Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject. – John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address to the University of St. Andrews, February 1, 1867

Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (Vampires and Zeitgeist)

Armand: Do you know how few vampires have the stamina for immortality? How quickly they perish of their own will? The world changes, we do not. Therein lies the irony that finally kills us. I need you to make contact with this age.

Louis: Me? Don’t you see? I’m not the spirit of any age. I’m at odds with everything. I always have been.

Armand: Louis, that is the very spirit of your age. The heart of it. Your fall from grace has been the fall of a century.

Louis: And the vampires in the theater?

Armand: Decadent… useless. They can’t reflect anything! But… you do. You reflect its broken heart. A vampire with a human soul. An immortal with a mortal’s passion. You… are… beautiful, my friend.

Bryan Magee and Hubert Dreyfus, Husserl, Heidegger & Existentialism (Historicity and Nihilism)

Hubert Dreyfus: …Heidegger… thinks that we are in a very special stage of this very special culture. We are the only culture that is historical. Of course, in any culture events follow one after another. But only in ours does the understanding of being change ­ from the Greeks, to the Christians, to the moderns, to us. That’s histori­city in Heidegger’s language, and we happen to stand in a special place in the history of being. A misunderstanding of being as a general char­acteristic of all beings rather than as a clearing started with Plato 2,000 years ago. It has gone through many philosophical and practical trans­formations since then, and it is now ‘finished’, Heidegger says. That means all the philosophical moves have been tried and played out, completed, and now it’s done for. Heidegger gets this idea from Nietz­sche, whose claim that the God of philosophy and theology is dead convinced him that our recent understanding of being is nihilistic. We have reached the stage of control for its own sake. We are now taking over the whole planet, and we will eventually have to get over our need of God or of philosophical comfort and direction, Nietzsche thought. Heidegger adds that our understanding of being is wiping out every other understanding of being, and this technological understanding of being has reached a point where it no longer gives guidelines for action. Heideg­ger calls this nihilism.

Bryan Magee: One often hears existentialists talk about ‘the human predi­cament’, and I take it that this, in essence, is what they are referring to. Does Heidegger point to any possible way out of it?

Hubert Dreyfus: Well, it’s first important to see what he means by nihilism. By nihilism he means that for us there are no meaningful differences any more. He doesn’t use this expression, but he talks about how the Greek temple – which I would call a cultural paradigm – held up to the Greeks what was important, and so let there be heroes and villains, victory and disgrace, disaster and blessing and so on. People whose practices were manifest and focused by the temple had guidelines for leading good lives. In the same way the medieval cathedral – another cultural paradigm – showed people the dimensions of salvation and damnation , and one knew where one stood and what one had to do. But as our culture has developed, we have tended more and more to treat everything as an object, and flatten everything into one dimension. Since Plato, Heidegger would say, philosophers have always looked for the one stuff that everything can be understood in terms of, and tried to state the truth about that. That philosophical goal is both a reflection of and a cause of our current understanding of being in which everything is measured on one dimension. We don’t even seek truth any more but simply efficiency. For us everything is to be made as flexible as possible so as to be used as efficiently as possible. If I had a styrofoam cup here, it would be a very good example. A styrofoam cup is a perfect sort of object, given our understanding of being, namely it keeps hot things hot, and cold things cold, and you can dispose of it when you are done with it. It efficiently and flexibly satisfies our desires. It’s utterly different from, say, a Japanese tea-cup, which is delicate, traditional, and socialises people. It doesn’t keep the tea hot for long, and probably doesn’t satisfy anybody’s desires, but that’s not important. We went through a stage about a century ago when to be real or important things had to be useful for satisfying our desires. That was the subject-object stage. But now we are ourselves becoming resources in a cybernetic society where to be real is to be used as efficiently as possible. We want to fit into the system so as to get the most out of our possibilities. That’s our understanding of being. I remem­ber in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick has the robot HAL, when asked if he is happy on the mission, say: ‘I’m using all my capacities to the maximum. What more could a rational entity want?’ A brilliant expression of what anybody would say who is in touch with our understanding of being. We thus become part of a system which no one directs but which moves towards the total mobilisation of all beings, even us, for their own welfare.

Heidegger would say that the problem is there are no guidelines any more. There are no goals. Why are we concerned with using our time more and more efficiently? To what end? Just to have time to organise our lives even more efficiently? Heidegger thinks there will soon be no meaningful differences, differences with content, any more, such as heroes and villains, or even differences like local and international, but only the more and more efficient ordering of everything, everywhere, just for the sake of more and more efficiency. That is what he means by nihilism.

Bryan Magee: What you say leads me to repeat my question with all the more urgency: Is there no way out of this predicament?

