!

J Routledge

ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 11 number 3 december 2006

The formulae perhaps and perhaps not,

[. . .] we adopt in place of perhaps it is and
perhaps it is not [. . .]. But here again we do
not fight about phrases [. . .] these expressions
are indicative of non-assertion.
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism
One could spend years on [. . .] the perhaps
[. . .] whose modality will render fictional and
fragile everything that follows [. . .]. One does
not testify in court and before the law with
perhaps.
Jacques Derrida, Demeure: Fiction and
Testimony

I the pyrrhonian therapy (a)

the abandonment of belief
Therapeutic objectives governed a number of
ancient philosophies, but none more so than
Pyrrhonian scepticism.1 For the Pyrrhonist, it is
the human tendency toward belief (that is, belief
per se) that requires philosophical treatment. 2
Only by eliminating our ontological, epistemic
and normative commitments can we attain an
untroubled and tranquil condition of [the] soul
or ataraxia.3 The Pyrrhonists are not devoted to
any single methodology,4 but just as physicians
have remedies which differ in strength [. . .] so
too the Sceptic propounds arguments which differ
in strength.5 This, combined with the rejection
of theoretical commitments, thus leads Sextus to
describe Pyrrhonism as a tone of mind,6 an
ability, or mental attitude.7 The Pyrrhonian
attitude toward reason is therefore extremely
pragmatic. Rational procedures are valued only
insofar as they facilitate existential health in a
given therapeutic context.8 Taking these curative
aspirations into account, we must determine
what, according to the Pyrrhonist,

bob plant

PERHAPS . . . jacques
derrida and pyrrhonian
scepticism
constitutes a healthy life. In order to answer
this question, however, we need to say something
about the Pyrrhonists metaphilosophy.
Although Sextus divides philosophy into the
Dogmatic, the Academic, and the Sceptic,9 his
principal concern is with the latter. 10 Indeed,
Sextus immediately problematizes this topography by charging both the Dogmatist and
Academic with holding equally bold beliefs
concerning truth.11 For while Dogmatists claim
to have discovered the truth, Academics assert
that it cannot be apprehended.12 Despite their
apparent differences, then, a telling congruity
emerges between these philosophies, as both
remain, not only tethered to objective truth, 13 but
also essentially affirmative

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/06/030137^20 2006 Taylor & Francis and the Editors of Angelaki
DOI: 10.1080/09697250601048606

13 7

derrida and pyrrhonian scepticism

in character. For Pyrrhonism, however, it is
precisely this most elementary of beliefs and the
haughty assertiveness which accompanies it that
requires therapeutic dissolution.14 Indeed, this is
why the Pyrrhonist eliminates truth from her
conceptual vocabulary, replacing it is with it
appears to me to be.15 This eliminative strategy
is central to Sextuss argument because
emphasizing only what appears to be the case
circumvents the aporetic nature of truth-criteria. 16
For, as he reminds us: in order to decide the
dispute which has arisen about the criterion [of
competing truth-claims], we must possess an
accepted criterion by which [...] to judge the
dispute; and in order to possess an accepted
criterion, the dispute about the criterion must first
be decided.17 But no one [. . .] disputes that the
underlying object has this or that appearance; the
point in dispute is whether the object is in reality
such as it appears to be.18 This manoeuvre thus
enables the Pyrrhonist to distinguish herself from
her philosophical competitors. For in their respective claims to have provided the most adequate
foundations upon which to live, philosophers fail
to see that their theories simply compound the
problem they aim to resolve. 19 Engagement with
any of these schools requires a variety of
ontological, epistemic and normative commitments, but it is precisely these that increase
existential disease insofar as they impede natural
instinct.20 What is needed if ataraxia is to be
attained is not dogma, but rather a natural
flexibility in the face of lifes unpredictabil-ities. 21
What ultimately guides this teleology of
quietude22 is the realm of unhampered
animality. Diogenes thus famously notes of
Pyrrho that when
fellow-passengers on board a ship were all
unnerved by a storm, he kept calm and
confident, pointing to a little pig [. . .] that
went on eating, and telling them that such was
the un-perturbed state in which the wise man
should keep himself.23
Apocryphal though the story may be, the general
sentiment is clearly opposed to the traditional
philosophical tendency to elevate the human
far above that of the animal. But for the

Pyrrhonist, humanity has much to learn from its

animal neighbours.24 After all:
What creature escapes being wrecked in the
tempest? The creature who goes through life
only as natural instinct prompts it, without
ambitious enterprises [. . .]. Not builders of
fortresses, but nomads, who move along
grazing here and there as natural need
dictates.25
Supplementing the claim that there exists a
fundamental unity between Dogmatic and
Academic, Sextus proceeds to suggest a further
point of contact, this time between these
philosophies and Pyrrhonism itself. For all are
said to share the goal of ataraxia. As we have
begun to see, the divergence between Pyrrhonism
and Dogmatism emerges in the latters assumption that the affirmation (or denial) of truth is
necessary to secure this shared liberatory end. 26
According to the Pyrrhonist, however, ataraxia
can only be achieved through the substitution of
truth for the life of phenomenal experience (Not
anything that lies beyond this, no, this the way
life actually goes in nature this is the end). 27
The Pyrrhonist thus questions, not merely the
possibility of attaining truth, but the benefit of
even trying to do so. By abandoning this
obsessive commitment, one is freed from theoretical speculation to follow natural animal
impulse.28 Thus (again) Pyrrho himself is said to
have led a life consistent with this doctrine,
going out of his way for nothing, taking no
precaution but facing all risks as they came.29
Released from the burdens of commitment one is,
like the wild animal, left only with fleeting
appearances30 and the guidance of instinct.31
The changing world simply strikes the Pyrrhonist
who, in turn, maintains a state of passive
acquiescence.32 But why does belief impede
ataraxia? Because he who believes himself to be
tormented by things naturally bad then pursues
the things which are, as he thinks, good. But
even if he obtains the latter, this does not facilitate
ataraxia, for in his dread of a change of fortune
he uses every endeavour to avoid losing the things
which he deems good. By contrast, the man
who determines nothing as to what is naturally
good or bad neither shuns nor

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pursues anything.33 In other words, the added
opinion that something is naturally good or bad
is worse than the actual suffering itself.34
Vulnerability is an inextricable feature of human
life. Sextuss point is that while such burdens
cannot be wholly eliminated, one can nevertheless
avoid aggravating them unnecessarily.35 The
Pyrrhonists aspirations are not therefore entirely
utopian, for, although ataraxia is his aim
regarding matters of superfluous belief, he does
not think the same level of unperturbedness is
possible in all areas of life. Certainly he is cold
at times and thirsty, and suffers various affections
of that kind, but whereas ordinary people are
afflicted by [both . . .] the affections themselves
and [. . .] by the belief that these conditions are
evil by nature, the Pyrrhonist escapes [. . .]
with less discomfort. Thus, while in matters of
opinion the Sceptics End is quietude, in regard to
things unavoidable it is moderate affection. 36
Suffering may be naturally unpleasant and often
best avoided,37 but believing such things to be
by nature evil simply increases ones initial
distress.38 To attain ataraxia, one does not then
require explanations, but the ability to resist
supplementing unavoidable torments with
theoretical speculation. Insofar as the end of the
Sceptic system39 is ataraxia, it is unlikely that
the Pyrrhonist can purge herself of all traces of
dogmatism. 40 For in one thing she has a little
hope;41 that ataraxia is itself a goal worth
pursuing and not merely for herself. 42 (The
claim that Pyrrho [. . .] leaves nothing at all to
seek after43 thus remains questionable.) Without
this minimal commitment, there would be no
motivation either to practise or to advocate the
Pyrrhonian attitude.44 In short, Pyrrhonism
necessarily involves a normative and to that
extent dogmatic dimension.45
This brings us to the question of how the
Pyrrhonist actually goes about undermining
Dogmatism. Sextus explains: We oppose either
appearances to appearances or objects of thought
to objects of thought [. . .]. For instance, we
oppose [. . .] thoughts to thoughts, when in
answer to him who argues the existence of
Providence from the order of the heavenly bodies
we oppose the fact that often the good fare
ill
and the bad fair well.46

