6 ideas
| 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. |
| 21862 | Consciousness is based on 'I can', not on 'I think' [Merleau-Ponty] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is in the first place not a matter of 'I think' but of 'I can'. | |
| From: Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception [1945], p.159), quoted by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics 2 'Sensation' | |
| A reaction: The point here (quoted during a discussion of Spinoza) is that you can't leave out the role of the body, which seems correct. |
| 20750 | The mind does not unite perceptions, because they flow into one another [Merleau-Ponty] |
| Full Idea: I do not have one perception, then another, and between them a link brought about by the mind. Rather, each perspective merges into the other [against a unified background]. | |
| From: Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception [1945], p.329-30), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 3 'Perceptual' | |
| A reaction: I take this to be another piece of evidence pointing to realism as the best explanation of experience. A problem for Descartes is what unites the sequence of thoughts. |
| 468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
| Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
| From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 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? |