Bulletin Philosophy and Society 2024-4

Philosophy and Society 2024 – 35/4

The fourth issue in 2024 of the journal Philosophy and Society (Philosophy and Society 2024-35/4) brings a thematic section: Invention and the Impossible: Twenty Years of Deconstruction with and without Jacques Derrida. Moreover, in this issue readers can find original scientific papers on therapy culture and the production of subjectivity in neoliberalism, normative decision theory and the rational voter paradox. Finally, this issue also includes a review of Patrick Gamsby’s book titled Henri Lefebvre, Boredom, and Everyday Life.

 

INVENTION AND THE IMPOSSIBLE: TWENTY YEARS OF DECONSTRUCTION WITH AND WITHOUT JACQUES DERRIDA

The thematic section “Invention and the Impossible: Twenty Years of Deconstruction With and Without Jacques Derrida” begins with Avital Ronell’s paper titled “Derrida and his Shadow.” In her work, Ronell explores the complex legacy of Jacques Derrida, focusing on the problematization of the hostility and mistrust that his work often provokes within philosophical and intellectual circles. The author examines why Derrida’s themes, often considered “trivial” or aberrant, have led to critical disparagement and attacks on his premises, while advocating for an alternative approach to the legacy of this philosopher. Particular emphasis is placed on how Derrida challenged institutional frameworks and opened up new spaces for critical thinking. The text portrays Derrida as a provocative and complex figure whose work continues to inspire debates and reflections.

In his article “The Death of the People”, Gil Anidjar builds on Derrida’s reflections on death as a question of numbers from the Politics of Friendship. Considering death in a grammatical and arithmetic register, the author focuses on death, “not of humanity, nor quite the death of all others, but the death of the people, the death of we who count and count for and on each other (or imagine we do)”.

In his text “Literature as a Mode of Thought: Derrida’s Institution of Différance”, Cillian Ó Fathaigh thematises literature as a privileged modality for thinking institutionality in Derrida’s work and holds that literature represents a model for institutions. As the author suggests, literature underscores the inescapability of institutions. Following Derrida’s understanding of institutions, the author concludes that our aim should not be to do away with institutions, but to form a new relation to institutions.

Giustino De Michele‘s “On the Economical Politics of Invention” addresses the question of invention in Jacques Derrida’s thought on deconstruction. From one perspective, the author examines Derrida's work “Psyché: Invention of the Other”, and explores its economic implications, while from the other, he considers its political implications in the context of “The World of Welcome.“ The second part of the paper is dedicated to Derrida‘s views on the possibility and means of deducing politics from an ethics.

In his article “The Enigma Of Validity: Speculations on the Last Paragraph of Donner Le Temps II”, Gabriel Rezende traces some of the clues Derrida leaves in concluding session of the seminar Donner le temps II. In this lecture, Derrida enunciates, but does not develop, what the author of this paper terms the “enigma of validity.” Following Derrida, the author suggests that the “mystery of normativity” is bound to the ambiguous status of legality within metaphysics.

Barry Stocker’s article titled “Singularity, Violence and Universality in Derrida’s Ethics: Deconstruction’s Struggle with Decisionism” examines Derrida’s critique of Levinas and his understanding of violence, as well as Derrida’s reflections on Lévi-Strauss and Rousseau in Of Grammatology. In exploring the singular self in Derrida's ethics, the author emphasizes that Derrida’s engagement with Celan is crucial. Universality, as the third component of Derrida’s ethics, is evident in his reflections on the story of Abraham and Isaac, as presented in Kierkegaard’s existentialist Christian thought.

Terrence Thomson, in his paper “After the Birth/Death of Kant/Derrida,” examines some points of cross-over (as well as points of difference) between Kant’s framing of critique and Derrida’s deconstruction of this frame. The author shows that beyond Kant’s intent, a deconstructive space tears up, one that Kant himself does not enter, and that Derrida picks up of this tear, particularly in The Truth in Painting. It is concluded that Derrida’s “death,” in both a metaphorical and methodological sense, frames Kant’s “birth,” and that the birth of deconstruction frames the death of critique.

The last article in this thematic section titled “’There is always Aufhebung.’ Derrida’s Reading of Hegel before Glas” by Ramón Mistral aims to reconstruct Jacques Derrida’s relationship to Hegelian philosophy as established prior to the publication of Glas from 1974. Through the analysis of Derrida’s texts on Hegel before 1974, the author argues that there are affinities between Derrida and Hegel. Despite an apparent explicit rejection of dialectical thinking, Derrida consistently acknowledged its relevance, and offers a deconstructive interpretation of Hegel’s thought.

 

STUDIES & ARTICLES

Milan Urošević’s paper titled “Therapy culture and the production of subjectivity in neoliberalism,” explores the relationship between neoliberalism and the phenomena of “therapy culture”. Through the critique of research conducted in cultural sociology, the author proposes a theoretical framework integrating Foucault’s “technologies of the self” and Lacan’s concept of “fantasy” to conceptualize the relationship between neoliberalism and therapy culture.

Nenad Filipović, in his article “Normative Decision Theory and Reindividuation of the Outcomes” efforts to preserve the requirements of normative decision theory from counterexamples by reindividuating outcomes. The author argues that the requirements of rationality are not universal and highlights several established approaches to decision theory that allow for domain-specific requirements.

The last article in this issue is by Ivan Mladenović and Miljan Vasić titled “A New Solution to the Rational Voter Paradox.” The authors of this paper propose a new solution based on Goldman’s causal responsibility approach, which asserts that voters make a partial causal contribution to the electoral outcome even if their vote is not decisive. The article integrates the logic of Condorcet’s jury theorem into the causal responsibility approach, arguing that this leads to solving the rational voter paradox.