ative or not) - why I have never been able to write it, on my own initiative and in my name, as it were. Why? Whence my reticence? And is it not fundamentally the essential part of the disquiet which inspires this book? Is this reserve, with respect to the above definition of Judaism, insufficiently Jewish, or, on the contrary, hyperbolically Jewish, more than Jewish? What, then, once again, does 'Judaism' mean? I add that the language of fraternity seems to me just as problematic when, reciprocally, Levinas uses it to extend humanity to the Christian, in this case to Abbot Pierre: 'the fraternal humanity of the stalag's confidential agent who, by each of his movements, restored in us the consciousness of our dignity. The man was called Abbot Pierre, I never learned his family name.'34}
It is rather late in the day now to issue a warning. Despite the appearances that this book has multiplied, nothing in it says anything
against
the brother or against fraternity. No protest, no contestation. Maligning and cursing, as we have seen often enough, still appertain to the inside of the history of brothers (friends or enemies, be they false or true) . This history will not be thought, it will not be recalled, by taking upthis
side. In my own special way, like everyone else, I believe, I no doubt love, yes, in my own way, my brother, my only brother. And my brothers, dead or alive, where the letter no longer counts and never has, in my 'family' and in my 'families' -I have more than one, and more than one 'brother' of more than one sex, and I love having more than one, each time unique, of whom and to whom, in more than one language, across quite a few boundaries, I am bound by a conjuration and so many unuttered oaths.Where, then, is the question? Here it is: I have never stopped asking myself, I request that it be asked, what is meant when one says 'brother', when someone is called 'brother'. And when the humanity of man, as much as the alterity of the other, is thus resumed and subsumed. And the infinite price of friendship. I have wondered, and I ask, what one wants to say whereas one
does not want
to say, one knows that one should not say, because one knows, through so much obscurity, whence it comes and where this profoundly obscure language has led in the past.Up until now.
I am wondering, that's all, and request that it be asked, what the implicit politics of this language is. For always, and today more than ever. What is the political impact and range of this chosen word, among other possible words, even - and especially - if the choice is not deliberate?Just a question, but one which supposes an affirmation. If my hypothesis must remain a hypothesis, it cannot be undone with a pledge. The pledge of a testimony irreducible to proof or certitude, as well as to all theoretical
306 POLITICS OF FRIENDSHIP
detennination. If one wishes to retranslate this pledge into a hypothesis or a question, it would, then, perhaps by way of a temporary conclusion -take the following form: is it possible to think and to implement democracy, that which would keep the old name 'democracy', while uprooting from it all these figures of friendship (philosophical and religious) which prescribe fraternity: the family and the androcentric ethnic group? Is it possible, in assuming a certain faithful memory of democratic reason and reason
tout court
-I would even say, the Enlightenment of a certainAuJkliirung
(thus leaving open the abyss which is again opening today under these words) -not to found, where it is -not longer a matter offounding,
but to open out to the future, or rather, to the 'come', ofa certain democracy?For democracy remains to come; this is its essence in so
far
as it remains:not only
will
it remain indefinitely perfectible, hence always insufficient and future, but, belonging to the time of the promise, itwill
always remain, in each of its future times, to come: even when there is democracy, it never exists, it is never present, it remains the theme of a non-presentable concept. Is it possible to open up to the 'come' of a certain democracy which is no longer an insult to the friendship we have striven to think beyond the homo-fraternal and phallogocentric schema?When will we be ready for an experience of freedom and equality that is capable of respectfully experiencing that friendship, which would at last be just, just beyond the law, and measured up against its measurelessness?
o my democratic friends . . .
Notes
1. From one ofFerenczi's letters to Freud; see below, p. 280
2. Book Four, para. 279, trans. W. Kaufinann, New York, Vintage 1974, pp. 225-226.
3. [See the epigraph to Derrida's
Of Grammatology:
the future is 'that which breaks absolutely with constituted normality and can only be proclaimed,presented,
as a sort of monstrosity': trans. Gayatri Spivak, Johns Hopkins University Press 1976, p. 5. - Trans.]4.
Anthropology .from a Pragmatic Point
ofView,
[trans. Victor Lyle Dowdell, Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press 1978], p. 38.5. See above, ch. 9, pp. 257-8.
6.
'esti gar
0pMos alios autos', Nicomachean Etlzics,
IX, 4, 1166a 32. Aristode posits here that man, with his friend, is in a relation similar to the one he has to hirnsel£ He then defers the question of whether there can be friendship between a man and himself, only to return to it further on, answering in the affirmative. It is in terms of this' F
O
R THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANITY' 307 friendship for self that friendship can extend to other men. The best I can wish for my best friend is what I wish for myselfin the highest degree (1168b 5).7. Montaigne,
Essays,
p. 212.8.
'Mein Bruder, wenn du eine Tugend hast, und es deine Tugend ist, so hast du sie mit niemandem gemeinsam'
[trans. R. Hollingdale, Penguin Classics 1961].9.
"Einer ist immer zu viel U1ll mich" also denkt der Einsiedler. "Immer einmal eins -das gibt atif die Dauer zwei!"
. . Id, und Midi sind immer su eifrig im Gesprache: wie ware es auzuhalten, ulfnn es mdlt emen Freund gabe?
"Immer ist fur den Einsiedler der Freund der Dritte: der Dritte ist der Kork, der verlundert, . daft das Gesprach der Zweie in die Tiife sinkt" ', Vom Freunde,
inAlso spradl ZaratllUstra
[trans. R. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth, Penguin 1961], p. 82.
