Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works', 'Librium de interpretatione editio secunda' and 'later work'

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5 ideas

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 6. Deconstruction
6840 Derrida came to believe in the undeconstructability of justice, which cannot be relativised [Derrida, by Critchley]
     Full Idea: In Derrida's later work we find him moving explicitly towards a belief in the undeconstructability of justice, as he puts it, which is an overarching value that cannot be relativised.
     From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Critchley - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.191
     A reaction: A nice corrective to the standard Anglo-Saxon assumption that Derrida is an extreme (and stupid) relativist. The notion of 'undeconstructability' is nice, just as Descartes found an idea that resisted the blasts of scepticism.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / d. Individuation by haecceity
14665 We can call the quality of Plato 'Platonity', and say it is a quality which only he possesses [Boethius]
     Full Idea: Let the incommunicable property of Plato be called 'Platonity'. For we can call this quality 'Platonity' by a fabricated word, in the way in which we call the quality of man 'humanity'. Therefore this Platonity is one man's alone - Plato's.
     From: Boethius (Librium de interpretatione editio secunda [c.516], PL64 462d), quoted by Alvin Plantinga - Actualism and Possible Worlds 5
     A reaction: Plantinga uses this idea to reinstate the old notion of a haecceity, to bestow unshakable identity on things. My interest in the quotation is that the most shocking confusions about properties arose long before the invention of set theory.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
4366 We can't accept Aristotle's naturalism about persons, because it is normative and unscientific [Williams,B, by Hursthouse]
     Full Idea: Williams has expressed pessimism about the project of Aristotelian naturalism on the grounds that his conception of nature, and thereby of human nature, was normative, and that, in a scientific age, this is not a conception that we can take on board.
     From: report of Bernard Williams (works [1971]) by Rosalind Hursthouse - On Virtue Ethics Ch.11
     A reaction: I think there is a compromise here. The existentialist denial of intrinsic human nature seems daft, but Aristotelians must grasp the enormous flexibility that is possible to human behaviour because of the open nature of rationality.
24. Political Theory / A. Basis of a State / 1. A People / c. A unified people
21936 A community must consist of singular persons, with nothing in common [Derrida, by Glendinning]
     Full Idea: In Derrida's modal reversal (where the only possible forgiveness is forgiving the unforgivable), the only possible community is the impossible community, which is a 'community of singularities' without anything in common.
     From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 7
     A reaction: Since this seems to go beyond multiculturalism, I can only see it as hyper-liberalism - that isolated individuals have an absolute status. Sounds like Nozick, but Derrida saw himself as a non-Marxist left-winger.
21937 Can there be democratic friendship without us all becoming identical? [Derrida, by Glendinning]
     Full Idea: The question is whether it is possible to think of a politics of democratic friendship that could free itself from the terrifying threat of homogenization.
     From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 7
     A reaction: Being terrified of people becoming all the same links Derrida to existentialist individualism. Is he just a linguistic existentialist, trying to free us from the tyranny of linguistic uniformity?