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Força de Lei
Força de Lei - Tirania, essa palavra que vem da Grécia, como ouvi-la ainda, e com outros ouvidos? O que seria a tirania? Este ensaio trata das relações entre o direito e a justiça, mas também entre o poder, a autoridade e a violência.
110 pages, Spiral-bound
First published November 1, 1991
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About the author
Jacques Derrida
652 books1,800 followersJacques Derrida was a French philosopher best known for developing deconstruction, a method of critical analysis that questioned the stability of meaning in language, texts, and Western metaphysical thought. Born in Algeria, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he was influenced by philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl, and Levinas. His groundbreaking works, including Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Speech and Phenomena (1967), positioned him at the center of intellectual debates on language, meaning, and interpretation.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions—such as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion—that falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of différance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida’s ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions—such as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion—that falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of différance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida’s ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.
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November 4, 2016
The thing about reading Derrida is that one never reads solely Derrida; it’s always a matter of reading D reading someone else. Here, D, after dicking around with Pascal & Montaigne for a moment, really digs in on Walter Benjamin, into the ‘Critique of Violence,’ as found in the collection Reflections at 277 ff. (everyone knows Illuminations; this is the other Benjamin collection, the one that Arendt didn’t put together). In this short article, Benjamin opposes natural law to positive law: the former sees violence as “a natural datum,” whereas the latter, “a product of history”; the former can judge law only as to its ends, and the latter, only as to its means; “if justice is the criterion of ends, legality is that of means” (loc. cit. at 278). B acknowledges that natural law opens with a distinction between “legitimate and illegitimate violence,” violence used for just and unjust ends—it is a distinction to be “emphatically rejected” (loc. cit. at 279), primarily because “positive law demands of all violence a proof of its historical origin” (loc. cit. at 280).
B takes as analysand the “guaranteed right to strike,” which shows that “labor is, apart from the state, probably today the only legal subject entitled to exercise violence” (loc. cit. at 281). Lotsa little gems in this article: violence is compulsory for militarism, which relies on conscription (loc. cit. at 284); the categorical imperative is an “incontestable minimum program” (loc. cit. at 285); contract is always reliant on violence in origin and result (loc. cit. at 288).
This text is D’s contribution, a ‘keynote address,’ at a conference on “deconstruction and the possibility of justice” (1), which is kinda the normal medium through which his arguments are made. (is that praxis consistent or inconsistent with the old thesis that writing is anterior to speech?)
Point of departure is that certain greasers suspect that “deconstruction doesn’t in itself present any just action, any just discourse on justice but instead constitutes a threat to droit, to law or right, and ruins the condition of the very possibility of justice” (2). In this formulation, though, “one can already find equivocal slippages between law (droit) and justice” (id.); that is, to frame it as a matter of law/justice is already to provide an answer, to stake out a position that makes deconstruction look bad. It’s all very Roman, I suppose, the lex/jus distinction that provides the opening “choice, the ‘either/or,’ the ‘yes or no’ that I detect in this title” (id.), which title “is rather violent, polemical [Heraclitus/Heidegger, NB], inquisitorial” (id.).
Much is made, also, initially, of how he delivers the address in English, that he ‘must’ speak in English, “imposed on me as a sort of obligation or condition by a sort of symbolic force or law in a situation I do not control. A sort of polemos [heraclitean war, heideggerian differentiation, &c.] already concerns the appropriation of language” (id.). (Mention is made briefly that Heidegger argued that “Dike--justice, droit, trial, penalty or punishment, vengeance, and so forth—is Eris (conflict, Streit, discord, polemos, or Kampf), that is, it is adikia, injustice, as well” (4).)
Prior to getting to the point, D marks out an outworks (3) insofar as enforceability is “the force essentially implied in the very concept of justice as law (droit), of justice as it becomes droit, of the law as ‘droit’”; it “reminds us that there is no such thing as law (droit) that doesn’t imply in itself, a priori, in the analytic structure of its concept, the possibility of being ‘enforced,’ applied by force” (id.).
The argument proceeds through the standard ‘oblique’ approach thereafter: “one cannot speak directly about justice, thematize or objectivize justice, say ‘this is just’ and even less ‘I am just,’ without immediately betraying justice, if not law” (8). So, naturally enough, we come at the oblique non-object through something completely different—here, Pascal, via one of his philistine gnomics: “Justice, force--It is just that what is just be followed, it is necessary that what is strongest be followed” (id.). There’s plenty to be said about this, but it pulls D toward Montaigne, for his subtitle, ‘mystical foundation of authority’ (9):
It is said that “law (droit) is essentially deconstructible, whether because it is founded, constructed on interpretable and transformable textual strata […] or because its ultimate foundation is by definition unfounded” (12). The frankfurt marxist lawyer in me gets a bit aroused by how “this deconstructible structure of law (droit)” “insures the possibility of deconstruction” (13):
Law in its application is re-inscriptive, which is aporetic when held in the mind alongside the basic principles that forbid retroactive application:
Accepts from Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” the proposition that there are “two sorts of general strikes, some destined to replace the order of one state with another (general political strike), the other to abolish the state (general proletarian strike). In short, the two temptations of deconstruction” (38). Benjamin’s oppositions “deconstruct themselves,” but D’s thesis “is anything but conservative and anti-revolutionary” (39). Rather, “the very violence of the foundation or position of law must envelop the violence of conservation and cannot break with it. It belongs to the structure of fundamental violence that it calls for the repetition of itself and founds what ought to be conserved, conservable, promised”; “Thus it inscribes the possibility of repetition at the heart of the originary” (id.).
