Polity

. Volume 39, Number 2 . April 2007

r 2007 Northeastern Political Science Association 0032-3497/07 $30.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/polity

The Ethics and Politics of Dwelling*

Nicholas Dungey California State University, Northridge
Emmanuel Levinas argues that Heideggers ontology, and the ethics it entails, fall short because while Dasein relates to the Other as being, Dasein fails to care for the Other as a pure individual. Heideggers preoccupation with Being, Levinas thinks, diverts Heideggers attention from the empirical, ethical claim made by the Other. On the political front, some argue that Heideggers preoccupation with Being gives rise to political forces of nationalism and totalitarian politics. I argue that Heideggers philosophy prepares the way for an alternative approach to ethics. Expressed in the way that Dasein comes-to-presence are the ontological relationships that reveal Daseins ethical being-with-one-another. However, I contend that Heideggers ontology becomes ethically complete when Derridas notion of differance is added to the analysis. On my reading, Derridas differance does not efface Heideggers existential analytic of Dasein, but rather differance furthers the ethical insight revealed in Daseins disclosure through the process of presencing absencing. Interpreting differance in light of Heideggers understanding of presencingabsencing reveals the ethical significance in language, extends ethical responsibility to the Other, and deepens Heideggers notion of dwelling. In addition, such a reading helps guard against the pernicious political possibilities some find in Heideggers philosophy. Polity (2007) 39, 234258. doi:10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300064

Keywords

Heidegger; Derrida; ethics; dwelling

Nicholas Dungey is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at California State University, Northridge. His primary interests are modern and contemporary political theory. He is particularly interested in the modernpostmodern debate as it relates to issues of identity, language, power, and the possibility of a postmodern democracy. He can be reached at nicholas.dungey@csun.edu

*I thank the former and current editors, referees, and staff of Polity for their thoughtful assistance in the preparation of this essay. Special thanks also go to James Mitchell and my colleagues at CSUNyour support has been invaluable. Last, I also thank Peter Digeser, Thomas Schrock, and Lea for their unending care.

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Introduction
Emmanuel Levinas argues that Heideggers ontology, and the ethics it entails, fall short because while Dasein1 relates to the Other as being, Dasein fails to care for the Other as a pure individual.2 Heideggers preoccupation with Being, Levinas thinks, diverts Heideggers attention from the empirical, ethical claim made by the Other. On the political front, some like Leo Strauss,3 Richard Wolin,4 and Karl Lowith5 argue that this abstract and insular reflection gives rise to political forces of nationalism and totalitarian politics. I contend that Heideggers philosophy prepares the way for an alternative approach to ethics. Our ethical being is revealed through the ontological relationships by which Dasein comesto-presence. However, I propose that Heideggers ontology becomes ethically complete when Derridas notion of differance is added to the analysis. On my reading, Derridas notion of differance does not efface Heideggers analysis of Dasein; rather differance furthers the ethical insight revealed in Daseins disclosure through the process of presencingabsencing. As I present it, the dynamic of presencingabsencing calls our attention to three dimensions of ethical care residing in our way of being. These moments are (1) presencing absencing between Being and the individual; (2) presencingabsencing between the individual and his/her death; and (3) the presencingabsencing of self and other revealed in the happening of differance. The first two relations are Heideggerean and represent simultaneous modes of practical and ethical disclosure. The third relation is my reading of Derridas notion of differance. Interpreting differance in light of Heideggers theory of presencingabsencing reveals the ethical significance in language, extends ethical responsibility directly to the Other, and helps complete Heideggers notion of dwelling. It also helps guard against the pernicious political possibilities that some find in Heideggers philosophy. And last, Derridas notion of differance and democratic hospitality

1. Translated literally as there-being, Dasein is Heideggers attempt to avoid the many metaphysical conceptssubjectivity, ego, consciousness, spirit, soul, etc.that have been used to express the nature of human beings. This designation Dasein. . . does not signify a what. The entity is not distinguished by its what, like a chair in contrast to a house. Rather, this designation in its own way expresses the way to be: Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time, trans. T. Kisiel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 153. Dasein is distinguished from other things that exist by virtue of its special way of being, which is to raise the question of its Being in and through its existence. In Dasein, Heidegger attempts to overcome the often-sharp metaphysical distinction between the subject and object, and seeks to capture both the empirically factual and ontological dimensions of our Being in a single concept. 2. Emmanuel Levinas, Is Ontology Fundamental? Philosophy Today 33 (1989): 12426. 3. Leo Strauss, An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism, in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989). 4. Richard Wolin, The Heidegger Controversy (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998). 5. Karl Lowith, The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, in The Heidegger Controversy, ed. Richard Wolin (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998).

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contributes to how we frame the issues of illegal immigration, community, and citizenship.

Heideggers Philosophy and Totalitarian Politics

My claim that Heideggers thought helps produce a salutary ethics and politics is a contested issue. Critics of Heideggers philosophy such as Strauss, Wolin, and Lowith contend that Heideggers preoccupation with Being, death, and authenticity give rise to insular, nationalist, and totalitarian politics. These authors do not see Heideggers participation in National Socialism as a grievous mistake on behalf of a political novice, but rather as part and parcel with his philosophical belief. Everyone who had read his first great book, Leo Strauss writes, and did not overlook the wood for the trees could see the kinship in temper and direction between Heideggers thought and the Nazis.6 Richard Wolin asks: Did Heideggers existential decision for National Socialism in 1933 signify his authenticity?7 As a political doctrine, National Socialism was characterized by the belief in the biological superiority of the Aryan race, and the pursuit of world domination based on this assertion.8 Heidegger, Lowith writes, took on political responsibilities . . .consistent with the fundamental thesis of Being and Time. Lowith quotes Heideggers claim that only an individual that is free for its death and can let itself be thrownback upon its factical there by shattering itself against death. . . can, by handing down to itself the possibility it has inherited, take over its thrownness and be in the moment of vision for its time.9 In this passage, Lowith finds the philosophical themes that he claims provide both the foundation for National Socialism, and that explain Heideggers commitment to it. In Being and Time, Heidegger describes human beings as the sort of beings who are thrown into their existence, and who have death as their most radical form of possibility. For Heidegger, death represents the unsurpassable moment of our existence. As such, our death is something that we cannot master and, therefore, our death signifies the impossibility of our very being. Not only is death the very real possibility that cannot be mastered, but it is also the one possibility that cannot be represented in concrete or objective form. Insofar as death gives nothing to calculate, measure, or master, it reveals the nothing of our existence. However, in giving this nothing, death also gives to the individual the freedom to choose her own
6. Strauss, An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism, 30. 7. Wolin, Over the Line: Reflections on Heidegger and National Socialism, in The Heidegger Controversy, 4. 8. Fred Dallmayr, Heidegger and Politics: Some Lessons, in The Heidegger Case, ed. Thomas Rockmore and Joseph Margolis (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), 284. 9. Lowith, The Political Implications of Heideggers Existenitialism, 170.

