Matthias Fritsch
Biographic Data
| ID | 461108 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthias Fritsch |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthias |
| FAMILY NAME | Fritsch |
| SIGNATURE | FRITSCH M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Concordia University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4100-9023 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Discussing Climate Disobedience in the Capitalocene
This is the transcript of a written exchange that Robin Celikates and Matthias Fritsch carried out between November 2024 and March 2025. We focus the conversation on civil disobedience in response to climate change and in the context of massive global and intergenerational injustices. We discuss climate disobedience as a paradigm case of the politicizing and democratizing force that civil disobedience can be in response to wide-spread entrenched …
Sharing cities with the future: How concerned are young Montrealers today about the implications of their residential choices for future generations
Residential preferences for single‐family homes are a key driver of urban sprawl. Using a stated‐preference survey among university students in Montreal, we explored how participants’ residential preferences are related to their perceptions of urban sprawl and intergenerational justice. A surprisingly large proportion of participants knew very little about urban sprawl. Preference for single‐family homes was not particularly pronounced. Preferenc…
Intercultural Philosophy and Environmental Justice between Generations: Indigenous, African, Asian, and Western Perspectives
This anthology combines an intercultural approach with intergenerational ethics to address critical environmental challenges. Written by scholars from all over the world, including Canada, the US, New Zealand, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Japan, the UK, China, and Spain, this book offers new perspectives on how to foster sustainable societal practises that draw on the past and are fair to future generations. It introduces the Māori idea that views all thin…
Carnophallogocentrism and Eco-Deconstruction
Whether deconstruction is relevant to environmental philosophy, and if so, in what ways and with what transformations, has been subject to considerable debate in recent years. I will begin by discussing some reservations regarding deconstruction’s relevance to environmental thought, and argue that they stem from an older misreading of Derrida’s work in particular as hostile to the natural sciences, and as a cultural textualism of relevance only t…
Why Democrats Should Be Committed to Future Generations
In response to the claim that democracies are inherently short-termist, this article argues for a new way to understand them as being committed to future generations. If taking turns among rulers and ruled is a normative idea inherent to the concept of democracy, then such turn-taking commits democrats to a fair turn with future generations
Environmental Philosophy and East Asia
Environmental Philosophy and East Asia: Nature, Time, Responsibility
Eco-Deconstruction: Derrida and Environmental Philosophy
Eco-Deconstruction marks a new approach to the degradation of the natural environment, including habitat loss, species extinction, and climate change. While the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), with its relentless interrogation of the anthropocentric metaphysics of presence, has already proven highly influential in posthumanism and animal studies, the present volume, drawing on published and unpublished work by Derrida and …
Virology and Biopolitics
As neither alive nor dead —though deadly, as we had to learn again—the virus is the figure of the border. The border divides, of course, but thereby relates what it separates. The virus belongs to the living, but on its border, disrupting life from the outside. If Derrida once described deconstruction as a 'virology', it was to note its special interest in the constitutive failure of coding and de-coding, in the interruption of goal-directed read…
Hicham-Stéphane Afeissa. Esthétique de la charogne
From Bio- to Eco-Deconstruction
Research Article| November 01 2019 From Bio- to Eco-Deconstruction Matthias Fritsch Matthias Fritsch Concordia University, Montréal Matthias Fritsch is Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University, Montréal. He is the author of The Promise of Memory: History and Politics in Marx, Benjamin, and Derrida (SUNY Press, 2005) and Taking Turns with the Earth: Phenomenology, Deconstruction, and Intergenerational Justice (Stanford University Press, 201…
Eco-Deconstruction: Derrida and Environmental Philosophy
The Right to Justification by Rainer Forst
The Gift of Nature in Mauss and Derrida
This essay proposes a reinterpretation of Marcel Mauss's famous The Gift with a focus on the question as to why gifts obligate recipients. Mauss argues that for the archaic cultures he studies, a donor is not separable from the thing given, so that the recipient also receives some of the donor's 'spirit' that wishes to return to its origin. In my reconstruction, I stress that the donor is not separable from her gift because it is understood to co…
