Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The Subject of the Ethical Turn
- 2 Empiricism, the Ethical Subject and the Ethics of Hospitality
- 3 Sexing the Ethical Subject
- 4 Vulnerability to Violence and Ethical Sensibility
- 5 The Ethical Subject of New Media Communications
- 6 Secrecy and the Secret of Ethical Subjectivity
- 7 Censored Subjects
- 8 Suffering
- 9 Hospitality, Friendship and Justice
- 10 Death, or the End of the Subject
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Hospitality, Friendship and Justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The Subject of the Ethical Turn
- 2 Empiricism, the Ethical Subject and the Ethics of Hospitality
- 3 Sexing the Ethical Subject
- 4 Vulnerability to Violence and Ethical Sensibility
- 5 The Ethical Subject of New Media Communications
- 6 Secrecy and the Secret of Ethical Subjectivity
- 7 Censored Subjects
- 8 Suffering
- 9 Hospitality, Friendship and Justice
- 10 Death, or the End of the Subject
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Hospitality is culture itself and not simply one ethic amongst others. In so far as it has to do with ethos, that is, the residence, one's home, the familiar place of dwelling, in as much as it is a manner of being there, the manner in which we relate to ourselves and to others … ethics is hospitality; ethics is so thoroughly coextensive with the experience of hospitality.
Not only is there a culture of hospitality, but there is no culture that is not also a culture of hospitality. All cultures compete in this regard and present themselves as more hospitable than others. Hospitality—this is culture itself.
Ethics is hospitality, hospitality is culture: it would appear to be a small syllogistic leap to the proposition that ethics is culture itself (or indeed vice versa.) This would be no more a conclusion though than it would be a starting point; one could only expand outward from such a statement to a multitude of cultural examples of one kind or another, scrutinising each one to investigate and to discover its ethical dimension and thereby to confirm the proposition. Rather than wondering whether or not there is a ‘ethical turn’ in Derrida's thinking, taking these remarks in isolation, it might be more accurate to say that ethics is conceived by Derrida as the precondition of the cultural universe in its entirety; which begins with a kind of ethical ‘big bang’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ethical Subjects in Contemporary Culture , pp. 168 - 188Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013