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possibilities. It is in this radical freedom to choose ones own possibilities that Heidegger locates the moment of authenticity. And, because all possibilities are finite, courageous reflection on death, what Heidegger calls resoluteness, forces us to seize and live our time. Lowith interprets Heideggers comments about death, nothingness, authenticity, and ones time against the backdrop of the tumultuous economic and political events of inter-war Germany. For Lowith, the struggle for individual authenticity mirrors the cultural and political struggle raging in inter-war Germany. He sees in Heideggers personal life and philosophy a negation in principle of all that has existed.10 Lowith reads Heideggers resoluteness towards death as a call for the individual to reject the nihilistic values of Modern Europe, and to hasten their social and political disintegration. Rejecting the nihilistic values of Modern Europe, and confronting the nothing of ones being, prepares the individual for a new beginning directed by ones own will. However, as Lowith argues, the nothing of being that resoluteness reveals must be replaced by something, and this something is National Socialism. Lowith believes that Heideggers notions of resoluteness and authenticity become synonyms for returning to ones ethnic, linguistic, and political homeland.11 On his account, the pursuit of authenticity, and the taking up of ones own destiny, results in a reinvigorated political duty to ones homeland and ethnic and linguistic community. Lowith writes, one need only. . .apply [the concept] of authentic existence. . .and the duty. . .that follows therefrom to specifically German existence and its historical destiny to see the way individual authentic existence is transposed to the totality of the authentic state.12 As critics of Heideggers philosophy see it, deriving from authenticity is the celebration of a particular form of political state. Indeed, once one frees oneself from common values and opinions, and overcomes their social and cultural expressions, the likely result is a totalitarian state that embodies the nations ownmost political destiny. Contrary to the views presented by Heideggers critics, I believe there is another way of approaching Heideggers analysis of our relationship with Being, our own death, and others. In Heideggers treatment of the individuals relationship with Being and mortality is an alternative way of understanding who we are, and how we relate to others, that fosters a greater sensitivity to the fragility of our own lives and those of others. It is my contention that Heideggers understanding of our relationship to Being and death works against the sort of
10. Lowith, The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 170. 11. Echoing Lowith, Pierre Bourdieu notes, the goal of authenticity is to re-root oneself in the essence of ones being. Pierre Bourdieu, The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger, trans. Peter Collier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 8. 12. Lowith, The Political Implications of Heideggers existentialism, 173.

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ethnic and nationalist politics ascribed to his philosophy. In addition, I argue that reading Derridas differance in light of Heideggers understanding of the interplay between presence and absence not only deepens the ethical relations revealed in Heideggers thought, but also provides yet another theoretical strategy designed to thwart the tendency of human beings to turn inward toward ethnic, linguistic, and nationalistic politics. Heidegger and Derridas philosophy resists an ethnic, nationalist, and totalitarian politics because it disrupts the very metaphysical concepts of objective, rational, and pure truths that have characterized the sort of political ideologies associated with so much human suffering. What follows is a response to the critics of Heideggers philosophy and politics, and one intended to point the way toward an alternative conception of democratic politics.

The Ethics of Dwelling

The philosophical claims we make about human nature directly influence our interpretation of the self, others, and the world we live in. For Heidegger and Derrida, the philosophical claims we make about human existence and Being reveal modes of togetherness and responsibility that are inherently ethical. Moreover, for both of them, these ethical claims ought to influence the sort of political decisions and actions we take. According to Heidegger, to engage ethics properly, we must raise the questions of who we are, and the way we find ourselves in this world. It is in this context that he writes, ethics as a mere doctrine and imperative is helpless unless man first comes to have a different fundamental relation to Being.13 Ethical understanding is grounded in the ontological situation of human existence, and is revealed through a clearer understanding of our being. Where the essence of man is thought so essentially, solely from the question concerning the truth of Being, but still without elevating man to the center of beings, a longing necessarily awakens for a peremptory directive and for rules that say how man. . .ought to live.14 Heidegger wants to raise the philosophical question of human existence in a way that avoids making man the objective ground of morality. Before we determine rules that regulate our behavior, we must philosophically clarify who we are. Heideggers philosophy, insofar as it reveals the essential relationships that disclose and characterize human existence, is itself a form of original ethics. And, for Heidegger, access to such a way of thinking begins with reflection on the essence of dwelling.
13. Heidegger, What is Called Thinking? trans. J. Gray (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 89. 14. Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, in Basic Writings, trans. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1977), 255.

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As early as Being and Time, Heidegger identifies dwelling as the essential character of human being-in-the-world. For Heidegger, dwelling reveals the holistic way we express understanding of ourselves, our relation with others, and the world. Ich Bin (I am) means I dwell, I stay near. . . the world as something familiar in such and such a way. Being as the infinitive I am: that is, understood as an existential, means to dwell near. . .15 To care for, and be involved with, ones life, others, and the world, are all manifestations of dwelling. As the most primordial set of activities through which our care is expressed, dwelling signifies who we are and the way of our being. It is not accidental, Heidegger insists, that the most primordial assertion of existence, I am, is historically and etymologically synonymous with dwelling. Dwelling entails the practical activity of building structures and cultivating the ontological relationships revealed in and through building. For Heidegger, both modes of buildingbuilding as cultivating and building as raising up edificesare comprised within genuine building, that is, dwelling.16 Practically speaking, we build and inhabit homes, and we do so to protect and safeguard ourselves from the environment and others. As human beings, we are always engaged in the technological occupation of using and manipulating the physical world. In the modern period, Heidegger contends, we build only with an eye to manipulate and conquer nature. Building is only engineering, and engineering is only a tool to expand mans dominion. However, Heidegger seeks to reawaken the distinction between the everyday activity of building and dwelling with others. This is necessary, he contends,

15. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 51. In addition to the ontological status of dwelling, it is important to recognize the connection between dwelling and spacewhat Heidegger calls nearness and distance. It is important, therefore, to clarify Heideggers existential understanding of space. For Heidegger, all spatial dimensions are first opened through the expression of care for, and involvement with, the world. The expression of our care towards others and things opens the dimension of space, establishing the phenomenon of near and far, and constituting the grounds of actual measurement. What is near and far is not first a function of measured space. Measured space becomes possible due to the awareness of and involvement with objects, and their placement in a larger context of meaningful significance. Spatiality, then, is an existential attribute of Daseins being. Only after existential care has been reawakened, can space in both the ethical and calculative sense be ontologically clarified (Heidegger, Being and Time, 103). The ethical dimension of Daseins spatiality concerns the way in which others are brought near and cared for. From the point of view of existential concern, near and far do not signify spatial opposites, but rather function as related points in a playing back and forth along a continuum of care towards others. The ethical dimension of nearness concerns the cultivation of an alternative mode of subjectivity, one that releases itself from the inclination to bring all things, as well as others, under the dominion of rational and technical manipulation. 16. Martin Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A. Hofstadter (New York: Harper Row, 1971), 147.

