Perhaps … 

Abstract

The formulae “perhaps” and “perhaps not,” […] we adopt in place of “perhaps it is and perhaps it is not” […]. But here again we do not fight about phrases […] these expressions are indicative of non-assertion.

 Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism

One could spend years on […] the perhaps […] whose modality will render fictional and fragile everything that follows […]. One does not testify in court and before the law with “perhaps.”

 Jacques Derrida, Demeure: Fiction and Testimony

Notes

Notes

1 See Martha Nussbaum, “Sceptic Purgatives: Therapeutic Arguments in Ancient Skepticism,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 29.4 (October 1991): 521–22, 536, 538, 541.

2 See Nussbaum 527. The Pyrrhonist does accept “beliefs” that “induce […] assent involuntarily” (Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, trans. R.G. Bury (London: Heinemann, 1967) 1.19).

3 See Sextus 1.10; Nussbaum 529; Christopher Hookway, Scepticism (London: Routledge, 1990) 4. Pyrrho is thought to have visited India (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, trans. R.D. Hicks (London: Heinemann, 1925) 9.61; R.J. Hankinson, The Sceptics (London: Routledge, 1995) 58 ff.), which raises questions about the relationship between Pyrrhonism and Eastern thought. Interestingly, Nietzsche refers to Pyrrho as a “Buddhist for Greece” (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. W. Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968) § 437. Hereafter WP).

4 See Sextus 1.13–17; Nussbaum 538.

5 Sextus 3.280; see also Nussbaum 540, 545. While the strength of treatment may alter, there remains an essential methodology of oppositional argumentation here (Sextus 1.31–34). It is therefore misleading for Sextus to claim that Pyrrhonism lacks a method. See Derrida's remarks on “opposition” in Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc (Northwestern UP, 1997) 116–17. Hereafter LI.

6 Sextus 1.187.

7 Sextus 1.8.

8 See Diogenes Laertius 9.77–78; Hookway 1; Nussbaum 548.

9 Sextus 1.4.

10 See Sextus 1.3–4. Sextus describes the Heraclitean (1.210 ff.), Cyrenaic (1.215 ff.) and Protagorean (1.216 ff.) philosophies as “Dogmatic,” and the thought of Plato, Arcesilausas and Carneades as “Academic” (1.220 ff.).

11 Both Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958) § 131 (hereafter PI); Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. C. Barrett (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) 72 (hereafter L&C)) and Nietzsche (WP § 446) accuse philosophers of “dogmatism.”

12 Sextus 1.2.

13 See Nietzsche, WP § 455.

14 According to Athenaeus (quoting Timon): “Desire is absolutely the first of all bad things” (A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley (eds.), The Hellenistic Philosophers Vol. I: Translations of the Principal Sources, with Philosophical Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987) 20).

15 Sextus 1.59, 196 ff.; see also Diogenes Laertius 9.105. This is not a trivial manoeuvre, for as Ludwig Wittgenstein remarks: “When language-games change, then there is a change in concepts, and with concepts the meaning of words change” (On Certainty, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe and D. Paul (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999) § 65 (hereafter OC); see also Zettel, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) § 438 (hereafter ZT)). Note Richard Rorty's voluntarism on this matter (Philosophy and Social Hope (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999) xviii–xix, xxii, 176 (hereafter PSH)), and passages of a more voluntaristic flavour in Wittgenstein (Notebooks 1914–1916, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979) 98 (hereafter NB)).

16 See Hookway 9.

17 Sextus 2.20; see also 1.114 ff.; Diogenes Laertius 9.90, 94–95. Richard Popkin reiterates many of these issues in relation to the epistemological crisis of the Reformation (The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley: U of California P, 1979) 1–2, 13, 51).

18 Sextus 1.22 my emphasis; see also Diogenes Laertius 9.103–04.

19 See Nussbaum 523.

20 While the Pyrrhonist criticizes the dogmatist for opposing natural inclination, she also suggests that theoretical dogmatism is itself of natural origin (Nussbaum 530) – what one might call pre-philosophical beliefs (Nussbaum 526).

