德里达：翻译与解构

德里达认为,自柏拉图以来的西方理性主义有一个根本的错误,即都在寻找某些“超验所指”(在任何语言中的任何时间都表达同样概念的所指),并以它们为中心,建构起具有等级秩序的逻各斯中心主义。要解构逻各斯中心主义,必须先解构其赖以生存的“可译性”基础。这样,解构问题转化为翻译问题。翻译,特别是语际翻译,见证、展现和诠释了能指与所指的分裂、所指/概念/意义自身的分裂、语言的(内部的和外部的)分裂以及文本的(内部的和外部的)分裂。在这一切发生的同时,翻译也撕裂了自身。它不再担“翻译”的名,而蜕化为无限暧昧的“变形”(transformation)概念,德里达用莎士比亚名剧《威尼斯商人》中的一句话“when mercy seasonsjustice”(情理兼顾)揭示了其内涵。     

Richard Rorty and the concept of redemption

It is curious why a secular pragmatist like Richard Rorty would capitalize on the religiously-laden concept of redemption in his recent writings. But more than being an intriguing idea in his later work, this essay argues that redemption plays a key role in the historical development of Rorty’s thought. It begins by exploring the paradoxical status of redemption in Rorty’s oeuvre. It then investigates an overlooked debate between Rorty, Dreyfus and Taylor (1980) that first endorses the concept. It then contrasts Rorty’s notions of essentialism and edification to link redemption to self-transformation. After providing a historical legitimation to the idea of redemption, the essay reconstructs Rorty’s modern version of the concept. Redemption for Rorty centers on human relationships and not religion or philosophy; it is also pluralist and liberal in character. Finally, it concludes that Rorty uses redemption—a primary component of religious language—to capture the salvific force of religion. This power is redirected toward the protection of secular, democratic hopes, which are demanding and fragile by nature.     

纪念哲学家和公共知识分子R.罗蒂

本文是尤尔根·哈贝马斯在斯坦福举行的纪念理查德·罗蒂大会上所做的悼词。哈贝马斯在文中回顾了他与罗蒂几十年的友谊，高度赞扬了罗蒂作为哲学家和公共知识分子所做出的杰出贡献。     

Richard Rorty and the Righteous Among the Nations

Richard Rorty has proposed the hypothesis that those who came to the rescue of Jews in Nazi Europe are more likely to have been moved to help by parochialist sorts of consideration — sympathy for a colleague, fellow national, and the like — than they are by universalist motives having to do with the proper treatment of human beings. Although inconclusive on many other points, the research on rescuer behaviour during the Holocaust embodies a consensus contrary to Rorty's hypothesis; and extensive reference to the rescuers'own testimony supports that consensus .     

Patriotism and Pride beyond Richard Rorty and Martha Nussbaum

Old and new complicities of collective political attachment in violence give patriotism a bad name. Simplistic positions often view collective attachment as either entirely bad or as sanitizable merely by adding to patriotism the adjective ‘critical’. Patriotic affectivity, as illustrated with the political emotion of pride, stands out within philosophical debates. This article argues that, to think about patriotism differently, we need to look more closely at ‘optics’ of patriotism and pride that have escaped debate although they are crucial for avoiding older pitfalls. To this end, I revisit Richard Rorty’s and Martha Nussbaum’s positions on pride by introducing more challenging examples of what being/feeling patriotic should mean. I reframe patriotism so that an ‘outward’ ‘optic’ acts as a strong corrective of the usual inward preoccupation with domestic issues within the polity and the state.     

Phenomenological futures in dispute: Emmanuel Levinas,Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy

This discussion consists of five sections, beginning with a pair of citations marking up a politics of inclusion, and exclusion in philosophical discussion. The second section, focusing on the first part of this essay's title, ‘Phenomenological futures in dispute’, locates three inflections of the notion of the future, in the context of an encounter between phenomenology and Marxism. The third section proposes two rewritings of the subtitle, in terms of thematics, as opposed to using proper names as indices for theoretical orientations. The first rewriting retrieves Heidegger's notions of tradition, as both transmission and inheritance. This opens up a givenness of a futural horizon to alternating versions of futures; the second rewriting then offers modes of evaluating these alternating futures, in a contestation between a patriarchal, a differentiated, and a neutral mode of transmission. A fourth section raises some further questions of methodology, indicating the manner in which a rethinking of religion and of theology returns within phenomenology. In an inconclusive summary, the paper returns to the point of departure, the first version of a relation of non-relation, in a disputed connection to be set out between philosophy, a politics of exclusion, and psychoanalytical accounts of political investment. The paper seeks to locate a relation of non-relation, both in the failed encounters between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, with respect to phenomenology and its futures, and in the re-emergence, as non-relation, of the formative function within phenomenology of religious precursors, preconditions and commitments.     

Richard Rorty and the pragmatic turn in the study of religion

Recent interest in the pragmatic tradition draws much of its impetus from the work of Richard Rorty and his critics. This paper argues that Rorty's late interest in religion derives from his abiding interests in American liberalism and not specifically from his Pragmatism. Students of religion, however, have much to learn from the pragmatic tradition and over the last 25 years work by Wayne Proudfoot, Jeffrey Stout, and others has been important in establishing a pluralist approach to the study of religion that avoids the pitfalls of foundationalism, essentialism, and dogmatism in understanding religion and religious phenomena. The continued pursuit of this approach, the essay concludes, will help students of religion avoid unnecessary worries about theories and methods.     

Beyond the Apophatic Circle: Rethinking the Debate Between Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques Derrida

This study offers a new perspective on the much-discussed debate between French phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion and postructuralist theorist Jacques Derrida on the question of ‘negative theology’ and the Christian mystical tradition. It argues that Marion's critique of Derrida betrays a fundamental misunderstanding, specifically, that it fails to recognise that Derrida is not interested in negative theology qua theology, but rather as a discursive practice with certain resources for the performative ‘unsaying’ of logocentric systems. It continues to show that Derrida's principal object is not the God of apophatic theology, but the broader, juridico-political implications of all ‘transcendental signifieds’. Finally, it suggests that Marion's oversight of these facts in his defence of the apophatic tradition unwittingly legitimates Derrida's critique, to the extent that it insulates the Christian tradition from external criticism, and thereby limits the responsiveness of that tradition to the demands of justice.     

Outgrowing representationalism: Semantic remarks on Tracy Llanera's Richard Rorty: Outgrowing modern nihilism

This article provides a semantic reading of Tracy Llanera's brilliant book Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism. Llanera is reframing the debate of how to react to the malaise of modern nihilism by proposing a change of metaphor: instead of trying to “overcome” nihilism, we should try to “outgrow” nihilism. This article invites Llanera to shed more light on her project with respect to the semantic categories of realism and representationalism, and with respect to the growing field of conceptual engineering. Can Llanera's project be fruitfully understood as engineering the concepts of “transcendence” and “redemption”? How much of the project hangs on the idea that language does not represent but is rather a tool that helps us fulfill our varying needs? How neat is the entanglement of semantic and existential meaning?