13 9

Having persuaded the Dogmatist of the equal

plausibility (equipollence) 47 of his assertion
being either true or false, this quasi-dialectical 48
move provokes a radical agnosticism.49 (The
emphasis on rhetoric should be duly noted, for
given the non-theoretical, non-dogmatic aspirations of the Pyrrhonist, she cannot risk getting
infected by the Dogmatists discourse. All she
can legitimately say is this is what my experiences cause me quite naturally to do; and this is
what I have so far observed to result from these
doings. See what happens in your own case.) 50
As previously noted, rational debate is of purely
therapeutic concern here, for the Pyrrhonist will
happily employ the same argument in one
situation, which, in another, she would subvert. 51
Thus, the value of argumentation is persuasiveness, rhetoric simply replaces logical
validity. Any number of logical sins52 may be
committed, so long as they successfully
undermine dogmatism and generate ataraxia. 53
What the Pyrrhonist attempts to bring about here
is an experience of radical indecision an
epistemological limbo where a decision for or
against a specific belief seems arbitrary. The
Pyrrhonists intention is not then to bring about
doubt in the patient. Indecision is rather an
aporetic state of being at a loss (epoche); a
paralysis54 or standstill of reason through
which one will neither deny nor assert anything.55 (What distinguishes this radical hesitancy from doubt and thus what separates
Pyrrhonism from other forms of scepticism is
that while doubt implies understanding, being at
a loss does not. One can only doubt an assertion
if one understands what that assertion and its
denial might mean.) Of course, this being at a
loss does
not
apply
to
immediate
phenomenological appearances. For although the
Pyrrhonist withholds assent [. . .] from all
categorical assertions [. . .] he is willing to say
how things now seem to him to be, but on the
question of how they are in fact, he takes no
position.56 While being at a loss may initially
provoke speechlessness,57 the Pyrrhonist need
not remain silent or wholly inactive58 because
he only expresses subjective appearances. 59 Thus,
Sextus explains that he adopts the formulae
perhaps and perhaps not, [. . .] and maybe

derrida and pyrrhonian scepticism

and maybe not in place of perhaps it is and
perhaps it is not [. . .] these expressions are
indicative of non-assertion.60 To summarize: the
route to philosophical health begins with demonstrating the equal plausibility (equipollence) of
mutually incompatible views. Subsequently, a
state of indecision (epoche) is brought about
where the choice between either view proves
arbitrary. Finally, having paralysed reason,
unperturbedness (ataraxia) ensues like a shadow
follows its substance.61 Having considered the
central themes of Pyrrhonism, we can now turn to
questions of a more social nature. I am not overly
concerned with the practicalities of the
Pyrrhonian attitude,62 but rather concerned with
its ethicalpolitical implications.

(b) the social chamele on

Having eliminated belief and thus submitted
herself to the life of apparent facts,63 Nussbaum
suggests that the Pyrrhonian convert will come
to lack all attitudes such as anger, fear, jealousy,
grief, [and] envy [. . .] because these all rest [. . .]
upon belief; and she will have no beliefs.64
Nussbaum continues:
the removal of belief removes arrogance and
irascibility [. . .]. Dogmatists [. . .] are selfloving, rash, puffed-up [. . .] skeptics, by
contrast, are calm and gentle [. . .] dogmatists
[. . .] impos[e] their own way on others; the
skeptic, by contrast, is tolerant.65
Despite the confusion between indifference and
tolerance in this passage, one can trace a certain
rationale in Nussbaums portrait. Still, other
features of Pyrrhonism present a more troubling
image.66 These can best be explored by considering Nussbaums additional point; that in keeping
himself to himself and letting others go their
way, the Pyrrhonist is not a slave to social
prejudices.67 This claim demands interrogation
given the radical sort of conservatism68 the
Pyrrhonist favours.69 Thus, earlier on, Nussbaum
rightly suggests of the Pyrrhonian convert that as
she becomes increasingly
used to the skeptic way she will [. . .] come to
hold all of her convictions [. . .] more lightly;
so she will need, progressively, weaker [. . .]

arguments. Argument gradually effects its own

removal from her life. At the end [. . .] the
bare posing of a question will already induce
a shrug of indifference, and further argument
will prove unnecessary.70
The critical point here is that there is nothing
within Pyrrhonism to stop this shrug of
indifference also manifesting itself in the
ethicalpolitical realm. 71 Indeed, in Sextuss own
account, we are explicitly told that, given the
equal plausibility of different lifestyles, 72 the
acceptance of the prevailing laws and customs
provides the Pyrrhonist with criteria for what is
good and bad in the conduct of life.73 In short,
the Pyrrhonist follows a line of reasoning which,
in accordance with appearances, points [her] to a
life conformable to the customs of [her] country
and its laws and institutions.74 These passages do
not merely suggest as Nussbaum remarks that
prevalent Customs of friendly and marital
loyalty will be observed.75 Taking into account
that the normativity of the pre-Pyrrhonian life is
extricated along with belief, 76 and that the
Pyrrhonist values her ability for social
conformism, 77 the claim that she would be
immune to social prejudices becomes
untenable. For if the Pyrrhonist finds herself in a
cultural context ingrained with social
prejudices,78 then how could she legitimately
avoid indulging in them? After all, to shun these
activities would be conducive neither to the
attainment nor to the maintenance of ataraxia. In
her defence, one might argue that the Pyrrhonist
could attain ataraxia because she would not adopt
the beliefs fuelling such prejudices. The
Pyrrhonist would not then, for example, believe
those of Jewish origin to be fit only for
extermination.
She
would
not
believe
homosexuality to be an abomination before God.
Nor would she believe that women were naturally
subordinate to men. She would, however, follow
others and engage in racist, homophobic, and/or
sexist activities if doing otherwise would
jeopardize her own ataraxia. 79 Could the
Pyrrhonist here propose ataraxia as an alternative
to such customs? It seems that there is no space
within the Pyrrhonian framework to engage in
such burdensome counter-cultural activities. After
all, the normativity of (dogmatic)

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plant
life is what she seeks to erase; as Nussbaum notes,
the Pyrrhonist has no view about how things
ought to go on.80 There is then something
paradoxical about Pyrrhonism, for in her desire to
be noncommittal, the Pyrrhonist occupies a
substantive ethicalpolitical position.81 To refrain
from (explicitly) making ethicalpolitical decisions is already to be (implicitly) engaged in
making at least one very important decision:
namely, to refrain from making (explicit) ethical
political decisions. (Insofar as the Pyrrhonian
convert hopes to reach a point where such
deliberate ignorance becomes mere obliviousness,82 this itself bears witness to a substantive
ethicalpolitical position.) Despite her protestations, the Pyrrhonist nevertheless says yes! to
non-commitment,83 and as such her alleged
indecision is little more than a fantasy. Of
course, it is not clear that the decision in favour of
indecision can even be justified on Pyrrhonian
grounds. For if the Pyrrhonist finds herself in a
culture which values the ability of individuals to
make their own ethicalpolitical decisions then
she will be forced by her own teleology to make
further ethicalpolitical decisions and actions or
at least appear to others to be doing so. It is
doubtful that merely emulating the decisions of
others would be conducive to the unperturbed
life, because one must first choose who, what,
when and how to emulate. As Derrida remarks:
Inheritance implies decision, responsibility,
response and, consequently, critical selection,
choice. There is always choice, whether one likes
it or not, whether it is or isnt conscious.84 For
the Pyrrhonist, then, a pluralistic democracy
would generate more anxieties than a totalitarian
dictatorship. To summarize: the Pyrrhonist must
sacrifice her ethicalpolitical parasitism in order
to maintain the liberatory, ataraxia-seeking
objectives of the very Pyrrhonism she espouses.
Even assuming she can successfully mimic those
around her and appear to be a morally
respectable, autonomous individual, the resultant
fissure between what others erroneously assume
about her and what she secretly knows of herself85
would likely prove detrimental to the attainment
of ataraxia. Becoming a social chameleon is not
therefore merely ethically and politically
troubling; it is deeply paradoxical.

141

II derridas qua si-pyrrhonian e thics (a)

met ho dology and metaphilo so phy
Given the Pyrrhonists radical devaluing of truth,
preference for rhetoric over reason, and ethical
political indifference, some might view Derridas
work as a sort of neo-Pyrrhonism. While certain
academic quarters have embraced Derrida with
more enthusiasm than critical reflection (what
Rorty identifies as formulaic applications of
the so-called deconstructive method), 86
Derridas reception in Anglo-American philosophy has been largely hostile.87 One reason for this
is his avowed inclination toward excessive
hyperbole.88 Although the history of deconstruction need not concern us, it is worth noting that
many of the anxieties Derridas work provokes
result from a certain idleness on the part of critics
and disciples.89 I will not attempt to address the
specificities of these diverse responses. What
concerns me here is the general suspicion that
Derridas thinking betrays a deep and troubling
relativism [. . .] skepticism or even nihilism;90 that his thinking fundamentally undermines reason, truth and the seriousness of ethical
political life. There is a story to be told about
Derrida and Pyrrhonism, but it does not offer any
straightforward correlations. Rather, where
Derridas work looks most Pyrrhonian is where
their paths diverge. I will begin with some
observations on three general differences between
them.
1. On matters of metaphilosophy, there will be
little consensus between Derrida and the
Pyrrhonist, for the latters therapeutic objectives
sit uncomfortably alongside Derridas rejection of
the idea that deconstruction constitutes a
psychoanalysis of philosophy.91 As we have
seen, the Pyrrhonist has a unified vision of
philosophy as fundamentally ataraxia-seeking.
For Derrida, however, philosophy does not know
what its destination is, not least because [a]ll
philosophical discussions carry within them the
question: What is philosophy? Where does it
begin, where does it end? What is the limit? 92
Philosophy, like literature, is therefore a counterinstitutional institution,93 though for Derrida this
is not a lamentable contingency.