21 See Nussbaum 523, 534.

22 Sextus 1.205.

23 Diogenes Laertius 9.68.

24 On the similarities between the human and animal, see Sextus 1.62–78.

25 Nussbaum 523.

26 See Nussbaum 529.

27 Nussbaum 532.

28 Nussbaum 546; see also B. Inwood and L.P. Gerson, Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988) 238.

29 Diogenes Laertius 9.62.

30 Sextus 1.19.

31 See M.F. Burnyeat, “Can the Skeptic Live His Skepticism?” in The Skeptical Tradition, ed. M.F. Burnyeat (Berkeley: U of California P, 1983) 126.

32 See Nussbaum 533.

33 Sextus 1.27–28; see also Diogenes Laertius 9.101.

34 Sextus 3.236; see also Nussbaum 524, 531.

35 See Sextus 1.25–30. Compare with Nietzsche, WP § 260.

36 Sextus 1.29–30; see also Diogenes Laertius 9.108.

37 See Inwood and Gerson 238; John D. Caputo, Against Ethics: Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation with Constant Reference to Deconstruction (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993) 29. Hereafter AETH.

38 See Sextus 1.27–28.

39 Sextus 1.25.

40 See Nussbaum 527, 529.

41 Sextus 1.12.

42 See Nussbaum 545.

43 Long and Sedley 20.

44 See Nussbaum 544.

45 Of course, even conceding this, the Pyrrhonist could still justify himself on pragmatic grounds; that although a life totally devoid of commitment may be impossible, Pyrrhonism still offers the best way of minimizing such troublesome commitments.

46 Sextus 1.32. There are ten “modes” of Pyrrhonian argumentation (Sextus 1.36 ff.; Diogenes Laertius 9.79–88).

47 Sextus 1.10.

48 See Popkin 63.

49 Diogenes Laertius 9.61; see also 9.74.

50 Nussbaum 540; see also Inwood and Gerson 181–82.

51 See Diogenes Laertius 9.71.

52 Nussbaum 548.

53 Nussbaum thus rightly draws attention to the principle of non-contradiction in the Pyrrhonian method (Nussbaum 548), for this is required in order to bring the patient to a state of indecision between equally plausible (though mutually incompatible) commitments.

54 Nussbaum 530.

55 Nussbaum 528; see also 547; Hookway 5. I shall not discuss here the dis/similarities between the Pyrrhonian and Husserlian epoche (see Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. D. Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969) §§ 7–9 (hereafter CM)).

56 “Introduction” in B. Mates, The Skeptic Way: Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996) 31.

57 Long and Sedley 15.

58 Sextus 1.23.

59 See Sextus 1.197.

60 Sextus 1.194–95.

61 Sextus 1.29; see also Diogenes Laertius 9.108. According to the Pyrrhonist, the attainment of ataraxia should not be purposely sought, for if ataraxia became too teleological a goal, then it too would likely generate additional anxieties (Nussbaum 532; Sextus 1.25–30). Rather, ataraxia comes about “by mere chance” (Nussbaum 530). For a critique of the Pyrrhonian teleology, see Nussbaum 541–45.

62 For detailed treatment of this question, see Burnyeat; Nussbaum 551 ff.

63 Diogenes Laertius 9.107.

64 Indeed, the “orientation to ataraxia” itself becomes quite “natural” (Nussbaum 546; see also 528, 540).

65 Nussbaum 553.

66 See Nussbaum 554.

67 Nussbaum 553; see also Inwood and Gerson 174.

68 Popkin 49.

69 It was this inherent “conservatism” that lay at the heart of the Catholic Pyrrhonian-fideism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Popkin ch. 3).

