Aporias (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) [Hardcover]

Jacques Derrida (Author), Thomas Dutoit (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics | Publication Date: December 1, 1993

Derrida’s new book bears a special significance because it focuses on an issue that has informed the whole of his work up to the present. One of the aporetic experiences touched upon is that “my death” can never be subject to an experience that would be properly mine,

that I can have

and account

for, yet that there is, at the same time, nothing closer to me and more properly mine

than “my death.”

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In this brief but dense book, the French philosopher examines the meaning of death. He proceeds, as usual, by minute examination of texts, beginning with Diderot and Cicero but soon moving to his favorite, Heidegger. Since one cannot experience one's death, dying must be viewed as a limiting concept, Derrida argues. This leads him to compare it with other boundaries between concepts and with political borders. Death straddles the gap between nature and culture, and its peculiar qualities enable Derrida both to continue and to challenge philosophy in the style of Heidegger, whose analysis of death in Being and Time he compares with the historical account of Phillippe Aries in Western Attitudes Toward Death (Johns Hopkins, 1973) in order to show how philosophy and history relate to each other. This short but powerful dose of Derrida will be of interest to his many admirers.
- David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"My death--is it possible?" That is the question asked, explored, and analyzed in Jacques Derrida's new book. Focusing on an issue that has informed his work for the last 30 years, Derrida stakes out a new frontier, at which the debate with his work must take place from now on.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 104 pages
• Publisher: Stanford University Press; 1 edition (December 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804722331
• ISBN-13: 978-0804722339
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,943,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), was born in Algeria, has been called the most famous philosopher of our time. He was the author of a number of books, including Writing and Difference, which came to be seen as defining texts of postmodernist thought.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Death as aporia, as wonderment, January 2, 2005

By 

Panayotis ZAMAROS (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Aporias (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) (Paperback)

Is "death" a limit? For Derrida "death" is that which `involves a certain step / not ... pace' (il y va d'un certain pas) (p. 6). It is not a telos or a terma, a limit beyond which there is none, but rather a `step', a peras, a passage one traverses by penetrating. At the same time, it is the moment of a `not', of an impossibility. What is more, it is certain that one reaches this step as impossibility, as non-path at a certain pace.

And in bringing forth Heidegger and the Aristotelian notion of aporia in the sense of being stuck in-between, Derrida is wondering whether "death" can be conceptualized in non-vulgar terms without being stuck in an impasse.

To achieve this, he remarks that aporia is the border as limit, as oros, and at the same time as tracing, as gramme. Hence an `aporetology' (p. 15) as has been his key concern in numerous instances, when, what is at stake, is not the crossing of the border, but rather, the double concept of the border from which aporia comes to be determined. Thus the word "death" whose concept is `unassignable or unassigning' (p. 22). And to expand on this, Derrida explores two issues.

First the idea of aporia as the impossible (in § 1: Finis) along with Heidegger's definition of "death" as `the possibility of the pure and simple impossibility for Dasein' (p. 23). In using the Heideggerian distinction between "properly dying" (tod - eigentlich sterben) and "perishing" (verenden), Derrida emphasizes that the problem of "death" concerns Dasein or the mortal, `not man (sic), the human subject, but it is that in terms of which the humanity of man must be rethought' (p. 35). A possible answer lies in "demise" (ableben) in the sense of walking away from life, thus placing an emphasis on the "arrivant" with no name or identity i.e. Dasein proper - death proper. Such delimitations institute a three-pronged inquiry for Derrida in one single braid: the problematic closure (conceptualisation of limit), anthropological border (discourse on limit), and conceptual demarcation (logical redefinition).

Second the idea of aporia as the crossing of borders (in §2: Awaiting (at) the Arrival). To this purpose, to wonder what there is after death makes methodological sense if the ontological essence of death has been elaborated and existential analysis of death has been carried out. More importantly such decisions occur here, over this side (i.e. not after death): they concern Dasein in its essence of `the being-possible' (p. 63). With an emphasis on the possible, Derrida remarks that `death is the most proper possibility of this possibility' (i.e. being-possibility of Dasein): with death Dasein awaits itself, standing before the impending anachronism (contretemps) of death.

To conclude I want to go to the beginning where Derrida dedicates this text to Koitchi Toyosaki, apparently for two reasons: Toyosaki's death and his father's (p. x). It seems to me that in citing `Toyosaki' and given that `names matter' (p. 21), Derrida is echoing what Toyosaki says. Namely, `citing is a manner of translating since it is obliged to leave its milieu of origin to find another where it takes more or less a new meaning et more importantly that it enters with the words that surround it in a relation of reciprocal translation' (Les fins de l'homme p.246). Citing then is about crossing a limit between that which is original and another, this side and the other. And if death for Derrida is this limit, it is an aporia - that which prompts anyone to wonder, to interrogate ... death as a figure of difference.

A book you must have read - but keep Heidegger close by!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating discussion of death and truth, October 15, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Aporias (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) (Paperback)

This intriguing book discusses the literature of death by other authors such as Aries and Heidegger. In his attempt to get at the limits of our understanding of death, perhaps to find Truth, Derrida raises some interesting questions: Can one ever truly experience death as such? Is it possible to come to terms with the concept of "my death"? This book is a must-read for anyone interested in philosophy or studies of life and death.

7 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars disagree, May 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Aporias (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) (Paperback)

Derrida has Heidegger wrong. Supposedly Heidegger understands death as the possibility of impossibility as such, and hence Dasein is the sein-zum-TOd, or the being towards the possibility of impossibility as such. Derrida denies the as such and asks, how can dasein be towards such an 'as such'? Heidegger says no such thing however. Dasein is not sein zum Ende, rather Dasein, correctly understood, is Ende zu sein. It is not toward an end, it is an end. Notice the even humorous inversion of Aristotle. Death is non-relational, it is unbezuglich. One cannot adopt a relation to death because death is impossibility, and Dasein is possibility: Dasein is the possibility of impossibility. Death is not ahead of Dasein, rather death can occur at any moment, hence death never "stands before" (bevorstehende), it is rather "unbezuglich," non-relational. Derrida fails to understand, once again, that he misunderstands Heidegger by trying to jump ahead of him.