Spaces of hospitality

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Notes

James Keye

Heidrun Friese

Lausitzer Str. 7

D‐10999

Berlin

Germany

E‐mail: [email protected]

European University Institute

Department of History and Civilization

Via Boccaccio 121

I‐50133 Firenze

Italy

E‐mail: [email protected]

Heidrun Friese

Lausitzer Str. 7

D‐10999

Berlin

Germany

E‐mail: [email protected]

F. Kafka, The Castle 12. All references to Kafka are to the English edition. Page numbers are given in the body of the text. The following considerations are based on my inaugural lecture at the Fachbereich Philosophie und Geschichtswissenschaften at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe‐Universität, Frankfurt am Main on 11 December 2002. I would like to thank the members of the faculty for their hospitality, especially Professors Axel Honneth and Klaus E. Müller who taught me that the “greatest triumphs are those unknown to others.” An earlier version of this paper was published in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 2 (2003): 311–23.

F. Kafka, Das Schloß 349. Brod interpreted both The Trial and The Castle as representations of the “outward forms of divinity (in the Cabalistic sense)” as “judgment and mercy.” The theological elements of this interpretation have been criticized by Walter Benjamin, among others.

G. Simmel, “Exkurs über den Fremden” 766, 767, 766–67; all trans. mine.

P. Klossowski, Die Gesetze der Gastfreundschaft 126.

Simmel, “Exkurs über den Fremden” 764.

Ibid. 765.

Bonnie Honig's discussion of the foreign‐founder inverts the perception of the stranger as a deplorable problem by asking “what does the stranger solve for us?” Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner 4.

E. Benveniste, Indo‐European Languages and Society 71.

“A bond of equality and reciprocity is established between this particular stranger and the citizens of Rome … hostis will signify, he who stands in a compensatory relationship and this is precisely the foundation of hospitality,” as Benveniste notes (Indo‐European Languages and Society 76–77). Simultaneously this meaning was also connected to munus, a position of honour related to reciprocation and to mutuus, a binding contract. Correspondingly, the immunis, the one who did not meet the requirements, became the ingratus. R. Esposito (Communitas: Origine e destino della comunità XIII–XXVI) pointed to the manifold relations between donum, munus and “community.” The relations between “gift, exchange and obligation” have also been discussed by G. Marramao (“Passaggio a Oriente, dono scambio obligazone”).

Benveniste, Indo‐European Languages and Society 76–77.

Ibid. 79. Benveniste refers to “institutions of welcoming and reciprocity, thanks to which the men of a given people find hospitality in another, and whereby societies enter into alliances and exchanges” (83).

Ibid. 78. The scenes and topoi of hospitality in the Homeric epic are presented in detail in S. Reece, The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene .

H.‐D. Bahr, Die Sprache des Gastes: Eine Metaethik 37.

J. Pitt‐Rivers, “Das Gastrecht” 21.

Ibid. 21. One could link up to certain aspects of Agamben's notions of “la nuda vita.” Cf. G. Agamben, Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita .

M. Fortes, “Fremde” 46.

Pitt‐Rivers, “Das Gastrecht” 22; emphasis added.

Kafka, The Castle 47.

Bahr, Die Sprache des Gastes 49.

A.H. Abou‐Said, “Honour and Shame among the Bedouins of Egypt.”

Bahr, Die Sprache des Gastes 27. According to ancient Arab custom it was considered extremely impolite to enquire as to name, origins, goals and purpose of a guest (Pitt‐Rivers, “Das Gastrecht” 22). The Homeric guest scene, however, clearly includes the revelation of name, origins and kinship relations which, however, are revealed only after the meal and the toasts. The Homeric host also demands of his guest the “honest” declarations of name, origin and purpose (cf. Reece, The Stranger's Welcome 29).

Plato addressed this holy, divine order:

• And how a man ought to order what relates to his descendants and his kindred and friends and fellow‐citizens, and the rites of hospitality taught by Heaven, and the intercourse which arises out of all these duties, with a view to the embellishment and orderly regulation of his own life, these things, I say, the laws, as we proceed with them, will accomplish, partly persuading, and partly when natures do not yield to the persuasion of custom, chastising them by might and right, and will thus render our state, if the Gods co‐operate with us, prosperous and happy.

Plato continues:

• In his relations to strangers, a man should consider that a contract is a most holy thing, and that all concerns and wrongs of strangers are more directly dependent on the protection of God, than wrongs done to citizens; for the stranger, having no kindred and friends, is more to be pitied by Gods and men. Wherefore, also, he who is most able to avenge him is most zealous in his cause; and he who is most able is the genius and the god of the stranger, who follow in the train of Zeus, the god of strangers. And for this reason, he who has a spark of caution in him will do his best to pass through life without sinning against the stranger. (Plato, Books 4 and 5)

Pitt‐Rivers, “Das Gastrecht” 20; and Fortes, “Fremde” 76.

Ibid. 66–67.

On the notion of nomos, which first signified taking possession of and distributing pastures, and as such had spatial aspects as well as connotations to justice, see M. Cacciari, Gewalt und Harmonie 109.