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because our modern, overtly technological approach to building leads us to forget the deeper significance of dwelling. Heidegger writes, These buildings house man. He inhabits them and yet does not dwell in them, when to dwell means merely that we take shelter in them. . . do the houses in themselves hold any guarantee that dwelling occurs in them?17 As long as we understand building only in terms of the manipulation of the natural environment, dedicated to the protection and advancement of mans ends, we will continue to alienate ourselves from true dwelling. Leslie Paul Thiele writes, a proper abode for humanity can never be fabricated. . . Our worldly abode is transformed once it no longer is approached metaphysically, as an objective reality, but rather as a set of relationships. . .18 Because the character of human being-inthe-world is nothing other than the webbing of its social and cultural relations, the building of things must be directed in light of the cultivation of these essential relationships. Of the two dimensions of dwelling, Heidegger insists that it is the matrix of human relations that provides the deeper significance of dwelling. We do not dwell because we have built, but we build and have built because we dwell, that is, because we are dwellers.19 When we dwell we build these relations, we cultivate a certain posture toward things and others. In Heideggers later writings, dwelling takes on strong ethical connotations.20
17. Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 146. 18. Leslie Paul Thiele, Timely Meditations: Martin Heidegger and Postmodern Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 18081. 19. Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 148. 20. While Heideggers notion of dwelling remains constant throughout his life, his approach to thinking about it undergoes an important change. This change entails the difference between what, in Being and Time, Heidegger considered the question of the meaning of Being, to what he later thought of as the truth of Being. In Being and Time, Heidegger sought the meaning of Being by interrogating that being (Dasein) for whom Being itself is an issue. In this context, Heideggers interrogation of metaphysics is intended to peel away the layers of metaphysical language and subjectivity that have shrouded the meaning of Being. The purpose of Being and Time is to provide an ever more refined interpretation of Daseins existence in order to recover the forgotten meaning of Being. In his later works, the focus shifts from a concern with recovering the meaning of Being to a meditation on the truth of Being. Here the truth of Being is understood as an interdependent and mutually disclosive relationship between Being and Dasein, and the implications such reflection carries for ethical co-being. From an ethico-ontological point of view, the shift is important. In Being and Time, the search for the meaning of Being entailed an overly subjective stance by Dasein toward Being, leading Dasein to will its resoluteness in the face of death. Such willful choice is what Heidegger means by Daseins authenticity, or ability to choose its own path. In his later writings, Heidegger lets go of the emphasis on individual decision as the mark of a good life, and turns to a meditation on the more passive nature of the relationship between Being and Dasein. It is in this mode of abiding in the opening of Being that Heideggers notion of letting-be becomes ethically relevant. See: Martin Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schumer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 178; Discourse on Thinking, trans. J. Anderson and E. Fruend (New York: Harper Row, 1966), 6061; and Anaximander Fragment, in Early Greek Thinking, trans. D. Krell and F Capuzi (New York: . Harper Row, 1975), 4041.

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The way in which you are and I am, the manner in which we humans are on the earth, is Buan, dwelling. The old word bauen, which says that man is insofar as he dwells . . . also means at the same time to cherish and protect, to preserve and to care for. . .21 At its most basic, dwelling expresses the emotional care that animates and binds together the family, home, and extended relationships we find ourselves in. As the beings who are born (thrown) into families, tribes, ethnicities, and historical epochs, we find ourselves revealed in integrated, caring, and loving associations. In addition to our reception of care, it is characteristic of our nature to express and extend care, protection, and love to others. Not only are we cared-for, but we are also the care-takers.22 For Heidegger, dwelling captures both the objective and subjective conditions of care abiding in each individual and the radius of his or her relationships. These modes of carecherishing, protecting, and lovingare ontologically constitutive of who we are. Bringing together the activity of building, the place it creates, and the relationships it nourishes, Heidegger calls the abode the site of the ethical disclosure of dwelling. Ethos means abode, dwelling place. The word names the open region in which man dwells. The open region of his abode allows what pertains to mans essence, and what in thus arriving resides in nearness to him, to appear.23 The open region of the abode refers to ontological, ethical, and geographical sites of disclosure. First, Dasein itself is the abode of Being, that place where Being is manifest. Residing in and through Dasein, Being is openness to others and things, and it is within this openness that what pertains to Dasein is brought near. Second, the abode signifies the immediate space of the home, where the set of meaningful relationshipspeople, things, and issuesthat are important to us appear and live. Third, the abode signifies the geographical sitecultural space and historical timewhere the broader life of care is experienced. By calling attention to the abode as multiple sites of openness, Heidegger reminds us that we are always-already at home in the world, that it is meaningful to us, and that it is a home/world we share with others. Phenomenologically speaking, we are at home in a world of essential relationships and we are at home in a physical and geographical place.

21. Martin Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 147. 22. Young, Heideggers Later Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 64. 23. Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, 256.

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The purpose of recovering the ethical dimension of dwelling is to cultivate a non-domineering relationship between human beings. To dwell ethically is to positively preserve the staying of others. As Heidegger puts it: If the name ethics, in keeping with the basic meaning of the word ethos, should now say that ethics ponders the abode of man, then that thinking which thinks the truth of Being as the primordial element of man, as one who ek-sists, is in itself the original ethics. . . This dwelling is the essence of beingin-the-world.24 To say that the essential character of human beings is to dwell is to say that we are always-already implicated in a condition of ethical relations and considerations. As Heidegger notes, [to] embrace a thing or person in its essence means to love it, to favor it. Such favoring is the proper essence of enabling. . .[which] can let something [or others] essentially unfold in its provenance, that is, let it be.25

The Significance of PresencingAbsencing

But, it might be asked: How is the essence of dwelling cultivated? The essence of dwelling is cultivated through a way of life that acknowledges the interplay between presence and absence in three aspects of our life. It is, therefore, important to examine what Heidegger means by the (ontological) difference between presence, absence, and actual beings and things. Heidegger notes: From early on it seems as though presencing and what is present were each something for itself. Presencing itself unnoticeably becomes something present. . . As soon as presencing is named it is represented as some present being. Ultimately, presencing as such is not distinguished from what is present . . . The essence of presencing, and with it the distinction between presencing and what is present, remains forgotten. The oblivion of Being is oblivion of the distinction between Being and beings.26 Maintaining the distinction, and proper relation between the phenomenon of presencing and empirically existing human beings, is essential. For Heidegger, the truth of Being, understood as presencing, does not reduce to a multiplicity of individually present things. Nor is it the case that what is present is simply the
24. Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 149, and Letter on Humanism, 260. 25. Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, 220. 26. Martin Heidegger, Anaximander Fragment, 50.

