The Death Penalty, Volume I

In his lectures on the death penalty Jacques Derrida argues the surprising thesis that 'no philosophical system as such has ever been able rationally to oppose the death penalty'. And he also entertains a second thesis that juridical execution undergirds the legal system. In his support for abolitionism, Derrida participates in 'philosophy' without quite belonging there. In fact, he maintains that juridical execution comes into sharper focus only when we pass from philosophy to theology. --Kevin Hart Studies in Christian Ethics The translation of the seminars, appositely enough, is itself the product, we are informed, of the 'Derrida Seminars Translation project workshops, ' and it is both elegant and, insofar as its subject's allusive and associative style permits, remarkably unequivocal. -- Critical Inquiry Those who attended Derrida's seminars and saw him 'live' will have been struck by the contrast between his reputation as a notoriously difficult philosopher (to quote The New York Times obituary) and the articulate, focused presentation on display in his classroom. His commentaries on the nuances of a single sentence or word were legendary for their length and intricacy, but he never failed to foreground the fundamental stakes of the debates at hand and the central questions motivating the analysis. The result was a rare combination of erudition, argumentative dexterity, and a style of interpretation that made it clear that the real master in the room was the text at hand. . . . What is certain is that this Death Penalty volume offers a rich, innovative approach to a confounding topic. One can only hope that it will be broadly read and debated. -- Los Angeles Review of Books