derrida and pyrrhonian scepticism

2. Contrary to Pyrrhonisms teleology of
liberation, Derrida following Levinas promises nothing in this regard. 94 Indeed, such
catharsis is what Derrida warns against in his
persistent condemnation of theoretical, ethical and
political good conscience.95 But neither is there
a sense of resignation in Derridas work, 96 for he
does not think that philosophy is eliminable in the
way the Pyrrhonist supposes. Indeed, Derrida
emphatically rejects anti-philosophical gestures,
not least because everyday language is not
innocent or neutral. It is in the language of
Western metaphysics, and it carries with it [. . .] a
considerable number of presuppo-sitions.97
Thus, what interests Derrida is how seemingly
inhospitable concepts necessarily contaminate
one another.98
3. The dominance of the animal in
Pyrrhonism has no counterpart in Derridas work.
While he is concerned with the question of socalled animality,99 this does not denote a
nostalgia or yearning for the animal as a site of
lost or recoverable innocence. According to
the Pyrrhonist, following her therapeutic procedures enables one to shed completely ones
humanity.100 Derridas position is more circumspect he even insists that the locution the
animal should be kept within quotation
marks.101 While Derrida does not think that the
animal is fundamentally distinct from
man,102 neither does he believe in some
homogeneous continuity between what calls itself
man and what [man] calls the animal.103 For
Derrida, there is no animal in [. . .] general [. . .]
separated from man by a single indivisible
limit,104 for none of [the] traditional concepts of
what is proper to man and thus of what is
opposed to it can resist a consistent scientific and
deconstructive analysis.105 Just as Derridas
work on hospitality is not an altogether new
departure, neither is his preoccupation with the
animal both are implicit in his account of
iterability.106 I raise the question of hospitality
here because Derridas concern with animality is
intimately connected with his reflections on the
deconstruction of the at-home107 that is, on a
hospitality that might open itself to an other that
is not [...] even my neighbour or my brother,
[but] perhaps an animal. 108

While Derrida does not offer a systematic

analysis of the animal, his moral sentiments are
clear: no one can deny the unprecedented
proportions of [the] subjection of the animal [. . .].
No one can deny seriously [. . .] that men do all
they can in order to dissimulate this cruelty or to
hide it from themselves, in order to organize on a
global scale the forgetting [. . .] of this violence
[. . .] (there are also animal genocides [. . .]).109
Again, I note this in order to highlight an
important difference between Derrida and the
Pyrrhonist. For the latters preoccupation with
animality is essentially a-moral. Despite the
Pyrrhonists appeals for us to learn from animal
life, the question of responsibility toward the
animal never arises. Rather, in the animal, she
sees only a strategy for her own withdrawal from
responsibility per se; the Pyrrhonists turn toward
the animal is simultaneously a turn away from the
ethical. For Derrida, however, the question of the
animal is bound up with the question of sacrifice
and the bad conscience he describes as the
main motivation of [his] ethics and [. . .]
politics.110 (Indeed, I would argue that what
haunts Derridas ethics is a guilt beyond the
economics of original sin, absolution or
salvation; what Levinas calls a Guilt without
fault111 or the culpability of the survivor.) 112
With these observations in mind, I now want to
focus on a number of specific Pyrrhonian themes
in Derridas work.

(b) hospitality, the future, and the to

co m e
In order to secure her therapeutic ends, the
Pyrrhonist attempts to inculcate an experience of
being at a loss by demonstrating the equal
plausibility of conflicting beliefs. We noted that
Sextus describes being at a loss under the
rubric of the perhaps or maybe.113 Now, this
is interesting because Derrida also employs these
strange categories. Thus, regarding the event of
hospitality, he suggests that the perhaps might
be [. . .] the most useful modality to phrase what
[he is] describing. That is:
Perhaps [. . .] thats the condition for an event.
Unless the event is so surprising that I am not

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even prepared for the surprise, it is not an
event. It is the same with the other [. . .] the
experience of the otherness of the other
implies that the other may come when I am
totally unprepared: that is the condition of the
other remaining other [. . .]. For the other to
happen, to come to me [. . .] the perhaps is
needed.114
Unlike the Pyrrhonist, Derrida does not use the
perhaps and maybe synonymously. For
while the maybe has a relation to the future,
to possibility, to something possible which may
occur or not occur, the perhaps [. . .] does not
necessarily [. . .] fall under the ontological
category of being present. And this is why
Derrida wants to distinguish between the future
and what is to come.115 The ethical orientation of
this distinction becomes more apparent when he
alludes to a messianicity without messian-ism,
which Derrida describes as the opening to the [. .
.] coming of the other or the advent of justice [.
. .] without horizon of expectation. That is, The
coming of the other can only emerge [. . .] when
the other and death and radical evil can come
as a surprise at any moment.116 Like the gift,
hospitality supposes a break with reciprocity,
exchange, economy and circular movement.117
Genuine hospitality depends rather upon ones
being open to the possibility of an absolute
surprise,118 for the other like the Messiah, must
arrive whenever he or she wants,119 not when I
decide they are least inconvenient.120 This
messianicity or not-knowing when, how or
even if the other will arrive121 is the
unconditional law of hospitality [. . .] [which] gives
us the order or injunction to welcome anyone. If
I am unconditionally hospitable, Derrida
concludes, I should welcome the visitation, not
merely the invited
guest.122
Unsurprisingly, this madness [. . .] linked to
the essence of hospitality123 is hazardous.124
While the invitation represents one way of
confining risk, it is precisely the desired
invulnerability motivating such practices that
problematises them. Regarding the visitation,
however, such risks play a constitutive role. That
the visitor might catch me without protection
[. . .] incapable of even sheltering

14 3

[myself]125 (that she might oppose my being-athome to the point of ruin[ing] the house,126 or
even by bringing death) is a necessary condition
of hospitality. It is also necessary for the home to
be a home (and not some regulated quarantine)
that the host and home are vulnerable in this
way127 one cannot exclude the possibility that
the one who is coming [...] is a figure of evil,128
even of radical evil.129 And again, the force of
this prohibition is constitutive of hospitality. Here
good-will and reciprocity can neither be
demanded nor pre-programmed. Just as an
authentic prayer cannot be merely repeated
mechanically,130 so a gesture of friendship or
politeness would be neither friendly nor polite if
it were purely and simply to obey a ritual rule.131
In short, both good and evil inhabit the Derridean
perhaps.
Now, insofar as Derridas conception of the
perhaps entails an experience of undecidability,
it seems close to the Pyrrhonists being at a
loss. After all, both emphasize the aporia of
facing two (or more) mutually exclusive and
equally justifiable possibilities. But caution is
needed here, for, as Derrida warns:
Many [. . .] who have written about deconstruction understand undecidability as paralysis in face of the power to decide [. . .]. Far
from opposing undecidability to decision, I
would argue that there would be no decision
[. . .] in ethics, in politics [. . .] and thus no
responsibility, without the experience of some
undecidability. [Otherwise . . .] the decision
would simply be the application of a programme, the consequence [. . .] of a matrix.132
Undecidibility is not mere indeterminacy. Rather:
I am in front of a problem and I know that the
two [or more] determined solutions are as
justifiable as one another. From that point, I have
to take responsibility.133 Undecidability thus
arises from more-or-less determinate possibilities.
Here, one might object that Derrida misrepresents
the issue by opposing two extreme possibilities.
For what of decisions that neither emerge from
the ordeal of the undecidable134 nor constitute
the mere application of a

derrida and pyrrhonian scepticism

programme?135 He is not unaware of this
tension:
In order to be responsible [. . .] a decision
should not limit itself to putting into operation
a determinable or determining knowledge, the
consequence of some preestablished order.
But, conversely, who would call a decision that
is without rule, without norm, without
determinable or determined law, a decision?136
A responsible decision is neither a simple reaction
nor free-floating. Rather, [t]he undecid-able
remains caught, lodged, as [. . .] an essential
ghost, in every decision.137 Derrida does not
therefore simply oppose the programmatic and
responsible decision, but suggests that the two
are inseparable. The incalculable is always
part of the game138 because even in the most
calculable situation, the decision to calculate
is not of the order of the calculable.139 That is,
one might determine ones decisions by some
calculus, but the decision to do this cannot itself
be determined by the calculus. 140 As Derrida
remarks of the foundations of law, we might say
here that the criteria for decision exceed the
opposition between founded and unfounded.141
Although he acknowledges the aporia of
judgement criteria,142 Derrida nevertheless resists
the Pyrrhonian teleology of ataraxia a resistance
that occasionally prompts him to speak of a quasiKierkegaardian leap.143 There is no liberation
from responsibility or the mad moment of
decision,144 because here there could only be the
corrupt assurance of good conscience;145 of
having applied the rule absolutely correctly. After
all, how does one justify applying this criterion
and not another, or account for the necessary
exclusion
of other
programs by the
implementation of this one?146 And how does one
justify applying a rule in this way rather than
that? Such questions render the Pyrrhonist at a
loss, for she is content to yield to the aporia.
Derrida, however, speaks of a nonpassive
endurance of the aporia which is the condition
of responsibility and of deci-sion.147 In other
words, the aporia is not a paralyzing structure,
something that simply blocks the way with a
simple negative effect.148 Rather, it is an
ordeal, a test, a

crucial moment through which we have to go

[. . .] we have to experience this moment of aporia
in order to make a decision, in order to take
responsibility.149 But Derrida is not describing
some heroic defeat of the aporia. The aporia may
not be a simple paralysis, but neither is its
ordeal that of an overcoming.150 The focus
here is (again) fundamentally ethical; that good
conscience is a scandalous luxury. The risk of
Pyrrhonian-like paralysis cannot be eliminated,
but this risk is constitutive of the decision and
responsibility.151 As a finite being, every decision I
make sacrifices every other; every responsible
act toward this other (or these others) is, by
definition, at the expense of that other (or those
others).152 The impossibility of knowing that I have
made the absolutely right decision (or assuring
myself that I am just) 153 is due to this sacrificial
structure. What therefore interests Derrida
is the experience of the desire for the
impossible [. . .] [that] we do not give up the
dream of the pure gift, in the same way that we
do not give up the idea of pure hospitality.
Even if we know it is impossible and that it
can be perverse.154
Why perverse? Because my hospitality toward
this other may itself demand my hostility toward
that other. To summarize: while the Pyrrhonist
submits to the aporia in order to evacuate ethics,
Derrida situates the aporia at the very heart of
ethicalpolitical life. And yet despite this
difference, the Pyrrhonian submission to good
conscience nevertheless haunts Derridas work
as a necessary and proper
possibility.155