70 Nussbaum 540.

71 See J. Annas and J. Barnes, The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985) 163–64, 169.

72 See Sextus 1.145 ff.

73 Sextus 1.24.

74 Sextus 1.17; see also 1.231; Inwood and Gerson 239.

75 Nussbaum 554.

76 See Nussbaum 531, 534.

77 See Nussbaum 535. The final part of the Sceptic Way is “instruction of the arts” (Sextus 1.23–24; see also Burnyeat 126).

78 Or what we would consider to be “prejudices.” This qualification highlights a deeper problem: that the very notions of “prejudice” and “intolerance” (and thus by implication “openness” and “tolerance”) cannot even get a foothold in a Pyrrhonian framework.

79 See Annas and Barnes 169. This troubling dimension of Pyrrhonism is nicely dramatized by the “diabolical old man” in Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (London: Corgi, 1961) 261–62). To what extent engaging in such behaviour actually leads to the “appropriate” beliefs (and to what extent “conversion” can be induced by such means), I leave an open question.

80 Nussbaum 531.

81 Much the same can be said of Pyrrhonism's supposed lack of epistemic and ontological commitments.

82 See Nussbaum 528, 540, 546.

83 As Derrida puts it, the “yes is co-extensive with every statement […] yes is the transcendental condition of all performative dimensions” (Jacques Derrida, Acts of Literature (London: Routledge, 1992) 296–98; see also 74, 257, 265, 288, 296–98, 302 (hereafter AL); “The Villanova Roundtable: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida,” in Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York: Fordham UP, 1997) 27 (hereafter VR); (various remarks in) Responsibilities of Deconstruction, eds. J. Dronsfield and N. Midgley, Pli: Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 6 (Summer 1997): 35 (hereafter RD); Points … Interviews 1974–1994, trans. P. Kamuf et al. (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995) 172, 384 (hereafter Po); “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone,” trans. S. Weber, in Religion, eds J. Derrida and G. Vattimo (Cambridge: Polity, 1998) 47 (hereafter F&K); Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. E. Prenowitz (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996) 68 (hereafter AF)). Søren Kierkegaard similarly comments on the “yes” and “promise” (Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, ed. C.E. Moore (The Plough Publishing House, 1999) 13–15).

84 Jacques Derrida, (with B. Steigler) Echographies of Television, trans. J. Bajorek (Cambridge: Polity, 2002) 69; see also 25 (hereafter ET); (various remarks in) Deconstruction Engaged: The Sydney Seminars, eds. P. Patton and T. Smith (Sydney: Power Publications, 2001) 77 (hereafter DE). See also Martin Heidegger's remarks on choosing one's “hero” (Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999) 437 (hereafter B&T)).

85 See Annas and Barnes 169.

86 Richard Rorty, (various remarks in) Deconstruction and Pragmatism, ed. C. Mouffe (London: Routledge, 1996) 15. Hereafter D&P.

87 Rorty's inability to “figure out” precisely “what this method is” (D&P 15) is not inconsonant with Derrida's own insistence that “Deconstruction is not a philosophy or a method […]. It is something which […] was at work before what we call ‘deconstruction’ started” (“Hospitality, justice and responsibility: a dialogue with Jacques Derrida,” in Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy, eds. R. Kearney and M. Dooley (London: Routledge, 1999) 65 (hereafter QE)), and similarly: “what happens deconstructs itself […]. It is not I who deconstruct; rather, something called ‘deconstruction’ happens” (“I Have a Taste for the Secret,” in J. Derrida and M. Ferraris, A Taste for the Secret, trans. G. Donis (Cambridge: Polity, 2001) 80; my emphasis (hereafter TS)). Broadening the concept of hospitality, Derrida speaks of the “autodeconstruction in every concept” – where “Each concept becomes hospitable to its other” (Acts of Religion (London: Routledge, 2002) 362 (hereafter AR)) – and similarly: “Hospitality – this is a name or an example of deconstruction” (AR 364; see also RD 16; Jacques Derrida, “As if I were Dead: An Interview with Jacques Derrida,” in Applying: To Derrida, eds. J. Brannigan, R. Robbins and J. Wolfreys (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996) 225 (hereafter AID); Adieu: To Emmanuel Levinas, trans. P.A. Brault and M. Naas (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999) 80 (hereafter ADEL); Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy, trans. P.P. Trifonas (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) 38 (hereafter EIRP)).