Jean‐Jacques Rousseau had already addressed this contemporary dilemma:

• The room we are shown into is very small, but clean and comfortable; a fire is lighted, and we find linen, clothes, and everything we need. “Why,” says Emile, in astonishment, “one would think they were expecting us. The peasant was quite right; how kind and attentive, how considerate, and for strangers too! I would think I am living in the times of Homer.” “I am glad you feel this,” I say, “but you need not be surprised. Where strangers are scarce, they are welcome. Nothing makes people more hospitable than the fact that calls upon their hospitality are rare; when guests are frequent there is an end to hospitality. In Homer's time, people rarely travelled, and travellers were everywhere welcome. Very likely we are the only people who have passed this way this year.” “Never mind,” he says, “to know how to do without guests and yet to give them a kind welcome is its own praise. (J.‐J. Rousseau, Emile, or On Education )

And again, what is addressed is the question of whether guests are needed.

Cf. J. Derrida and A. Dufourmantelle, De l'hospitalité 29.

Derrida refers to the inalienable antinomy of the Law in its “universal singularity” and the plurality of laws and their historical differentiation (Derrida and Dufourmantelle, De l'hospitalité 73). Cf. Derrida: “il y a une histoire de l'hospitalité, une perversion toujours possible de La loi de l'hospitalité (qui peut apparaître inconditionnelle) et des lois qui viennent la limiter, la conditionner en l'inscrivant dans un droit” (Derrida, Cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un effort ! 43).

“… elle lui est aussi étrangement hétérogène que la justice est hétérogène au droit dont elle est pourtant si proche, et en vérité indissociable” (Derrida and Dufourmantelle, De l'hospitalité 29).

We should not forget the specific traditions in which this thought inevitably evolves. Greek thought knew – with the stoic heritage, and the cosmopolitan and Christian traditions (Paulus) – how to see men not as strangers but as brothers and united cosmopolitans. This proposal is additionally profoundly indebted to Emmanuel Levinas's ethics (cf. Derrida, Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas ) but could also be related to E. Jabès (Le Livre de l'hospitalité ).

I. Kant, “Über ein vermeintliches Recht aus Menschenliebe zu lügen”; cf. I. Kant, “Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht.” The rational idea of a peaceful if not friendly community is not an “ethic‐philanthropic” venture but, as Kant stresses, a “legal principle” (emphasis mine). Nations are not legal communities of propriety (communio) but of interrelation (commercium). The law that guarantees this without allowing that the “stranger being legitimated to treat him as an enemy” (der Auswärtige ihn darum als einen Feind zu begegnen berechtigt ware) is cosmopolitan law (ius cosmolpoliticum) which entails the right to visit but not to stay. For the latter, Kant insisted on the need of a “special treaty” (I. Kant, Die Metaphysik der Sitten , sect. 62, “Das Weltbürgerrecht” 475–77).

M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality 31–63, esp. chapter 2, Membership, 33–34. One certainly does not need to share Walzer's communitarian programme to agree with this point.

Bahr, Die Sprache 221.

Cf. Derrida and Dufourmantelle, De l'hospitalité 117. Derrida refers to Levinas: “le language est hospitalité,” and asks “l'éthique est hospitalité” – “cultiver l'étique de l'hospitalité, ce langage n'est‐il pas … tautologique?” (Derrida, Cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un effort! 41–42).

F. Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft 630–31, no. 277.

Simmel, “Exkurs über den Fremden” 770.

J. Clifford, Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century 7.

Such concepts seem to point to “the loss of place as a dominant metaphor for culture.” However, even such approaches – and the insistence on “glocal communities” – repeat a paradigm tied to stabile spaces, well‐integrated fields of research: “it can be very tempting to converge a quest for familiar anthropological ‘fields’ with essentialist categories appearing in public discourses and to justify this as an attentiveness to the ‘voices’ of subordinated ‘others’” (V. Amit and N. Rapport, The Trouble with Community: Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity 3, 4).

Renewed emphasis on “community” and substantial bonds between the ones who belong echo not just the old sociological distinctions between “community” and “society” (Tönnies), “modern vs. traditional” societies and its variations such as “organic vs. mechanical solidarity” (Durkheim), but can be seen as modern attempts to engage with and to remedy modernities. For a discussion of this inversion in contemporary identity politics, see H. Friese, “Pre‐judice and Identity” and Identities: Time, Boundaries and Difference.

The reference is obviously to M. Theunissen (The Other: Studies in the Social Ontology of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Buber . (orig. Der Andere: Studien zur Sozialontologie der Gegenwart.)), which is still the best contribution to the question of the Other.

Derrida and Dufourmantelle, De l'hospitalité 63.

Under the heading “One has to learn to love,” Friedrich Nietzsche at least addressed this question, and related ones such as a “hospitality” to “hearing” (heraushören) and “distinguishing” (unterscheiden) (Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft 559–60, no. 334).

C. Geertz, Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics ix.

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James Keye Heidrun Friese Lausitzer Str. 7 D‐10999 Berlin Germany E‐mail: [email protected] European University Institute Department of History and Civilization Via Boccaccio 121 I‐50133 Firenze Italy E‐mail: [email protected]