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objective manifestation of Being itself. The collapse of this distinction is the mistake that Heidegger insists led Western thinking astray. Generally speaking, the experience of presence (Being) is given, what alwaysalready surrounds human beings.27 While always aware that we are present, the fact of our presence is something we assume, and take for granted. As such, presence, and the happening of presencing, signifies the unthought, background condition, and unifying phenomenon that enables empirically present human beings and things. What is present, Heidegger writes, coheres in unifying presencing, as everything becomes present to everything else within its duration; it becomes present and lingers with the others.28 Human beings come-topresence in time and appear together in a realm that has been granted to them, and one that is constituted by shared meaning and significance. Moreover, it is important to stress that the gift of presence is not the product of human will or power. The phenomenon of presence is not created, willed, nor ever mastered by any single human being. No being exists objectively in its own presentness. Human beings and cultures are, Young writes, receptive rather than creative with respect to the modes of presence they inhabit.29 It is this essential passivity with respect to presence that opens one dimension of the ethical significance of human beings. We possess a responsibility to care for the gift of presence. To the discussion of presence must be joined the importance of withdrawal, and absence, as characteristic of human existence. According to Heidegger, and later Derrida, the withdrawal of Being, and the Other, enables and illuminates the present actuality of individuals.30 Put otherwise, as Being reveals itself in and

27. Young, Heideggers Later Philosophy, 23. 28. Heidegger, Anaximander Fragment, 40. 29. Young, Heideggers Later Philosophy, 23. 30. This is one of the central motifs of Derridas articulation of differance. In Derridas language, the absentpresent trace of linguistic meaning and identity refers to that element of meaning or identity which, due to the differential structure of meaning and identity, is irreducibly related to the proper meaning of a word or to the identity of the proper name before such isolation is possible. Absence refers to those elements of differential possibility, transcendental differance, that are essential to the singular appropriation of any term or identity. On Heidegger and Derridas reading, absence is structurally constitutive of the conditions of possibility for anything; and cannot be (as metaphysics attempts), and should not be (as most forms of ethical theory attempt), forgotten or dissolved. In fact, deconstruction is made possible by the impossibility of the proper name, whether this is understood in terms of meaning or identity. The absentpresent trace always frustrates the attempt at transparent meaning and autonomous identity precisely because relational difference always-already presupposes singularity. Singularity and meaning are always isolated out of differance and a thrown context of meaningful involvement, what is unrecoverable in this transcendental movement is the absentpresent trace. What is necessary is to recover the significance that absence plays in this ontic-ontological happening. The work of Heidegger and Derrida, as well as the way in which I read a possible rapprochement between the two, differs from other postmodern thinking in how it understands the role and significance of absence. As constitutive of the conditions of meaning and possibility, absence represents an alternative form of connectedness and sharing.

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through individuals, Being withdraws.31 Only the no-thingness of Being, Thiele notes, allows human being to disclose beings as things.32 The withdrawal, and subsequent absence, of Being signifies a form of disclosure in and through concealment. But, Heidegger insists, withdrawal is not nothing.33 We must resist the temptation to interpret the withdrawal of Being as a negative characteristic of human existence. The withdrawal of Being does not signify an emptiness that must be filled, or a deficiency that must be overcome. On the contrary, the withdrawal of Being is an event in which human beings participate.34 Indeed, Heidegger suggests that the event of withdrawal could be what is most essential throughout the present,35 meaning that it is the enabling capacity of Beings withdrawal which illuminates actual individuals and sustains their connection. Being (presence) is the open space, and its withdrawal enables human beings and things to stand within it. But, how are we aware of that which, from the beginning, has already withdrawn? And how is participation in the event of withdrawal ethically significant? What withdraws from us, Heidegger writes, draws us along by its very withdrawal. . .. Once we are drawn into the withdrawal, we are. . .caught in the draft of what draws. . .. As we are drawing toward what withdraws, we are pointing in that direction. . . .36 Our way of being is opened in that pointing toward, and caring for, Being. Drawn along by the gravitational pull of Being, we are always caught in the draft of Being. For Heidegger, the withdrawal of Being creates an ethical gravity of care with which individuals are carried forward, and through which their relationships to others are held together. I will argue later that we experience the draw of this ethical gravity not only through the withdrawal of Being, but also in and through our relationship to our own death, and the withdrawal of the Other in and through differance. In addition, the withdrawal of Being provides a further ethical service. The withdrawal of Being creates a dimension of absence that always remains beyond the grasp of each individual. As such, absence forces us to confront those dimensions of our lives that are beyond our physical, rational, and technological mastery. Confronting limits to our power serves to soften our drive to mastery, making us more sympathetic to the hopes and sufferings of others. Finding our presence given, being carried along by what withdraws, and confronting what cannot be mastered, we are forced to reorient how we relate to our self and

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Heidegger, Anaximander Fragment, 26; and Basic Questions of Philosophy, 178. Thiele, Timely Meditations, 73. Heidegger, What Calls for Thinking? in Basic Writings, 374. Heidegger, What Calls for Thinking? 374. Heidegger, What Calls for Thinking? 374. Heidegger, What Calls for Thinking? 374.

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others. We will see how this phenomenology of presencingabsencing unfolds along three dimensions of our existence. The Three Movements of PresencingAbsencing Ethical dwelling is cultivated when we live with a view toward the happening of presencingabsencing in our lives and relationships with others. For Heidegger, this awareness represents no less than the beginning of the transformation of humanity.37 Scholars such as Fred Dallmayr38 and Steven White39 have recognized the ethical significance of Heideggers phenomenology of the presencing absencing of Dasein. Dallmayrs work focuses on the relationship between the self and Being, and suggests that this relationship grounds the ethical potential in Heideggers thought. Whites work focuses on the relationship between the self and death, and suggests that our relationship toward death, and its inability to be rationally managed, serves as an opening to a deeper care towards others. I seek to contribute to the work of Dallmayr and White in suggesting that a third moment of presencingabsencing occurs on the level of individual subjectivity, represented by Derridas notion of differance. Reading differance as yet another moment of presencingabsencing provides a more complete phenomenological description of the ethics revealed in and through our way of being. Ethical dwelling, then, names a way of existing that bears witness to the three intertwined and mutually reinforcing moments of presenceabsence that constitute our being. The ethical significance of this way of being lies in the capacity of such reflection to loosen the self from excessive modes of autonomy and self-mastery. Such awareness fosters ethical sensitivity because it changes how we experience what is near to us, while respecting the difference that characterizes the world. As one becomes more attuned to each moment, and the way that these moments relate to each other, one develops an ever more refined experience with what nears and what remains distant. The First Movement of PresencingAbsencing: Being and Dasein The first movement of presencingabsencing speaks directly to the relationship between individuals and Being. Heidegger calls this relationship ontological joining,40 the simultaneous play between the presence of each individual and the reciprocal withdrawal of Being into self-concealment. As Heidegger writes: As it reveals itself in beings, Being withdraws. . . As it provides the unconcealment of
37. 38. 39. 40. Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, 181. Fred Dallmayr, The Other Heidegger (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). White, Political Theory and Postmodernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Heidegger, Anaximander Fragment, 41; Dallmayr, The Other Heidegger, 108.