88 Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. M. Dooley and M. Hughes (London: Routledge, 2001) 39; see also 45, 51 (hereafter OCF); Monolingualism of the Other: Or, The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. P. Mensah (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998) 48–49 (hereafter MO). In particular, Derrida's emphasis on the radical “otherness” of the other (ADEL 92) – and, not least, the absolute “surprise” of that which is “to come” – sits uncomfortably alongside his remarks on iterability, singularity, and generality (if the other is indeed radically “other” then how could one ever know that there had been an encounter with “it,” for as such the other “would not even show up” (AL 68; see also Derrida, OCF 23; Jacques Derrida, “Philosophy and Communication: Round-table Discussion Between Ricoeur and Derrida,” in L. Lawlor, Imagination and Chance: The Difference Between the Thought of Ricoeur and Derrida (Albany: State U of New York P, 1992) 142–43 (hereafter P&C))). On a related point concerning testimony, see Jacques Derrida, (with M. Blanchot) The Instant of My Death/Demeure: Fiction and Testimony, trans. E. Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000) 40–42 (hereafter DEM). For Derrida's cautionary reading of Levinas’ own appeal to the “radically other,” see Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. A. Bass (London: Routledge, 1997) 125–29 (hereafter W&D). Similar points are made by Peter Winch (“Nature and Convention,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 20 (1960): 236 (hereafter NC); “Understanding a Primitive Society,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 1.4 (October 1964): 311, 317 (hereafter UPS)); Richard J. Bernstein (The New Constellation: The Ethical–Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge: Polity, 1991) 74 (hereafter TNC)); and Caputo, AETH; “The End of Ethics,” in The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, ed. H. Lafollette (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) 113 (hereafter TEE)).

89 See Derrida, Po 218.

90 Derrida, LI 137.

91 Derrida, W&D 196. See also Derrida's remarks on forgiveness and the “therapy” of reconciliation (OCF 31–32, 41, 50).

92 Derrida, Po 376; see also 219; Derrida, TS 54–55; EIRP 4, 10, 22–23.

93 Derrida, AL 58; see also Derrida, Po 327.

94 See, for example, Emmanuel Levinas’ remarks on the “happy end” (Is It Righteous To Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2001) 134, 197 (hereafter IRB)) and “assurances” (IRB 145, 175).

95 Derrida, QE 67.

96 See Derrida, AR 278; Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. A. Bass (London: Athlone, 1982) 53 (hereafter POS); (various remarks in) Questioning God, eds. J.D. Caputo, M. Dooley and M.J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001) 201–02. Hereafter QG.

97 Derrida, POS 19; see also Derrida, Po 219, 225, 374; EIRP 27–28, 35–36, 48, 51. Note also Derrida's remarks on “ordinary” and “extraordinary” language (Jacques Derrida, (various remarks in) Arguing with Derrida, Ratio (new series) 13.4 (Dec. 2000): 415–16 (hereafter AD)).

98 See Derrida, AL 68; LI 119; AR 362, 364.

99 Derrida, AR 258.

100 Inwood and Gerson 174.

101 Jacques Derrida, “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow),” trans. D. Wills, Critical Inquiry 28 (winter 2002): 402. Hereafter TA.

102 Derrida, DE 113. Rather, “there are an infinite number of different animals” (Derrida, DE 113).

103 Derrida, TA 398; see also Derrida, AD 407.

104 Derrida, TA 415.

105 Jacques Derrida, Without Alibi, trans. P. Kamuf (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002) 231 (hereafter WA). Although Derrida claims that “We do not know what the figure of what one calls ‘man’ today will be tomorrow” (“A Roundtable Discussion with Jacques Derrida,” in Derrida Downunder, eds. L. Simmons and H. Worth (NZ: Dumore Press, 2001) 262 (hereafter DD); see also Derrida, DE 112), one must, I think, question the idea that the possibilities for “man” are radically open (as Foucault sometimes suggests), and thereby wholly unconstrained by “very general facts of nature” (Wittgenstein, PI 230).

