{"id":1759,"date":"2006-01-18T16:32:41","date_gmt":"2006-01-18T16:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1759"},"modified":"2017-09-06T22:53:12","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T16:53:12","slug":"derrida-closet-platonist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2006\/01\/derrida-closet-platonist\/","title":{"rendered":"Derrida, Closet Platonist"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\">\n<\/head><body><p><\/p><p> In Specters of Marxism, Derrida advocates a strongly eschatological Marxism but without committing himself to the specifics of a Marxist analysis of capitalism (must as he advocates a \u201cmessianism without messiah\u201d).  In both cases, he reaches for a formal structure without content, deliberately, because \u201ccontent is always deconstructible.\u201d  Further, any time there\u2019s flesh on dem bones, one has to make choices, which means excluding options.  This, Derrida thinks, violates the fundamental principle of ethics, which is unconditional, infinite hospitality and welcome.  To remain open to the alterity of the future requires that we don\u2019t have a what James Smith calls a \u201cparticular, determinate horizon of expectation.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> Here we have a horizontal Platonism, the abstract and contentless form of the Good found not in the intelligible realm above but in the realm of justice that is always arriving but never arrived just over the horizon.   <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Specters of Marxism, Derrida advocates a strongly eschatological Marxism but without committing himself to the specifics of a Marxist analysis of capitalism (must as he advocates a \u201cmessianism without messiah\u201d). In both cases, he reaches for a formal structure without content, deliberately, because \u201ccontent is always deconstructible.\u201d Further, any time there\u2019s flesh on dem [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Derrida, Closet Platonist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In Specters of Marxism, Derrida advocates a strongly eschatological Marxism but without committing himself to the specifics of a Marxist analysis of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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