Igors Gubenko

University of Latvia

With Heidegger against Heidegger:

Derrida Thinking Academic Responsibility
Presented at the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy in Athens on August 9, 2013

In 1953, Jrgen Habermas wrote a polemic article on the occasion of the publication of
Martin Heideggers lecture course Introduction to Metaphysics. He deplored the
unchanged publication of the lectures dating back from 1935 and bearing a trace of
Heideggers controversial political engagement of the time, as well as pointed out the
incoherence of this choice with Heideggers own understanding of history. Habermas
famously concluded his text by claiming that it appears to be time to think with Heidegger
against Heidegger. I take this invitation to think with Heidegger against Heidegger as a
clue for my investigation of Heideggers and Derridas complicated philosophical filiation
in light of the question of academic responsibility the question which, for us, obviously
doesnt limit itself to the immediate context of Habermass polemical statement.

It would hardly be an exaggeration to consider Derrida one of the most prominent followers
of Heidegger in the second half of the 20th century. Heideggers thinking has profoundly
marked Derridas deconstructive endeavor not only in its initial self-determination as the
overcoming of the metaphysics of presence, but also in its later reconceptualization as the
experience of the impossible (Psych: Invention of the Other). The very notion of
deconstruction of logocentrism put forth in the late 1960s can be seen as a transformation
of Heideggers idea of destruction of western ontology, while Derridas key quasi-concept
of diffrance, as Jean Luc Nancy has suggested and as Derridas own texts richly testify, is
a deconstructive transformation of Heideggers notion of the ontico-ontological difference
(the difference between being and beings). The same also goes for the notion of thinking
(Denken, pense) that both Heidegger and Derrida take to be distinct from philosophy in its
historical submission to metaphysics.

But is this to suggest that in his deconstructive thinking Derrida has wholly remained with
Heidegger? In what follows I would like to suggest, or rather remind, that, as defining as
Heideggers thinking has remained for Derrida throughout his deconstructive venture, it
still didnt remain intact from deconstruction. Furthermore, I propose to read Habermass
invitation to think with Heidegger against Heidegger as one of the possible definitions of
deconstruction itself.

In a 1998 paper As If It Were Possible... Derrida examines the notion of inheritance that
he defines as thinking against the tradition in its name and as saving it, even while
betraying it. This indecidable approach strikingly parallel to that advocated by Habermas
can indeed be seen at work in most of Derridas deconstructive readings starting with
1960s, notably those of Husserl, Freud, Hegel and Heidegger. [These readings demonstrate
1) how the phenomenological temporality is not derivable from the living present (Husserl),
2) how there is no one coherent unconscious text (Freud), 3) that the Aufhebung does not
bring about a dialectical synthesis (Hegel), 4) that the destruction of western metaphysics is
not achieved while the medium of the voice keeps its privilege (Heidegger).] I would like to
suggest that betrayal and salvation here are not to be seen as choices independent of each
other: one does not betray some part of a doctrine or discourse and save some other part.
Rather: one saves in betraying and betrays in saving.

Applying this concept of inheritance to the question of academic responsibility as situated

between Heidegger and Derrida would then mean showing how Derrida has made, if not
forced, Heideggers thinking to think against itself something that, as Heidegger himself
acknowledged, can take place only rarely (The Experience of Thinking).

The stage for the question of academic responsibility to what and for what do we have to
respond at the university? is set by the modernist critique of reason highlighted by
Habermas in his reading of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida. The richest example of such
critique in Heideggers work is his 195556 lecture course The Principle of Reason
where he explores Leibnizs principium rationis or the principle of reason a principle,
according to which for every truth a reason can be rendered (omnis veritatis reddi ratio
potest). Heidegger points out that in the modern age of representational thinking this
2

principle obliging one to render reason or give ground to whatever he or she takes to be
true, governs the whole of technology and science, as well as the modern university the
privileged place of modern techno-science. Heideggers intention in the lecture course is to
question the reason (ground) of the principle of reason itself something that cannot be
done while fully obeying this principle.

In his own text on The Principle of Reason (a paper of 1983) Derrida gives Heideggers
invitation to question the principle of reason a normative force by turning it into a
responsibility a need to answer for the principle of reason, [..] to raise questions about
the origin or ground of this principle of foundation that holds not only for the university,
but for all thinking in general. In this Derrida clearly seems to remain with Heidegger. But
there is at least one implication of Heideggers idea of such questioning that he isnt willing
to inherit.