106 See Derrida, LI 132–35. From a Derridean perspective, the Pyrrhonist's view of animality is overly simplistic. For, as Derrida remarks:

when I referred to ‘trace’ rather than ‘human language’ […] it was […] to free the space for another discourse on ‘the animal’ […] ‘trace’ holds for the animal too. So from the very beginning I was against the Cartesian attitude towards animality […] I am constantly critical of Heidegger's concept of animality.

(Derrida, AD 406; see also 404; Derrida, ET 87; QG 47–48; LI 136; Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. G. Bennington and R. Bowlby (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989) ch. 6 (hereafter OS)).

107 Derrida, AR 364.

108 Derrida, AR 363; see also Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, trans. D. Wills (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995) 69 (hereafter GD); (various remarks in) God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, eds. J.D. Caputo and M.J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999) 135. Hereafter GGP.

109 Derrida, TA 394; see also 397, 416; Jacques Derrida, “Marx and Sons,” in Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx, ed. M. Sprinker (London: Verso, 1999) 260. Hereafter M&S.

110 Derrida, QG 69. For an overview of this point, see Bob Plant, “Doing justice to the Derrida–Levinas connection: A response to Mark Dooley,” in Philosophy and Social Criticism 29.4 (2003).

111 Levinas, IRB 52.

112 Emmanuel Levinas, God, Death, and Time, trans. B. Bergo (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000) 12 (hereafter GDT). For a more detailed discussion of this, see Bob Plant, Wittgenstein and Levinas: Ethical and Religious Thought (London: Routledge, 2005) especially ch. 8.

113 Sextus 1.194.

114 Derrida, RD 4–5; my emphasis; see also Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, trans. G. Collins (London: Verso, 1997) ch. 2. Hereafter POF.

115 Derrida, RD 2; my emphasis.

116 Derrida, F&K 17; see also 7; Derrida, DE 68; DD 259. Note also Derrida's remarks on “messianicity” (M&S 253 ff.) and the “democracy to come” (AL 378; RD 2, 25, 30; Jacques Derrida, “Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism,” trans. S. Critchley, in Deconstruction and Pragmatism, ed. C. Mouffe (London: Routledge, 1996) 80, 83 (hereafter RDP); On the Name, trans. D. Wood et al. (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995) 29 (hereafter ON)).

117 Derrida, QE 69.

118 Although this cannot be an absolute surprise, for otherwise “that would make it impossible to recognize the surprise as a surprise” – indeed we would not even know “that anything was happening at all” (Caputo, AETH 74).

119 Derrida, QE 70.

120 See Jacques Derrida, Aporias, trans. T. Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1993) 33–34 (hereafter AP); Derrida, VR 17; “Hospitality,” trans. B. Stocker and F. Morlock, Angelaki 5.3 (2000): 8, 10 (hereafter HOS). “[I]f there is a categorical imperative,” Derrida claims, “it consists in doing everything for the future to remain open […]. The other may come, or he may not. I don’t want to programme him, but rather leave a place for him to come if he comes” (Derrida, TS 83).

121 See Matthew's gospel 24:36, 39, 42–51, and Derrida's remarks in VR 22–24; TS 31.

122 Derrida, QE 70. See also Derrida's remarks in RD 8; GGP 77; ADEL 62–63; HOS 14, 17 n. 17, and Levinas on the “visitation” in Emmanuel Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996) 53–54, 59 (hereafter BPW).

123 Derrida, MO 89 n. 9; see also Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. P. Kamuf (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992) 9, 35, 45–46, 55 (hereafter GT); Levinas IRB 54, 218, 250.

124 See Derrida's remarks in DEM 91; Po 198; GD 68; RD 10, 23, 28–29; F&K 31; MO 62; QE 70–71. Note also Kierkegaard's remarks on “risk” and “faith” (SWK 70–73).