D describes this as “a differantielle contamination” in the text of Benjamin (id.), leading to the conclusion that “there is something decayed or rotten in law, which condemns it or ruins it in advance (40). Similar to the strike is “war and polemos” (id.). Though “it appears easier to criticize the violence that founds since it cannot be justified by any pre-existing legality and so appears savage,” it also is “more difficult, more illegitimate to criticize this same violence since one cannot summon it to appear before the institution of any preexisting law: it does not recognize existing law in the moment that it founds another” (41).
Derrida, quoting Benjamin: “The police are ignoble because in their authority ‘the separation of the violence that founds and the violence that conserves is suspended’ […] the police invent the law, they make themselves ‘lawmaking,’ legislative, each time law is indeterminate enough to give them the chance” (44). The necessity of police deconstructs B’s distinction: “At most, it can sign it as a spectral event. Text and signature are specters” (id.).
Police violence, to be expected from the absolutist, has several consequences otherwise: “Democracy is a degeneracy of droit and of the violence of droit” and “There is not yet any democracy worthy of this name” (47). D construes B as “a critique of the parliamentarianism of liberal democracy, is revolutionary, even marxisant, but in the two senses of the word ‘revolutionary,’ which also includes the sense ‘reactionary,’ that is, the sense of a return to the past of a purer origin” (id.). This becomes then “a putting into archeo-teleological, indeed archeo-eschatological perspective that deciphers the history of droit as a decay since its origin. The analogy with Schmittian or Heideggerian schemes does not need to be spelled out” (48).
Some discussion of Benjamin’s theory of ‘divine violence’ (56) follows, subject to the same types of readings. D’s post-script takes up the ‘divine violence’ stuff in a consideration of the Holocaust, with some thoughtful comments on how Benjamin might’ve reacted, based on the principles of the ‘Critique’ (61 ff.)—but:
Recommended for those inside the ungraspable revolutionary instant that belongs to no historical continuum, demonstrators who ruin the distinctions they propose, and readers who oppose feature for feature the violence of the Greek mythos with the violence of God.
B takes as analysand the “guaranteed right to strike,” which shows that “labor is, apart from the state, probably today the only legal subject entitled to exercise violence” (loc. cit. at 281). Lotsa little gems in this article: violence is compulsory for militarism, which relies on conscription (loc. cit. at 284); the categorical imperative is an “incontestable minimum program” (loc. cit. at 285); contract is always reliant on violence in origin and result (loc. cit. at 288).
This text is D’s contribution, a ‘keynote address,’ at a conference on “deconstruction and the possibility of justice” (1), which is kinda the normal medium through which his arguments are made. (is that praxis consistent or inconsistent with the old thesis that writing is anterior to speech?)
Point of departure is that certain greasers suspect that “deconstruction doesn’t in itself present any just action, any just discourse on justice but instead constitutes a threat to droit, to law or right, and ruins the condition of the very possibility of justice” (2). In this formulation, though, “one can already find equivocal slippages between law (droit) and justice” (id.); that is, to frame it as a matter of law/justice is already to provide an answer, to stake out a position that makes deconstruction look bad. It’s all very Roman, I suppose, the lex/jus distinction that provides the opening “choice, the ‘either/or,’ the ‘yes or no’ that I detect in this title” (id.), which title “is rather violent, polemical [Heraclitus/Heidegger, NB], inquisitorial” (id.).
Much is made, also, initially, of how he delivers the address in English, that he ‘must’ speak in English, “imposed on me as a sort of obligation or condition by a sort of symbolic force or law in a situation I do not control. A sort of polemos [heraclitean war, heideggerian differentiation, &c.] already concerns the appropriation of language” (id.). (Mention is made briefly that Heidegger argued that “Dike--justice, droit, trial, penalty or punishment, vengeance, and so forth—is Eris (conflict, Streit, discord, polemos, or Kampf), that is, it is adikia, injustice, as well” (4).)
Prior to getting to the point, D marks out an outworks (3) insofar as enforceability is “the force essentially implied in the very concept of justice as law (droit), of justice as it becomes droit, of the law as ‘droit’”; it “reminds us that there is no such thing as law (droit) that doesn’t imply in itself, a priori, in the analytic structure of its concept, the possibility of being ‘enforced,’ applied by force” (id.).
