《Learning to Live Finally》Jacques Derrida

Eurocentrism 

Since the very beginning of my work - and this would be "deconstruction" itself - I have remained extremely critical with regard to Europeanism or Eurocentrism, especially in certain modern formulations of it, for example, in Valery, Husserl, or Heidegger.  I have written a great deal on this subject and in this direction. Deconstruction in general is an undertaking that many have considered, and rightly so, to be a gesture of suspicion with regard to all Eurocentrism.

Secularism and Marriage

It is not about the veil at school but about the veil of "marriage." I unhesitatingly supported and endorsed with my signature the welcome and courageous initiative taken by Noel Mamere, even though same-sex marriage is an example of that great tradition inaugurated by Americans in the nineteenth century under the name of civil disobedience: not defiance of the Law but disobedience with regard to some legislative provision in the name of a better or higher law - whether to come or already written into the spirit or letter of the Constitution. And so I "signed" in this current legislative context because it seems to me unjust for the rights of homosexuals, as well as hypocritical and ambiguous in both letter and spirit. If i were a legislator, I would propose simply getting rid of the word and concept of "marriage" in our civil and secular code. "Marriage" as a religious, sacred, heterosexual value - with a vow to procreate, to be eternally faithful, and so on - is a concession made by the secular state to the Christian church, and particularly with regard to monogamy, which is neither Jewish (it was imposed upon Jews by Europeans only in the nineteenth century and was not an obligation just a few generations ago in Jewish Maghreb), nor, as is well known, Muslim. By getting rid of the word and concept of "marriage,"and thus this ambiguity or this hypocrisy with regard to the religious and the sacred - things that have no place in a secular constitution - one could put in their place a contractual "civil union," a sort of generalized pacs, one that has been improved, refined, and would remain flexible and adaptable to partners whose sex and number would not be prescribed. As for those who want to be joined in "marriage" in the strict sense of the term - something, by the way, for which my respect remains totally intact - they would be able to do so before the religious authority of their choosing. This is already the case in certain countries where religiously consecrated same-sex marriages are allowed. Some people might thus unite according to one mode or the other, some according to both, others according to neither secular law nor religious law.

War with oneself

I am at war with myself, it's true, you couldn't possibly know to what extent, beyond what you can guess, and I say contradictory things that are, we might say, in real tension; they are what construct me, make me live, and will make me die. I sometimes see this war as terrifying and difficult to bear, but at the same time I know that that is life. I will find peace only in eternal rest. I thus cannot really say that I assume this contradiction, but I know that it is what keeps me alive, and makes me ask precisely the question you recalled earlier, "how dose one learn to live?"