concepts associated with kinship, and especially the concept of friendship
(Aristotle), in terms of which democracy wasWrst deWned. In this way, his
interest in the concept of friendship is linked to the ambition to deconstruct
the ‘‘given concept of democracy’’ in order to open up the possibility of a
diVerent way of understanding this peculiar manner of living together with
others (Derrida 2002 , 178 ).
2 Non-teleological Progress
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
A further area in which there is a measure of agreement between post-
structuralism and non-metaphysical liberalism concerns the abandonment
of Enlightenment inspired philosophies of history in favor of open-ended
and piecemeal conceptions of progress in human aVairs. Rorty presents a
version of liberalism that embodies this kind of non-teleological or negative
progress when he deWnes liberals as those who believe that cruelty to others
is the worst thing that we can do and therefore something we should strive
to eliminate (Rorty 1989 , xv). Since ‘‘cruelty’’ here should be understood in
a broad sense to include all forms of causing or allowing others to suVer,
and since it is always open to us to be convinced that behavior that was
formerly considered natural or justiWed or inoVensive is bound up with the
suVering of others, it follows that there is an historically dynamic element
to liberalism understood in this manner. This dynamic is not merely
theoretical since it ultimately derives from the practical activity of those
who contest, challenge, or otherwise bring to light hitherto unrecognized
forms of suVering.
Foucault presents the critical ethos embodied in his practice of genea-
logical criticism of the present in a similar fashion, in several versions of a
comparison with Kant’s ‘‘What is Enlightenment?’’ (Foucault 1986 , 1996 ,
1997 ). He describes the aim of such criticism as the identiWcation of limits
to present ways of thinking, acting, and speaking in order toWnd points of
diVerence or exit from the past: ‘‘in what is given to us as universal, necessary,
obligatory, what place is occupied by whatever is singular, contingent and the
product of arbitrary constraints?’’ (Foucault 1997 , 315 ). Rather than attempt
to provide normative justiWcation for such departures from established ways
130 paul patton