The lesson, then, is that psychology remains a necessary
perspective: that we cannot live in Derrida’s clean, imagined
conflict between metaphysics and skepticism. Derrida himself
broke with this pure opposition in his bouts of prophetic in-
sistence; he was unable to decide whether the prophecy was of
a new freedom (Nietzsche) or a new obligation (Lévinas). But
he continued to avoid psychology.
My reason for writing this book is my belief that Der-
rida’s confusion is instructive, because it tells us something
about our current desire to evoke, in one gesture, imaginative
diversity together with ethical responsibility. Derrida appealed
to so many for a reason: he embodied a contradiction that
is still ours, between the liberation that we sense in an ex-
panded field of meaning and our ethical obligation to others.
It is impossible to make one goal serve the other, despite
our current inclination to see in the freedom from rigidly
defined, artificially imposed notions of identity a demonstra-
tion of the dignity, and therefore the worth, of humans. On the
level of aspiration—when we search for a commanding, moti-
vating insight, a tablet of the law—Nietzsche and Lévinas re-
main incompatible.
But both are aspects of us already. Returning to psychol-
ogy—to a necessary, rather than freely invented, myth of the
self—is a way of reminding ourselves of how obligation inter-
weaves with fascination. Derrida gave little attention to what
interests us in people; he was too intent on safeguarding oth-
erness. It is time to overcome his purity.
Coda 247