Derrida – The Politics of Friendship - Theory Reading Group at UNM

46 POLITICS OF FRIENDSHIP
this dISdain - as for Hegel in his awful sarcasms against the unfortunate Krug - a prephilosophical
failure, an empiricist slip back into the approximate formulations of
ordinary language. 'Perhaps' would belong to a vocabulary which should remain outside
philosophy. That is to say, outside certainty, truth, even outside veracity. In this respect,
the plulosopher himself echoes the common sense of the German proverb which says:
'Perhaps is practically a lie' (or a half-truth?) (Vielleidlt ist eine halbe Luge). Having
recalled the German etymology of vielleicht (villithe in Middle High German gathers the
significations of sehr leidlt (easy), vermutlicli (probably, conceivably), and mogliclierweise
(possibly), which marked then, more so than now, an expectancy, not a Simple POSSIbility
and, as Grimm takes note of, the presumed possibility that a statement might
correspond to a reality or that something will happen, as Gasche translates: thus perhaps),
and before dealing with the abundant use that Heldegger makes of vielleiclit m one of the
essays in Untenuegs zur Spradle, Gasche poses the question which IS of the utmost interest
to us here: 'And what If perhaps modalized a discourse which no longer proceeds by
statements (declarations, affirmations, assertions) Without being for all that less rigorous
than the discourse of philosophy?' ('Perhaps - a Modality? On the Way with Heidegger to
Language', in Graduate Faculty PhilosophyJoumal, vol. 16, no. 2,1993, p. 469).
6. Nietzsche, &yond Good and Evil, 1st part, 'On the prejudices of philosophers',
2.
7. Ibid.
8. See Bonrue Horug, Political TIleory and the Displacement cif Politics, Cornell
University Press, 1993, pp. 66-9 (,Nietzsche's Recovery of Virtue as Virtu').
9. Beyond Good and Evil, p. 135.
10. Ibid., para. 214.
11. 'On the Prejudices ofPhuosophers', para. 2.
12. Ibid., para. 42.
13. "Freund. - Milfreude, nidi Mitleiden, maclit den Freund', Human All Too Human,
para. 499: 'Fellow reJoicmg, not fellow suffering, makes the friend.'
14. In one of the most blinding passages of TI,e Writing cif Disaster, Blanchot evokes
(with the audacity and prudence required here) 'certam commentators' of Jewish
messianism', where Jewish mesSIanism 'suggests the relation between the event and its
nonoccurrence':
If the MeSSiah IS at the gates of Rome among the beggars and lepers, one nught tl1lnk that rus
mcogruto protects or prevents rum £rom conung, but, precISely, he IS recogruzed; someone,
haunted WIth questlonmg and unable to leave off, asks hun: 'When will you come?' HIS bemg
there IS, then, not the coming With the MesSiah, who IS there, the call must always resound
'Come, Come.' HIS presence IS no guarantee. Both future and past (It IS said, at least once, that
the MeSSiah has already come), hiS conung does not correspond to any presence at all . . And
should It happen that, to the question, 'When will your commg take place' the Messiah
responds 'It IS today', the answer IS certamly unpresslve: so, It IS today! It IS now and always
now. There IS nO waltmg, although thIS IS as an obhgauon to walt And when IS now? When IS
the now which does not belong to ordmary tune ... does not mamtam but destabilizes It? .,
VEtr;ture du dlsastre, Gallunard 1980, pp 214-15 [trans. Ann Smock, The Writitlg '!! Disaster,
University of Nebraska Press, New BISon Book Edition 1995, pp. 141-2 (trans. modified)].
15. It is well known that these words are Bataille's. Why do we quote them here?
In order to bear wimess - too briefly, shabbily - to the grateful attention that draws me
'
LOVING IN FRIENDSHIP: PERHAPS 47
to those thinkers and texts to which I am bound without ever bemg their equal.
Without hope, then, of ever giving the~ their due here. These ~o~~ of Bataill~ ~e
chosen by Blanchot as an epigraph to La Communaute inavouable, Edlno~ du ~mult,
1983 [TIle Unavowable Community, trans. Pierre Jons, Tarrytown, NY: Stanon Hill Press
1988], a work wmch, from the very first lines, is in conversation With an article by Jean­
Luc Nancy which later become a book: La Communaute desoeuvree, Bourgois 1986, 1990
[The Inoperative Community, University of Mmnesota Press 1991]. Like Blanchot's
L'Amitie (GaIhmard 1971), which we will take up later, this is yet another book on
friendsmp, m particular fnendship according to Bataille (see, for example, pp. 40 ff.). As
those towards which or from which they shine in so smgular a fashion, these works are
no doubt among those that count the most for me today. Without being able to refer
to them here as abundandy and directly as would be necessary, I would at least like to
situate my subject with regard to what they have staked out: to pre-name, smgularly
around the texts of Nietzsche that I am attempting to read here, a selSlnic event whose
'new logic' leaves Its mark on all the necessaruy contradictory and undecidable
statements that organize these discourses and give them their paradOXIcal force. A
paradigm here might be, for example, this 'community of those without community',
'the moperative operation of the work', like all the 'X WIthout X' that open uP. the
sense at the heart of these thoughts. These thoughts mvent themselves by counterslgnmg,
accordmg to the teleiopoesis that we have been referring to, the event ~igned
'Nietzsche'. They belong - but the word is not appropriate - they belong WithOut
belonging to the untimely time of Nietzsche. I could have placed the followmg as
epigraph to tms ennre essay, in any case to that part dealmg with Nietzsche, taken from
'The Negative Commumty' m The Unavowable Community:
For example, Bataille says: 'The community I am speakmg of IS that wruch Will eXist Virtually
from the filct of Nietzsche's eXIStence (wl1lch IS the demand for such a community) and that
each of Nietzsche's readers undoes by srurkmg - that IS, by not solvmg the posed emgma (by
not even readmg It)' But there was a huge difference between Bataule and Nietzsche
Nietzsche had an ardent deSire to be heard, but also the sometimes haughty certitude of bemg
the bearer of a truth too dangerous and too supenor to be able to be embraced. For Bataille,
fnendshlp IS a part of the 'sovereign operatIon'; It IS no aCCident that I.e Coupab/e has at the very
begmnmg the subtitle, Frietldship; fnendshlp, It IS true, IS difficult to define fnendsl1lp for
oneself to the pomt of dISSolution, fnendsrup from one to another, as the passage and affirmation
of a conunUlty startmg from the necessary dIScontinUIty. But readmg - the moperatlve
operation of the work -IS not absent from It . (pp.41-2)
Further on, Blanchot insists on the fact that 'these movements are only apparendy
contradictory'. 'What is then the case concemmg fnendshlp? Friendship: .friendship for the
unknown {one] withoutfriends' (p. 44; ongmal emphasIS).
In subscribmg in turn, in countersigning, m taking it senously, as I have always done,
the necessity of these 'apparendy contradictory' statements, I would hke to return (for
example, here With Nietzsche) not to some archaeological ground or platform
summoned to support them (by defimtion this ground always gives way, escapes) but to
an event that opens up a world m wmch we must today, now, write in this way, and
dehver ourselves over to thIS necessity. As we are domg.
Then, yes, what I will say - starting from and on the subject of Nietzsche, and m his
favour also - will be a salute to the fnends I have just quoted or named. What I will say