125 Derrida, AP 12.

126 Derrida, HOS 353.

127 See Jacques Derrida, “Foreigner Question” and “Step of Hospitality/No Hospitality,” in J. Derrida and A. Dufourmantelle, Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle invites Jacques Derrida to Respond, trans. R. Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000) 61 (hereafter OH). As Levinas remarks, the exposed, mortal “body is the very condition of giving, with all that giving costs […] [giving] implies a body, because to give to the ultimate degree is to give bread taken from one's own mouth” (GDT 188).

128 Derrida, RD 9.

129 Derrida, F&K 17.

130 Derrida, AL 269.

131 Derrida, ON 7. Or, in Wittgenstein's words, as though one was following “a doctor's prescription” (Culture and Value, trans. P. Winch (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) 53; see also 8 (hereafter C&V)). Thus, “For an event to happen, the possibility of the worst […] must remain a possibility […]. Otherwise the good event, the good Messiah, could not happen either” (Derrida, RD 9).

132 Derrida, QE 66; my emphasis; see also Derrida, LI 116.

133 Derrida, QE 66; see also Derrida, GD 24, 77; RD 10, 20, 34; LI 148, GGP 133–34; Jacques Derrida, Resistances of Psychoanalysis, trans. P. Kamuf et al. (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998) 113 (hereafter RP).

134 Derrida, AR 252.

135 Although I will not pursue it here, there is doubtless something to be said regarding Derrida's account of the decision and Wittgenstein's remarks on following a “rule blindly” (Wittgenstein, PI § 219).

136 Derrida, AP 17.

137 Derrida, AR 253.

138 Derrida, Po 17.

139 Derrida, AR 252.

140 See Derrida, GD 24, 95; AID 223; TS 61; VR 19. If someone decides to determine her actions on the throw of a dice, clearly this decision cannot itself be determined by a throw of the dice. (Neither can she determine what specific course of action each number represents by throwing the dice.) Moreover, each subsequent throw of the dice reaffirms or countersigns the (non-calculable) decision to determine her actions on the throw of a dice. These points relate to Derrida's remarks on the “moment of foundation” (for example, of law) and the possibility of self-foundation (AR 228 ff.).

141 Derrida, AR 242. In one of his very few allusions to Wittgenstein, here Derrida speaks of “the mystical” (AR 242; see also 206, 208). Elsewhere, Derrida similarly remarks that

the. moment of foundation, the instituting moment, is anterior to the law or legitimacy which it founds. It is thus outside the law, and violent by that very fact […]. This foundational violence is not only forgotten. The foundation is made in order to hide it; by its essence it tends to organise amnesia, sometimes under the celebration and sublimation of the grand beginnings.

(OCF. 57; see also Derrida, AL 192–93, 205). Elsewhere, Derrida thus refers to “origin-like effects” (P&C 135).

142 See Derrida, W&D 133; GGP 133–34.

143 Derrida, QE 73; see also Derrida, ADEL 117; AD 383. Derrida's few allusions to “a pure concept of forgiveness” (QG 62; see also 57) and a “pure hospitality” which provide the “criterion” (GGP 133) for ethical–political life are thus misleading. For such “pure” concepts do not offer determinate criteria. Rather, what they guarantee is that any ethical–political act (no matter how genuine or philanthropic) will necessarily remain inadequate to the excessive demands of ethical–political responsibility (not least because any such act will always be made at the expense of someone/something else). This is why Derrida elsewhere remarks: “justice is not the law. Justice is what gives us the impulse, the drive, or the movement to improve the law […] justice is always unequal to itself […] the call for justice is never […] fully answered. That is why one cannot say ‘I am just.’ ” (VR 17; my emphasis) See also Kierkegaard's remarks on “choice” and “decision” (SWK 3–12, 73).

144 Jacques Derrida, “By Force of Mourning,” trans. P-A. Brault and M. Naas, Critical Inquiry 22 (1996): 177. Hereafter BFM.

