Writing Sample

Includes Limits of Irony: Freedom and Responsibility in Culture

W tych smutnych okolicznościach przyrody...

Stanowisko w dyskusji dotyczącej możliwości uprawiania polityki poza konfliktem

A Culture Truly Democratic

Panel: America Abroa

Obietnice i wymówki: Derrida i aporia podmiotowości

The aim of this essay is mainly critical: it intends to demonstrate that despite all the promises to give account of a "deconstructive subjectivity," Derrida failed to do so, postponing the moment of positive delivery and providing in the end only excuses. This charge relies on the thesis that Derrida - again, despite his overt declarations - proved unable to rethink critically the concept of narcissism which he himself saw as crucial for the future philosophical understanding of subjectivity. And although Derrida draws the concept of narcissism from the writings of Freud, it can be nonetheless easily shown that the meaning he attaches to this notion is much older: its true source appears to be Hegel's famous critique of the beautiful soul. My purpose here will be to show that what Derrida calls the aporia of narcissism is, in fact, nothing more than the deconstructive version of the Hegelian dilemma of the beautiful soul - and, theoretically speaking, a rather "defunct" one, for it explicitly prohibits any dialectical procedure that could lead us out of this aporetic predicament.The aim of this essay is mainly critical: it intends to demonstrate that despite all the promises to give account of a "deconstructive subjectivity," Derrida failed to do so, postponing the moment of positive delivery and providing in the end only excuses. This charge relies on the thesis that Derrida - again, despite his overt declarations - proved unable to rethink critically the concept of narcissism which he himself saw as crucial for the future philosophical understanding of subjectivity. And although Derrida draws the concept of narcissism from the writings of Freud, it can be nonetheless easily shown that the meaning he attaches to this notion is much older: its true source appears to be Hegel's famous critique of the beautiful soul. My purpose here will be to show that what Derrida calls the aporia of narcissism is, in fact, nothing more than the deconstructive version of the Hegelian dilemma of the beautiful soul - and, theoretically speaking, a rather "defunct" one, for it explicitly prohibits any dialectical procedure that could lead us out of this aporetic predicament

Literackie kryptoteologie nowoczesności, czyli o pierwszeństwie świata

Literary Cryptotheologies of Modernity, or the Primacy of the World This essay is an extended analysis of two aphorisms: Angelus Silesius’ sacred epigram on “the rose without why” and Paul Celan’s sentence on the hidden god of the poem. While there seems to be no direct connection between them, I nonetheless interpret them as belonging to – or even stronger, creating – the same paradigm of a typically modern religiosity which I call here a literary cryptotheology: a peculiar religion of deus absconditus who conceals himself and retreats in the background in order to let the world and the creation come stronger to the fore. Thus, if the “mystical rose” is to reach its full glory and achieve an autotelic existence causa sui or “without why,” which so far had only been God’s attribute, God the Creator must become a “hidden God,” i.e. conceal his blinding splendour. By playing on the Lurianic motif of tsimtsum, “God’s withdrawal,” and its avatars in the modern thought from Hegel to Derrida, I wish to outline a peculiar “religion of the World” – neither simply secular, nor traditionally theological – which I see as the unique modern contribution to the evolution of religious faith. In modernity, faith does not disappear: it only changes its object

Granice wspólnoty albo gra z cieniem: brak, sekret i duch przyjaźni w antropologii Plessnera i Derridy

The essay stages a confrontation between Helmuth Plessner and Jacques Derrida as the two continuators of philosophical anthropology, the discipline created by Johann Gottfried Herder who famously defined man as a ‘deficient being’ (Mängelwesen). Although Derrida was most probably unaware of Plessner’s interpretation of Herder’s thought, the affinities between the two thinkers are striking. Unlike the conservative wing of the Herderians, which stresses the need to compensate the original constitutive lack of human being (e.g. Arnold Gehlen), both Plessner and Derrida toy with the idea that the lack can be of value itself and that it does not call for the immediate cultural compensation. In their reading of the Herderian tradition, the lack which resists compensatory filling becomes a “secret” principle of individuation and as such an indispensable foundation of liberal society, based on the spirit of friendship, which allows for the play with the shadow of individual privacy. Writing against the utopia of the radical community, Plessner and Derrida give an outline of another society respecting the limits and the distance implied by the constitutive lack which can never by fully revealed.Esej przedstawia konfrontację między Helmuthem Plessnerem i Jacquesem Derridą jako dwoma kontynuatorami antropologii filozoficznej, dyscypliny stworzonej przez Johanna Gottfrieda Herdera, który w słynny sposób zdefiniował człowieka jako „niedoskonałą istotę” (Mängelwesen). Chociaż Derrida najprawdopodobniej nie był świadomy Plessnerowskiej interpretacji myśli Herdera, to powinowactwa pomiędzy tymi dwoma myślicielami są uderzające. W przeciwieństwie do konserwatywnego skrzydła Herderianistów, które podkreśla potrzebę zrekompensowania pierwotnego braku konstytutywnego dla człowieka (np. Arnold Gehlen), zarówno Plessner, jak i Derrida wykorzystują myśl, że brak może być wartością samą w sobie i że nie wymaga on natychmiastowej kompensacji kulturowej. W ich odczytaniu tradycji herderowskiej brak, który wymaga kompensacji, staje się „sekretną” zasadą indywidualizacji i jako taki stanowi niezbędny fundament liberalnego społeczeństwa opartego na duchu przyjaźni, pozwalający na grę z cieniem indywidualnej prywatności. Argumentując przeciw utopii radykalnej wspólnoty, Plessner i Derrida przedstawiają zarys innego społeczeństwa respektującego granice i dystans implikowany przez konstytutywny brak, którego nigdy nie można w pełni ujawnić

