The Poetics and Politics of Hospitality and Hostility

Abstract

The conceptual pair of hospitality and hostility can be analyzed by means of the two classical ethical paradigms that we owe to Aristotle and Kant. Strangely enough, although ethics is considered normative, neither of the two tendencies is normative: instead, one is descriptive, the other rational, insofar as it is based on the fundamental features of rationality. Most contemporary ethical trends can be classified under one of the original paradigms or interpreted as a combination of them. Where does Derrida’s ethics fit in, or does it represent a new way of thinking? I will attempt to put forward some considerations that might help us to understand Derrida’s ethics as a third ethical paradigm.