(c) truth, testimony, and affirmation

Derrida is unequivocal that the question of
truth is neither outmoded nor a value one
can renounce.156 He therefore maintains that
the value of truth (and all those values
associated with it) is never contested in [his]
writings,157 and similarly that undecidability
[.. .] does not in the least invalidate [...]
truthfulness, sincerity, or objectivity.158 These
assurances aside, it would nevertheless seem

14 4

plant
that here (and elsewhere), we find a certain
slippage between truth and truthfulness; that
Derrida is attempting to circumvent the question,
demands and responsibilities of truth by focusing
instead on truthfulness. But can one evade truth
so easily? I do not think so, and I doubt Derrida
thinks so either (In the name of [. . .] which
other truth, [could he]?). 159 What Derrida is
(perhaps) highlighting is that, prior to concepts of
truth, we are already bound up with it. Truth is
not a value one can renounce because it is not
something one can voluntarily pick up or cast
aside. Thus, when he remarks that Justice [. . .]
outside or beyond law, is not deconstruc-tible,160
much the same could be said of truth outside or
beyond theoretical truth. This, I suggest, is how
we should read Derridas following remarks on
the promise: There is a language of the promise
next to other languages [. . . but] beyond
determined promises, all language acts entail a
certain structure of the promise, even if they do
something else at the same time. All language is
addressed to the other in order to promise him or
her to speak to him or her in some way [. . .] there
is in the simple fact that I am speaking to the
other a [. . .] commitment to go to the end of my
sentence, to continue [. . .] one cannot imagine a
language that is not in a certain way caught up in
the space of the promise [. . .] I do not master it
because it is older than me [. . .] It is before me.
As soon as I speak, I am in it.161 So, when
Derrida claims that he has a commitment to
[. . .] question the possibility of the truth, the
history of the truth, the differences in the concept
of truth,162 one should not take this to be of a
sceptical hew. For, the moment said to be
epistemic, the content of knowledge, truth, or
revelation, already depends [. . .] on a
performative promise: the promise to tell the
truth.163 But this focus on testimony and
specifically the testimonial pledge of every
performative164 does not (as it does for the
Pyrrhonist) subjectivize truth. As Derrida
variously notes: When I say Im telling you the
truth about what I saw there, it means [. . .]
anyone whosoever in my place would

14 5

have seen the same thing, and thats why what

I say is true;165
In saying: I swear to tell the truth, where I
have been the only one to see or hear and
where I am the only one who can attest to it,
this is true to the extent that anyone who in
my place, at that instant, would have seen or
heard or touched the same thing and could
repeat [. . .] the truth of my testimony.166
The range and depth of testimonial truth can
hardly be exaggerated. For while all theoretical
knowledge is circumscribed within this testimonial space, this same [t]estimony, which
implies faith or promise governs the entire
social space.167 That is: You cannot address the
other, speak to the other, without an act of faith,
without testimony [. . .]. You address the other
and ask, believe me. Even if you are lying [. . .]
you are addressing the other and asking the other
to trust you. This trust me, I am speaking to you
is of the order of faith, a faith that cannot be
reduced to a theoretical statement [. . .] this faith
is absolutely universal [. . .]. Each time I open my
mouth, I am promising something [. . .] the
promise is not just one speech act among others;
every speech act is fundamentally a promise [. . .].
There is no society without faith, without trust in
the other.168

(d) syno psis

According to Derrida, the thinking of justice,
responsibility and hospitality demands that we
endure the experience of the impossible169 or
more accurately, the experience of the desire for
the impossible.170 As we have seen, one striking
example of this is his insistence that the socalled responsible decision must not merely be
the technical application of a concept or the
consequence of some preestablished order.171
Rather, it must arise against a background of the
undecidable, even though the undecidable
inscribes threat in chance, and terror in the ipseity
of the host.172 In an interesting ethical twist to
the Pyrrhonian narrative, this backdrop of
undecidability neither constitutes nor sanctions
paralysis in the face of sacrificial choices.173
Appealing to ones inherited

derrida and pyrrhonian scepticism

cultural practices and values (or, to borrow
Wittgensteins phrase, ones world-picture)174
may be epistemically legitimate, but it will never
be ethically sufficient to justify good conscience. For any world-picture must be inhabitable by other others. If, as Levinas and Derrida
suggest, the other haunts175 my being-in-theworld as such, then the specificities of my worldpicture will provide neither a means of exorcism
nor a quarantine in which to withdraw:
since there is [. . .] no hospitality without
finitude, sovereignty can only be exercised by
filtering, choosing, and thus by excluding and
doing violence. Injustice, a certain injustice,
and even a certain perjury, begins right away,
from the very threshold of the right to
hospitality.176
That I choose you over her, friends over strangers,
my family, community or even species over
others all this I habitually justify for the sake
of law, and perhaps sanity. But that in this very
justification I apply this criterion over another, I
cannot absolutely justify.177 We must of course
calculate between possible choices178 Derrida is
not advocating random or arbitrary action (neither
of which would constitute a decision).179
Likewise, one has a responsibility to accumulate as
much knowledge as possible upon which to
judge180 we must not be wilfully anti-rational
(after all, how could this be justified without
appeal to another rationality?). 181 But the decision
to calculate is not itself of the order of the
calculable.182 More specifically, the decision
between just and unjust is never insured by a
rule183 because the justice of the rule and there
might always be a better justice and a better
rule184 would thereby have to be assumed.
Recalling the paradox of Pyrrhonian quietism, we
might therefore say that one is always already
within the decision, for even when I am
indecisive even when I say no! to the
decision I have already said yes! to
indecision. (One decides to put off deciding
one decides not to decide.)185 This being-in-thedecision is not itself deliberative or quasicontractual, but rather due to the very structure of
human finitude.186 In this sense, what Derrida is
attempting to articulate is the

quasi-performative backdrop against which all

particular deliberations occur.187 But this task is
difficult if not itself impossible insofar as
every discourse (or meta-discourse) presupposes
the pre-performative yes, promise, and
believe me for itself.188
I have suggested that Derridas repeated
emphasis lies on the vigilance demanded by the
bad conscience of ethicalpolitical life. There
may seem to be something terrible189 about all
this, but we should recall that such aporias do not
delineate a trap. Rather, these are the very
condition of a decision190 and of responsibility
itself. What characterizes the experience of the
impossible is a perpetual uneasiness191 in
acknowledging that my decisions and actions
because they are sacrificial are never wholly
just. It is in this sense then that Derrida describes
remorse as an essential predicate of the
relation we have to any decision192 that in our
relations with others [. . .] we should never be
sure of having done the right thing.193 In other
words:
the mortal [. . .] is someone whose very
responsibility requires that he concern himself
[. . . with] a goodness that is forgetful of itself.
There is thus a [. . .] dissymmetry between the
finite and responsible mortal on the one hand
and the goodness of the infinite gift on the
other hand. One can conceive of this disproportion without [. . .] tracing it back to the
event of original sin, but it inevitably transforms the experience of responsibility into one
of guilt [. . .]. What gives me my singularity
[. . .] is what makes me unequal to the infinite
goodness of the gift [. . .]. Guilt is inherent in
responsibility because responsibility is always
unequal to itself: one is never responsible
enough.194

III postscript (. . . perhaps)

Liberated from theoretical speculation, the
Pyrrhonist follows her natural animal
impulse.195 As Diogenes notes, Pyrrho himself
was consistent with this view in his manner of
living, neither avoiding anything nor watching out
for anything, taking everything as it came.

