On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (Thinking in Action) (Paperback)

by Jacques Derrida (Author) "The two essays in this volume are telling examples of Jacques Derrida's recent work on ethical and political issues..." (more)
Key Phrases: South Africa, Hannah Arendt, International Parliament of Writers (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Reading Jacques Derrida requires an unusual blend of wit and patience. Ever the magician, Derrida dazzles again in his slim treatise On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. Part of the Thinking in Action series, providing clear and accessible pieces from major thinkers, the book contains two surprisingly lucid essays from a writer notorious for producing difficult prose. Derrida is the consummate French philosopher, and his work has mainly been the province of grad students and the coffeehouse set, which is unfortunate because he has much more to offer. In this volume, he turns his attention to international human rights, asking penetrating questions about our capacity to forgive, heal, and reconcile in a world fraught with incalculable evil.

Derrida's most important contribution to modern philosophy is his infamous technique of textual interpretation, deconstruction. The technique doesn't come easily, but its critical perspective allows one to draw connections between seemingly unrelated ideas. And that's what Derrida does here, tracing lines between cities, asylum, and reconciliation. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness is grounded in the immediacy of present-day happenings, taking up questions about human rights, amnesty, the Gulf War, and East Timor. Of course, readers will do well to have some background in philosophy, but the heart of the book is for all of us. --Eric de Place

Review
On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness clearly illustrates Derrida's remarkable and influential mode of approaching concepts at their limits..
–MLN 116 #5, 12/01

On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness clearly illustrates Derridas remarkable and influential mode of approaching concepts at their limits..
–MLN 116 #5, 12/01

This is clearly an important series. I look forward to reading future volumes.
–Frank Kermode

powerful and provocative...important, urgent, and demanding in... the best sense....These essays masterfully articulate the impossibilities of forgiveness and hospitality, but their real achievement lies in understanding this impossibility as inseparable from political and pragmatic exigencies.
–Modern Language Notes

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Product Details

• Paperback: 94 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (June 26, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415227127
• ISBN-13: 978-0415227124
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #512,261 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Towards a union of theory and politics, November 18, 2002

By	Douglas H. Hunter "dhhunter" (Pasadena CA.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After seeing the new documentary on Derrida(Nov. 2002) I decided to reconnect with this thinker whose work I studied with great vigor twelve years ago. Coming back to Derrida through On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness was both interesting and enjoyable. In these all too brief essays Derrida addresses two concerns of human rights. The first being the ideas of hospitality and refuge in the contemporary geo-political environment. The second, being the nature, meaning, and limits of forgiveness.
In on Cosmopolitanism he extends the existing call for "cities of refuge" while examining the rights of hospitality as they are(n't) currently allowed to refugees. these movements are part of Derrida's advocating for a new consideration of cosom-politics.
When addressing forgiveness, Derrida argues against the economy of forgiveness that is created whenever forgiveness is called for, insisted upon, or deployed as a way of re-establishing normalcy. That is when the concept is used by a system of political / spiritual exchange. Derrida argues very well that the only things that can be forgiven are those considered unforgivable, and that the right to forgive is owned by specific individuals.
Back in the 1970's and 80s one of the most common attacks launched against post-structural thought in general, and deconstruction in particular was that it lacked political utility, or worse, was apolitical, or even worse, was politically regressive. Many of us at the time felt that such criticisms were both over stated and ill-informed. A book such as this leaves no doubt that post-structural thought and methods are relevant and helpful to progressive politics.
If you are new to Derrida and want to experience deconstruction this is not the book. Derrida's method here is well structured and worth examining, but, it is clearly not an example of the explorations he has undergone elsewhere to examine those elements "always already" present within philosophical texts that undermine in unusual and interesting ways both what and how we understand said texts to mean.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Le Grand Pardon, May 18, 2007

By	Etienne ROLLAND-PIEGUE (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As Derrida points out, the two virtues of hospitality and forgiveness belong to the Abrahamic tradition common to Jews, Christians and Moslems. They were defined and codified at a time when nation-states didn't exist, and point toward forms of solidarity that are both archaic and highly modern, in the sense that they help us expand our legal and political horizon.

Granting hospitality or giving forgiveness are what linguists call speech acts, when enunciation creates its own performance and engages the speaker through the strength of the given word. One would need to establish fine-grained distinctions between the related notions of hospitality, asylum, refuge, sanctuary, safe haven, tolerance, openness, or within the even richer field of words connected to forgiveness: pardon, clemency, grace, acquittal, amnesty, reconciliation, excuse, exemption, prescription, repentance, apology, self-accusation, confession, etc. These are not only linguistic distinctions: differences in legal status and socio-economic conditions between asylum-seekers, refugees, immigrants, foreigners, deported, heimatlosen, stateless or displaced persons have very real consequences.

Derrida identifies a contradiction or a double imperative contained in these two notions, a tension that leads to unanswerable questions. Forgiveness presupposes a call for pardon, but usually the worst offenders don't ask for forgiveness and manifest no repentance: can one forgive the guilty as guilty? And if true forgiveness consists in forgiving the unforgivable, what does forgiveness forgive if the unforgivable is forgiven? Likewise, the concept of hospitality points toward a right of refuge that should be granted unconditionally to all foreigners; but all political organizations, be they the modern nation-states or the cities of refuge of the ancient Jews, impose limitations on the rights of residence.

