Looking for the Political Good: A “Friendly” Encounter Between Aristotle and Jacques Derrida By Pamela Huber BA, MA A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy Department of Political Science Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario Canada © 2006 by Pamela Huber Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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ABSTRACT I seek an ethics of open-ness and questioning or “political good.” Namely, an ethics without any fixed standard, but informed by perpetual otherness. To flesh out this ethic, I rely on Aristotle and Derrida, particularly their views of the good and friendship. Aristotle offers an "in" to otherness when he suggests Plato's view of the good as one-ness is empty because it largely ignores the human fact of plurality and free choice. So how to marry the good with these facts? Friendship. In particular, Aristotle uses the love bond of friends to show how our multiple views of the good can work to form a common good. Thus, thanks to the affection and love of friendship, the good is set alongside a greater sensitivity to the other. On the other hand, this sensitivity is ultimately limited, since friendship like everything else in Aristotle remains defined by the Platonic good. Derrida takes otherness more literally and so gives plurality and choice freer play. Thus, following Heidegger, he suggests that a fixed, singular good does not exist. In other words, the good exists only in perpetual change, questioning and work. The reason for this, Derrida suggests, is that when the good is fixed or presumed from the start as in Aristotle, it is ultimately not very "good" at all. Namely, it is not open to all views of the good, but instead favors one particular view. Further, this pre-eminent view must be assured by force or the absolute exclusion of other views. If there is to be hope for a truly universal good then, we must get beyond this ethics of force and exclusion. Thus, Derrida posits an ethics which is never fixed and final, but ever open to the questioning of the other. Precisely, it is a vision of the good ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ever undone by its other. As such, Derrida's view of the good is literally one of friendship. Namely, it is a common good which is ever questionable, ever informed by its other and for that very reason, inclusive and universal. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to all of the members of my committee, especially my thesis supervisor, Professor Newell, for advice and support. Thanks also to Vincent Turgeon, Ornur Birler, Catherine Pacella, Toivo Koivukoski, Daniel Pierre-Antoine and members of the unofficial “thesis support group” for their common sense and invaluable advice. I would also like to acknowledge Michel St-Germain, Paul Kelly and especially Chris Stark who were very patient, especially on “stressful” days. And lastly, thank you to my parents and to my family who have always been there. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION - CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION ENDNOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY - Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION As I have been writing these lines that concern a dear friend and one of my literary mentors, I have been experiencing a real difficulty “ending” and “concluding” something about Albahari’s literary opus. But then I realized that this kind of prose poses the ultimate challenge to the literary scholar. How does one end writing about a writer who always writes beyond ending? The reality beyond “reality” that Albahari’s prose circumscribes is by definition inconclusive, uncertain, erratic. His prose testifies to that dimension that exceeds words, that remains hidden in the “halftones of unwritten music” he invokes in the story “The Playground.” So I end without ending, letting that music of words point toward that “something else” buried in the stories we tell each other. - Tomislav Longinovic, Afterword,Words are something else1 In this dissertation, my “argument” is essentially this: ethics should not be based on certainty, or a presumption of the good, or even a model of a certain kind of human community{ethos). Indeed, do any of these things, and ethics, or more precisely the question of what is good or right, becomes a pretext for exclusion and hence not very good at all. In effect, to opt for “givens” as far as the good is concerned is to inevitably make the question of the good a matter of force, of excluding certain groups from participation in the good from the start; or more bald-facedly, of me imposing my particular view of the good over all of you. And so, for the good to be good, for ethics to be possible at all, my “uncertain” contention is that one must eschew all such presumptions of one-ness and instead opt for the trope of friendship; of a perpetual open­ ness to, and therefore a perpetual trust in, the perspective of the excluded other. In this sense, this friendship sense, ethics, the good, becomes a kind of unending work on our 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 part. Namely, it literally becomes a political good, a good negotiated and renegotiated, simultaneously embraced and questioned, alive in the stories we tell and retell each other. Or in more political terms, ethics always already exists there in our particular laws, mores, conventions, philosophies insofar as we all realize that they could ever be better, ever more inclusive. In the end then, the notion of ethics I am seeking in this dissertation is a perpetual and participatory striving for the universally good. As such, it is a “standard” which is not simply just for the moment, but just for all human beings who have ever been and who ever will be precisely because it endlessly strives to include all of our myriad perspectives. To support my search for this open-ended and radically inclusive conception of ethics, I rely principally on two very different thinkers, at least on the surface: Aristotle and Jacques Derrida. In general, my use of Aristotle and Derrida is meant purposefully to suggest that this open-ended ethical formulation is not mine alone. Further, I do not even intend it to be an ethical “solution.” Rather, what is being implied here is something broader. In short, such ethical open-ness, far from being a novel proposal by me, may very well be deeply embedded in the tradition of political philosophy itself. Thus, all at once, my argument for the political good becomes something more akin to a search. Or to put this in another way, what I am simply suggesting is that the spirit of political philosophy guides “my” notion of ethics. Namely philosophy is not deterministic. It is not meant to be a theory that captures all of reality. On the contrary, given its spirit of pursuing knowledge, it necessarily welcomes questions and critique. As such, no matter where it finally stands, no matter whether it exults freedom or the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 eternal good, political philosophy, by “definition,” remains open-ended. Indeed, it must. For without at least an implicit nod to open-ended-ness, there would be no way to finally distinguish political philosophy from political ideology. And thus, I confess that it is this non-deterministic spirit of philosophy in general that ultimately prompts my search for a so-called political good.