Hubert Dreyfus: Heidegger is not optimistic. He thinks we might be stuck in what he calls the darkest night for the rest of human history. But he isn’t pessimistic either, since he thinks that the very lack of local concerns and meaningful differences might make us appreciate non-efficient practices – what he calls the saving power of insignificant things. I think he has in mind such things as friendship, backpacking into the wilderness, running, and so on. He mentions drinking the local wine with friends, and dwelling in the presence of works of art. All these practices are marginal precisely because they are not efficient. These practices can, of course, be engaged in for the sake of health and greater efficiency. That is the dark-night possibility. But these saving practices could come together in a new cultural paradigm, which held up to us a new way of doing things which made these practices central, and efficiency marginal. Rock concerts in the seventies were considered by some to offer hope of such an alterna­tive paradigm. Such a new understanding, if it were to be saving, would have to lead us to appreciate again that human practices are special because they receive a changing, historical understanding of being. This is the one ahistorical truth about human beings which Heidegger recog­nises from start to finish. Such an understanding could go along with our still using our technological devices – Heidegger does not want to return to pre-Socratic Greece – just as the Japanese keep their VCRs and computers alongside their household gods and traditional tea-cups. Overcoming nihilism is a possibility for Heidegger precisely because it means getting over our technological understanding of being, not our technology.

Nikhil Padgaonkar and Jacques Derrida Interview

Nikhil Padgaonkar: Let me begin this interview by asking you what has been retained today from the word “philosophy” as the Greeks understood it nearly three thousand years ago – that is, as love of wisdom. Are either “love” or “wisdom” issues today?

Jacques Derrida: Well, when we teach philosophy in France, at the beginning of every academic year, we recall this etymology. We remember that philosophia in Greek means the love or friendship towards Sophia which is wisdom but also cleverness or skill or knowledge. So then we ask what is Philia – what is love or friendship or desire? In this way, we begin defining philosophy on the basis of this etymology. And there are a number of texts today concerned with love and friendship. I myself wrote a book on the politics of friendship. Deleuze was interested in friendship, and so was Foucault. I would agree that in fact we often lose this etymological definition of philosophy: every philosopher has his own definition of philosophy, and this is one of the typical features of discussions among philosophers about the essence of philosophy – when and where does it start? What is the origin of philosophy? And you can’t of course rely simply on the word to define the concept of philosophy. The word by itself is not enough. And when one agrees that philosophy is a Greek noun and that philosophy as such was born in Greece, then there are so many interpretations of what happened then – when did it occur and why, and is every thinking a philosophy? As you know, Heidegger claimed that there was a Greek thinking before philosophy, that philosophy was putting an end to something, to some thought by Parmenides or Heraclitus. So philosophy was, in a way, the beginning of an end to thinking…

Nikhil Padgaonkar: Over the years, you have repeatedly defended the view that deconstruction is not an inherently negative term, that it is not to be understood as criticism or destruction. And indeed in an interview you gave in 1982 and which was subsequently published in Le Monde, you even said that deconstruction is always accompanied by love. Could you comment on this “love”. Is it the same love as in “philia“?

Jacques Derrida: This love means an affirmative desire towards the Other – to respect the Other, to pay attention to the Other, not to destroy the otherness of the Other – and this is the preliminary affirmation, even if afterwards because of this love, you ask questions. There is some negativity in deconstruction. I wouldn’t deny this. You have to criticise, to ask questions, to challenge and sometimes to oppose. What I have said is that in the final instance, deconstruction is not negative although negativity is no doubt at work. Now, in order to criticise, to negate, to deny, you have first to say “yes”. When you address the Other, even if it is to oppose the Other, you make a sort of promise – that is, to address the Other as Other, not to reduce the otherness of the Other, and to take into account the singularity of the Other. That’s an irreducible affirmation, its the original ethics if you want. So from that point of view, there is an ethics of deconstruction. Not in the usual sense, but there is an affirmation. You know, I often use a quote from Rosensweig or even from Levinas which says that the “yes” is not a word like others, that even if you do not pronounce the word, there is a “yes” implicit in every language, even if you multiply the “no”, there is a “yes”. And this is even the case with Heidegger. You know Heidegger, for a long time, for years and years kept saying that thinking started with questioning, that questioning (fragen) is the dignity of thinking. And then one day, without contradicting this statement, he said “yes, but there is something even more originary than questioning, than this piety of thinking,” and it is what he called zusage which means to acquiesce, to accept, to say “yes”, to affirm. So this zusage is not only prior to questioning, but it is supposed by any questioning. To ask a question, you must first tell the Other that I am speaking to you. Even to oppose or challenge the Other, you must say “at least I speak to you”, “I say yes to our being in common together”. So this is what I meant by love, this reaffirmation of the affirmation.

Nikhil Padgaonkar: To many of your readers, one of the important consequences of reading your works is the realization that criticism from an “outside” position is no longer possible, that one is always working with inherited language, and because one inherits language, one inevitably works within a shared framework. Now, if one seeks to question or to displace without seeking recourse to an outside position, does one not run the risk of conservatism?