Democracy, Climate Change, and Environmental Justice
Taking its cue from Derrida’s rethinking of political life as lifedeath , this essay argues that taking turns helps in conceptualizing the intra- and inter-generationally shared nature of democratic institutions. However, the generational taking turns with democratic power must be thought in conjunction with an environmental turning: not only do human generations seek to share sovereignty over subjects and the earth, but such human sovereignty is…
Deconstructive aporias: Quasi-transcendental and normative
Equality and Singularity in Justification and Application Discourses
To respond to the charge of context-insensitivity, discourse ethics distinguishes justification discourses, which only require that we consider what is equally good for all, and subsequent application discourses, in which the perspective of concrete others must be adopted. This article argues that, despite its pragmatic attractiveness, the separation of justification and application neglects the co-constitutive role that applicability plays for t…
Antagonism and Democratic Citizenship (Schmitt, Mouffe, Derrida)
In the context of the recent proliferation of nationalisms and enemy figures, this paper agrees with the desirability of retaining some of the explanatory and motivational potential of an agonistic account of politics, but gives reasons not to accept too much of Carl Schmitt's account of citizenship. The claim as to the necessarily antagonistic exclusion of concrete others can be supported neither on its own terms nor on Derridian grounds, as Cha…
Equal consideration of all – an aporetic project
The article considers the relationships among three arguments that purport to establish the intrinsically contradictory or paradoxical nature of the modern project aiming at the equal consideration of all. The claim that the inevitable historical insertion of universal-egalitarian norms leads to always particular and untransparent interpretations of grammatically universal norms may be combined with the claim that the logic of determination of po…
A New Critical Theory Based on Rational Choice
Joseph Heath's Communicative Action and Rational Choice may be read as a critical commentary upon Habermas's critical social theory, but it may also be read as merely using the latter as “scaffolding” (p. 10) for the presentation of Heath's own version of critical theory. In what follows, I will focus on the second option and thus largely ignore the exegetical question to what extent Heath provides a fair reading of Habermas. This does not mean, …
The promise of memory: History and politics in Marx, Benjamin, and Derrida
"Rereading Marx through Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, The Promise of Memory attempts to establish a philosophy of liberation. Matthias Fritsch explores how memories of injustice relate to the promises of justice that democratic societies have inherited from the Enlightenment. Focusing on the Marxist promise for a classless society, since it contains a political promise whose institutionalization led to totalitarian outcomes, Fritsch argues…
The Enlightenment Promise and its Remains: Derrida and Benjamin on the Classless Society
Derrida's Democracy to Come
To assess the contribution of recent French thought to democratic theory, this paper discusses Derrida's 'democracy to come' in relation to a quasi-transcendental account of the constitution of meaning and identity in terms of an excess of time named the future to come.This reconceptualization of democracy cannot escape the affirmation of normative commitments, a commitment to futural openness that stands in need of justification.Derrida's intent…
History, Violence, Responsibility
Since post-structuralist theory has criticized representational historiography, the ethical and political responsibility of the historian has been scrutinized anew. This essay investigates the responsibility of the professional historian in particular, with regard to possible responses to what we might come to see as the 'victims' of modern history. Focusing on a Derridian account of the formation of subjectivity in history and its inevitable vio…
History, Violence, Responsibility
Since post-structuralist theory has criticized representational historiography, the ethical and political responsibility of the historian has been scrutinized anew. This essay investigates the responsibility of the professional historian in particular, with regard to possible responses to what we might come to see as the 'victims' of modern history. Focusing on a Derridian account of the formation of subjectivity in history and its inevitable vio…
Derrida's Democracy to Come
To assess the contribution of recent French thought to democratic theory, this paper discusses Derrida's 'democracy to come' in relation to a quasi-transcendental account of the constitution of meaning and identity in terms of an excess of time named the future to come.This reconceptualization of democracy cannot escape the affirmation of normative commitments, a commitment to futural openness that stands in need of justification.Derrida's intent…
