The ethics and politics of otherness (Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger)

The question of a possible ethics and politics of deconstruction has been hotly debated for the past thirty years. Recently, a third wave of deconstruction has emerged, one in which ethical and political questions are of central importance. I contend that a dearer conception of what the third wave of deconstruction—a postmodern ethics and politics—may be like can be seen through a rapprochement between the thought of Heidegger and Derrida. By arguing that Derrida's work is a continuation of Heidegger's critique of Western Metaphysics, I am to address what is the central issue in postmodern ethics and politics: the cultivation of care and respect for otherness. The ethical and political significance of Derrida's writings become dearer when differance and deconstruction are interpreted from the context of Heidegger's existential analytic of Dasein. I argue that Deirida's differance does not efface Heidegger's ontological analysis of Dasein. Rather, Heidegger's ontology provides the necessary philosophical context for deconstruction. A postmodern ethics and politics develops out of a rapprochement between Heidegger's rendering of the ontological condition of Dasein's being-with-others, on the one hand, and deconstruction's capacity to politicize Heidegger's critique of Dasein's fall into “publicness,” on the other hand. Deconstruction mobilizes the ethical and political potentiality in Heidegger's interpretation of being-with-others as a primordial condition of being-in-the-world.