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beings it founds the concealment of Being. Concealment remains characteristic of that denial by which it [Being] keeps to itself.41 Insofar as individuals stand in the actual, concrete world, they do so through the absence of Being. The withdrawal of Being is the enabling capacity and openness in which the meaningful world appears. This is why, Heidegger insists, the attempt to grasp this Being as if it were a being yields emptiness. Being is not simply hidden; it withdraws and conceals itself.42 Dallmayr suggests that it would be a mistake to think of ontological joining as a metaphysical framework or totalizing system. What prevents such totalization, Dallmayr notes, is the present-absent status of Being, implicit in Beings withdrawal.43 It is impossible for any individual to overcome this form of radical, existential passivity. As Heidegger notes, . . .the clearing is the clearing for self-concealment, and, above all, the clearing of beings is not something we ourselves merely think or represent. On the contrary, it is something in which we ourselves stand and apparently nothing of our own doing. We stand in this clearing in such a way that it first opens for us a relation to beingsand to ourselves.44 Being is the awareness of human existence, how we are related, and our possibilities. As such, this openness, and the relationship that constitutes it, is not some thing that we can think or cognitively represent. Nor is our relationship to Being a product of our own cognition or will to power. The relationship between human beings and Being presupposes each individual. As a disclosive relationship, it makes it impossible for any individual to appropriate to itself complete mastery over its own being, or that of others. The claim that the ground of ones existence is also simultaneously an abyss is precisely what sustains Heideggers characterization of existence as becoming and thoroughly relational, and revealed through the play of presencingabsencing.45 Affirming that Being is not reducible to individual subjectivity is the first step in cultivating a posture toward existence and others that reduces the drive to mastery. Ethical co-being is premised on a posture of existence that is released from the desire to master Being and one that is respectful of the being of others. Releasement entails an alternative mode of Daseins stance toward Being and others because it helps recover the primordial sense of nearness and distance.
41. Heidegger, Anaximander Fragment, 26. 42. Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, 178. 43. Dallmayr, The Other Heidegger, 111. 44. Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, 179. 45. It is precisely the absence of a metaphysical ground that is timeless that gives rise to the possibility that the ground of humanity must therefore be grounded through humanity as ground (Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, 179).

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Appreciation of ontological joining helps individuals recover the essence of nearness and distance because of the distinctive manner in which spatiality is opened. Through awareness of its place in ontological joining, the individual bears witness to the enabling capacity of Being, but does so without the desire to master it, or make it its own. Being retains its distance, its difference. Nearness is opened through our care for Being, and distance, as well as difference (from Being), is maintained and respected as irreducible. Rather than aggressively competing with others, we come to see others, as Thiele notes, as coinhabitants of the world who require caring accompaniment, who are to be escorted.46 No longer master of the self, others, and earth, human beings come to see themselves as the caretakers of a set of relationships in and through which they are revealed. The Second Movement of PresencingAbsencing: Dasein and Death The phenomenology of presencingabsencing is not constituted by a single moment, but rather through multiple, mutually reinforcing relationships that reveal the ethical nature of human beings. In ontological joining, we saw how each individual, as it takes up its projects and goals, comes to understand its existence through the withdrawal and absence of Being. The recovery of this awareness is, however, often obscured by our very involvement with the everyday world. Consumed with our work and projects, we often become entrenched in the presentness, and immediacy, of ourselves, others, and things. To this end, we often fail to remember the significance that absence plays in the perpetually unfolding flow of our lives and our relation to others. However, there is another, more immanent opportunity for human beings to become sensitive to the flow of presencingabsencing: reflection on our own Death. Like the selfs relationship with Being, death, with its always outstanding and deferred character, is constitutive of our way to be, and therefore significant to understanding human existence. As White has noted, . . .that essence, as Heidegger comes to see more and more, has to do with finitude: coming into presence, passing into absence.47 For Heidegger, death is not simply something that occurs at the end of ones life, nor can it be reduced to the biological end of life. In keeping with the special status that Heidegger affords to human beings, it is important to emphasize that of all things that exist, only we die.48 Because we are thrown into the world, wherein
46. Thiele, Timely Meditations, 181. 47. White, Political Theory and Postmodernism, 58. 48. Heidegger, Being and Time, 22931. Heidegger makes the claim that only Dasein dies because he believes that Dasein is that being for whom its Being is an issue. It is precisely because my being is an issue for me, and that my being is finite, that no considerations of existence and ethics can ignore the question of death.

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we always-already find ourselves underway, an essential aspect of our existence is characterized by open-ended possibilities. Indeed, in both practical, and ontological ways, we understand ourselves purely in terms of our possibilities what Heidegger calls our potentiality-of-being. Therefore, so long as we exist, something, or some possibility, is always outstanding with respect to our being. For Heidegger, death signifies the most radical possibility of each individual, one that is always beyond its grasp. As radical possibility, death must remain for us an ever-present not-yet. As a possibility that is ever impending, we have our notyet in the form of a will-be that can never be actualized, since death signifies the loss of our being-there. To be human means to have being-towards-death as our way to be: As long as Dasein is, something is always still outstanding, what it can and will be. But the end itself belongs to what is outstanding. The end of being-inthe-world is death . . .. A constant unfinished quality thus lies in the essence of the constitution of Dasein.49 As an unfinished quality, death belongs to Dasein as the not-yet achieved possibility that inheres in the being of Dasein. As Heidegger states, Dasein always-already exists in such a way that its not-yet belongs to it . . . [t]he most extreme not-yet has the character of something to which Dasein relates.50 The always present not-yet of death situates each individual in the play of presencingabsencing between life and death. Daseins being-towards-death, its not-yet, requires Dasein to learn to relate to the most radical form of (im)possibilityits own death. Death is, for Dasein, the possibility of impossibility.51 Heidegger calls learning to relate courageously toward ones death resoluteness. Resoluteness, Heidegger writes, does not detach Dasein from its world, nor does it isolate it as a free floating ego. Resoluteness brings the self right into its being. . . and pushes it toward concerned being-with with the others.52 Confronting the always impending not-yet of our existence transforms our understanding of ourselves, and others, by challenging our will-to-power. Resoluteness entails confronting limitsof reason, control, and being. These limits force us to experience the precariousness of our power and the fragility of our existence. Attentive concern for otherness, White writes, means that the gesture of nearing, bringing into ones presence, into ones world, must always be complemented by a letting go, an allowance of distance, a letting be in absence,
49. 50. 51. 52. Heidegger, Heidegger, Heidegger, Heidegger, Being Being Being Being and and and and Time, Time, Time, Time, 21516 and 21920. 226, 231. 242. 274.

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thus bearing witness to our own limits.53 Confronting death helps release us from the desire to manage forms of closure, impossibility, and absence. An important consequence of confronting death is greater awareness of the hope and suffering of others. Releasing oneself into the happening of the absent present trace of death facilitates a mode of thinking that brings others near in ethically significant ways. The most dramatic opening towards otherness. . . was human being-towards-death. . . as an unsurpassable possibility, death also renders Dasein sensitive to the existential possibilities of others.54 Others are brought near through our existential concern with death. The self-estrangement that is part of the experience of death opens us to the existence of others, others who are also disclosed through finitude. Death is not only a condition we all share, but more importantly, it is the condition that conditions our presence. The way we relate to deathand we are always relating toward finitude in some waydetermines the manner in which we take up our being-in-the-world-withothers. What I wish to emphasize is the shared, and irreducibly relational, nature of the world that is opened through reflection on death. From an ethicoontological standpoint, becoming open to such possibilities entails bearing witness to the radical belonging-together that is the condition of our existence. The Third Movement of PresencingAbsencing: Differance and Identity The third moment of presencingabsencing is revealed through Derridas notion of differance. I argue that differance extends Heideggers insight into the ethical significance of our way of being, and therefore should be read as another moment in the phenomenology of presencingabsencing. Reading differance in this way provides an opportunity to extend Heideggers ethical understanding of nearness and distance to individual identity, and the individuals relation to others. Before going on, however, it is necessary to rehearse some fundamental Derridean themes in order to clarify how I interpret and utilize them. Derrida coins differance to describe how he understands the movement of signification, language, and the experience of subjectivity itself. Differance refers to the spatial and temporal movement of differentiation and deferral. Derrida argues that no word has meaning in and of itself, but rather each word serves as a marker of signification. Furthermore, the meaning of each sign is generated by the difference between it and other words. Derrida writes: the signified concept is never present in and of itself, in a sufficient presence that would refer only to itself. Essentially and lawfully, every concept is inscribed in a chain or in a system
53. White, Political Theory and Postmodernism, 67. 54. Dallmayr, The Other Heidegger, 151.

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within which it refers to the other, to other concepts, by means of a systematic play of differences.55 A words meaning is further codified by its juxtaposition with, or relationship to, other words in a structural and temporal chain regulated by rules of grammar. Moreover, the happening of differance is not limited to the movement of the spoken and written word, it also infects and disrupts the very center of individual autonomy and identity. Differance extends beyond the field of semio-linguistic communication, and conditions the entire field of what philosophy would call experience, even the experience of being. . ..56 As the play of spatial difference and temporal deferral, differance is, for Derrida, an account of the conditions of subjectivity in general. Differance is an irreducible element in the webbing of subjectivity. This is why Derrida claims that what is named in the present (even identity), always include its differential, or non-present (absent), Other. The ubiquity of the absentpresent trace of the Other, and its relation to the self, constitutes the linguistic moment in the phenomenology of Daseins presencing absencing. Calling attention to the circulation of self and Other in the primordial play of identity, Derrida writes: From the very beginning of Greek philosophy the self-identity of the logos is already fissured and divided. . .. Moreover, the rapport of self-identity is always a rapport of violence with the other; so that the notions of. . .appropriation and self-presence, so central to logocentric metaphysics, are essentially dependent on an oppositional relation with otherness. In this way, identity presupposes alterity.57 The absentpresent trace of the Other presupposes individual identity. Differance calls our attention to the always-already circulating economy of differences that constitute identity and with which identity always has some relation. The radical play of differance, the primordial play of presencingabsencing out of which identity is struck, provides the individual an opportunity to bear witness to the nearness of the other as an irreducible element of its own identity.58 Therefore, for Derrida, the experience of self always takes the form of a spatio-temporal
55. Jacques Derrida, Differance, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 11. 56. Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc., trans. Samuel Weber (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 9. 57. Jacques Derrida, Interview with Richard Kearney, in Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 117. 58. It is important to note that Derrida is not denying the empirical fact, nor the significance of, our subjectivity. As Derrida insists: I have never said that the subject should be dispensed with. Only that it should be deconstructed. To deconstruct the subject does not mean to deny its existence. There are subjects, operations or

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relationship with the Other. Differance reveals in yet another way the fact that our being is being-with-others. However, under the sway of metaphysics, rather than a sensitivity to the other, what develops is a dismissal of the other and a belief in absolute autonomy and self-presence. Derrida calls this form of subjectivity logocentrism. As an interpretation of subjectivity grounded in the certainty of self-presence, logocentrism governs the manner in which we negotiate our nearness to, and distance from, others. From the logocentric point of view, distance from the other is constituted through the absolute autonomy of the agent, and nearness is equated with the desire to bring things and others under increasing control through techno-reason.59 Logocentrism isolates, and organizes, the happening of difference in specific, and the concert of presencingabsencing in general. The consolidation of identity, and the push to solidify self-presence, obscures ones primordial relationship with the other that is revealed through differance (linguistic presencingabsencing). Deconstructing logocentric subjectivity is important because the essence of nearness and distance that characterizes our being-with-others cannot be realized from the perspective of logocentrism. For Derrida, (re)calling the relation between the self and other, and cultivating care for it, constitutes a form of original ethical responsibility. Speaking about the responsibility that deconstruction reveals, Derrida writes: We are already caught, surprised. . . in a certain responsibility, and the most ineluctable of responsibilitiesWe are invested with an undeniable responsibility at the moment we begin to signify something. . .. And we see it coming from the Other. It is assigned to us by the Other, from the Other, before any hope of reappropriation permits us to assume this responsibility in the space of what could be called autonomy.60
effects of subjectivity. This is an incontrovertible fact. To acknowledge this does not mean, however, that the subject is what it says it is. The subject is not some meta-linguistic substance or identity, some pure cogito of self-presence; it is always inscribed in language. My work does not. . .destroy the subject; it simply tries to resituate it. [Derrida, Interview with Kearney, 124] With respect to the facticity of the subject, and Derridas claim that the subject may not be what it thinks, we can see the parallels to Heideggers claim in Being and Time regarding the mode of inauthenticity that each Dasein assumes by virtue of its thrownness into the world. It is not the case, for Heidegger or Derrida, that critical questioning of the nature of human existence constitutes a denial of the subject. Rather than reading deconstruction as a leveling assault on subjectivity per se, I argue that we interpret deconstruction from the point of view of the full phenomenology of presencingabsencing, disclosurewithdrawal, and nearness-distance as it relates to ethical co-being. For Derrida, like Heidegger, the ethical opening to the other is found in recognizing the limits of the possible and releasing oneself from the desire to foreclose the play of presencingabsencing. 59. White, Political Theory and Postmodernism, 67. 60. Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (New York: Verso, 1997), 23132.

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Derridas phrase, the most ineluctable of responsibilities, is specific and strategic. Ineluctable means inescapable, and incapable of being evaded. Here, Derrida is speaking to the a priori happening of differance, and the role it plays in the construction of meaning and subjectivity. Differance assigns us a responsibility that cannot be evaded; it is inescapable because identity itself is disclosed in a structure of responsibility opened in language. We are invested, Derrida insists, with a form of radical responsibility at the moment we respond to the Otherat the moment we say yes. In language, we always-already find ourselves caught up in a circulation of responsible involvement due to the relational ground of meaning, significance, and the ethical gravity of language itself. Speaking delivers us into a structure of involvement and concern that binds us in mutual responsibility because our possibilities are defined in and through that opening. It is an excessive assignation because, as Derrida argues, [t]hat which comes before autonomy must. . .also exceed it, that is, succeed it, survive it, and indefinitely surpass it.61 There is no form of responsibility, no autonomy, no will that stands outside the economy of differences. The intertwining of self and other that happens ecstatically with the fact of subjectivity, and alwaysalready circulates through linguistic expression, constitutes a radical form of responsibility. As the happening of linguistic presencingabsencing that names the individual, then binds him or her to the other, differance is the linguistic dimension of Heideggers ontological joining, and as such, extends Heideggers ethics directly to the relationship between the self and Other. As is the case with ontological joining, where Dasein is delivered over to a belonging and responsibility to Being, differance assigns us our responsibility, a responsibility Derrida believes is conveyed in the call of the Other. Applying Heideggers analysis of the withdrawal of Being to Derridas account of differance, we see that the affect of singular identity is actualized in and through the withdrawal of the Other. As the otherness of differance withdraws, ever more powerful claims to autonomy and personal identity are asserted. Indeed, the deep self is constituted in and through the absence of the Other. Ultimately, we believe ourselves to be morally autonomous and self-present by virtue of the degree of absence, exclusion, and distance of the Other from the inner realm of the self. But, as was the case with the relationship between Being and Dasein, the withdrawal of the Other is never complete, nor mastered by the individual. And it is here that I want to extend Heideggers analysis of the ethical gravity created by the withdrawal of Being to Derridas injunction to (re)call the absentpresent trace of the Other. For Derrida, (re)calling, or remembering to hear, the call of the Other constitutes a way of pointing toward and caring for the actual Other in and
61. Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, 232.

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through its withdrawal. In hearing, and responding to, the call of the Other, we allow ourselves to be carried along in the draft of ethical give-and-take. The call of the Other is the ethical gravity that draws out our answer, our response, and our responsibility. Disclosed in and through language, the self has responsibility as its way to be. We do not possess responsibility, but rather are, responsible. Similar to the relationship between the self and Being, and ones stance toward death, the ethical imperative revealed through differance consists in the selfs ability to resist the temptation to deny or dominate the interdependent relation between self and other. This entails that we respect the significance of difference, combined with an acknowledgment of the structure of responsibility that opens and binds the possibility of difference itself. In this way, differance calls our attention to the manner in which the other is simultaneously very near (in its essence as alterity in and through differance), and yet respectfully distant (in its existence as actual Other). With regard to the relationship between ethical dwelling and language, I suggest that differance radicalizes Heideggers claim that: Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.62 The origin of ethics is dwelling. Language is the primordial home within which we ethically dwell: that is, it governs the way in which we bring others near while respecting their distance.

The Politics of Dwelling

Politics always depend on the fundamental, philosophical claims we make about who we are. Regarding the question of whether or not Heideggers philosophy gives rise to pernicious political forces, Thiele writes, ontological difference is the foundation on which the acknowledgement of political differencethat of human othernessultimately rests.63 It has been my purpose, so far, to demonstrate how ethical care, revealed through ontological difference, is reinforced by reflection on death and Derridas notion of differance. Heidegger and Derridas account of human existence operates to lessen the emphasis on the autonomous individual as the source of objectively free action and thought. Such thinking seeks to transform our metaphysical conception of the self from one of solitary isolation and possessive mastery, to an awareness of the being-with-others that defines our existence. Recognizing both that our existence is characterized by shared disclosure of meaning and possibilities, and that there are existential limits to human mastery and control, necessarily changes how we act politically.

62. Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, 217. 63. Thiele, Timely Meditation, 161.

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For Heidegger, the beginning of a politics of dwelling starts with an alternative conception of freedom. Heideggers understanding of freedom undergoes a dramatic evolution from Being and Time to his later works. In Being and Time, Heidegger speaks of freeing things in their nature. To free an entity literally means to disclose its meaning and significance in the world by using it in the context and relationships to which it belongs. To let something be relevant means to let things at hand be in such and such a way in. . .taking care of things, to let them be as they are and in order that they be such.64 In Being and Time, this is most clearly demonstrated through Heideggers discussion of the workshop. When Heidegger discusses the freeing of things he is mostly referring to objects and things. While Heidegger does speak of the freeing of one human being by another in Being and Time, there is no developed, sustained discussion of the ethical and political implications. What separates the discussion of freeing in Being and Time from that of the later works is the later essays focus on the ethicalontological relations between human beings. In his later works, Heidegger speaks to the freeing of others to live and pursue their projects in a world of shared meaning. For Heidegger, there is a direct relationship between the ethics of dwelling and the disclosure of freedom. On this account, freedom denotes not the egoistic pursuit of ones private interests, but refers to the way and ease with which others are allowed to come to presence, appear, and be as they are. Freedom is not what common sense is content to let pass under the name: the random ability to do as we please. . . freedom is participation in the revealment of what-is-as-such.65 Freedom is not simply the expression of individual will, but rather care-full participation in the gift of possibilities. When we bear witness to this donation, we let others be in and through their possibilities, and act in such a way that we preserve and spare the gift itself. Freedom denotes a particular understanding of ones disclosure in a world of meaningful relationships and mutual possibilities. In taking up freedom, then, one not only considers his/her own activity and situation, but also recognizes that freedom is manifest within a shared space of mutual disclosure. To free really means to spare. The sparing itself consists not only in the fact that we do not harm the one whom we spare. Real sparing is something positive and takes place when we leave something beforehand in its own nature, when we return it specifically to its being, when we free it in the real sense of the word into a preserve of peace.66
64. Heidegger, Being and Time, 79. 65. Martin Heidegger, Existence and Being (Washington DC: Regnery Gateway, 1949), 307. 66. Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 149.

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We free someone when we acknowledge that the world in which we act and pursue our goals is a shared world. It is not a world that I objectively or accidentally share with others. To free and spare in a primordial sense means to resist the temptation to dominate the social space and bring others under ones control. While Heideggers account of freedom is evocative, it is, admittedly, rather abstract. In order to ground Heideggers concept of freedom, I want to employ Derridas notion of differance and the Democratic Hospitality it gives rise to. I argue that Derridas differance acts as a further check against the claim that Heideggers philosophy translates into a nationalistic or totalitarian politics. Derrida provides yet another way to resist the tendency in human beings to turn inward toward ethnic and nationalistic politics. The human difference that deconstruction reveals resists the desire to reduce politics to a pure language, identity, and history. Therefore, I contend that Derridas notion of Democratic Hospitality is the political expression of Heideggers account of the ontological difference. One of the central issues facing democratic politics is how to create a social and political arena that is as welcoming and open to the foreigner (Other) as possible, while at the same time remaining a cohesive, sovereign state governed by laws and institutions. For Derrida, . . . there [is] an insoluble antinomy. . . between, on the one hand, The law of unlimited hospitality (to give the new arrival all of ones home and oneself, our own, without asking a name or compensation. . .), and on the other hand, the laws (in the plural), those rights and duties that are always conditioned and conditional, as they are defined by the. . . family, civil society, and the state.67 The Law of Hospitality entails an unconditional offering to the foreigner. Yet, in order to give at all, to be hospitable, requires that one be sovereign of what is offered. The tension in Democratic Hospitality arises in the aporia between the command to give unconditionally, while at the same time, retaining political power over what, and how, resources and rights are defined. There is an inescapable tension between the infinite demand to give, and the concrete, factual conditions of all political decisions. As Derrida conceives it, the concrete laws and institutions of politics, as well as the rights and obligations of citizens, constitute the laws of hospitality, and are made possible by the infinite Law of Hospitality.68 The Law of Hospitality, like Heideggers conception of the relation between the individual and Being (ontological difference), is a mode of disclosure that is infinite, and one that can never be mastered by, or reduced to,

67. Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford University Press, 2000), 77. 68. Derrida, Of Hospitality, 77.

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the politics of any given historical or cultural moment. It is the ethical claim of differance that first opens, and then sustains, the (in)finite gift of Democratic Hospitality and the promise of political justice. The political responsibility that attends the (in)finite giving of Democratic Hospitality derives from Derridas notion of language and subjectivity. One is politically responsible to the Other because ones relationship to the Other is predicated on a mode of experience that precedes the free will and legal identity of the individual. Let us say yes, Derrida writes, to who [ever] turns up, before any determination, before any anticipation, before any identification, whether or not it has to do with a foreigner, an immigrant, an invited guest, or an unexpected visitor. . ..69 Interpreting democracy as the political site of The Law of Hospitality provides an alternative way of thinking about the issues of rights, laws, and membership in the democratic community. We can get a concrete view of what Democratic Hospitality entails by applying it to a current, hotly debated political controversythe question of whether or not to give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. From California to Georgia, communities and states are faced with this very difficult political dilemma. The concrete political facts are straightforward. There are millions of individuals who reside in cities and states throughout the United States who do not possess proper legal documentation. For the most part, they are here to stayAmerica is their home. They are here to stay because they work in, and contribute significantly to, the local, state, and national economy. In addition, they contribute significantly to the ethnic and cultural richness of American society. Moreover, their children attend public schools and participate as young members of the community. The political facts are that millions of people reside here, work here, and are integral members of the political community. In California, for example, there are approximately 2.5 million undocumented residents, 2 million [which are] driving age.70 Those who advocate giving drivers licenses to illegal residents do so mainly for reasons of public safety and legal accountability. Giving licenses to illegal residents helps insure that they know the rules of the road and comply with insurance requirements. Those who oppose the legislation do so because they believe that illegal immigration is a serious economic and political problem, and they do not want to reward lawbreakers by extending to them a tacit recognition of legitimacy. Across the nation, legislation that would give drivers licenses to illegal residents has been defeated. However, simply defeating the legislation does not solve the political problem, and I suggest that the standard model for arguing the merits of the

69. Derrida, Of Hospitality, 77. 70. Ed Mendel, Bill would let Illegal Immigrants get Licenses, San Diego Union-Tribune, April 2, 2003.

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debatethe model of legal citizenship based on birth or naturalizationis insufficient to fully grasp the dilemma. The presence of these fellow residents, and the political debates unleashed by the fact that they make America their abode, forces us to rethink the way we interpret who we are, the rights of individuals, and what it means to be a part of a political community. Deriving from the conception of ethics revealed in Heideggers and Derridas thought, Democratic Hospitality requires that we say yes to whoever shows up. At the most fundamental level, Democratic Hospitality requires that we recognize the Other as being here, with us, and for whom she is. Ethical responsibility, and the yes of Democratic Hospitality, is prior to the possession of rights. The most primordial form of right is disclosed in and through the linguistic and political space opened by the call of the Other, and the question of the foreigner. The command to respond, the right to respond, and the mutual responsibility conveyed back and forth are simultaneous with the determination of identitywhether as citizen or foreigner. Finding oneself always-already within the community, speaking its language(s), responding to its demands of personal and civic responsibility, and calling upon the community to live up to its own commitment to protection and prosperity, is itself the most primordial form of rightfully belonging. Therefore, it is the unsurpassable recognition of the Other that opens the political domain. Only once the Other has been recognized as being-here-with-us, in this community, and as essential to the economic, cultural, and political vitality of the community, can the details about rules and laws and politics be negotiated. But, as it now stands, the Other lacks this sort of fundamental recognition. Lacking legal standing, the millions of Others are marginalized in a sort of ambiguous economic and political netherworld. Indeed, it is the very ambiguous, adumbrated life they live on the margins of the community that not only adds to their lack of recognition, but also frustrates the attempt at political solution. Now, it is important to stress that Democratic Hospitality will not provide us with an easy solution to this problem. Nor will reading Heidegger and Derrida tell us how to legislate, or decide, the issue. Part of the political import of deconstruction is the way it reminds us that, for justice to be served, each case must be recognized individually. Each legal and political decision is always made in a sort of madness of the political moment. As Derrida notes, we will always be threatened by this dilemma between, on the one hand, unconditional hospitality that dispenses with law, duty, even politics, and, on the other hand, hospitality circumscribed by law. . .. We will have to negotiate constantly between these two extensions of the concept of hospitality as well as language.71 What Democratic Hospitality does do is deepen our understanding of what is at stake in this issue.
71. Derrida, Of Hospitality, 135.

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By shifting the paradigm with which we interpret ourselves, and our relationships with others, we open up new ways of articulating the political problems we face, and hopefully create new solutions to these problems. It is in this way, I believe, that Derridas account of the relationship between the Law of Hospitality and the laws and duties of democratic citizenship politicizes the ethical responsibility revealed in the three moments of presencingabsencing.

Conclusion
As I read Heidegger and Derrida, ethical sensitivity flows through our way of being. Ethics is not an abstract, objective condition that we seek through reason or rules, but a webbing of relationships held together by the care and responsibility that first discloses who we are, and then extends from us to others. Ethics is a circulating economy of care and involvement. For Heidegger, this circulating care is revealed through our capacity to dwell, which entails the cultivation of human relationships and the building of houses and structures intended to shelter and nourish those relationships. Dwelling entails recognizing the coming and passing of others, a letting-be of their essential natures, and a respect for their plans and projects. We do this by resisting the temptation to control and dominate the space and possibilities of the world in which we live. But such a way of being and relating to others is frustrated by metaphysical conceptions of subjectivity and politics. To counter this perspective, and prepare the ground for ethical co-being and democratic hospitality, I have argued that we come to see ourselves, others, and the world as disclosed through three, simultaneous modes of presencingabsencing. Ethical co-being is cultivated when we recognize that our life and possibilities are shaped by the donation of presence and the withdrawal of Being, by the gift of identity opened in differance, and through our always impending, but absent death. The ethical significance of this way of thinking is revealed through the realization that I always-already find myself in a shared world, sustained by the ethical gravity of caring for what comes to presence and what passes away. In addition, ethical sensitivity is awakened through the awareness that what withdraws into absenceBeing, the Other, or my own deathmust always remain beyond my grasp, beyond my rational and technological mastery. Facing the limits of our power, and the fragility of our existence, we are made sensitive to the existential and political concerns of others. Such a way of thinking reveals that we are already shaped by ethics, responsible by virtue of our way of being.

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