Perjury and pardon. Volume 1. / Jacques Derrida ; edited by Ginette Michaud and Nicholas Cotton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Derrida, Jacques, author.

Contributor:

Michaud, Ginette, 1955- editor.

Cotton, Nicholas, editor.

Series:

The Seminars of Jacques Derrida

The Seminars of Jacques Derrida ; v.1

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Forgiveness in literature.

Forgiveness--Philosophy.

Forgiveness.

Forgiveness--Political aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (355 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago, Illinois ; London, England : The University of Chicago Press, [2022]

Summary:

An inquiry into the problematic of perjury, or lying, and forgiveness from one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. “One only ever asks forgiveness for what is unforgivable.” From this contradiction begins Perjury and Pardon, a two-year series of seminars given by Jacques Derrida at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris in the late 1990s. In these sessions, Derrida focuses on the philosophical, ethical, juridical, and political stakes of the concept of responsibility. His primary goal is to develop what he calls a “problematic of lying” by studying diverse forms of betrayal: infidelity, denial, false testimony, perjury, unkept promises, desecration, sacrilege, and blasphemy. Although forgiveness is a notion inherited from multiple traditions, the process of forgiveness eludes those traditions, disturbing the categories of knowledge, sense, history, and law that attempt to circumscribe it. Derrida insists on the unconditionality of forgiveness and shows how its complex temporality destabilizes all ideas of presence and even of subjecthood. For Derrida, forgiveness cannot be reduced to repentance, punishment, retribution, or salvation, and it is inseparable from, and haunted by, the notion of perjury. Through close readings of Kant, Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, Plato, Jankélévitch, Baudelaire, and Kafka, as well as biblical texts, Derrida explores diverse notions of the “evil” or malignancy of lying while developing a complex account of forgiveness across different traditions.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword to the English Edition

General Introduction to the French Edition

Editors’ Note

Translator’s Note

First Session

Second Session

Third Session

Fourth Session

Fifth Session

Appendix, Fifth Session — Discussion Session

Sixth Session

Appendix 1, Sixth Session

Appendix 2, Sixth Session

Seventh Session

Eighth Session

Ninth Session

Tenth Session

Appendix, Tenth Session — Restricted Session

Index of Proper Names

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-226-81918-3

OCLC:

1345589470