The argument proceeds through the standard ‘oblique’ approach thereafter: “one cannot speak directly about justice, thematize or objectivize justice, say ‘this is just’ and even less ‘I am just,’ without immediately betraying justice, if not law” (8). So, naturally enough, we come at the oblique non-object through something completely different—here, Pascal, via one of his philistine gnomics: “Justice, force--It is just that what is just be followed, it is necessary that what is strongest be followed” (id.). There’s plenty to be said about this, but it pulls D toward Montaigne, for his subtitle, ‘mystical foundation of authority’ (9):
It is true that Montaigne proposed an analogy between this supplement [NB] of a legitimate fiction, that is, the fiction necessary to establish the truth of justice, and the supplement of artifice called for by a deficiency in nature, as if the absence of natural law called for the supplement of historical or positive, that is to say, fictional, law. (10)That is, the mystical foundation of authority (“The justice of law, justice as law is not justice. Laws are not just as laws. One obeys them not because they are just but because they have authority” (10)) is the legitimate fiction underneath the law, which works, it seems, as a grammatological supplement.
It is said that “law (droit) is essentially deconstructible, whether because it is founded, constructed on interpretable and transformable textual strata […] or because its ultimate foundation is by definition unfounded” (12). The frankfurt marxist lawyer in me gets a bit aroused by how “this deconstructible structure of law (droit)” “insures the possibility of deconstruction” (13):
Justice in itself, if such a thing exists, outside or beyond law, is not deconstructible [cf. Spectres of Marx]. No more than deconstruction itself, if such a thing exists. Deconstruction is justice. […] 1. The deconstrucbility of law (droit), of legality, legitimacy or legitimation (for example) makes deconstruction possible. 2. The undeconstructibility of justice also makes deconstruction possible, indeed is inseparable from it. 3. The result: deconstruction takes place in the interval that separates the undeconstructibility of justice from the deconstructibility of droit (authority, legitimacy, and so on). (id.)D proceeds to “the formal abstract statement of several aporias, those in which, between law and justice, deconstruction finds its privileged site” (19); deconstruction has two basic types: “One takes on the demonstrative and apparently ahistorical allure of logico-formal paradoxes. The other, more historical or more anamnesic, seems to proceed through readings of texts, meticulous interpretations and genealogies” (20).
Law in its application is re-inscriptive, which is aporetic when held in the mind alongside the basic principles that forbid retroactive application:
for a decision to be just and responsible, it must, in its proper moment if there is one, be both regulated and without regulation: it must conserve the law and also destroy it or suspend it enough to have to reinvent it in each case, rejustify it, at least reinvent it in the reaffirmation and the new and free confirmation of its principle. Each case is other, each decision is different and requires an absolutely unique interpretation, which no existing, coded rule can or ought to guarantee absolutely. At least, if the rule guarantees it in no uncertain terms, so that the judge is a calculating machine—which happens—we will not say that he is just, free, and responsible. But we also won’t say it if he doesn’t refer to any law, to any rule or if, because he doesn’t take any rule for granted beyond his own interpretation, he suspends his decision, stops short before the undecidable or if he improvises and leaves aside all rules, all principles. (21)That’s the first aporia of law/justice; the other two are a bit more opaque, so we’ll just move along. What follows is the reading of Benjamin. First identifies two types: violence that founds and violence that conserves (31). The state fears “not so much crime or brigandage,” but rather “fundamental, founding violence, that is, violence able to justify, to legitimate, or to transform the relations of law, and so to present itself as having a right to law” (35).
Accepts from Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” the proposition that there are “two sorts of general strikes, some destined to replace the order of one state with another (general political strike), the other to abolish the state (general proletarian strike). In short, the two temptations of deconstruction” (38). Benjamin’s oppositions “deconstruct themselves,” but D’s thesis “is anything but conservative and anti-revolutionary” (39). Rather, “the very violence of the foundation or position of law must envelop the violence of conservation and cannot break with it. It belongs to the structure of fundamental violence that it calls for the repetition of itself and founds what ought to be conserved, conservable, promised”; “Thus it inscribes the possibility of repetition at the heart of the originary” (id.).
D describes this as “a differantielle contamination” in the text of Benjamin (id.), leading to the conclusion that “there is something decayed or rotten in law, which condemns it or ruins it in advance (40). Similar to the strike is “war and polemos” (id.). Though “it appears easier to criticize the violence that founds since it cannot be justified by any pre-existing legality and so appears savage,” it also is “more difficult, more illegitimate to criticize this same violence since one cannot summon it to appear before the institution of any preexisting law: it does not recognize existing law in the moment that it founds another” (41).
Derrida, quoting Benjamin: “The police are ignoble because in their authority ‘the separation of the violence that founds and the violence that conserves is suspended’ […] the police invent the law, they make themselves ‘lawmaking,’ legislative, each time law is indeterminate enough to give them the chance” (44). The necessity of police deconstructs B’s distinction: “At most, it can sign it as a spectral event. Text and signature are specters” (id.).