It is well known that starting with Being and Time onward Heidegger has consistently
maintained a critical position in respect to the public sphere (ffentlichkeit). First by
associating it with average everydayness and inauthentic being, and later by subordinating
it to the realm of modern technology. In both cases the fundamental trait of publicity is its
inability to measure to the authentic language of questioning and thinking: while in Being
and Time publicity is described in terms of small talk, scribbling and ambiguity
characteristic of the inauthentic existence of the they, in later works like The Question
Concerning Technology the technologically enframed public sphere is seen as wholly
regulated by the principle of the most economic communication of information (i. e. of
language reduced to its ontically limited referential function).

Heideggers treatment of both reason and publicity explicitly brings his thinking into
conflict with the enlightenment paradigm as spelled out by Kant. This paradigm is of
relevance in regard to the question of academic responsibility for at least two reasons.
Firstly: it was Kant who first defined the university as an institution grounded on the
principle of reason. [This definition preceded by less than 15 years the foundation of the
University of Berlin in 1810 that became the model for the western research university.]
Secondly: it was Kant who, answering the question what is enlightenment?, claimed the
3

right for reason (understood as the highest faculty of cognition and moral deliberation
making possible the architectonic totality of knowledge) to speak publicly on all matters
concerning truth in society undergoing enlightenment at large, as well as in the university
as the main platform of this enlightenment. The autonomy demanded by Kant for the
faculty of philosophy as opposed to the faculties of theology, law and medicine is first of
all expressed in its right to publicly criticize any doctrine professed by these faculties in
respect to its truth.

Derrida explicitly embraces the principle of publicity in his political thought starting with
1980s, making it an integral part of what he calls democracy to come (dmocratie
venir), and the same goes for its particular application to the university as a privileged place
(this comes into sharp conflict with Richard Rortys treatment of Derrida as a private ironist
whose theorizing bears little or no public relevance). Derrida acknowledges his unreserved
support to what he calls the new university Aufklrung and treats academic responsibility
as an irreducibly public issue something that his later text The University without
Condition makes particularly clear.

Now Heideggers devaluation of the public sphere, which I take to be essentially implied in
his way of thinking and questioning the principle or reason, comes into direct conflict with
the Kantian understanding of the enlightenment as the free public use of reason. This
invites one question Derridas inheritance of Heideggers thinking. Is it really possible to
inherit both Heideggers call to questioning the principle reason and Kants demand for the
right to the unconstrained public use of reason? This seems to be exactly what Derrida is
doing, and as I have suggested, he is doing it with Heidegger against Heidegger.

In his book Of Spirit Derrida performs a deconstruction of Heideggers treatment of the

essence (Wesen) and in particular of his tendency to preserve what he considers essential
from contamination by what does not belong to the essence. The pattern of such separation
is laid out by the ontico-ontological difference, where being (Sein) never fuses with beings
(die Seienden). Thus, for instance, the language that Heidegger famously claims to be the
house of being (Letter on Humanism) is never seen as essentially threatened by
technology that on his account fully conditions language in its public use. In his seminar
4

What Is Called Thinking?/What Thinking Calls For? (Was heisst Denken?) the hierarchical
separation of the two kinds of language is maintained with full rigor. Deconstruction turns
against this preservationist tendency of Heideggers thought from the very start by stressing
the inevitable mutual contamination of metaphysical oppositions which is already at work
in Heideggers own text (cf. his reading of Nietzsche in Overcoming Metaphysics).
Moreover, it is exactly the indiscernibility of being from beings that characterizes the
movement of diffrance taken by Derrida to be older than the ontological difference itself
(Differance).

It follows from this that there is no pure language fully separable from technology and
publicity. Indeed, both technology and publicity are implied in the notion of iterability or
repeatability in difference that Derrida takes to be the defining property of language and of
every mark in general: in order to signify, a mark has to be repeatable and recognizable in
its repetition. Such repetition steals a mark its singularity and makes it accessible to an
indefinite multitude of possible (as well as impossible) others. The publicity obtaining
within this indefinite multitude is of course not one based on communication of univocal
meaning in a community of subjects fully present to themselves and to each other. For such
model of communication, of univocal meaning, of subjectivity and of presence has
constantly remained the privileged target of deconstruction in its historical deployment.

By thus negotiating Heideggers call for questioning the principle of reason with Kants
demand for the right to the free public use of reason Derrida has been thinking not only
with Heidegger against Heidegger, but obviously also with Kant against Kant. On this
interpretation the deconstructive vision of academic responsibility as the irreducibly public
questioning of the principle of reason governing contemporary techno-science is to be
thought as a particular instance of the complicated inheritance of these two traditions in the
double meaning of betrayal and salvation.