The Right to Justification by Rainer Forst
The Gift of Nature in Mauss and Derrida
This essay proposes a reinterpretation of Marcel Mauss's famous The Gift with a focus on the question as to why gifts obligate recipients. Mauss argues that for the archaic cultures he studies, a donor is not separable from the thing given, so that the recipient also receives some of the donor's 'spirit' that wishes to return to its origin. In my reconstruction, I stress that the donor is not separable from her gift because it is understood to co…
The Enlightenment Promise and its Remains: Derrida and Benjamin on the Classless Society
History, Violence, Responsibility
Since post-structuralist theory has criticized representational historiography, the ethical and political responsibility of the historian has been scrutinized anew. This essay investigates the responsibility of the professional historian in particular, with regard to possible responses to what we might come to see as the 'victims' of modern history. Focusing on a Derridian account of the formation of subjectivity in history and its inevitable vio…
History, Violence, Responsibility
Since post-structuralist theory has criticized representational historiography, the ethical and political responsibility of the historian has been scrutinized anew. This essay investigates the responsibility of the professional historian in particular, with regard to possible responses to what we might come to see as the 'victims' of modern history. Focusing on a Derridian account of the formation of subjectivity in history and its inevitable vio…
The Enlightenment Promise and its Remains: Derrida and Benjamin on the Classless Society
Derrida's Democracy to Come
To assess the contribution of recent French thought to democratic theory, this paper discusses Derrida's 'democracy to come' in relation to a quasi-transcendental account of the constitution of meaning and identity in terms of an excess of time named the future to come.This reconceptualization of democracy cannot escape the affirmation of normative commitments, a commitment to futural openness that stands in need of justification.Derrida's intent…
A New Critical Theory Based on Rational Choice
Joseph Heath's Communicative Action and Rational Choice may be read as a critical commentary upon Habermas's critical social theory, but it may also be read as merely using the latter as “scaffolding” (p. 10) for the presentation of Heath's own version of critical theory. In what follows, I will focus on the second option and thus largely ignore the exegetical question to what extent Heath provides a fair reading of Habermas. This does not mean, …
The promise of memory: History and politics in Marx, Benjamin, and Derrida
"Rereading Marx through Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, The Promise of Memory attempts to establish a philosophy of liberation. Matthias Fritsch explores how memories of injustice relate to the promises of justice that democratic societies have inherited from the Enlightenment. Focusing on the Marxist promise for a classless society, since it contains a political promise whose institutionalization led to totalitarian outcomes, Fritsch argues…
Equal consideration of all – an aporetic project
The article considers the relationships among three arguments that purport to establish the intrinsically contradictory or paradoxical nature of the modern project aiming at the equal consideration of all. The claim that the inevitable historical insertion of universal-egalitarian norms leads to always particular and untransparent interpretations of grammatically universal norms may be combined with the claim that the logic of determination of po…
Antagonism and Democratic Citizenship (Schmitt, Mouffe, Derrida)
In the context of the recent proliferation of nationalisms and enemy figures, this paper agrees with the desirability of retaining some of the explanatory and motivational potential of an agonistic account of politics, but gives reasons not to accept too much of Carl Schmitt's account of citizenship. The claim as to the necessarily antagonistic exclusion of concrete others can be supported neither on its own terms nor on Derridian grounds, as Cha…
Equality and Singularity in Justification and Application Discourses
To respond to the charge of context-insensitivity, discourse ethics distinguishes justification discourses, which only require that we consider what is equally good for all, and subsequent application discourses, in which the perspective of concrete others must be adopted. This article argues that, despite its pragmatic attractiveness, the separation of justification and application neglects the co-constitutive role that applicability plays for t…
Deconstructive aporias: Quasi-transcendental and normative
The Right to Justification by Rainer Forst
The Gift of Nature in Mauss and Derrida
This essay proposes a reinterpretation of Marcel Mauss's famous The Gift with a focus on the question as to why gifts obligate recipients. Mauss argues that for the archaic cultures he studies, a donor is not separable from the thing given, so that the recipient also receives some of the donor's 'spirit' that wishes to return to its origin. In my reconstruction, I stress that the donor is not separable from her gift because it is understood to co…
