From différance to justice: Derrida and Heidegger’s “Anaximander’s Saying”

Abstract

Considerations of Jacques Derrida's oeuvre, and of deconstruction as theory and practice, are bound to revolve around Derrida's key notion of différance, developed at the outset of his career. However, Derrida's conception of justice, which started to make its presence felt in his work in the late 1980s, should also be considered to play a major role, not least when bearing in mind his declaration, made in 1989, that "deconstruction is justice." In this paper, the relation between différance and justice is explored against the background of Martin Heidegger's essay "Anaximander's Saying" which, it is argued, played a formative role in the development of Derrida's thinking. Derrida's analysis of justice as being comprised of three aspects-justice as idea, as law or right (droit) and as deconstruction-is shown to bear a strong resemblance with the conceptual scheme drawn from Anaximander in Heidegger's essay. The parallels between Derrida's différance and the notion of usage (Brauch), described by Heidegger as "the early word for Being," are also brought out.

‘Give me the space to live’: trauma, casted land and the search for restitution among the Meghwal survivors of the Dangawas massacre

“…In 'The saying of Anaximander', German philosopher Martin Heidegger analyses the only surviving text fragment authored by the Greek thinker Anaximander, which states that all things must eventually give way if the world is to be in balance. Anaximander deems an unwillingness to cede space when one's time has come an unjust action (Heidegger [1946(Heidegger [ /1950(Heidegger [ ] 1977Thornsteinsson 2015). People must recognise that they share the world with others and must accept the gradual transformation of one's physical space and the relationships that inhabit it.…”