Hospitality and forgiveness therefore exhibit a tension between the conditional and the unconditional, the calculus of politics and the imperative of ethics. One should not try to solve this contradiction or reconcile those two poles: inflections in politics and international law, such as the notion of crime against humanity or the French law that makes such crimes imprescriptible, usually stem from this tension between the two orders of injunctions.

Another point common to these two notions is that they belong to a 'politics of friendship', they create a personal bind between individuals or communities that can sometimes contradict the rules of citizenship and sovereignty imposed by the nation-state. Derrida's first lecture before the International Parliament of Writers occurred at a time when the tightening of laws against foreigners without rights of residence, the so-called 'sans papiers', generated mass protests in Paris. In a bold move, Derrida reconnects with the philosophical tradition that treats the city as the matrix of all political organizations and mulls over the ancient cities of refuge mentioned in the Laws of Moses. As he acknowledges, "if we look to the city, it is because we have given up hope that the state might create a new image to the city." Hospitality granted by individuals or communities such as churches sometimes go against the laws of the states, and can even be treated as 'acts of terrorism' or 'participation in a criminal conspiracy' in a post 9/11 world.

The second lecture, On Forgiveness, also underscores the tension between the individual and the state. Despite the political performance of the "theater of forgiveness" on which "the grand scene of repentance" is played over and again, Derrida insists that a public institution has neither the right nor the power to forgive. Pure forgiveness must engage two singularities, the victim and the perpetrator, without the intervention of a third party. It is therefore distinct from the "therapy of reconciliation" that nevertheless needs to be played so that wounds may be healed by the work of mourning.

To conclude, let me quote from the excellent preface that puts the two lectures in their intellectual context: "On Forgiveness and On Cosmopolitanism are proof, if proof were needed, that deconstruction is not some obscure textual operation initiated in a mandarin prose style, but is a concrete intervention in contexts that is governed by the undeconstructable concern for justice."

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Accessible introduction to a major thinker, March 8, 2006

By	bryan12603 (Poughkeepsie, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This is a review of _On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness_ by Jacques Derrida (Routledge, 2001).

Jacques Derrida, who died in 2004, was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. But if you peek into his seminal work _Of Grammatology_ (1967), you'll see why he has a reputation for being quite hard to understand. What is nice about _On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness_ is that it gives you a general sense for what Derrida is all about, but in a style that you can actually follow.

This book consists of two brief essays by Derrida, on specific topics and in response to specific occasions. On Cosmopolitanism, which was an address to the International Parliament of Writers (1996), discusses the problem of cities of refuge : cities which are specifically intended to be open to refugees from around the world. It seems that, on the one hand, there is a need for such cities, because there are many refugees from political oppression and natural disasters around the world. On the other hand, how can there be cities of refuge in a world in which nation-states are the basic political units? Derrida gives an overview of the issue, and briefly discusses the views of Hannah Arendt (see her _The Origins of Totalitarianism_) and Kant (see his _Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay_).

On Forgiveness, which was originally a reply to a series of questions posted to Derrida by a French publication (1999), discusses the problem of forgiveness as it arises in response to outrages like aparthied and the Holocaust. For example, South Africa's famous Truth and Reconciliation Commission is sometimes conceptualized as promoting forgiveness for the perpetrators of aparthied. But can anything as awful as institutionalized racism and torture be forgiven? And even if it can be forgiven, can a political body (as opposed to a victim) offer it?

Although Derrida is much-discussed, and has had an immense influence on literary criticism, he is also extremely controversial. When he was given an honorary degree by Cambridge, one member of the faculty objected that "Mr. Derrida is forced to write more and more obscurely in order to conceal the fact that he has nothing to say." I think that particular comment is too harsh. But it is certainly an open question, at this point, what Derrida's long-term historical legacy will be. So how insightful are the essays in this volume?

I found On Cosmopolitanism interesting, but not particularly original or challenging. Derrida argues that there is a tension between a demand for unconditioned hospitality (shouldn't we be open to anyone who needs our help?) and a demand for conditioned hospitality (practically speaking, whom will we allow in, and under what conditions?). I found On Cosmopolitanism to be like a good (but not great) essay one might run across in a magazine like The Atlantic or The New York Review of Books. On Forgiveness was a bit more engaging. Derrida's primary thesis is that one can only forgive the unforgivable. Here is how I, at least, understand this idea. Suppose you have wronged me in some minor way, and I really ought to forgive you. Since I OUGHT to forgive you, there is nothing really special or problematic required of me. Indeed, if I don't forgive you in this case, it seems that I have wronged you. What IS special is when a person has done something so wrong that they are not entitled to forgiveness, but their victims offer them forgiveness anyway. But how is it possible for the victims to forgive, when what the perpetrators have done does not entitle them to forgiveness?

It is characteristic of Derrida's work to identify what he sees as contradictions, but then to argue that they are ultimately inescapable, and that we must learn to operate within them. So the ideas that we can only forgive the unforgivable and that hospitality is both unconditional and conditioned are very characteristic of his work. Would we learn more if we tried to resolve these contradictions? Or would the effort to resolve them be oversimplifications? This is precisely the sort of issue that divides Derrida's critics.

This work does not explain or even mention the key notions for underlying Derrida's method of deconstruction, including logocentrism and difference. But if you are looking for a brief, accessible introduction to Derrida's general approach, then I would recommend this book, especially On Forgiveness.