Critical Theory Emphasis

QUESTIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY:  PERJURY AND FORGIVENESS

We will continue the cycle of studies conducted over the last few years on the current stakes (philosophical, ethical, juridical, or political) of the concept of responsibility.

We have been privileging, as a guiding thread, the themes of the secret, testimony, and hospitality.  This year, we will continue to elaborate a problematic of perjury [le parjure].  The lectures will be a continuation of last year's seminar, although the bibliography has expanded a bit.

Although every misdeed is in essence a perjury (the failure to fulfill an at least implicit promise or duty) the problematic would concern above all a certain experience of evil, of malice, or of bad faith when this negativity takes the determinate form of a denial or breach (of contract, trust, or duty) [reniement].  Focusing in particular on the pledge or commitment "before the law" (the promise, sworn statement, given word, word of honor, oath, pact, contract, covenant, debt, etc.), we will study various forms of betrayal (perjury, recantation, infidelity, denial, breach of trust, false testimony, lie, broken promise, profanation, blasphemy, etc.) in different fields (ethics, anthropology, law) and on the basis of a diverse body of texts (exegetical, philosophical, or literary, for example).  We will try to link these questions "of evil," such as perjury, to that of forgiveness, which in fact seems inseparable from it.  If the forgiving of a misdeed, an offense, or a crime, and therefore of perjury, is neither an excusing, nor a forgetting, nor amnesty, nor political absolution, how should we think the "possibility" of this "impossibility?"

We will continue to refer to the bibliography announced last year (I have added several titles to the list for this year's seminar).  The following bibliography will seem both minimal and excessive, but I will refer to each of these texts in some way (sometimes only allusively, and sometimes in an explicit way over several sessions).  I will specify the readings more precisely as we go along.

Bibliography:  The Bible (at least Genesis 6-9 and Genesis 22; The Gospels of Luke & Matthew; above all the Epistle to the Hebrews); St. Augustine, Confessions (at least the first book), The City of God (books V and IX); Martin Luther, "The Seven Psalms of Penitence"; Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice; Joel Fineman, Shakespeare's Perjured Eye; Rousseau, Confessions and Reveries of a Solitary Wanderer; Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (at least the Introduction to §50); Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling; Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal; Kafka, Letter to Father; Vladimir Jankelevitch, Le Pardon, Lí'mprescriptible, and Pardonner?; Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (especially § 33 and 34); Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading (especially chapters 11 and 12); "Le Pardon" in Le Point Théologique (by Actes du Colloque); Olivier Abel, ed. Le Pardon, Briser la Dette et l'Oubli; Nicole Loraux, La Cité Divisée (especially the chapters on the oath); Jean Lambert, ed. Pardonner; Marcus Lefebure, ed. Forgiveness; Henri Thomas, Le Parjure; Hermann Cohen, Reason and Hope; Leo Baeck, The Essence of Judaism.

Additional Titles:  Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit (the end of chapter VI on "Spirit"), The Spirit of Christianity and its Destiny, and Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Volume III, "The Consummate Religion"); Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (especially pp. 102, 103, 114 of the Standard Edition).  Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason (the chapter on "The Pardon"); Annick Charles-Saget, ed. Retour, repentir et constitution de soi; Lévinas, Nine Talmudic Readings (the first lesson on "Yoma"); The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa; Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom; Antije Krog, Country of My Skull; Desmund Tutu, "No Amnesty without Truth" in the journal Commonwealth; Timothy Garton Ash, "The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa" in The New York Review of Books.

Notes:  The lectures will begin the second week of classes, Monday, April 12, 1999.  They are open to everyone.  Enrollment in the seminar is through TELE.  Copies of all the works on this yearís bibliography will be reserve at the library, and a selection of them will be on sale in the UCI bookstore.  A more detailed bibliography is available from Barbara Cohen in HIB 403.