Police violence, to be expected from the absolutist, has several consequences otherwise: “Democracy is a degeneracy of droit and of the violence of droit” and “There is not yet any democracy worthy of this name” (47). D construes B as “a critique of the parliamentarianism of liberal democracy, is revolutionary, even marxisant, but in the two senses of the word ‘revolutionary,’ which also includes the sense ‘reactionary,’ that is, the sense of a return to the past of a purer origin” (id.). This becomes then “a putting into archeo-teleological, indeed archeo-eschatological perspective that deciphers the history of droit as a decay since its origin. The analogy with Schmittian or Heideggerian schemes does not need to be spelled out” (48).
Some discussion of Benjamin’s theory of ‘divine violence’ (56) follows, subject to the same types of readings. D’s post-script takes up the ‘divine violence’ stuff in a consideration of the Holocaust, with some thoughtful comments on how Benjamin might’ve reacted, based on the principles of the ‘Critique’ (61 ff.)—but:
What I find, in conclusion, the most redoubtable, indeed (perhaps, almost) intolerable in this text, even beyond the affinities it maintains with the worst (the critique of Aufklarung, the theory of the fall and of originary authenticity, the polarity between originary language and fallen language, the critique of representation and of parliamentary democracy, etc.), is a temptation that it would leave open, and leave open notably to the survivors or the victims of the final solution, of its past, present or potential victims. What temptation? The temptation to think the holocaust as an uninterpretable manifestation of divine violence insofar as divine violence would be at the same time nihilating, expiatory and bloodless, says Benjamin, a divine violence that would destroy current law through a bloodless process that strikes and causes to expiate. (65)And just in case anyone thinks that D is on Heidegger’s nuts too much:
despite all its polysemic mobility and all its resources for reversal, [Benjamin’s text] seems to me finally to resemble too closely, to the point of specular fascination and vertigo, the very thing against which one must act and think, do and speak, that with which one must break (perhaps, perhaps). This text, like many others by Benjamin, is still too Heideggerian, too messianico-marxist or archeo-eschatological for me. (66)Cool overall. Similar in concerns to the Specters of Marx.
Recommended for those inside the ungraspable revolutionary instant that belongs to no historical continuum, demonstrators who ruin the distinctions they propose, and readers who oppose feature for feature the violence of the Greek mythos with the violence of God.
July 7, 2020
Στην περίπτωση του βιβλίου του Γάλλου φιλοσόφου Jacques Derrida που φέρει τον τίτλο 'Ισχύς Νόμου,' έχουμε να κάνουμε μία με μία ουσιώδη πραγματεία που εν προκειμένω πραγματεύεται το ζήτημα του Νόμου και περαιτέρω του Δικαίου και της Δικαιοσύνης. Ο Βαγγέλης Μπιτσώρης παρέδωσε μία πολύ καλή και διεισδυτική μετάφραση που παραμένει κοντά στο πνεύμα του συγγραφέα, αφήνοντας, την ίδια στιγμή τον Ντερριντιανό να 'ρέει' προς την δυνατότητα απόδοσης και ερμηνείας της Δικαιοσύνης. Το τέλος όμως αυτής της πραγματείας δεν σημασιοδοτεί και το τέλος του βιβλίου και του αναγνωστικού εγχειρήματος. Και γιατί λέγεται κάτι τέτοιο; Διότι ακολουθεί ένα από τα πλέον, θεωρούμε, σημαντικά κείμενα του Jacques Derrida, το οποίο, με τον προτρεπτικό, ως προς το ίδιο το 'πράττειν' της ανάγνωσης ��ίτλο 'Προωνύμιο του Benjamin,' προβάλλει μία σφαιρική και σε ένα δεύτερο επίπεδο, φιλοσοφικο-ιστορική αλλά και πολιτική προσέγγιση του δοκιμίου του Benjamin 'Για μία κριτική της βίας' ('Zur kritik der Gewalt'). Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο, το βιβλίο που περιλαμβάνει βασικές Ντερριντιανές ιδέες, δύναται να λειτουργήσει και ανάποδα, κάτι που σημαίνει πως ο αναγνώστης έχει την δυνατότητα να προβεί πρώτα στην ανάλυση του Derrida για το έργο του Walter Benjamin, εντός του οποίου η βία, συναρθρώνει την ιστορία με την πολιτική όντας δεσπόζουσα έννοια και πράξη. Στην πραγματεία 'Ισχύς Νόμου,' ο Ντερριντά κινείται μεταξύ Αγγλικής και Γαλλικής γλώσσας, ώστε να προβεί στην ανα-θεμελίωση των εννοιών (και όχι των τύπων) του 'Δικαίου' και της 'Δικαιοσύνης,' η οποία και ανάγεται, πέραν του προσίδιου 'κανόνα' στη σφαίρα της εμπειρίας, διαπερνώντας παράλληλα την περί 'Δικαιοσύνης' προβληματική του Πασκάλ. Η θεώρηση του Ντερριντά καθίσταται πυκνή στο βαθμό που επιδιώκει να συμβάλλει, μέσω της πραγματείας του, στην ανάδειξη των νοημάτων και των συνδηλώσεων που διέπουν το 'Δίκαιο' και την 'Δικαιοσύνη,' προσιδιάζοντας προς την κατεύθυνση συγκεκριμενοποίησης τους: Εάν το 'Δίκαιο' ή αλλιώς, μέσω του 'Δικαίου' παράγεται ό,τι ορίζεται ως θεσμός (θεσμική προσέγγιση), τότε, η 'Δικαιοσύνη,' προσλαμβάνεται, όχι ως η βάση του 'Δικαίου' αλλά ως ανοιχτή, απερίσταλτη και δι-ιστορικού τύπου έννοια, στο σημείο όπου η ίδια αυτή έννοια θεωρείται ως 'μη αποδομήσιμη.' Και τι δύναται να σημάνει η 'Δικαιοσύνη' ως η μη-αποδομήσιμη έννοια, εν αντιθέσει με το 'Δίκαιο' που εκπίπτει στην κατηγορία της "αποδομησιμότητας" του; Σημαίνει, στη Ντερρινιανή ιδιόλεκτο, το ό,τι η 'Δικαιοσύνη' φέρει εν σπέρματι στοιχεία συμβαντοποίησης της που δεν αποτελούν ένα απλό στοίχημα ή σύνθημα, αρθρώνεται στον αστερισμό της κοινωνιο-γλωσσικής εμπειρίας, ορίζεται ως μαρτυρία, απορία και απεύθυνση που εκκινεί από το 'ποιος είμαι;' και το 'πως πράττω;' δυνάμενη να αξιο-θεμελιώσει ένα 'άλλο' περιεχόμενο, λειτουργώντας ως στοίχημα. Και για τον 'τόπο' που ιστορικά ομνύει σε μία απερίσταλτη 'Δικαιοσύνη' για την οποία το 'Δίκαιο' δια-μοιράζεται όπως το 'εσύ' και το 'εμείς' της γλώσσας και της γλωσσικής κατανομής και αναγνώρισης, αλλά και για την αστικού τύπου, Δημοκρατία. Για την οποία το 'Δίκαιο' είναι ο μείζων κανόνας. Ο Jacques Derrida δεν παύει να αναζητεί την σχέση 'Δικαίου' και 'Δικαιοσύνης,' εκεί όπου μας επιτρέπεται να πούμε ό,τι η 'Δικαιοσύνη' κουβαλά τον σταυρό του Δικαίου για να τον μεταπλάσει: Να μία ενδιαφέρουσα θεώρηση. Η 'Δικαιοσύνη' καθίσταται το διαρκές 'έλεος,' δίχως φόβο. Η κατάδυση στην Ντερριντιανή προβληματική εξελίσσεται συναρπαστικά για τον αναγνώστη, ιδίως από την στιγμή όπου ο Γάλλος φιλόσοφος δεν διστάζει να αναμετρηθεί με ένα Μπενγιαμινικό κείμενο το οποίο και αποτέλεσε και αποτελεί αντικείμενο ερευνών, μελετών και ερμηνειών. 'Για την κριτική της βίας,' λοιπόν. Με τον τρόπο του Ζακ Ντερριντά. Εκ-διπλώνοντας το εγχείρημα του, ο συγγραφέας φέρει ενώπιον του, πρωταρχικά, το φάντασμα (ας θυμηθούμε το βιβλίο του 'Φαντάσματα του Μαρξ'), του Γερμανο-εβραίου στοχαστή, για να προβεί σε μία απορητική έγκληση: Που εκκινεί η γλώσσα; Πως επιτελείται η ιστορία ως βία και η βία ως ιστορία; Όσο εξελίσσεται η γραφή, ο Jacques Derrida συγκεκριμενοποιεί την αναλυτική του, τοποθετώντας στο κέντρο της την έννοια της "μυθικής" βίας καθώς και την έννοια της "θεϊκής" βίας του Benjamin. H πρώτη συγκροτεί, καθιστά, δίδει, η δεύτερη, με τους επι-γενόμενους όρους της Εβραϊκής παράδοσης (Σάββας Μιχαήλ), καταστρέφει, εξαγνίζει, αποκαθάρει και απολυτρώνει με την διαφορά τους να έγκειται στο αντίστοιχο υπόστρωμα της 'δυναμολογίας.' Δεν επρόκειτο για μορφές μίας ίδιας βίας, αλλά, αντιθέτως, για πλαισιώσεις που με το δικό τους φορτίο, άπτονται της εξέλιξης της ανθρώπινης ιστορίας και της κοινωνικής