So I recently started Derrida's The Gift of Death (I've read parts 1 and 2) -- not for any particular reason, just for fun because I hadn't ever before. Spoiler alert: I read and re-read philosophy for fun...  In college I attended philosophy lectures for fun/relaxation even though I wasn't in the class until I got yelled at by the professor who was head of the department while attending his lecture when he realized I wasn't in the classes because my schedule was too full of my hard science, French, classical humanities, dance, and one English class "for fun" so I was too maxed out on credits (even though I came in as technically a senior due to all my AP courses, French retro credits, and college courses I took in high school.)  He was really angry that one of his best "students" wasn't even in his class and was just auditing the philosophy courses.

Anyway, So the Derrida. Firstly, I have NOT read any Patocka and the first essay is a literary criticism of the obscure Polish philosopher/theologian. AND I have not actually read any Heidegger so I'm uncertain that I'm getting as much out of it as I would if I'd read either or both of them. (I own a translation of Being and Time and its basic views/influence on phenomenology and existentialist thinkers, but every time I think I ought to read it I get the icks about it having been written five years before Heidegger became a literal Nazi and started ruthlessly making his university run on pro-Nazi propaganda program. At some point I'll read Heidegger, as he is so important to modern and post-modern philosophers -- but i still haven't gotten past the ick factor yet to make me do it.) 

Derrida is also (much like Kierkegaard and Kant and Descartes) WAY too fucking Christian in his most basic fundamental premises approaching thoughts of death and responsibility for the way I think and view the world and it colors everything in his philosophy.  I understand that a person cannot ever completely let go of the framework in which their thoughts were formed (both linguistically and socially) however I find both Christians (of all types) and atheists who were raised Christian have really blindered narrow-minded ways of philosophizing that are very binary and about either accepting or rejecting the ideas of an external savior's forgiveness.  I personally start at the fact that I do not see sin or personal wrongs as something that is transferable -- you can no more pass your own sins/wrong actions on to another to expiate than another can voluntarily or involuntarily take them upon themselves to expiate.  I recognize that this breaks with Judaic scriptures as well as Christian scriptures (sin offerings and scapegoats as a way of expiating personal and communal sins being in the Torah, Leviticus I think) but I find the very concept of transferrability of sin to be morally abhorrent and to abnegate the process of one's own acknowledgement/accountability taking and seeking to atone for past wrongs and thus growing/healing both you and the person(s) who were wronged. I genuinely believe that a lot of America's foundational problems that still plague us today would not exist if Christianity weren't so deeply embedded in the beliefs of such a large percentage of Americans that they believe in savior-complexes and in getting a mulligan without consequences for their bad choices if they just truly believe they can be forgiven for the wrongs they have done.  

So my take on personal responsibility is radically different from those raised within a Christian framework (whether they accepted it or rejected the religion, the concepts of transferral of sin is a core foundational concept that they don't even realize they have embedded in their unexamined premises.) My take is closer to a classic Athenian (Socratic/Platonic/Aristotilean, most notably closest to that in The Nichomachean Ethics where you seek some ideal of a soul's perfection/goodeness in your behavior and life) and I personally ALWAYS have a clear distinction between how I use the term ethics (internally mediated concepts of justice and right versus wrong) and morality (externally mediated socially/community instilled virtues that change depending on when/where you happen to be born and who you surround yourself with) and I consider morality the best that can be done for those who lack self-reflection in their actions/choices but that a strong ethical compass is better than the dogma of following a moral compass since moral compasses have given us communal sanctioned ostracism, genocide, slavery, misogyny, and generally been used to rationalize all forms of othering (creating an external enemy, or other, and then your clique who you must always bond/side with or you can end up outcast as the other) and hierarchical master-slave dichotomy relations. Therefore, I personally think a constantly examined ethical code is inherently more inclined to justice than a rigid moral code, but it takes a level of intellectual honesty to examine your own actions/thoughts/assumptions/preconceptions and to admit when you have wrong to create and evolve a self-reflective ethical code that I just don't think many people are capable of rigorously and objectively doing and that I also don't think most people CARE to put the effort into it. Great artists and free thinkers and iconoclasts and social protestors do because they question what most people in society simply accept because it's what those surrounding them say is 'the right thing to do" -- but they are often outsiders from the group think by natural inclination/temperament or because they were forced out by the ostracism of others.

