When was 9/11? Philosophy and the terror of futurity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11340702 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stella Gaon (0000-0003-1234-8322, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Canada, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 339-356 |
| Publication date | 2008-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Philosophy & Social Criticism (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0191-4537 • E-ISSN: 1461-734X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0191453708088508 |
| OpenAlex | W1972364352 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 1 |
This article offers a close reading of Derrida's response to the events of 11 September 2001, in the interview he conducted immediately afterwards with Giovanna Borradori in the text Philosophy in a Time of Terror (2003). I argue that this text is significantly different from previous philosophical responses to horrific political events (such as those by Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt) insofar as it invites us to contest radically the assumption that philosophy's role is to envision and to realize the `good'. Instead, Derrida's response provokes us to acknowledge that philosophy's role was only ever to criticize itself, that this is the absolute limit of what philosophy can or should do, and that this work is both genuinely risky and crucially important, because in undertaking a critique of itself philosophy intervenes for democracy, without rules or guarantees, in the very determinations that are the material of political life
CONTEST · Democracy · Epistemology · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Reading (process · Sociology · Theology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |