Derrida

echoes of the forthcoming

Olivia Custer

pp. 231-247

in: Karinde Boer, Karin de Boer, Ruth Sonderegger (eds), Conceptions of critique in modern and contemporary philosophy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

At the cusp of the new century, from 1999 to 2001, Derrida devoted his seminar to the issue of the death penalty. The seminar turned into a quest for a philosophical principle that could specifically support an abolitionist position.¹ Indeed, while Derrida had no doubt that he wanted to be against capital punishment, he did have doubts about having any argument that could support his stance without equivocation. Simply put, each abolitionist argument that he encountered turned out, on analysis, to appeal to a principle that could also be used to argue in favour of the death penalty. "Thou shalt not kill," escaping the logic of an eye for an eye, respecting the dignity of human life, proportionality of punishment, all these and many more have provided starting points for arguments against capital punishment; the problem, according to Derrida, is that each can also be used, as, if not more, convincingly, to argue for the death penalty.² Hence the worry: is there no specifically abolitionist discourse? Or, to put it another way, is there a sense in which all our discourse is bound to a tradition that in some sense "requires' the possibility of capital punishment? Derrida's readings lead to the suspicion that we do not have the conceptual means to defend a position that renounces the death penalty without unwittingly perpetuating support for its continued possibility.

Cited authors

Derrida Jacques