145 Derrida, QE 67; see also Derrida, ON 59; GD 25; TS 22.

146 See Derrida, LI 135.

147 Derrida, AP 16; my emphasis. “[T]here is no justice without [the] experience, however impossible it may be, of aporia” (Derrida, AR 244; see also Derrida, RP 36–37). Though, Derrida adds, “there is something passive in the most radical decision” (RD 14), and likewise: “the enigma of responsibility lies in this aporia: that a decision is something passive in a certain sense of passivity” (AID 222–23).

148 Derrida, QG 62.

149 Derrida, DE 63, my emphasis; see also Derrida, QE 73; OCF 56; POS 86; TS 63.

150 Derrida, AP 32. “What I dream of, what I try to think as the ‘purity’ of a forgiveness worthy of its name, would be a forgiveness without power: unconditional but without sovereignty” (Derrida, OCF 59).

151 See Derrida, RD 10, 20; VR 14.

152 See Heidegger's remarks on the “nullity” (B&T 331).

153 Derrida, VR 17.

154 Derrida, GGP 72; see also Derrida, DE 86; QE 66; AR 244; OCF 45, 54; EIRP 26.

155 Derrida, DEM 72.

156 Derrida, TS 10.

157 Derrida, LI 146.

158 Derrida, DEM 92. On the relation between fiction and testimonial truth see Derrida, DEM 27, 29–30, 72.

159 Derrida, LI 136; see also Jacques Derrida, “History of the Lie: Prolegomena,” in Futures: Of Jacques Derrida, ed. R. Rand (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2001). Hereafter HL.

160 Derrida, AR 243; see also 254; Derrida, RD 27.

161 Derrida, Po 384; see also Derrida, RDP 82; AR 256; WA 189; DD 254, 260; F&K 18, 26, 44; M&S 255–56. Levinas likewise speaks of the “bonjour” that “underlies all discourse” (IRB 47; see also 211–12).

162 Derrida, AD 382.

163 Derrida, WA 140; see also Derrida, AD 382–83; F&K 63; DEM 49.

164 Derrida, F&K 28.

165 Derrida, TS 73.

166 Derrida, DEM 41. I sense a minimal realism in these remarks; that it is because the world is sufficiently stable and independent (not that all possible observers are mysteriously prone to having the same phenomenal experiences) that “anyone whosoever in my place would have seen the same thing.” On this point, see Derrida's remarks on the “indeterminacy” in “our relation to the world and to ourselves,” not “in the things themselves” (Derrida, RD 15), Husserl's remarks on the “here” and “there” (Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy (Second Book) (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1989) 88, 171, 177, 201, 206 (hereafter IPP); Husserl, CM 92), Hofstadter's remarks on the spatiality of the “Da” of “Dasein” in Heidegger's work (Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. A. Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982) 334–35 (hereafter BPP)), and Heidegger's own comments on the “here” and “there” (B&T 171).

167 Derrida, QE 82; my emphasis.

168 Derrida, VR 23; my emphasis; see also Derrida, AD 418. Note also Winch's remarks on “truth-telling” (NC 242–46).

169 Derrida, Po 359; see also Derrida, ON 43, 81; MO 9; GGP 60; RP 36–37.

170 Derrida, GGP 72; my emphasis; see also 77; Derrida, GT 8, 31; RD 30.

171 Derrida, AP 16–17; see also Derrida, LI 116.

172 Derrida, MO 62; see also Derrida, ADEL 116; Peter Winch, Trying to Make Sense (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987) 179 (hereafter TRMS).

173 See Derrida, RD 23. For “there would be […] no responsibility, without the experience of some undecidability” (Derrida, QE 66). Peter Winch makes a number of related points regarding decision, judgement and risk (“Apel's ‘Transcendental Pragmatics,’ ” in S.C. Brown (ed.) Philosophical Disputes in the Social Sciences (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1979) 60–62; Winch, TRMS 179).

