"Powerful and provocative...important, urgent, and demanding in... the best sense....These essays masterfully
articulate the impossibilities of forgiveness and hospitality, but their real achievement lies in understanding
this impossibility as inseparable from political and pragmatic exigencies."
--Modern Language Notes
"On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness clearly illustrates Derrida's remarkable and influential mode of approaching
concepts at their limits.."
--MLN 116 #5, 12/01
"This is clearly an important series. I look forward to reading future volumes."
--Frank Kermode
Routledge Web Site, May, 2002
Summary
One of the world's most famous philosophers, Jacques Derrida, explores difficult questions in this important
and engaging book. Is it still possible to uphold international hospitality and justice in the face of increasing
nationalism and civil strife in so many countries? Drawing on examples of treatment of minority groups in Europe,
he skillfully and accessibly probes the thinking that underlies much of the practice, and rhetoric, that informs
cosmopolitanism. What have duties and rights to do with hospitality? Should hospitality be grounded in a private
or public ethic, or even a religious one? This fascinating book will be illuminating reading for all.
Table of Contents
Preface to "On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness," Simon Critchley and Richard Kearney
On Cosmopolitanism, translated by Mark Dooley
On Forgiveness, translated by Michael Collins Hughes