Do dekonstrukcji i z powrotem

The concept of the turn belongs to the favourite terms of nowadays humanities. The so called "deconstructive turn" became one of their most cherished cliches, which, as a cliche, immediately calls for a sceptical, typically deconstructionist intervention. In my paper, I question radically of the deconstructive project by trying to show that deconstruction, despite all the slogans it produced, proclaiming the death of the author and the subject, is far more continuous with modern tradition than it is commonly assumed. Especially, the notion of subjectivity is the one which most stubbornly resists the deconstructive attempts of its "undoing". I analyse three strategies of deconstruction, created by Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida and Harold Bloom, and conclude by pointing to the dialectical circle based on the concepts of expression and inscription. The traditional "romantic" subject perceives itself as an expressive voice for which writing is merely a secondary means of expression. Deconstruction of de Man and Derrida overturns the "romantic" subject by demonstrating the primacy of the effect of inscription. But the postdeconstructive work of Harold Bloom shows the possibility of reconciliation between expression and inscription which opens the way for the return of the subject, although no longer traditionally conceived.The concept of the turn belongs to the favourite terms of nowadays humanities. The so called "deconstructive turn" became one of their most cherished cliches, which, as a cliche, immediately calls for a sceptical, typically deconstructionist intervention. In my paper, I question radically of the deconstructive project by trying to show that deconstruction, despite all the slogans it produced, proclaiming the death of the author and the subject, is far more continuous with modern tradition than it is commonly assumed. Especially, the notion of subjectivity is the one which most stubbornly resists the deconstructive attempts of its "undoing". I analyse three strategies of deconstruction, created by Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida and Harold Bloom, and conclude by pointing to the dialectical circle based on the concepts of expression and inscription. The traditional "romantic" subject perceives itself as an expressive voice for which writing is merely a secondary means of expression. Deconstruction of de Man and Derrida overturns the "romantic" subject by demonstrating the primacy of the effect of inscription. But the postdeconstructive work of Harold Bloom shows the possibility of reconciliation between expression and inscription which opens the way for the return of the subject, although no longer traditionally conceived

Ironia, tragedia, wspólnota: Richard Rorty w oczach barbarzyńcy

Irony, Tragedy, Community: Richard Rorty in the Eyes of a Barbarian Abstract in English The essay is a perverse attempt at interpreting Richard Rorty from the perspective of a barbarian, that is, a person whom the author of “Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity” excludes from the conversation of civilised people. For Rorty, the basic criterion of barbarity is adherence to a culture which has retained distinctly pre-modem characteristics, i.e., those which predate “the process of civilisation.” The author, by identifying herself with the excluded "barbarian," seeks to indicate the merits of the pre-modem paradigm which has been unjustly disparaged by the leading philosopher of American postmodernism. Thus the author wants to redress the postmodernist tum from a pre-modern position; by evoking those categories that modernity has made to sink into oblivion - e.g. ritual un-differentiation and the catharsis experience – Agata Bielik-Robson argues that they are a natural supplement to Rorty's “call for universal solidarity.” Without this supplement, Rorty's call is just a vacuous declaration

Toward deconstruction, and back

The concept of the turn belongs to the favourite terms of nowadays humanities. The so called "deconstructive turn" became one of their most cherished cliches, which, as a cliche, immediately calls for a sceptical, typically deconstructionist intervention. In my paper, I question radically of the deconstructive project by trying to show that deconstruction, despite all the slogans it produced, proclaiming the death of the author and the subject, is far more continuous with modern tradition than it is commonly assumed. Especially, the notion of subjectivity is the one which most stubbornly resists the deconstructive attempts of its "undoing". I analyse three strategies of deconstruction, created by Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida and Harold Bloom, and conclude by pointing to the dialectical circle based on the concepts of expression and inscription. The traditional "romantic" subject perceives itself as an expressive voice for which writing is merely a secondary means of expression. Deconstruction of de Man and Derrida overturns the "romantic" subject by demonstrating the primacy of the effect of inscription. But the postdeconstructive work of Harold Bloom shows the possibility of reconciliation between expression and inscription which opens the way for the return of the subject, although no longer traditionally conceived