Learning to Live Finally by Jacques Derrida

Author:Jacques Derrida [Derrida, Jacques]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61219-032-7
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2010-12-29T05:00:00+00:00

JB: But then what are we to do in the case of Holocaust revisionists who deny the existence of gas chambers and the reality of the Shoah?

JD: One has the right to ask all questions. But when one responds to questions with falsifications or counter-truths, gestures that have nothing to do with honest research or critical thought, then that’s something else. It’s either incompetence or unjustified instrumentalism, and it has to be reprimanded, just as a bad student has to be reprimanded. It’s not because one has the status of professor that one can say whatever one wants in the university, even though we must reserve for the university the possibility of posing questions and reexamining things. If Faurisson had simply said: “Let me have the right to do historical research, let me have the right not to take certain witnesses at their word,” then I would have been all for letting him work.25 But when he then wants, against a mountain of evidence, to go from these critical questions to affirmations that are unacceptable from the point of view of attested and proven truth, then he is simply incompetent, harmful as well, but first of all incompetent. And thus unworthy of presenting himself as a university professor. In this case, debate is impossible. But, in principle, the university remains the only place where critical debate must remain unconditionally open. This is a legacy I hold dear, even if my own relation to the university is rather complicated. It is a legacy from Europe and from Greek philosophy; it was not born elsewhere. And despite all the deconstructive questions I pose with regard to this philosophy, I continue to say a certain yes to it, and I will never propose simply jettisoning it. I have never turned my back on either philosophy or Europe. My gestures are of another sort. I will never say—and you know what I’m referring to here—“Forget Europe! Goodbye [salut], philosophy!” … No more than I will ever say “marriage is a fundamental value for society.”

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