οργάνωσης, με τη μεν "μυθική" βία να ονομάζεται κρατική ή κυβερνώσα, τη δε "θεϊκή,'' να διακρατεί την 'Δικαιοσύνη' και τον χρόνο 'χάριν όλων,' επιτελώντας (ιστορική επιτελεστικότητα με την βία) εμβαπτίζοντας. Να το υπόδειγμα της 'Δικαιοσύνης' που ως έννοια και ως 'πράττειν' απασχολεί έντονα του Ντερριντά: Εάν για τον ποιητή Τάσο Λειβαδίτη 'κάποτε' (χρονικότητα) θα αποδίδεται 'Δικαιοσύνη' με ένα άστρο ή ένα γιασεμί,' τότε, για τον Walter Benjamin, 'Δικαιοσύνη' θα αποδίδεται μέσω της ''θεϊκής" βίας που είναι η 'ενσάρκωση' του Θεού ομιλεί ενώπιον του ανθρώπου. Ας μην ξεχνάμε τον Ντερριντά: Μεταξύ 'Δικαίου' και 'Δικαιοσύνης,' ο λόγος. Κλείνοντας ουσιαστικά την ανάλυση του, τον λόγο ως τέτοιο, ο Ντερριντά αφήνει, ακόμη και σήμερα, ανοιχτή ήτοι ερμηνεύσιμη, την εξής προκλητική υπόθεση εργασίας: Η "θεϊκή'' βία του Μπένγιαμιν ως σχηματοποίηση της στη μορφή και στο πλαίσιο της εθνικοσοσιαλιστικής-ναζιστικής Εβραιο-κτονίας, ως ανάδυση του 'αιματηρού,' του πολλαπλά 'αιματηρού' και του ανεπίκριτου στην ιστορία. Η υπόθεση παραμένει ανοιχτή, κοινοποιήσιμη σε έναν ευρύτερο κύκλο που δεν περιορίζεται στους μελετητές του Εβραϊκού 'Ολοκαυτώματος,' προσδιορίζοντας την βία ως ιστορική σφραγίδα εξόντωσης. Για εμάς βέβαια, η αντίληψη αυτή του Ντερριντά είναι προβληματική και σχετικά επιφανειακή, διότι αποκόπτει την Μπενγιαμινική έννοια από τα συμφραζόμενα της, παραβλέποντας πολιτικά-ιστορικά, το τέλος του Benjamin, o oποίος, έμπλεος της τραγικότητας του και της ιστορίας του πρώτου μισού του 20ου αιώνα, αυτοκτονεί στα 1939, στα Γαλλοϊσπανικά σύνορα για να μην πέσει στα χέρια του ναζιστικού καθεστώτος. Τελευταίο άλλα όχι έσχατο, οι σημειώσεις του μεταφραστή, καθίστανται ιδιαίτερα κατατοπιστικές και αναλυτικές, διασαφηνίζοντας έννοια του Ντερριντιανού έργου, αλλά και του Μπενγιαμινικού, εφόσον ο δεύτερος συνιστά επίσης πρωταγωνιστή.
May 26, 2025
Voor mij de eerste keer dat ik iets van Derrida gelezen heb. Ik had verwacht een vernietigende postmodernist te vinden, maar helaas. Ik moet maar aan verwachtingsmanagement bij mezelf gaan doen.
De tekst is redelijk leesbaar en maakt enkele interessante punten over de verhouding tussen rechtvaardigheid en de wet. Het is altijd goed om in het achterhoofd te houden dat de wet slechts een benadering van rechtvaardigheid is.
De tekst is redelijk leesbaar en maakt enkele interessante punten over de verhouding tussen rechtvaardigheid en de wet. Het is altijd goed om in het achterhoofd te houden dat de wet slechts een benadering van rechtvaardigheid is.
May 19, 2025
5.5/10
De onderliggende beschouwing constitutief voor CLS is zeker van waarde, maar daarmee is alles wel gezegd.
De onderliggende beschouwing constitutief voor CLS is zeker van waarde, maar daarmee is alles wel gezegd.
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April 12, 2021caralho que delícia esse texto 🥵
December 20, 2025
Second part is close reading of Benjamin’s wonderful, imaginative and endlessly disturbing essay Zur Kritik der Gewalt (1921), where he brings up the now-famed distinction between mythical, law-preserving violence and revolutionary, law-making, divine violence. Derrida is in particular troubled by the question how this text may have prefigured the Final Solution (and therefore, in a way, how Benjamin may have prophesied his own death), where in Final Solution as if both the law-preserving (through maximum intensification of police and bureaucracy) and law-making (through complete annihilation) violence become intermingled. However, Derrida ultimately kind of cops out, doesn’t say that much about it, and his close reading doesn’t bring much more to what one already gets (and doesn’t get) from Benjamin’s essay.
