ABSTRACT

Jürgen Habermas famously argues that reason cannot be rejected or criticized by employing its tools. In other words, every critique of reason has to put forward certain universal generalizations about reality. Based on this, he suspects a performative contradiction in Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction – a claim which is largely dismissed by Derrida and his followers. Derrida aims at articulating the paradoxes inherent to being and justice, instead of proposing a general theoretical model of reality or a normative model of justice. In this article, I argue that there are certain generalizations at play in deconstruction. The standard Derridean interpretation of such generalizations is that they stem from the paradoxes which are at work in deconstruction. In contrast, I demonstrate that deconstruction’s belief in the paradoxes of being and morality are at least partially based on the generalizations that Derrida makes about reality. I argue that this does not deal a fatal blow to deconstruction, but requires the whole approach to assume a theoretical and normative character. I conclude that interpreting deconstruction as a theory and a normative project, rather than an atheoretical and anormative approach, will be beneficial for philosophy and political theory.

摘要

于尔根·哈贝马斯 (Jürgen Habermas) 著名地认为，不能通过使用其工具来拒绝或批评理性。换句话说，每一种对理性的批判都必须对现实提出某些普遍的概括。基于此，他怀疑在雅克·德里达的解构中存在表演矛盾——德里达及其追随者在很大程度上驳回了这一主张。德里达旨在阐明存在与正义固有的悖论，而不是提出现实的一般理论模型或正义的规范模型。在本文中，我认为在解构中存在某些概括。德里德对这种概括的标准解释是，它们源于在解构中起作用的悖论。相比之下，我证明解构主义对存在和道德悖论的信仰至少部分基于德里达对现实的概括。我认为这不会对解构造成致命的打击，而是需要整个方法都具有理论性和规范性。我的结论是，将解构解释为一种理论和规范项目，而不是一种非理论和规范的方法，将有利于哲学和政治理论。