moment of affordance between the two. Although Derrida writes that the decision is “passive” (as quoted above), this passivity refers to the fissure of one’s agency, that in the moment of the decision one’s agency and rationality are suspended, inactive, accepting of the inevitability of the impossible choice. Yet, at the same, Derrida writes in Aporias that the experience of the impossible decision is not passive: “a sort of nonpassive endurance of the aporia was the condition of responsibility and of decision” (16). The aporia is the name given to the “interminable experience” of being caught between the contradiction of both rejecting and conserving the rule, collecting and discarding knowledge, recognizing the necessity and impossibility of making a decision. “Such an experience must remain such if one wants to think, to make come or to let come any event of decision or of responsibility” (ibid.). The possibility of the decision, of taking responsibility for the decision that is made, and of the surprising anxiety-inducing arrivance of the event of the decision, requires, for Derrida, both a passivity and a non-passivity. Making a just decision necessitates a “mad” suspension of agency and rationality (that is, a passivity of agency), but the experience of this impossible “madness” must be non-passively “endured.” The lingering anxiety of the endless, interminable inadequacy of the just decision must be endured, wrestled with, felt, experienced, by the decision-maker as agent of the decision. The just decision necessitates both the interruption and generation, impossibility and possibility of one’s agency.

While it might be tempting to focus on the “madness” and undecidability of the decision, which requires the cessation of agency and the momentary upheaval of the subject, Chang’s account affords us an opportunity to recall that the decision is also one of possibility. Making a decision is necessitated by the demands of justice, and the experience of this undecidable decision also requires a non-passive agency, a subject that makes a commitment to a choice, and endures the anxiety that comes with it. For Chang, this commitment transforms the decision-maker, generating and defining their agency. But this commitment need not be a possibility that is marred by good conscience, unfaltering dedication to the choice, and lack of further deliberation. Instead, perhaps this agency is what makes possible that the decision-maker is haunted by the terrible absurdity that comes with the aporia, making possible that the decision is undecidable, that the decision is not only structurally impossible, but experienced as such. It is here that Derrida’s writing can be used to supplement Chang’s notion of commitment and exercise of rational agency. Perhaps it is this realization – that when reasons run out our very commitment to the choice is also a moment of madness – that allows for the possibility to make hard decisions and negotiate the challenge of justice with both affirmation and hesitation, doubt and commitment, passivity and non-passivity. Perhaps this “mad” commitment is what Derrida calls a “pledge,” the making of a promise to continually attend to the singularity of the other, the promise of justice and the anxiety and uncertainty that comes with it; a pledge that is, according to Derrida, only made possible by its impossibility to fulfil.¹⁰

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2022 Derrida Today conference in Washington, DC. I am grateful to the participants of the parallel session on “Ethical Response” for their helpful comments during the question session of my talk. I am particularly grateful to Matthias Fritsch for his valuable feedback and suggestions, as well as Steven Gormley for his inspiring lectures at the University of Essex in 2017, which were central to shaping my interpretation of Derrida's ethical turn. Any mistakes in interpretation are my own.

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See, for example, passages in Derrida, “Force of Law” 16; Negotiations 200; Paper Machine 20; Of Hospitality 45.

2 Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this quotation.

3 See also Geoffrey Bennington’s 2011 interpretation of Derrida’s use of the term “madness” as borrowed from Kierkegaard.

4 See, for example, the passages in Derrida and Düttmann 7; Derrida and Roudinesco 53; Derrida et al. 34; Derrida, Rogues 145; Deconstruction in a Nutshell 19.

5 For a similar iteration of these questions, see Derrida, “Force of Law” 23; Psyche: Inventions of the Other 166.

6 Chang also rejects the view that a choice is hard in virtue of either “incomparability” or “incommensurability” of the alternatives (see “Are Hard Choices”; “Hard Choices” 6–10). For the purposes of the discussion here I leave aside an explanation and analysis of these arguments. Even if the alternatives in a choice were comparable with respect to justice, and commensurable in terms of a shared unit of measurement that could be used to determine the extent to which an alternative is just, I take it that Derrida would still insist the moment of decision is heterogeneous to knowledge, including the rules and calculations that would be involved in determining the comparability and commensurability of alternatives.

7 Some might object to Chang’s view on the basis that relying on will-based reasons results in the plausibility of justifying one’s choices ad hoc or retrospectively, akin to hindsight bias or wrongful justification. As such, Chang must quality that the will-based reasons that generate either a commitment to or drifting acceptance of one of the alternatives must not be generated after the fact. However, this objection can similarly be brought against traditional views of attributing reasons to a decision, so the objection is not unique to Chang’s account. Thanks to Matthias Fritsch for raising this point during the question session of the 2022 Derrida Today conference.

8 See, for example, passages in Derrida, “Force of Law” 24; Politics of Friendship 219; Specters of Marx 65.

9 Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this quotation and point of difference.

10 See, for example, Derrida’s mention of the “pledge” in Specters of Marx (47, 51) and For What Tomorrow (Derrida and Roudinesco 53). For interpretations of Derrida’s use of the term, see Kronick and Evink.