Am happy to stand corrected with any of this, but whether entrenched academic or enlightened autodidact, come armed and at the ready (lol).

On the other hand, in a different venue, that of the sundry social/political effusions and proud heterodoxies of the Left, I only hesitate to use the term ‘ideological religionists’ – in a pejorative sense. But that’s a different setting – even if one that does have some antecedents in the former subject. If these often highly fevered ideological religionists were to complain, the reply is that they are the ones attempting to forever use rhetoric as a force multiplier in the first place (Amnesty International most recently), so they have no reasonable complaint about their own weapon being turned against them. It can create difficulties, yes, but at least one does not naively engage on the basis of their rhetorical salvos, charades and theatre. But all that represents a different category compared to the primary subject.

OK. That’s the kind of response that I am familiar with.

The question then is what makes someone decides to adopt the Derridean religion.

Re, Lilla, we agree to disagree and that too is fine. Lilla is not complete but he is substantial, he tackles Heidegger and Derrida (with full philosophical comprehension from what I can tell) and then angles in largely from a psychological/moral perspective. In that sense alone there will always be “loose ends” to grapple with. To be brief, it is their unspoken and unexamined faith (from what I’ve been able to tell) in the autonomous mind, a type of hyper-Cartesian quality, that serves to reveal the most elemental pivot-point upon which their thought in general, and their amoral error more specifically, hinges. Someone like Rorty, an egalitarian purist, is essentially post-metaphysical, he does not deign to address the metaphysical. Heidegger, by contrast, still takes it seriously while also wanting an escape from virtually all Western metaphysics, at least so since early antiquity. (Derrida on this scale is not so easy to classify, which reflects a problem, he’s a bit too playful and indeterminate, so perhaps is somewhere between Rorty and Heidegger in this vein.) But they all express a faith, unexamined if not unacknowledged, in the autonomous mind, a hyper-Cartesian faith.

And michael, I did indeed take it too personally, so my apologies. I’m content to disagree with you on the value of Lilla’s treatment, as well as your use of the word even, which I still maintain is demonstrative. Other than that, I’ll just say that wrong is right, and leave it at that.

a rather unresponsive essay which even Derrida’s admirers termed “ironic” or “playful”

Except in a long essay by, erm, Derrida.

“Lilla’s description of the intellectual background of D.’s emergence is fascinating. We’re talking about D.’s engagement w/ the thought and writings Sartre and Levi-Strauss – not his traumatic childhood.”

But Lilla doesn’t talk about Derrida’s engagement with Sartre or Levi-Strauss. There’s a vague waffle about some people who apparently ‘misunderstood’ Levi-Strauss, and a little bit about Heidegger’s debate with Sartre on humanism.

Indeed, the Lilla article doesn’t seem to contain much content at all, except a blank incomprehension that anyone could reject the conceptual underpinnings of bourgeois liberalism. It’s no suprise, then, that it ends with the revelation that the problem with Derrida is that he was French and, therefore, tragically was not American.

You took the remark regarding ‘profundity’ per se too personally. Regarding de Man, I wasn’t so much forming a positive assessment but was comparing de Man (and Derrida’s too eager apology on behalf of de Man – an apology rife with dismissiveness btw) with Heidegger, then essentially agreeing with the manner of JQ’s assessment, though I would go a step further than JQ does herein in assessing Heidegger’s (and de Man’s) more positive embraces of National Socialism and the linkage that has with their speculative initiatives.

(And placing “even” before merely two similar mentions of Foucault hardly represents a pattern, nor was Foucault’s “abstruse” quality per se the object of comparison.)

Too though, I regard Lilla highly, you indicate a more dismissive regard, which I don’t regard too seriously; Lilla is a substantial critic. Finally, my own far too humble assessment is that an aspect of Derrida can ultimately be treated more seriously, one example only thereof is Graham Ward’s context, but other aspects very much tend to outstrip themselves, as I believe Lilla substantially – and coherently – demonstrates, lending both intellectual and moral seriousness to his critique of Heidegger’s faith in the autonomous mind and, similarly, Derrida’s as well. All this reflects Mark Lilla’s use of the term philo-totalitarian – or is it philo-tyrannical? – an apt term applied to both Heidegger and Derrida, if differently applied, to be sure.)

The Politics of Friendship is “nihilistic”?

Good grief.

http://jya.com/lilla-derrida.htm

It’s an indication that L. took D. seriously.

Citing other folks who find Derrida disagreeable is an argument from authority, not an engagement,

On the contrary, Searle and Ellis are serious attempts at understanding Derrida that are never addressed seriously by Derrida’s enthusiasts.

Searle in particular is sometimes mocked but the content of his critique is never addressed.

I never suggested Lilla dislikes internationalism, only that the things Derrida supports, and claims to support through his thinking, are neither nihilist nor fascist in inclination.

You seem to ignor my point, which was that Lilla says nothing about the death penalty, refugees etc. but you mysteriously imply that D.’s support for them is what actually bothered Lilla.

Saying “Lilla’s personal gloss” is not name calling, though it does use a name in a possessive, appropriative sense.

My point was that saying “tops it all off with a ridiculous helping of Lilla’s personal gloss on political responsibility” is not an argument. Hence it’s nothing that can be responded to and is just derogation.

our reading “(haha)” is actually, entirely consistent with psychosocial analysis,

“entirely consistent with” ? What does that mean – either it is or it isn’t psychosocial analysis.

Lilla’s description of the intellectual background of D.’s emergence is fascinating. We’re talking about D.’s engagement w/ the thought and writings Sartre and Levi-Strauss – not his traumatic childhood.

and to be literally pathetic means simply to be governed by pathos, as opposed to a more colloquial sense of “sad” or “deficient.”

Lilla is literally governed by pathos? Don’t think so.

Of Grammatology also includes engagements with Rousseau, and in it a discussion of instrumentality and the law, both subjects political enough to be found problematic when addressed in “Force of Law.”

This would seem to be the main point. And if it is correct I wonder why you aren’t emphasizing it rather than the other points which seem personal or minor.

The question then is whether Lilla is entirely wrong in his understanding of “Politics of Friendship” – or if the latter conflicts with other less nihilistic writings.

And along with the ignored reference to “Structure, Sign, and Play,”

I didn’t ignor it, as I’m simply not familiar with it which I think was evident from the fact that I mentioned OG, which struck me as a superficial attempt to deal with issues already addressed by Wittgenstein.

you might also read or reread the rest of Writing and Difference, especially the chapters on Levinas, Freud, and “even” Foucault. While I doubt Lilla and I are reading a different author, I’m fairly confident we are reading differently, and while the idea of an infinite justice isn’t explicit in those terms in his earlier writings, he comes close,

So the idea of infinite justice is meant to be taken seriously? Lilla wasn’t sure.

and while we’re having fun with argument by authority, let me at least direct you to work by Simon Critchley and John Caputo, where you can find some nice cite-maps regarding Derrida and ethics, the influence of Levinas, and some related concepts.

Oh, btw: Derrida was one of the first to claim that “deconstruction” needs to be deconstructed, and that it isn’t a method as much as an attitude.

Lilla quotes D. to this effect – which for L. is part of the problem of nailing D. down on anything.

Last but not least, that Lilla quote demonstrates not only a sad lack of hermeneutic charity, but also a profoundly warped view of the concept of the messianic. If it will help you any, you might find better indictments of it in Ghostly Demarcations, a collection of responses to Specters of Marx. Enjoy.

Lilla may indeed lack hermeneutic charity.

When you say Lilla has “a profoundly warped view of the concept of the messianic” – are you saying that he misunderstood Derrida’s doctrine of the messianic? I can’t tell.

Commendably, it seems that you are claiming that D. has a certain political doctrine that can be assessed, described and taken seriously – and that Lilla simply got it wrong. But I’m surprised that you didn’t make that the main point of our discussion, that you seem to endorse deconstruction not being a doctrine, and that you didn’t try to explain how that is consistent with the nihilistic views that Lilla quotes.

Well that’s not about to get any serious reader of Derrida even mildly interested. On the contrary.

Notice how this all-too-familiar and tired line of “argument” REDUCES a)deconstruction to destruction (not even destruktion), as if some pure relativism or mere pomo nihilism (at the very least, it is not concerned with contradicting this popular misreading); b)deconstruction to a method “applied to others” (and with “glee” nonetheless; glee with destructing them! One might ask here what tendencies or assumptions about the proper role of philosophy or thinking are being betrayed..); and c)the very concept and potential of ‘justice’ to its “nature,” or some likewise pragmatic (or normative?) plan…etc.

Without presenting any arguments himself, it seems to me, the author in that paragraph alone implicitly accuses Derrida of a) being an ideological poser merely; b) having no “serious” readers; and c) “simply failing” to “specify” something he devoted a lifetime of work and dozens of books to exploring and articulating.

For comparison purposes, if you wish, an excerpt from what is—to say the least—a more patient and less arrogant essay that touches on Heidegger:

http://pasaudela.blogspot.com/2005/02/from-derrida-faith-and-kno_110816546346718120.html

Hopefully it still goes without saying that I haven’t read anywhere near enough Lilla to form any definitive judgements of the sort (although that passage doesn’t begin to entice), and there are others who frame this (quite common) concern with Derrida far more carefully and hospitably.

There’s also Richard Wolin’s The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader, Columbia Uni Press, New York, 1991.

For taster and background, to indicate that Heidegger didn’t just “go along” but actively adopted the mantle and the ideology of Nazism, and lent his position and his voice in Hitler’s service, here are a couple of quotes.

The 3 November 193 address to “German students”:

“The National Socialist revolution is bringing asbout the total transformation of our German existence [Dasein]. In these events it is up to you to remain the ones who always urgwe on and who are always ready, the ones who never yield and who always grow. [...] Be hard and genuine in your demands. Remain clear and sure in your rejection.

“Do not pervert the knowledge you have struggled for into a vain, selfish possession. Preseerve it as the necessary primal possession of he leader [führerischen Menschen] in the Völkisch professions of the state. [...]

“Let your loyalty and your will to follow [Gefolgschaftswille] be daily and hourly strengthened. Le your courage grow without ceasing so that you will will be able to make the sacrifices necessary to save the essence of our Volk and to elevate its innermost trength in the State. [...]

“The Führer alone is the present and future German reality and its law. Learn to know ever more deeply; from now on every single thing demands decision, and every action responsibility.

“Heil Hitler!
“Martin Heidegger, Rector.”

Or as Heidegger put it in his 22 January 1934 address of National Socialist Education:

“To the man of this unprecendented will, to our Führer Adolph Hitler – a threefold Sieg Heil!”

There’s much more where that came from.

And here I crave your indulgence, because I’ve just launched a blog, and I’ll now lay down a link to my post on Heidegger, which concerns why I have more problems with the man than just the Nazism thing.

The url of my sad, lonely and ignored blog, sad bastard that I am, is: http://laonandthenibelungs.blogspot.com/

And if you think the Heidegger stuff is not your cup of meat, there’s a discussion of medieval and current joke structure a little way further down the page. Love me, love me! etc…

I’m also going to put up evidence and argument suggesting links between Heidegger’s embrace of Nazism and his technical philosophy. But it’s bedtime in Oz, and I have a day job. So that will appear tomorrow.

I also think Lilla’s book is very far from pathetic.

Cheers!

Laon