Ethics of the impossible: a reflection from deconstruction

Abstract

This article intends to present another reading about ethical issues - hospitality, reception justice - from the perspective of the impossible: an ethics of the impossible. Through an interpretative analysis of some of Jacques Derrida’s works, the perspective of the Ethics of the impossible, presented here, pass through the questioning of such an absence that allows the other to remain inaccessible or, as a condition of im/possibility of the relationship with the other, also referred to as ‘an unrelated relationship’ beyond the present or mere appearance. Thus, the possibility of a full presence is questioned. It is warned that this thought does not deny the presence of the other, but questions the supremacy given to the presence in the philosophical tradition, to the absence’s detriment. Likewise, it is not intended an inversion of terms - absence in supremacy of presence - but an alternation of terms, a play between absence and presence in acting in front of the other. The responsibility towards the other, not as imposition or force, but as openness and acceptance and host to every other time. Each time another, because it transcends the present time for time to come, always to come, a disjunction of time between that which is absent and presents itself without totalizing in advance.