Jacques Derrida: Well you see, everything depends on this concept of inherited. When you inherit a language, it does not mean you are totally in it or you are passively programmed by it. To inherit means to be able to, of course, appropriate this language, to transform it, to select something. Heritage is not something you are given as a whole. It is something that calls for interpretations, selections, reactions, response and responsibility. When you take your responsibility as an heir, you are not simply subjected to the heritage, you are not called to simply conserve or keep this heritage as it is, intact. You have to make it live and survive, and that is a process – a selective and interpretive process. So no doubt, there is a temptation simply to repeat and to take up conservative positions. But it is not absolutely necessary, and I would even say that in order to make something new happen, you have to inherit, you have to be inside the language, inside the tradition. You would not be able to transform or displace anything without in some way being inside the tradition, without understanding the language.

Nikhil Padgaonkar.: There is no difference without repetition…

Jacques Derrida: Of course, of course, some repetition, some kind of repetition. But the choice is not between repetition and innovation, but between two forms of repetition and two forms of invention. So I think there are inventive forms of respecting the tradition, and there are reactive or non-inventive forms. But I would not say that in order to invent something new, or to make something new happen, you have to betray the tradition or to forget the tradition. If I may say something about the way I try to work within the French tradition, I have the feeling that the more I understand from within a poet or a writer, the more I am able to, let us say reproduce what he is doing, the more I am able to write something else, or to counter-sign. That is, to sign another text which encounters the generic text. When I write on authors such as Genet, I don’t write like them, I try to incorporate what they give me in order to perform something else which bears my own signature -which is not simply mine but which is another signature. And this happens not only in philosophy or literary theory; it happens all the time. To speak with someone else, you have to understand what the Other says, you have to be able to repeat it – thats what understanding means – and to be able to answer, to respond, and your response will be different, it will be something else, and the response includes the possibility of understanding what you’re responding to. So I would put all this in terms of response – and responsibility -towards your heritage.

Nikhil Padgaonkar.: You have argued that language is subject to a generalized “iterability” – that is, it can be grafted into new and unforeseen contexts…

Jacques Derrida: I have a vague idea of the Sanskrit etymology of “itera” which means again, the same, repetition, and something else, some alteration…

Nikhil Padgaonkar: …so language reproduces itself in new contexts, in new frames, and it becomes impossible therefore to limit the range of possible meanings it thus produces. Significantly enough, iterability suggests that one cannot attempt to delineate the meaning of a text by referring to the intentions of its author. This much said, is there any possibility of holding an author responsible for the fate of his or her book? I am of course thinking of your discussion of Nietzsche, but more generally, can a writer be held to account for the way his or her writings are interpreted or could possibly be interpreted? Is there any way for an author to regulate, in advance, the range of possible interpretations?

Jacques Derrida: If you expect an answer in the form of a “yes or no”, I would say no. But if you give me more time, I would be more hesitant. I would say that a philosopher or writer should try of course, to be responsible for what he writes as far as possible. For instance, one must be very careful politically, and try, not so much to control, but to foresee all possible consequences some people might draw from what you write. Thats an obligation – to try to analyse and foresee everything. But it’s absolutely impossible. You can’t control everything because once a certain work, or a certain sentence, or a certain set of discourses are published, when the trace is traced, it goes beyond your reach, beyond your control, and in a different context, it can be exploited, displaced, used beyond what you meant. And this is the question I asked about Nietzsche since you mention him. Of course, there was an abusive interpretation of Nietzsche by the Nazis. No doubt, Nietzsche didn’t want that, it is sure. But, nevertheless, how can we account for the fact that the only philosopher or thinker that was referred to as a predecessor by the Nazis was Nietzsche? So there must be in Nietzsches discourse, something which was in affinity with the Nazis, and you can say this and try to analyse this possibility without of course, concluding that Nietzsche himself was a Nazi, or that everything in Nietzsche was in affinity with the Nazis. But we have to account for the fact that there was a lineage, there was some genealogy. So, we are all exposed to this – I am sure that some people could draw reactive or reactionary or right-wing conservative positions from what I say. I struggle, I do my best to prevent this, but I know that I can’t control it. People could take a sentence and use it…let us take the example of what I was telling you this afternoon: of course, I am in favour of, let us say, the development of idioms, the differences in language so as to resist the hegemony or the monopoly of language. But I immediately added to this statement that I was also opposed to nationalism. That is, to the nationalistic re-appropriation of this desire for difference. Now, maybe someone can say, “well, you’re in favour of divisions against a universal language, then we would use your discourse in favour of nationalism or reactionary linguistic violence” and so on and so forth. So, I can’t control this. I can only do my best, just adding a sentence to my first sentence, and to go on speaking trying to neutralize the misunderstandings. But you can’t control everything, and the fact that you cannot control everything doesn’t mean simply that you’re a finite being and a limited person. It has to do with the structure of language, the structure of the trace. As soon as you trace something, the trace becomes independent of its source – thats the structure of the trace. The trace becomes independent of its origin, and as soon as the trace is traced, it escapes. You cannot control the fate of the book totally. I can’t control the future of this interview (laughter)…You record it, but then you’ll re-write it, re-frame it, build a new context, and perhaps, my sentence will sound different. So, I trust you but I know that it is impossible to control the publication of everything I say.

Nikhil Padgaonkar: But there is an implicit faith, an implicit relationship…

Jacques Derrida: It’s a matter of faith, of good faith, but it’s faith, it’s faith…