14 6

plant
He was therefore kept alive by his acquaintances
who followed him around, for
many times [Pyrrho] would leave town without telling anyone beforehand, and ramble
around with whomever he might meet. And
once, when Anaxarchus fell into a ditch, he
passed by him and did not give him any help.
Some blamed him for this, but Anaxarchus
himself praised his indifference and lack of
sentimentality.196
Without the encumbrance of belief and
commitment one is, like the wild animal, left only
with fleeting appearances197 and the guidance
of instinct.198 The changing world simply strikes
the Pyrrhonist who, in turn, maintains a state of
passive acquiescence with regard to her natural
and cultural environment. Following her most
primitive instincts for food and shelter, the
Pyrrhonist (one imagines) eats, drinks, and plays,
copulates and recuperates. But, as Diogenes
suggests, this state of obliviousness constantly
places her worldly orientation under threat.
(Death by misadventure would be a common
Pyrrhonian epitaph.) On her nomadic wanderings,
the Pyrrhonist implicitly relies on the hospitality
of those prepared to welcome her, to feed, clothe,
and protect her from her own indifference. In this
sense, the Pyrrhonist embodies the quasimessianic other Derrida describes as arriving
without warning. But there is another sense in
which the Pyrrhonist can be thought of as other
perhaps the other par excellence. For all this
talk of hospitality might bother us, but it would
not trouble the Pyrrhonist; she stopped thinking
(and caring) about it long ago. For the real
challenge posed by Pyrrhonism is not that of
sceptical doubt but that of radical indifference. If
she doubted the reality and depth of ethical
political responsibilities that would at least imply
some common ground between us as Derrida
notes: even the prospect of arguing [is] already
to recognise that arguing [is] possible.199 But
what are we to say when faced with genuine
apathy when we find ourselves in a quasiPyrrhonian state of being at a loss? What
happens to Derridas passion for keeping the
perhaps a condition of the event when she
who comes is not so much radically evil

14 7

as radically indifferent? 200 Can we say anything

more than that encountering such indifference
remains a necessary possibility? 201
While indifference encompassed all areas of
Pyrrhos own life, his followers seem rather less
triumphant. For insofar as Pyrrhonism remains a
therapeutic philosophy, it is fundamentally concerned, not only with conceptual suffering but
with the conceptual suffering of others. The
paralysis of reason and elimination of normativity from human life leave this fact
untouched.202 Can this best be accounted for as
ineptitude on the part of Pyrrhos disciples? Or
rather, might this concernfulness be immune to
the paralysis of reason precisely because it
does not find its impulse [. . .] drive, or [. . .]
movement203 in reason? Perhaps, as Wittgenstein
suggests, it is a primitive reaction to tend, to
treat, the part that hurts when
someone else is in pain; and not
merely when oneself is.204 That
is, perhaps ethical concern is
itself something animal.205

notes
1 See Martha Nussbaum, Sceptic Purgatives:
Therapeutic Arguments in Ancient Skepticism,
Journal of the History of Philosophy, 29.4 (October
1991): 521^22, 536, 538, 541.
2 See Nussbaum 527.The Pyrrhonist does accept
beliefs that induce [...] assent involuntarily
(Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, trans.
R.G. Bury (London: Heinemann,1967) 1.19).
3 See Sextus 1.10; Nussbaum 529; Christopher
Hookway, Scepticism (London: Routledge,1990) 4.
Pyrrho is thought to have visited India (Diogenes
Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, trans.
R.D. Hicks (London: Heinemann, 1925) 9.61; R.J.
Hankinson, The Sceptics (London: Routledge,1995)
58 ff.), which raises questions about the relationship between Pyrrhonism and Eastern thought.
Interestingly, Nietzsche refers to Pyrrho as a
Buddhist for Greece (Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Will to Power, trans. W. Kaufmann and
R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968)
x 437. Hereafter WP).
4 See Sextus1.13^17; Nussbaum 538.

derrida and pyrrhonian scepticism

5 Sextus 3.280; see also Nussbaum 540, 545. While the
strength of treatment may alter, there remains an essential
methodology of oppositional argumentation here
(Sextus1.31^34).It is therefore misleading for Sextus to
claim that Pyrrhonism lacks a method. See Derridas
remarks on opposition in Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc
(Nor thwestern UP, 1997) 116 ^17. Hereafter LI.

voluntaristic flavour in Wittgenstein (Notebooks

1914^1916, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1979) 98 (hereafter NB)).
16 See Hookway 9.

7 Sextus1.8.

17 Sextus 2.20; see also1.114 ff.; Diogenes Laertius 9.90,

94^95. Richard Popkin reiterates many of these issues in
relation to the epistemological crisis of the Reformation
(The History of Scepticism fr o m E ra s m u s t o S pi n oza
(Berkeley: U of California P, 1979) 1^2,13, 51).

8 See Diogenes Laertius 9.77^78; Hookway 1; Nussbaum

548.

18 Sextus 1.22 my emphasis; see also Diogenes Laertius

9.103^ 04.

9 Sextus1.4.

19 See Nussbaum 523.

10 See Sextus 1.3^4. Sextus describes the Heraclitean

(1.210 ff.), Cyrenaic (1.215 ff.) and Protagorean (1.216 ff.)
philosophies as Dogmatic, and the thought of Plato,
Arcesilausas and Carneades a s Academic (1.2 20 ff.).

20 While the Pyrrhonist criticizes the dogmatist for

opposing natural inclination, she also suggests that
theoretical dogmatism is itself of natural origin (Nussbaum
530) ^ what one might call pre philosophical beliefs
(Nussbaum 526).

6 Sextus1.187.

11 Both

Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical

Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1958) x 131 (hereafter PI); Lectures and
Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious
Belief, ed.C. Barrett (Oxford: Blackwell,1994) 72
(hereafter L&C)) and Nietzsche (WP x 446)
accuse philosophers of dogmatism.
12 Sextus1.2.
13 See Nietzsche,WP x 455.
14 According to Athenaeus (quoting Timon): Desire is
absolutely the first of all bad things (A.A. Long and D.N.
Sedley
(eds.),
The
Hellenistic
Philosophers
Vol.I:Translations ofthe Principal Sources, with
Philosophical Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP,1987) 20).
15 Sextus 1.59, 196 ff.; see also Diogenes Laertius

9.105. This is not a trivial manoeuvre, for as

Ludwig Wittgenstein remarks: When languagegames change, then there is a change in concepts, and with concepts the meaning of words
change (On Certainty, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe
and D. Paul (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999) x 65
(hereafter OC); see also Zettel, trans. G.E.M.
Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) x 438
(hereafter ZT)). Note Richard Rortys voluntarism on this matter (Philosophy and Social Hope
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999) xviii ^xix, xxii,
176 (hereafter PSH)), and passages of a more

21 See Nussbaum 523, 534.

22 Sextus1.205.
23 Diogenes Laertius 9.68.
24 On the similarities between the human and

animal, see Sextus1.62^78.

25 Nussbaum 523.
26 See Nussbaum 529.
27 Nussbaum 532.
28 Nussbaum 546; see also B. Inwood and L.P. Gerson,
Hellenistic
Philosophy:
Introductory
Readings
(Indianapolis: Hackett,1988) 238.
29 Diogenes Laertius 9.62.
30 Sextus1.19.
31 See M.F. Burnyeat, Can the Skeptic Live His
Skepticism? in The Skeptical Tradition, ed. M.F. Burnyeat
(Berkeley: U of California P, 1983) 12 6 .
32 See Nussbaum 533.
33 Sextus 1.27^28; see also Diogenes Laertius 9 .1 0 1 .

34 Sextus 3.236; see also Nussbaum 524, 531.

35 See Sextus 1.25^30. Compare with Nietzsche,
260.

14 8

WP x

plant
36 Sextus 1.29^30; see also Diogenes Laertius 9.1
08.

(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969) xx 7^9

(hereafter CM)).

37 See Inwood and Gerson 238; John D. Caputo,

Against Ethics: Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation
with Constant Reference to Deconstruction
(Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993) 29. Hereafter
AETH.

56 Introduction

in B. Mates, The Skeptic Way:

Sextus Empiricuss Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Oxford:
Oxford UP,1996) 31.
57 Long and Sedley15.
58 Sextus1.23.

38 See Sextus1.27^28.

59 See Sextus1.197.

39 Sextus1.25.

Sextus1.1
94^95.

40 See Nussbaum 527, 529.

60

41 Sex tus 1.12 .

61 Sextus 1.29; see also Diogenes Laertius 9.108.

According to the Pyrrhonist, the attainment of
ataraxia should not be purposely sought, for if
ataraxia became too teleological a goal, then it too
would likely generate additional anxieties
(Nussbaum 532; Sextus 1.25^30). Rather, ataraxia
comes about by mere chance (Nussbaum 530).
For a critique of the Pyrrhonian teleology, see
Nussbaum 541^ 45.

42 See Nussbaum 545.

43 Long and Sedley 20.
44 See Nussbaum 544.
45 Of course, even conceding this, the Pyrrhonist
could still justify himself on pragmatic grounds; that
although a life totally devoid of commitment may
be impossible, Pyrrhonism still offers the best way
of minimizing such troublesome commitments.
46 Sextus 1.32. There are ten modes of
Pyrrhonian argumentation (Sextus 1.36 ff.;
Diogenes Laertius 9.79^88).

62 For detailed treatment of this question, see

Burnyeat; Nussbaum 551ff.
63 Diogenes Laer tius 9.107.

47 Sextus1.10.

64 Indeed, the orientation to ataraxia i t s e l f

becomes quite natural (Nussbaum 546; see also
528, 540).

48 See Popkin 63.

65 Nussbaum 553.

49 Diogenes Laertius 9.61; see also 9.74.

66 See Nussbaum 554.

50 Nussbaum 540; see also Inwood and Gerson

181^ 82 .

67 Nussbaum 553; see also Inwood and Gerson

174 .

51 See Diogenes Laertius 9.71.

68 Popkin 49.

52 Nussbaum 548.

69 It was this inherent conservatism that lay at

the heart of the Catholic Pyrrhonian-fideism of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Popkin ch.
3).

53 Nussbaum thus rightly draws attention to the

principle of non-contradic tion in the Pyrrhonian
method (Nussbaum 548), for this is required in
order to bring the patient to a state of indecision
between equally plausible (though mutually incompatible) commitments.
54 Nussbaum 530.

55 Nussbaum

528; see also 547; Hookway 5. I

shall not discuss here the dis/similarities between
the Pyrrhonian and Husserlian epoche (see
Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An
Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. D. Cairns

14 9

70 Nussbaum 540.
71 See J. Annas and J. Barnes, The Modes of
Scepticism:
Ancient
Texts
and
Modern
Interpretations (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985)
163 ^ 6 4, 169.
72 See Sextus 1.145 ff.
73 Sextus 1.24.
74 Sextus 1.17; see also 1.231; Inwood and Gerson
239.

derrida and pyrrhonian scepticism

75 Nussbaum 554.
76 See Nussbaum 531, 534.
77 See Nussbaum 535. The final part of the
Sceptic Way is instruction of the arts (Sextus
1.23^24; see also Burnyeat 126).
78 Or what we would consider to be prejudices.
This qualification highlights a deeper problem: that
the very notions of prejudice and intolerance
(and thus by implication openness and tolerance) cannot even get a foothold in a
Pyrrhonian framework.
79 See Annas and Barnes 169. This troubling
dimension of Pyrrhonism is nicely dramatized by
the diabolical old man in Catch-22 (Joseph
Heller, Catch-22 (London: Corgi, 1961) 261-62). To
what extent engaging in such behaviour actually
leads to the appropriate beliefs (and to what
extent conversion can be induced by such
means), I leave an open question.
80 Nussbaum 531.
81 Much the same can be said of Pyrrhonisms supposed lack of epistemic and ontological
commitments.
82 See Nussbaum 528, 540, 546.
83 As Derrida puts it, the yes is co-extensive with
every statement [...] yes is the transcendental condition of all performative dimensions (Jacques
Derrida, Acts of Literature (London: Routledge,
1992) 296^98; see also 74, 257, 265, 288, 296^98,
302 (hereafter AL); The Villanova Roundtable: A
Conversation
with
Jacques
Derrida,
in
Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with
Jacques Derrida (New York: Fordham UP, 1997) 27
(hereafter VR); (various remarks in) Responsibilities
of Deconstruction, eds. J. Dronsfield and N. Midgley,
Pli:WarwickJournalofPhilosophy,6(Summer 1997): 35
(hereafter RD); Points... Interviews 1974^1994, trans.
P. Kamufetal. (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995) 172,
384 (hereafter Po); Faith and Knowledge:The Two
Sources of Religion at the Limits of Reason
Alone, trans. S.Weber, in Religion, eds J. Derrida
and G.Vattimo (Cambridge: Polity, 1998) 47 (hereafter F&K); Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,
trans. E. Prenowitz (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996)
68 (hereafter AF)). Soren Kierkegaard similarly
comments on the yes and promise (Provocations:
Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, ed. CE. Moore (The
Plough Publishing House, 1999) 13^15).

8 4 Jacques Derrida, (with B. Steigler) Echographies

of Television, trans. J. Bajorek (Cambridge: Polity,
2002) 69; see also 25 (hereafter ET); (various
remarks in) Deconstruction Engaged: The Sydney
Seminars, eds. P. Patton and T. Smith (Sydney:
Power Publications, 20 01) 77 (hereafter DE). See
also Martin Heideggers remarks on choosing
ones hero (Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie
and E. Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999) 437
(hereaf ter B&T )).
85 See Annas and Barnes 169.
86 Richard
Rorty,
(various
remarks
in)
Deconstruction and Pragmatism, ed. C. Mouffe
(London: Routledge,1996) 15. Hereafter D&P.
87 Rortys inability to figure out precisely what
this method is (D&P 15) is not inconsonant with
Derridas own insistence that Deconstruction is
not a philosophy or a method [. . .].It is something
which [...] was at work before what we call
deconstruc tion started (Hospitality, justice and
responsibility: a dialogue with Jacques Derrida, in
Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in
Philosophy, eds. R. Kearney and M. Dooley
(London: Routledge,1999) 65 (hereafter QE)), and
similarly: what happens deconstructs itself [. . .]. I t
is not I who deconstruct; rather, something called
de c o n s t r u c t io n happens (I Have a Ta ste for the
Secret, in J. Derrida and M. Ferraris, A Taste for
the Secret, trans. G. Donis (Cambridge: Polity,
2001) 80; my emphasis (hereafter TS)). Broadening
the concept of hospitality, Derrida speaks of the
autodeconstruc tion in every concept ^ where
Each concept becomes hospitable to its other
(Acts of Religion (London: Routledge, 2002) 362
(hereafter AR)) ^ and similarly: Hospitality ^ this is
a name or an example of deconstruction (AR 364;
see also RD16; Jacques Derrida,As if I were
Dead: An Interview with Jacques Derrida, in
Applying: To Derrida, eds. J. Brannigan, R.
Robbins and J. Wolfreys (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1996) 225 (hereafter AID); Adieu: To Emmanuel
Levinas, trans. P.A. Brault and M. Naas (Stanford:
Stanford UP, 1999) 80 (hereafter ADEL); Ethics,
Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy, tr a ns. P.P.
Trifonas (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) 38
(hereafter EIRP)).
88 Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and
Forgiveness, trans. M. Dooley and M. Hughes
(London: Routledge, 2001) 39; see also 45, 51
(hereafter OCF); Monolingualism of the Other: Or,
The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. P. Mensah

15 0

plant
(Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998) 48^49 (hereafter
MO). In particular, Derridas emphasis on the radical otherness of the other (ADEL 92) ^ and, not
least, the absolute surprise of that which is to
come ^ sits uncomfortably alongside his remarks
on iterability, singularity, and generality (if the
other is indeed radically other then how could
one ever know that there had been an encounter
with it, for as such the other would not even
show up (AL 68; see also Derrida, OCF 23;
Jacques Derrida,Philosophy and Communication:
Round-table Discussion Between Ricoeur and
Derrida, in L. Lawlor, Imagination and Chance:
The Difference Between the Thought of Ricoeur
and Derrida (Albany: State U of New York P,1992)
142^43 (hereafter P&C))).On a related point concerning testimony, see Jacques Derrida, (with M.
Blanchot) The Instant of My Death/Demeure: Fiction
and Testimony, trans. E. Rottenberg (Stanford:
Stanford UP, 2000) 40 ^ 42 (hereafter DEM). For
Derridas cautionary reading of Levinas own
appeal to the radically other, see Jacques
Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. A. Bass
(London: Routledge, 1997) 125 ^29 (hereafter
W&D). Similar points are made by Peter Winch
(Nature and Convention, Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, 20 (1960): 236 (hereafter NC);
Understanding a Primitive Society, American
Philosophical Quarterly, 1.4 (October 1964): 311, 317
(hereafter UPS)); Richard J. Bernstein (The New
Constellation: The Ethical^Political Horizons of
Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge: Polity, 1991)
74 (hereafter TNC)); and Caputo, AETH; The
End of Ethics, in The Blackwell Guide to Ethical
Theory, ed.H.Lafollette (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)
113 (hereafterTEE)).
89 See Derrida, Po 218.
90 Derrida,LI137.
91 Derrida, W&D196. See also Derridas remarks
on forgiveness and the therapy of reconciliation
(OCF 31^32, 41, 50).
92 Derrida, Po 376; see also 219; Derrida, TS
54^55; EIRP 4,10, 22^23.
93 Derrida, AL 58; see also Derrida,Po 327.
94 See, for example, Emmanuel Levinas remarks
on the happy end (Is It Righteous To B e? Interviews
with Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford: Stanford UP,
2001) 134, 197 (hereafter IRB)) and assurances
(IRB145, 175).

151

95 Derrida,QE 67.
96 See Derrida, AR 278; Jacques Derrida,
Positions, trans. A. Bass (London: Athlone, 1982)
53 (hereafter POS); (various remarks in)
Questioning God, eds. J.D. Caputo, M. Dooley
and M.J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001)
201^ 02. Hereafter QG.
97 Derrida, POS19; see also Derrida, Po 219,
225, 374; EIRP 27^28, 35^36, 48, 51. Note also
Derridas remarks
on
ordinary and
extraordinary language ( Jacques Derrida,
(various remarks in) Arguing with Derrida, Ratio
(new series) 13.4 (Dec. 20 0 0): 415 ^16 (hereaf
ter AD)).
98 See Derrida, AL 68; LI119; AR 362, 364.
99 Derrida, AR 258.
100 I n w o o d and G e r s o n 174.

101 Jacques Derrida,The Animal That Therefore

I Am (More to Follow), trans. D. Wills, Critical
Inquiry 28 (winter 20 02): 4 02. Hereaf ter TA.
102 Derrida, DE 113. Rather, there are an infinite
number of different animals (Derrida, DE 113).
103 Derrida,TA 398; see also Derrida, AD 407. 10
4 D e r r i d a , TA 415.
105 Jacques Derrida,Wit ho ut A li bi , trans. P. Kamuf
(Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002) 231 (hereafter WA).
Although Derrida claims that We do not know
what the figure of what one calls man today will
be tomorrow (A Roundtable Discussion with
Jacques Derrida, in Derrida Downunder, eds. L.
Simmons and H. Worth (NZ: Dumore Press,
2001) 262 (hereafter DD); see also Derrida, DE
112), one must, I think, question the idea that
the possibilities for man are radically open (as
Foucault sometimes suggests), and thereby wholly
unconstrained by very general facts of nature
( Wittgenstein, PI 230).
106 See Derrida, LI 132^35. From a Derridean
perspective, the Pyrrhonists view of animality is
overly simplistic.For, as Derrida remarks:
when I referred to trace rather than human
language [. . .] it was [. . .] to free the space
for another discourse on the animal [. . .]
trace holds for the animal too So from the
very beginning I was against the Cartesian
attitude towards animality [.. .] I am constantly critical of Heideggers concept of
animality.

derrida and pyrrhonian scepticism

(Derrida, AD 406; see also 404; Derrida, ET 87;
QG 47^48; LI 136; Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit:
Heidegger and the Question, trans G. Bennington
and R. Bowlby (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989) ch.
6 (hereaf ter OS)).
107 D e rr id a , AR 364.
108 Derrida, AR 363; see also Jacques Derrida, The Gift of
Death, trans. D. Wills (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995) 69
(hereafter GD); (various remarks in) God, the Gift, and
Postmodernism, eds. J.D. Caputo and M.J. Scanlon
(Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999) 135. Hereafter GGP.
109 Derrida, TA 394; see also 397, 416; Jacques
Derrida,Marx and Sons, in Ghostly Demarcations:
A Symposium on Jacques Derridas Specters of
Marx, ed. M. Sprinker (London: Verso, 1999)
260.Hereafter M&S.
110 Derrida,QG 69.For an overview of this point,
see Bob Plant, Doing justice to the Derrida ^
Levinas connection: A response to Mark Dooley,
in Philosophy and Social Criticism 29.4 (2003).
111 L ev in a s, IRB 52 .
112 Emma nuel Levina s, God, Death, and Time, trans.
B. Bergo (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000) 12 (here
after GDT). For a more detailed discussion of
this, see Bob Plant,Wittgenstein and Levinas: Ethical
and Religious Thought (London: Routledge, 20 05)
especially ch. 8.
113 Sextus 1.194.
114 Derrida, RD 4^5; my emphasis; see also Jacques
Derrida, Politics of Friendship, trans. G. Collins (London:
Verso,1997) ch. 2. Hereafter POF.
115 D e r r i d a ,RD 2;my emp ha sis.
116 Derrida, F&K 17; see also 7; Derrida, DE 68;
DD 259. Note also Derridas remarks on messianicity (M&S 253 ff.) and thedemocracy to come
(AL 378; RD 2, 25, 30; Jacques Derrida,Remarks
on Deconstruction and Pragmatism, trans. S.
Critchley, in Deconstruction and Pragmatism, ed.
C. Mouffe (London: Routledge, 1996) 80, 83
(hereafter RDP); On the Name, trans. D. Wood
et al. (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995) 29
(hereafter ON)).
117 D e r r i d a ,QE 69.
118 Although this cannot be an absolute surprise,
for otherwise that would make it impossible to
recognize the surprise as a surprise ^ indeed we

would not even know that anything was happening at all (Caputo, AETH 74).
119 D err ida ,QE 70.
120 S e e J a c q u e s D e r r i d a , Aporias, trans.T.Dutoit
(Stanford: Stanford UP, 1993) 33^34 (hereafter AP);
Derrida,VR17; Hospitality, trans. B. Stocker and
F.Morlock, Angelaki 5.3 (20 0 0): 8, 10 (hereafter HOS). [I]f
there is a categorical imperative, Derrida claims, it
consists in doing every thing for the future to remain
open [...]. The other may come, or he may not. I
dont want to programme him, but rather leave a
place for him to come if he comes (Derrida,TS
83).
121 See Matthews gospel 24:36, 39, 42^51, and Derridas
remarks in VR 22^24; TS 31.
122 Derrida, QE 70. See also Derridas remarks in
RD 8; GGP 77; ADEL 62^ 63; HOS 14, 17 n. 17,
and Levinas on the visitation in Emmanuel
Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings (Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1996) 53 ^54, 59 (hereafter BPW).
123 Derrida, MO 89 n. 9; see also Jacques Derrida,
Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. P. Kamuf
(Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992) 9, 35, 45^46, 55
(hereafter GT); Levinas IRB 54, 218, 250.
124 See Derridas remarks in DEM 91; Po198; GD
68; RD 10, 23, 28^29; F&K 31; MO 62; QE 70^71.
Note also Kierkegaards remarks on risk and
faith (SWK 70^73).
125 D e r r i d a , AP 12.
126 D e r r i d a , HOS 353.
127 See Jacques Derrida, Foreigner Question
and Step of Hospitality/No Hospitality, in J.
Derrida and A. Dufourmantelle, Of Hospitality:
Anne Dufourmantelle invites Jacques Derrida to
Respond, trans. R. Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford UP,
2000) 61 (hereafter OH). As Levinas remarks, the
exposed, mortal body is the very condition of
giving, with all that giving costs [...] [giving] implies
a body, because to give to the ultimate degree is to
give bread taken from ones own mouth
(GDT188).
128 D e r r i d a , RD 9.
129 D e rr id a , F&K 17.
130 D e r r i d a , AL 269.

15 2

plant
131 Derrida, ON 7. Or, in Wittgensteins words, as
though one was following a doctors prescription
(Culture and Value, trans. P. Winch (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1994) 53; see also 8 (hereafter C&V)).
Thus, For an event to happen, the possibility of
the worst [...] must remain a possibility [...].
Otherwise the good event, the good Messiah,
could not happen either (Derrida, RD 9).
132 Derrida, QE 66; my emphasis; see also
Derrida,LI116.
133 Derrida, QE 66; see also Derrida,GD 24, 77;
RD 10, 20, 34; LI 148, GGP 133^34; Jacques
Derrida, Resistances of Psychoanalysis, trans. P.
Kamuf et al. (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998) 113
(hereaf ter RP).
134 D e r r i d a , AR 252.
135 Although I will not pursue it here, there is
doubtless something to be said regarding Derridas
account of the decision and Wittgensteins remarks
on following a rule blindly (Wittgenstein, PI x
219 ) .
13 6 D e r r i d a , AP 17.
137 D e r r i d a , AR 253.
13 8 D e r r i d a , Po 17.
139 D e r r i d a , AR 2 52 .
140 See Derrida,GD 24,95; AID 223;TS 61; VR19.
If someone decides to determine her actions on
the throw of a dice, clearly this decision cannot
itself be determined by a throw of the dice. (Neither
can she determine what specific course of action
each number represents by throwing the dice.)
Moreover, each subsequent throw of the dice
reaffirms or countersigns the (non-calculable)
decision to determine her actions on the throw of a
dice. These points relate to Derridas remarks on
the moment of foundation (for example, of law)
and the possibility of self-foundation (AR 228 ff.).
141 Derrida, AR 242. In one of his very few allusions to Wittgenstein, here Derrida speaks of the
mystical (AR 242; see also 206, 208). Elsewhere,
Derrida similarly remarks that
the moment of foundation, the instituting
moment, is anterior to the law or legitimacy
which it founds. It is thus outside the law, and
violent by that very fact [. . .]. This foundational violence is not only forgotten.

15 3

The foundation is made in order to hide it; by

its essence it tends to organise amnesia,
sometimes under the celebration and sublimation of the grand beginnings.
(OCF 57; see also Derrida, AL 192^93, 205).
Elsewhere, Derrida thus refers to origin-like
effects (P&C 135).
142 See Derrida,W&D133; GGP133^34.
143 Derrida, QE 73; see also Derrida, ADEL 117;
AD 383. Derridas few allusions toa pure concept
of forgiveness (QG 62; see also 57) and a pure
hospitality which provide the criterion (GGP 133)
for ethical ^ political life are thus misleading. For
suchpureconcepts do not offer determinate
criteria. Rather, what they guarantee is that any
ethical-political act (no matter how genuine or
philanthropic) will necessarily remain inadequate to
the excessive demands of ethical-political
responsibility (not least because any such act will
always be made at the expense of someone/something else).This is why Derrida elsewhere remarks:
justice is not the law. Justice is what gives us the
impulse, the drive, or the movement to improve the
law [. . .] justice is always unequal to itself [. . .] the
call for justice is never [. . .] fully answered. That is
why one cannot say I am just. (VR17; my
emphasis) See also Kierkegaards remarks on
choice and decision (SWK 3^12, 73).
144 Jacques Derrida, By Force of Mourning,
trans. P-A. Brault and M. Naas, Critical Inquiry 22
(1996): 177. Hereafter BFM.
145 Derrida, QE 67; see also Derrida, ON 59; GD
25; TS 22.
146 See Derrida,LI135.
147 Derrida, AP 16; my emphasis. [T ]here is no
justice without [the] experience, however impossible it may be, of aporia (Derrida, AR 244; see
also Derrida, RP 36^37). Though, Derrida adds,
there is something passive in the most radical
decision (RD 14), and likewise: the enigma of
responsibility lies in this aporia: that a decision is
something pa ssive in a cer tain sense of passivity
(AID 222^23).
14 8 Derrida,QG 62.
149 Derrida, DE 63, my emphasis; see also
Derrida,QE 73; OCF 56; POS 86;TS 63.
150 Derrida, AP 32.What I dream of, what I try to
thinkas thepurityofaforgiveness worthyofits

derrida and pyrrhonian scepticism

name, would be a forgiveness without power:
unconditional but without sovereignty ( D err id a ,
OCF 59).
151 See Derrida, RD10, 20;VR14.
152 See Heideggers remarks on the nullity (B&T
331).
153 D e r r i d a ,VR 17.
154 Derrida, GGP 72; see also Derrida, DE 86; QE
66; AR 244; OCF 45, 54; EIRP 26.
155 D e r r i d a , DEM 72.
156 D e r r i d a , TS 10.
157 D e r r i d a , LI14 6.
158 Derrida, DEM 92. On the relation between
fiction and testimonial truth see Derrida, DEM 27,
29^30, 72.
159 Derrida, LI 136; see also Jacques Derrida,
History of the Lie: Prolegomena, in Futures: Of
Jacques Derrida, ed. R. Rand (Stanford: Stanford
UP, 2001). Hereafter HL.
160 Derrida, AR 243; see also 254; Derrida, RD
27.
161 Derrida,Po384;see alsoDerrida,RDP82; AR
256; WA 189; DD 254, 260; F&K 18, 26, 44; M&S
255^56. Levinas likewise speaks of the bonjour
that underlies all discourse (IRB 47; see also
211^12).
162 Derrida, AD 382.
163 Derrida, WA 140; see also Derrida, AD
382^83; F&K 63; DEM 49.
164 Derrida, F&K 28.
165 D e r r i d a , TS 73.
166 Derrida, DEM 41. I sense a minimal realism in
these remarks; that it is because the world is sufficiently stable and independent (not that all possible observers are mysteriously prone to having the
same phenomenal experiences) thatanyone whosoever in my place would have seen the same
thing. On this point, see Derridas remarks on the
indeterminacy in our relation to the world and to
ourselves, not in the things themselves (Derrida,
RD 15), Husserls remarks on the here and
there (Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to

a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological

Philosophy (Second Book) (Netherlands: Kluwer
Academic, 1989) 88, 171, 177, 201, 206 (hereafter
IPP); Husserl, CM 92), Hofstadters remarks on the
spatiality of the Da of Dasein in Heideggers
work (Mar tin Heidegger, The B asic Problems of
Phenomenology, trans. A. Hofstadter (Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1982) 334 ^35 (hereafter BPP)), and
Heideggers own comments on the h ere a nd th
ere ( B & T 171).
167 Derrida, QE 82; my emphasis.
168 Derrida, VR 23; my emphasis; see also
Derrida, AD 418. Note also Winchs remarks on
truth-telling (NC 242^46).
169 Derrida, Po 359; see also Derrida, ON 43, 81;
MO 9; GGP 60; RP 36^37.
170 De rri da, GGP 72; my emphasis; see also 77;
Derrida,GT 8, 31; RD 30.
171 Derrida, AP16^17; see also Derrida, LI116.
172 Derrida, MO 62 ; see also Derrida, ADEL 116 ;
Peter Winch, Trying to Make Sense (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1987) 179 (hereafter TRMS).
173 See Derrida,RD 23.For there wouldbe [. . .] no
responsibility, without the experience of some
undecidability (Derrida, QE 66). Peter Winch
makes a number of related points regarding decision, judgement and risk (Apels Transcendental
Pragmatics, in S.C. Brown (ed.) Philosophical
Disputes in the Social Sciences (Brighton: Harvester
Press, 1979) 60 ^ 62; Winch, TRMS 179).
174 Wit tgen s tein, O C x162 .
175 Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics of the Infinite, in
R. Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental
Thinkers:
the
Phenomenological
Heritage
(Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984) 63 (hereafter
EI); see also Derrida, TS 89.
176 Derrida, OH 55; see also Emmanuel Levinas,
Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. A.
Lingis (Duquesne UP, 1996) 157, 170^74 (hereafter
T&I); Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other, trans. M.B.
Smith and B. Harshav (New York: Columbia UP,
199 8 ) 20 ^21. H e r e a f t e r EN.
177 See Derrida,GD 67^68, 70^71.
178 See Derrida,Po 272^73.

15 4

plant
179 See Derrida, RDP 83^84. In any case, there would
here be a decision to act randomly which would not itself
be of the order of the r a nd om.
180 See Derrida,Po272^73, 359; AID 223; QE 66;
TS 61.

195 Nussbaum 546; see also Inwood and Gerson 238.

196 Inwo od and G e r s o n 173 ^74.
197 S ex tus 1.19.
198 See Burnyeat 126.

181 To b e anti-rational is to take a distinc tive

stance toward rationality ^ it is to seek to subvert
the rule of rationality, and thus (albeit tacitly) to re
cognize t he rule it self. Here, see Derridas remarks
on truth (LI136).

199 Derrida, AD 351; see also Derrida, DEM

34^36; Winch,TRMS187^89.

182 Derrida, AR 252; see also Derrida,GD 95.

201 Here, we might recall Wittgensteins remark

that

183 D e rr i d a , AR 24 4.
184 See Derrida, ADEL112^13, 115.
185 Derrida, AL195. As Pascal remarks concerning the
wager on Gods existence: you must bet. There is no
option; you have [already] embarked on the business
(The Pensees, trans. J.M. Cohen (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1961) 157, my emphasis). On the wager and the
incalculable see also Derrida,TS13.
186 See Derrida, AL 298.
187 See Derrida, AL 257, 265, 270, 288, 296^99, 302.
188 See Derrida, AL 297, 299; QG 54.
189 Derrida,RD 20; see also Derrida,QE 67^ 69.
190 Derrida, QE 69.
191 Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction and the
Other, in R. Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary
Continental Thinkers: The Phenomenological Heritage
(Manchester: Manchester UP,1984) 120.
192 D e r r i d a , RP 37.
193 D e r r i d a , RD 23.
194 Derrida, GD 51; my emphasis. Compare with
Levinas remarks in IRB 52,134,136,194, 206. I thus take
Caputos claim that Derrida provokes us to think of
obligation without .. . the deadening weight of guilt (John
D. Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation
with Jacques Derrida (New York: Fordham UP, 1997) 149
(hereafter DIN)) to be potentially misleading. See Caputos
more recent remarks on ethics and bad conscience
(TEE116).

15 5

200 Levinas does not seem to think that such

indifference is even possible (IRB184).

Where two principles really do meet which

cannot be reconciled with one another, then
each man declares the other a fool and
heretic [. . .] but wouldnt I give him reasons?
Certainly; but how far do they go? At the end
of reasons comes persuasion (OC xx
611^12).
202 Levinas suggests that
From the very start you are not indifferent to
the other From the very sta r t you are not
alone! Even if you adopt an attitude of
indifference you are obliged to adopt it! The
other counts for you; you answer him as
much as he addresses himself to you; he
concerns you! (IRB 50)
203 Derrida,VR16.
204 Wittgenstein, ZT x 540.
205 Wittgenstein, OC x 359. Of Levinas work,
Derrida remarks:
It is as if the welcome, just as much as the
face, just as much as the vocabulary that is
co-extensive
and
thus
profoundly
synonymous with it, were a first language, a
set made up of quasi-primitive [...] words.
(ADEL 25; my emphasis)
I leave the following questions open: Is
Wittgensteins minimal naturalism incompatible
with: (i) Derridas reference to the quasi-primitive? and/or (ii) his account of general iterability
and denial of ontological, archaeological, theological, etc origin[s] (P&C 135; see also Derrida, LI
129) ^ that is, Derridas denial of a certainty
immediate andprior toall experience of the trace

derrida and pyrrhonian scepticism

(P&C 162; see also Jacques Derrida, Signature
Event Context, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. A.
Bass (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982) 307^30)?
Sincere thanks to John Sellars for his comments on
an earlier draftof this paper.

Bob Plant
Department of Philosophy
University of Aberdeen
Old Brewery
High Street
Aberdeen AB24 3UB
UK
E-mail: r.plant@abdn.ac.uk