The first part, “Force of Law”, however seems to be informed by the tensions of Benjamin’s essay in at somehow intriguing ways, almost without bringing in Benjamin at all at that point. The tension is now between law and justice, and force as “mediating” element.
Source of law is mythos, law binds not necessarily because it’s just, it just binds. Its power seems to derive from its everlasting presence, as something that was and always will be there. Law therefore immediately appears as force. Justice seems outside law – Derrida says it’s maybe kind of like Kantian ideal, but not really. Justice is what should be achieved in individual judgments, in legal singularities when law is “done”, where it’s “applied” (as French would say, unsatisfactorily for Derrida) or “enforced” (as English would say, to Derrida’s satisfaction now). But the everlasting presence of law is manifested actually in undecidability, indeterminacy, possibility of endless calculations – of endless, as lawyers would say (Derrida doesn’t) on-the-one-hands and on-the-other-hands. Decision collapses this everpresence into singular shock (when reading Benjamin later – maybe this is more of a law-making than law-preserving). Decision, Derrida says with Kierkegaard, is a kind of madness. Decision, judgment, in applying law, is a momentous dislocation outside law, trying to get its force actually from justice.
Where does deconstruction enter into this? One could expect that deconstruction maintains the undecidability, indeterminacy. But we know that “from the point of view of semantics, but also of ethics and politics, ‘deconstruction’ should never lead either to relativism or to any sort of indeterminism”. And now, therefore, literally: “Deconstruction is justice.” Deconstruction/justice dislocates law towards madness/decision. Of course, Derrida continues to insist – as he did throughout his philosophical writings – that deconstruction very much may be an impossibility. And so is it which justice, too.
And of course, that is actually why it is in domain of law where deconstruction can finally lay claim to truth. Here, deconstruction is a way to truth, to justice.
What should one do with this all I don’t know now, so I’ll just leave here a sketchy idea: one of the “plot”-“points” in Finnegans Wake is that HCE tries to explain away his undefined sin, an undefined act of indecency, but through very act of speaking he cannot help but implicate him further with each sentence. ALP writes a letter to exonerate his husband, but that has the same further-implicating result. The problem is not psychological, these are not Freudian slips – the problem is structural, by entering into domain of language, the risk of truth appearing instantly appears. Then, of course, there’s a question of what language – the language of Finnegans Wake is, arguably, the most deconstructed language in the history of novel. The language of FW dislocates everything, it is madness. So, it’s not only any kind of language – it’s language that defies any use, that stands above as oppressive glossolalic machine. And that’s, in a twist, the language that necessarily brings about justice, in which it’s impossible to cover the truth, because it’s already captured in the deconstructed language.
And the idea behind this is actually simple: lawyers think they can use language, but what if language is using them? By manipulating, they’re fighting language – but what if they can never win? What if there’s something in the very structure, the very ontology of the language that makes truth and justice inevitable?
Derrida doesn’t really justify the “deconstruction is justice” claim, but his forays into the fibers of language may very well be justified.
Anyway, that’s just a thought, I didn’t really work it out, maybe I’ll never will...
The first part, “Force of Law”, however seems to be informed by the tensions of Benjamin’s essay in at somehow intriguing ways, almost without bringing in Benjamin at all at that point. The tension is now between law and justice, and force as “mediating” element.
Source of law is mythos, law binds not necessarily because it’s just, it just binds. Its power seems to derive from its everlasting presence, as something that was and always will be there. Law therefore immediately appears as force. Justice seems outside law – Derrida says it’s maybe kind of like Kantian ideal, but not really. Justice is what should be achieved in individual judgments, in legal singularities when law is “done”, where it’s “applied” (as French would say, unsatisfactorily for Derrida) or “enforced” (as English would say, to Derrida’s satisfaction now). But the everlasting presence of law is manifested actually in undecidability, indeterminacy, possibility of endless calculations – of endless, as lawyers would say (Derrida doesn’t) on-the-one-hands and on-the-other-hands. Decision collapses this everpresence into singular shock (when reading Benjamin later – maybe this is more of a law-making than law-preserving). Decision, Derrida says with Kierkegaard, is a kind of madness. Decision, judgment, in applying law, is a momentous dislocation outside law, trying to get its force actually from justice.
Where does deconstruction enter into this? One could expect that deconstruction maintains the undecidability, indeterminacy. But we know that “from the point of view of semantics, but also of ethics and politics, ‘deconstruction’ should never lead either to relativism or to any sort of indeterminism”. And now, therefore, literally: “Deconstruction is justice.” Deconstruction/justice dislocates law towards madness/decision. Of course, Derrida continues to insist – as he did throughout his philosophical writings – that deconstruction very much may be an impossibility. And so is it which justice, too.
And of course, that is actually why it is in domain of law where deconstruction can finally lay claim to truth. Here, deconstruction is a way to truth, to justice.
