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Title: The Derridean Notion of Hospitality as a Resource for Interreligious Dialogue in a Globalized World
Author(s): DE SCHRIJVER, Georges
Journal: Louvain Studies
Volume: 31    Issue: 1-2   Date: 2006   
Pages: 79-104
DOI: 10.2143/LS.31.1.2019380

Abstract :
Although Jacques Derrida never directly tackled the question of interreligious dialogue, he offers some challenging input on this issue. Derrida advocates an ‘impossible democracy to come’ in which respect will be paid to each person, and reclaims the radical notion of unconditional hospitality which is familiar to the Abrahamic religions. Derrida invites these religions to examine the extent to which they restrict their hospitality to fellow-believers, to the exclusion of the ‘heathen’ and the ‘stranger’. He challenges them to return to their roots and to revive the ‘messianic’ dream of the ‘impossible’ ideas of justice and hospitality without reserve. These ‘impossible’ ideas are not to be found in empirical reality; they are ‘unpresentable’ and exert a potent lure on people. The article traces the notion of the ‘unpresentable’ back to Jean-François Lyotard’s re-reading of Kant’s analysis of the sublime.

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