For Strasbourg: Conversations of Friendship and Philosophy - Hardcover

Derrida, Jacques

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823256480 ISBN 13: 9780823256488

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 2014

Synopsis

For Strasbourg consists of a series of essays and interviews about the city of Strasbourg and the philosophical friendships Jacques Derrida developed there over a period of some forty years.

Written just months before his death, the opening essay, “The Place Name(s): Strasbourg,” recounts in detail, and in very moving terms, Derrida’s deep attachment to this French city on the border between France and Germany. More than just a personal narrative, however, the essay is a profound interrogation of the relationship between philosophy and place, philosophy and language, and philosophy and friendship. As such, it raises a series of philosophical, political, and ethical questions that might all be placed under the aegis of what Derrida once called “philosophical nationalities and nationalism.”

The other three texts included in the book are long interviews/conversations between Derrida and his two principal interlocutors in Strasbourg, Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. These interviews are significant both for the themes they focus on (language, politics, friendship, death, life after death, and so on) and for what they reveal about Derrida’s relationships to Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe. Filled with sharp insights into one anothers’ work and peppered with personal anecdotes and humor, the interviews bear witness to the decades-long intellectual friendships of these three important contemporary thinkers.

This collection thus stands as a reminder of and testimony to Derrida’s unique relationship to Strasbourg and to the two thinkers most closely associated with that city.

About this title

About the Author:

The late Jacques Derrida was the single most influential voice in European philosophy of the last quarter of the twentieth century. His Athens, Still Remains, The Animal That Therefore I Am, Sovereignties in Question, and Deconstruction in a Nutshell have been published by Fordham University Press.

Review:

Derrida did not plan to publish For Strasbourg, but it is an illuminating addition to his legacy, (―Times Literary Supplement)

This volume gathers some of Derrida’s last texts, from 2002 to 2004, as he was engaged in fascinating discussions with Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe about questions of sovereignty, event, responsibility, friendship, hospitality, singularity, community, the people, the human and animality, and his own relation to Heidegger and to the “Strasbourg school.” More poignantly, Derrida develops extraordinary meditations on death, on his own death, on dying alone or together, on survival and disappearance, on eternity, immortality and finitude, returning to the notions of trace, spectrality, and mourning. This is a moving and extraordinarily rich volume, which reveals Derrida’s final philosophical reflections. (―François Raffoul Louisiana State University)

About this edition

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0823256480
• ISBN 13: 9780823256488
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 144