I find some of the sections in the Derrida fascinating and have been giving me a lot to think of.  One of them is his assertion (or agreement with Patocka's reasoning) that genuine responsibility for actions requires that one be a heretic, that one intentionally remove oneself from the group think of your church/society/family/peers because otherwise you'll fall back into fervent group think fanatacism justifying it by it being the way everyone you're surrounded sees it. I agree to a certain extent, that one must remove oneself from the thoughts/rationalizations of others and objectively view a situation/question to find ones own sense of ethical responsibility, but I hesitate to say being heretical is automatically how you arrive at the best ethics and responsibility.  Because, one gives up personal responsibility by automatically caving to the social external pressures of "right" versus "wrong" and that's how you end in la terreur and using the Bible to justify slavery/Jim Crow and that's clear enough. HOWEVER, if one gives up all mooring in social sanction of actions/choices then you will end up in "most good for the greatest number" like Mill which is pretty abject misery if extrapolated out or fervent belief in eugenics or truly reprehensibly cruel things justified by no code except for one's own whims of personal rationalizations. People who lose touch with what others think/feel tend to lose grasp on empathy and to be willing to rationalize some pretty horrific conclusions... 

I don't have an answer to it other than "question everything that anyone tells you or that you believe until you have examined it against your subjective view of objective reality and made it make sense to you."  But the intellectual honesty of that approach relies on one's willingness to lie to themselves/others and how readily they can come to believe lies/rationalizations as truth. And that is unquantifiable and not objective and difficult to put into a uniform practice. Thus why we need to have such socially mediated morality as the Geneva Code and the Hippocratic Oath which must of necessity trump internally mediated ethics so long as the rules of the moral code are based upon basic concepts of individual rights/responsibilities. There is a higher code that needs to be invoked to curb the self-serving responsibility-evading rationalizations that all people can and sometimes are guilty of falling into within their own ethical codes, but codifying morality/ethics into something that is just and applicable and metes out responsibility on the guilty parties in a way that transcends any given moment or societal preconceptions is a really impossible thing to define.  Even something as simple as the golden rule gets into shades of greys because until you have experienced both sides of the situation, you will always justify you'd want done to you what you are advocating to choose be done to the other. So you must be a heretic to place the concept of responsibility on one's self, but you also need to recognize a higher code of conduct outside one's subjective self to check you when you're rationalizing the indefensible. And how does one define such a higher code without some concept of empathy, social responsibility, and/or a higher power greater than oneself -- all the things that compose externally mediated morality? And then how does one enforce and interpret such a higher code when even the best that societies are capable of at any given time are shown by the unfolding of human nature to be subject to greed/self-serving rationalizing interpretations and have flaws that require revisions to try to be more equitable and just than they were shown in practice?

So the questions of heretical versus orthodoxy in accepting or evading responsibility isn't as black and white as Derrida wants it to be in my reading thus far. And for me, they are not too distant between questions of authoritarianism versus mob rule democracy in ordering personal choices as well as social structures.

There is an answer in it, and it's neither blind adherence to dogma nor is it relativist because relativism by its nature is the most prone to devolving into any form of rationalizing ones vices desires. I just haven't been able to find it and put it fully into words.... And I've been thinking on this question for about 5,000 years of lifetimes now. Somewhere in that examination is where I decided that there is sanctity of free will in the unfolding purpose of incarnations and that's why personal choice/free will must always be respected and nobody can be "saved" from the consequences of their choices or their own responsibility for the choices they make as a part of my concept of karmic justice....  But that's not something codifiable or objective, not even anything I can demand of others to adhere to -- it's just a part of how I re-calibrate against subjectivity in my own internal ethical compass. (Even when that calibration setting causes me unhappiness or to not be able to achieve something I desire.) I don't expect to solve it tonight, but it's on my mind in recent days as I'm reading Derrida's The Gift of Death (in English translation) as an intellectual/ethical diversion from familial/personal drama and things that i dislike but can't do anything to change or alter course at this time. 

Anyway. If I think of it, I'll take snapshots of the Derrida passages I found most illuminating or helpful and my reactions to the passages. It probably wouldn't be interesting to most people, but putting my internal processing/reactions  into words helps me to look at it critically and objectively. So mostly it would be selfish indulgence and a good mental exercise because who really cares about that sort of philosophizing anyway in the modern world?  But I may not write it up here if I get distracted by life and lose track of the flow of time passing. I'll still be working on it in my head after I finish reading it, but I may not write it up here. If that happens then, well, I guess just ask me at some point in the future if it's actually of interest to you. But I don't expect anyone to be disappointed if I fail to do that. It's not the sort of thing to be of interest to most people, but then, also most people don't read Derrida for fun. So we're already well outside the realms of "most people" in this post.

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