Democracy, Climate Change, and Environmental Justice
Taking its cue from Derrida’s rethinking of political life as lifedeath , this essay argues that taking turns helps in conceptualizing the intra- and inter-generationally shared nature of democratic institutions. However, the generational taking turns with democratic power must be thought in conjunction with an environmental turning: not only do human generations seek to share sovereignty over subjects and the earth, but such human sovereignty is…
Eco-Deconstruction: Derrida and Environmental Philosophy
From Bio- to Eco-Deconstruction
Research Article| November 01 2019 From Bio- to Eco-Deconstruction Matthias Fritsch Matthias Fritsch Concordia University, Montréal Matthias Fritsch is Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University, Montréal. He is the author of The Promise of Memory: History and Politics in Marx, Benjamin, and Derrida (SUNY Press, 2005) and Taking Turns with the Earth: Phenomenology, Deconstruction, and Intergenerational Justice (Stanford University Press, 201…
Eco-Deconstruction: Derrida and Environmental Philosophy
Eco-Deconstruction marks a new approach to the degradation of the natural environment, including habitat loss, species extinction, and climate change. While the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), with its relentless interrogation of the anthropocentric metaphysics of presence, has already proven highly influential in posthumanism and animal studies, the present volume, drawing on published and unpublished work by Derrida and …
Virology and Biopolitics
As neither alive nor dead —though deadly, as we had to learn again—the virus is the figure of the border. The border divides, of course, but thereby relates what it separates. The virus belongs to the living, but on its border, disrupting life from the outside. If Derrida once described deconstruction as a 'virology', it was to note its special interest in the constitutive failure of coding and de-coding, in the interruption of goal-directed read…
Hicham-Stéphane Afeissa. Esthétique de la charogne
Environmental Philosophy and East Asia
Environmental Philosophy and East Asia: Nature, Time, Responsibility
Carnophallogocentrism and Eco-Deconstruction
Whether deconstruction is relevant to environmental philosophy, and if so, in what ways and with what transformations, has been subject to considerable debate in recent years. I will begin by discussing some reservations regarding deconstruction’s relevance to environmental thought, and argue that they stem from an older misreading of Derrida’s work in particular as hostile to the natural sciences, and as a cultural textualism of relevance only t…
Why Democrats Should Be Committed to Future Generations
In response to the claim that democracies are inherently short-termist, this article argues for a new way to understand them as being committed to future generations. If taking turns among rulers and ruled is a normative idea inherent to the concept of democracy, then such turn-taking commits democrats to a fair turn with future generations
Intercultural Philosophy and Environmental Justice between Generations: Indigenous, African, Asian, and Western Perspectives
This anthology combines an intercultural approach with intergenerational ethics to address critical environmental challenges. Written by scholars from all over the world, including Canada, the US, New Zealand, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Japan, the UK, China, and Spain, this book offers new perspectives on how to foster sustainable societal practises that draw on the past and are fair to future generations. It introduces the Māori idea that views all thin…
Sharing cities with the future: How concerned are young Montrealers today about the implications of their residential choices for future generations
Residential preferences for single‐family homes are a key driver of urban sprawl. Using a stated‐preference survey among university students in Montreal, we explored how participants’ residential preferences are related to their perceptions of urban sprawl and intergenerational justice. A surprisingly large proportion of participants knew very little about urban sprawl. Preference for single‐family homes was not particularly pronounced. Preferenc…
Discussing Climate Disobedience in the Capitalocene
This is the transcript of a written exchange that Robin Celikates and Matthias Fritsch carried out between November 2024 and March 2025. We focus the conversation on civil disobedience in response to climate change and in the context of massive global and intergenerational injustices. We discuss climate disobedience as a paradigm case of the politicizing and democratizing force that civil disobedience can be in response to wide-spread entrenched …
Philosophy (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (11 works) · Democracy (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism (6 works) · Critical Theory and Philosophy (5 works)