The Other Heading

Like a navigator, Derrida sets out from a Europe that has always defined itself as the capital of culture, the headland of thought, in whose name and for whose benefit exploration of other lands, other peoples, and other ways of thinking has been carried out. If such Eurocentric biases are not to be repeated, Derrida warns, the question of Europe must be asked in a new way; it must be asked by recalling another heading. Not only is it necessary for Europe to be responsible for the other, but its own identity is actually constituted by the other. Rejecting the easy or programmatic solutions of Euruocentrism or anti-Eurocentrism, of total unification or complete dispersion, Derrida argues for the necessity of working with and from the Enlightenment values of liberal democracy while at the same time recalling that these values do not themselves ensure respect for the other.