The future of critical philosophy and world politics

This paper considers the legacy of Derrida's thought in the context of the future challenge of contemporary politics: the construction of world polity. It rehearses, first, the steps of the recent 'reconciliation' between Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, and suggests, from out of the terms of this reconciliation, that the deconstruction of reason has been caught out by the contemporary movements of irrationalism. It then deepens this historical viewpoint by giving a neo-Marxist account of modem history in economic and political terms and by setting up from out of this history the continuing problematic of modernity above and beyond recent distinctions between the modern and the postmodern. The third section of the paper returns to Derrida's late work on world democracy, underlines its critical rigour with regard to modernity, the dilemma of law and world sovereignty, and shows how this rigor can be considered to address critically our future political challenge. The fourth section then contends that the way in which Derridean thought disposes itself to the real but nevertheless occludes concerted development of our historical actuality and, in this sense, falls short of the critical. I conclude, accordingly, by arguing for a renewed engagement between critical philosophy and social science, with a focus on the promotion of international institutions and strong interdisciplinary work between international relations, international economics, and political philosophy.