Putting hospitality in its place

Brian Treanor

pp. 49-66

in: Richard Kearney, Kascha Semonovitch (eds), Phenomenologies of the stranger, New York City, Fordham University Press, 2011

Abstract

For the past several decades, continental philosophy has exhibited an ongoing concern with what we might call liminal phenomena, among them friendship, the gift, mourning, responsibility, forgiveness, and hospitality. Of course, to call these “phenomena” already begs the question, or at least a question, the question of whether and to what extent these events actually take place. Thinking in the wake of Jacques Derrida it is impossible to ignore, for example, the excess of the call to forgiveness over the sort of forgiveness that actually takes place in concrete situations.