Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics by Jacques Derrida Hans-Georg Gadamer & Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

Author:Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, & Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 2016-07-27T13:59:07+00:00

HEIDELBERG, FEBRUARY 6, 1988

On February 6, the day after the conference, a meeting between the philosophers and part of the audience was organized at the Sole d’Oro restaurant in Heidelberg, in the presence of a number of journalists.

Meeting of February 6, 1988

question: I would like to return to the notion of responsibility, but from another point of view. My question is addressed to Jacques Derrida and to Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. You have presented your philosophical work as being, practically, an attempt at a new definition—considering the exhaustion and the general state in which we find the traditional definitions to which we have had recourse up to now. Allow me to ask you whether we might not also pose the problem of your responsibility, if not as philosophers at least as intellectuals, in the delay effect, in the constrained and forced character (which you yourselves have recognized) of the circumstances at once complex and somewhat equivocal: the publication of the book by Farias. Can we ask you why, finally, it is only now, when you are, as you said, “disarmed,” that you have begun to speak about subjects concerning which you describe at once the gravity and the painful character of the discussions they bring with them? For by the same token you risk the accusation, albeit excessive and caricatural, of speaking only when constrained and forced, whereas you have at your disposal a long established knowledge and a permanent aptitude to speak out.

jacques derrida: This question is no doubt addressed more directly to me, given what I said. Before trying to respond, one remark. Since you are in fact posing to me the question of responsibility, I would like to recall, as I have already said, what troubles me about the format of the discussion of Heidelberg: the public spectacle, the simplifying constraints that that could produce; and what troubles me regarding the philosophical ethics of putting forward propositions that I knew would be simplifying and that, because of the situation, would have a greater echo than what all of us here would publish after weighing our words. So my request, since some of those who are here are going to publish phrases, or serve as a conduit for what we are saying, my request is the following: I appeal to your responsibility to respect not only what we say, but also what we do not say, that is, the precautions that we take with regard to simplification. And if one must quote a phrase spoken here in these conditions of improvisation, I ask that one take account also of the work on the basis of which, for half a century, for a quarter of a century, we have been trying to confront and to explicate [nous expliquer avec] these responsibilities. Therefore, I too appeal to the responsibility of those who practice your profession—which I respect, and which I believe is a profession that is respectable in its mission, even if it is not always respected in its exercise.

That said, I will try to respond to you.

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