10. And even of sacrificial 'camo-phallogocentrism'. See
Points de suspension,
Galilee . 1992, p. 294[Points . . . : Interviews
1974-1994, ed. Elisabeth Weber, trans. Peggy Kamufand others, Stanford University Press 1995], pp. 280-81.1 1 .
Nicomachean Ethics,
VIII, 2, 1 155a 25.12. Ibid., 10, 1160b 18-20.
13.
Eudemian Ethics,
VII, 9, 1241b 30.14.
Nicomachean Ethics,
VIII, 15, 1 162b 20;Eudemian Ethics,
VII, 10, 1242b 30.15. The brother's name or the name ofbrother: Montaigne again, on his friendship with La Boetie: 'The name of brother is truly a fair one and full oflove: that is why La Boetie and I made a brotherhood of our alliance' p. 208).
16.
Bifore the LAw.
17. Budapest, 26 December 1912, in
TIle Correspondence
ofSigmund Freud and Sandor Ferenczi,
vol. 1, 1908-14 [trans. Peter T. Hoffer, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and London 1993], pp. 449-51.18. On all these problems, and again on the ethico-political question of the woman/
wife, the sister, and the brother in Hegel, I refer the reader to
Glas,
Galilee 1974 [trans.John P. Leavey Jr and Richard Rand, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press 1986].
19.
TIle Gospel According to Matthew,
V, 43-8 [trans. Members of the Catholic . Biblical Association of America, fromTIle New American Bible,
World Publishing 1972].This is evidendy the passage to which Schmitt refers (see above, ch. 4, pp. 88-9).
20.
TIlUs Spoke Zarathustra,
pp. 87-8.21. 'You want to be paid as well, you the virtuous! Do you want reward for vJrtue . and heaven for earth and eternity for your today?', ibid. 'Of the Virtuous', p. 1 17. The reference is undoubtedly, among many other possibilities, to the Gospel according to Matthew, cited above. But the logic of wages is everywhere in the
9
0spels.22. Chapter 4.
23. In a recent and beautiful essay, Alexander Garcia Diittrnann says of this passage and of 'Star Friendships' that it is a question of an 'originary alter-ation'
qua
a nondialectizable, non-relevable, un-sublatable distancing. See 'What is called Love in all the Languages and Silences of the World: Nietzsche, Genealogy, Contingency', in
Imago,
Fall 1993, p. 314.
24. Montaigne, 'On Friendship, p. 220.
25. Ibid., pp. 206-7.
26.
L'Ami/ii,
Gallimard 197 1 , pp. 328-9. Emphasis added.308 P OLITICS OF FRIENDSHIP
27. Maurice Blanchot, n,e Writing oj the Disaster [trans. Ann Smock, Bison Book Edition, University of Nebraska Press 1995], p. 27.
28. Elsewhere I have suggested the opposite: that the gift ought to exclude the too natural value of generosity. See Donner Ie temps, Galilee 1991, p. 205 (trans. Peggy Karnuf, Given Time, l. Counterfeit Money, University of Chicago Press 1992], p. 162.
29. Fata Morgana 1986, pp. 63-4 [trans. Jeffrey Mehlman, Zone Books 1987], pp. 108-9.
30. The work of the lost friend should not be 'praised' - it is the same word as the one used in the text on Bataille, so many years before, which we cited above: 'if only to praise him'.
31. Le Comite. Confessions d'un ledeur degrande maison, Champ Vallon 1988, pp. 88-9.
32. ' . . . the heart offratemity: the heart of the law', p. 47.
'The problem of being commIttees of actIon without acnon, or cucles of frtends which would disown theu former friendships In the name of an appeal to friendship (comradeslup wtthout preconditions) which would carry the exigency of being there, not as a penon or subject, but as the demonstration of a brotherly. anonymous, and impersonal movement.
The presence of the "people" In Its hmidess power which, so as not to limIt itself. accepts to do tlolhit/g'. (p. 55)
33. A letter to Salomon Maika, L'Arche, no. 373, May 1988. Emphasis added, obviously.
34. Emmanuel Levirtas, 'Qui �es-vous?', Interview with F. Poirie, La Manufacture, 1987, pp. 84-5, cited in M.A. Lescourret, Emmanuel Levinas, Aarnmarion 1994, p. 121.
308 POLITICS OF FRIENDSHIP
27. Maurice Blanchot,
TIle Writing of the Disaster
[trans. Ann Smock, Bison Book Edition, University of Nebraska Press 1 995], p. 27.28. Elsewhere I have suggested the opposite: that the gift ought to exclude the too natural value of generosity. See
Donner
Ietemps,
Galilee 1991, p. 205 [trans. Peggy Kamuf,Given Time, 1. Counteifeit Money,
University of Chicago Press 1992], p. 162.29. Fata Morgana 1986, pp. 63-4 [trans. Jefli:ey Mehlman, Zone Books 1987], pp. 108-9.
30. The work of the lost friend should not be 'praised' - it is the same word as the one used in the text on Bataille, so many years before, which we cited above: 'if only to praise him'.
31. I.e
Comite. Confessions d'un lecteurdegrande maison,
Champ Vallon 1988, pp. 88-9.32. ' . . . the heart of fraternity: the heart of the law', p. 47.
'The problem of being committees of .etlon without .ctlon, or CIrcles of fnends which would disown thell former friendships m the n.me of an appeal to friendship (comradeslnp wtthout preconditions) which would carry the exigency of being there, not as a person or subject, but as the demonstration of a brotherly, anonymous, and impersonal movement.
The presence of the "people" m Its hmidess power which, so as not to limit itself, accepts to do notllillg'. (p. 55)
33. A letter to Salomon Maika,
L'Arche,
no. 373, May 1988. Emphasis added, obviously.34.