What should one do with this all I don’t know now, so I’ll just leave here a sketchy idea: one of the “plot”-“points” in Finnegans Wake is that HCE tries to explain away his undefined sin, an undefined act of indecency, but through very act of speaking he cannot help but implicate him further with each sentence. ALP writes a letter to exonerate his husband, but that has the same further-implicating result. The problem is not psychological, these are not Freudian slips – the problem is structural, by entering into domain of language, the risk of truth appearing instantly appears. Then, of course, there’s a question of what language – the language of Finnegans Wake is, arguably, the most deconstructed language in the history of novel. The language of FW dislocates everything, it is madness. So, it’s not only any kind of language – it’s language that defies any use, that stands above as oppressive glossolalic machine. And that’s, in a twist, the language that necessarily brings about justice, in which it’s impossible to cover the truth, because it’s already captured in the deconstructed language.
And the idea behind this is actually simple: lawyers think they can use language, but what if language is using them? By manipulating, they’re fighting language – but what if they can never win? What if there’s something in the very structure, the very ontology of the language that makes truth and justice inevitable?
Derrida doesn’t really justify the “deconstruction is justice” claim, but his forays into the fibers of language may very well be justified.
Anyway, that’s just a thought, I didn’t really work it out, maybe I’ll never will...
February 27, 2023
No sé, me hubiese gustado leer a Derrida narrando.
July 14, 2016
Uma obra baça e às vezes até obscurantista na explicitação. De facto, o autor muitas vezes recorre a uma racionalidade tautológica para complicar o óbvio.
Por outro lado, muito importante a dissertação sobre a vigência da lei, a minuciosidade das implicações linguísticas na hermenêutica, e interessantíssima (ou seja, o meu "eu anarquista" sorriu de bochecha a bochecha com) a análise crítica à Polícia.
Por outro lado, muito importante a dissertação sobre a vigência da lei, a minuciosidade das implicações linguísticas na hermenêutica, e interessantíssima (ou seja, o meu "eu anarquista" sorriu de bochecha a bochecha com) a análise crítica à Polícia.
March 22, 2024
Innecesariamente enrevesado en muchos puntos. El primer texto arroja una idea interesante de la justicia (absoluta) como imposible y contradictoria, puesta en relación con el derecho, pero no lo hace particularmente bien.
El segundo texto y el P.S. es un comentario y crítica a la filosofía de Walter Benjamin sobre la violencia. Su contenido es bastante mejor y la crítica a Benjamin es muy acertada, pero el tema es menos interesante, pese a estar claramente relacionado con el primer texto.
Es atractivo porque se sale de los discursos habituales sobre la filosofía política y las teorías de la justicia. Pero el resultado, pese a lo novedoso, es más bien inutil y vacio.
El segundo texto y el P.S. es un comentario y crítica a la filosofía de Walter Benjamin sobre la violencia. Su contenido es bastante mejor y la crítica a Benjamin es muy acertada, pero el tema es menos interesante, pese a estar claramente relacionado con el primer texto.
Es atractivo porque se sale de los discursos habituales sobre la filosofía política y las teorías de la justicia. Pero el resultado, pese a lo novedoso, es más bien inutil y vacio.
June 2, 2023
Obra curta, densa e complexa. Derrida discute o conceito de Justiça e Lei, levando em conta uma sempre presente "violência fundadora" do Direito, que se justifica em si ante sua sobreposição concreta.
Também é feita uma longa análise de um texto de Walter Benjamim, em que a sua crítica se direciona a uma possível mentalidade judaico-alemã de Benjamim, que era avesso às democracias burguesas e representativas, e também defendia que nelas havia uma certa "queda da linguagem", ou seja, uma decadência do Direito enquanto genuína e justa esfera do poder.
Também é feita uma longa análise de um texto de Walter Benjamim, em que a sua crítica se direciona a uma possível mentalidade judaico-alemã de Benjamim, que era avesso às democracias burguesas e representativas, e também defendia que nelas havia uma certa "queda da linguagem", ou seja, uma decadência do Direito enquanto genuína e justa esfera do poder.
August 20, 2021
Voor Recht-Literatuur-Deconstructie (ALW). Heel erg moeilijk; stelt dat macht op niets gebaseerd is behalve eventueel op het mystieke. Tweede deel, Derida's lezing, is interessanter. Hij probeert het dichotome denken van Benjamins werk (Kritik der Gewalt)
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April 19, 2023Έχει ενδιαφέρον αν και γενικά ο λόγος του Derrida δεν είναι εύκολος για κάποιον μη μυημενο και πολλές φορές φαίνεται υπερβολικα αναλυτικός.
Περισσότερο ενδιαφέρον βρήκα στο δεύτερο μέρος που αναλύει το δοκίμιο του Walter Benjamin.
Περισσότερο ενδιαφέρον βρήκα στο δεύτερο μέρος που αναλύει το δοκίμιο του Walter Benjamin.
March 23, 2022
Není to docela nepřesně pojmenováno...
February 13, 2020
Violence and the Law (Summer 2018) at The New School
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