174 Wittgenstein, OC § 162.

175 Emmanuel Levinas, “Ethics of the Infinite,” in R. Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: the Phenomenological Heritage (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984) 63 (hereafter EI); see also Derrida, TS 89.

176 Derrida, OH 55; see also Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. A. Lingis (Duquesne UP, 1996) 157, 170–74 (hereafter T&I); Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other, trans. M.B. Smith and B. Harshav (New York: Columbia UP, 1998) 20–21. Hereafter EN.

177 See Derrida, GD 67–68, 70–71.

178 See Derrida, Po 272–73.

179 See Derrida, RDP 83–84. In any case, there would here be a decision to act randomly which would not itself be of the order of the “random.”

180 See Derrida, Po 272–73, 359; AID 223; QE 66; TS 61.

181 To be anti-rational is to take a distinctive stance toward rationality – it is to seek to subvert the rule of rationality, and thus (albeit tacitly) to recognize the rule itself. Here, see Derrida's remarks on truth (LI 136).

182 Derrida, AR 252; see also Derrida, GD 95.

183 Derrida, AR 244.

184 See Derrida, ADEL 112–13, 115.

185 Derrida, AL 195. As Pascal remarks concerning the wager on God's existence: “you must bet. There is no option; you have [already] embarked on the business” (The Pensées, trans. J.M. Cohen (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961) 157, my emphasis). On the wager and the incalculable see also Derrida, TS 13.

186 See Derrida, AL 298.

187 See Derrida, AL 257, 265, 270, 288, 296–99, 302.

188 See Derrida, AL 297, 299; QG 54.

189 Derrida, RD 20; see also Derrida, QE 67–69.

190 Derrida, QE 69.

191 Jacques Derrida, “Deconstruction and the Other,” in R. Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The Phenomenological Heritage (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984) 120.

192 Derrida, RP 37.

193 Derrida, RD 23.

194 Derrida, GD 51; my emphasis. Compare with Levinas’ remarks in IRB 52, 134, 136, 194, 206. I thus take Caputo's claim that Derrida provokes us to think of “obligation without … the deadening weight of guilt” (John D. Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York: Fordham UP, 1997) 149 (hereafter DIN)) to be potentially misleading. See Caputo's more recent remarks on ethics and “bad conscience” (TEE 116).

195 Nussbaum 546; see also Inwood and Gerson 238.

196 Inwood and Gerson 173–74.

197 Sextus 1.19.

198 See Burnyeat 126.

199 Derrida, AD 351; see also Derrida, DEM 34–36; Winch, TRMS 187–89.

200 Levinas does not seem to think that such indifference is even possible (IRB 184).

201 Here, we might recall Wittgenstein's remark that

Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and heretic […] but wouldn’t I give him reasons? Certainly; but how far do they go? At the end of reasons comes persuasion. (OC §§ 611–12).

202 Levinas suggests that

From the very start you are not indifferent to the other. From the very start you are not alone! Even if you adopt an attitude of indifference you are obliged to adopt it! The other counts for you; you answer him as much as he addresses himself to you; he concerns you! (IRB 50)

203 Derrida, VR 16.

204 Wittgenstein, ZT § 540.

205 Wittgenstein, OC § 359. Of Levinas’ work, Derrida remarks:

It is as if the welcome, just as much as the face, just as much as the vocabulary that is co-extensive and thus profoundly synonymous with it, were a first language, a set made up of quasi-primitive […] words.. (ADEL 25; my emphasis)

I leave the following questions open: Is Wittgenstein's minimal naturalism incompatible with: (i) Derrida's reference to the “quasi-primitive”? and/or (ii) his account of “general iterability” and denial of “ontological, archaeological, theological, etc. origin[s]” (P&C 135; see also Derrida, LI 129) – that is, Derrida's denial of “a certainty immediate and prior to all experience of the trace” (P&C 162; see also Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. A. Bass (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982) 307–30)? Sincere thanks to John Sellars for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper.