ency and fairness,” which are linked to the adversarial situations characteris-
tic of law and politics. There is a later, somewhat parallel development of in-
spirational rhetoric when the Christian “need to convert souls” arrives ( 120 ).
2. Penelope Deutscher,How to Read Derrida(London: Granta
Books, 2005 ), 12.
3. Charles Griswold,Self-Knowledge in Plato’s Phaedrus(New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1986 ); and Giovanni R. F. Ferrari,Listening to the
Cicadas: A Study of Plato’s Phaedrus(New York: Cambridge University Press,
1987 ).
4. One of Austin’s spectacular examples, in his essay “A Plea for Ex-
cuses” (in Philosophical Papers) details the difference between shooting a
donkey accidentally and doing so by mistake: “You have a donkey, so have I,
and they graze in the same field. The day comes when I conceive a dislike for
mine. I go to shoot it, draw a bead on it, fire: the brute falls in its tracks. I in-
spect the victim, and find to my horror that it is your donkey. I appear on
your doorstep with the remains and say—what? ‘I say, old sport, I’m awfully
sorry, &c, I’ve shot your donkey by accident’? Or ‘by mistake’? Then again, I
go to shoot my donkey as before, draw a bead on it, fire—but as I do so, the
beasts move, and to my horror yours falls. Again the scene on the doorstep—
what do I say? ‘By mistake’? Or ‘by accident’?” ( 185 n).
5. Wittgenstein also questions this idea in the opening sequence of
thePhilosophical Investigations,the famous “Bring me a slab” discussion. But
Wittgenstein writes with the aim of returning us to ordinary life rather than,
like Derrida, removing us from this life. In this way Wittgenstein, and Austin
too, differs decisively from Derrida.
6. Stanley Cavell, “What Did Derrida Want of Austin?” in Cavell,
Philosophical Passages (Philosophical).
7. Austin believed in an essentially moral role for the philosopher. He
noted that both Plato and Aristotle confused the difference between suc-
cumbing to temptation and losing control, a confusion “as bad in its day and
its way as the later, grotesque, confusion of moral weakness with weakness
of will” (Papers 198 ). (Often we succumb to temptation in high style, know-
ing perfectly well what we’re doing; making this point, Austin sounds for a
moment like Oscar Wilde.) And rather than being concerned in merely
pragmatic fashion with whether actions or statements come offor misfire,
Austin raises in a telltale footnote the question of whether they are sound:
that is, fair or accurate (Papers 250 ).
8. On the early reception of Nietzsche, see Steven Ascheim,The
Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890 – 1990 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992 ); on developments in feminist readings of Nietzsche after Der-
Notes to Pages 152 – 66 253