Carl Schmitt and Jacques Derrida, Dialogue Tests

Carl Schmitt and Jacques Derrida are rather distant authors. The first is an expression of continental Europe, the second is Franco-Algerian, nourished by Jewish culture. Yet, for example, both take the biblical lesson seriously. Schmitt moves through an articulated discourse, attentive to nuances, exceptions and particularities. Derrida is more inclined, with Nietzsche and, in some ways, with Marx and Freud, to reversals, assonances, paradox. The genesis of Derridas thought and his work of deconstruction, however, particularly in the ethical field, owe something to Schmitts conceptualizations. Ultimately, for example, it is precisely the rigid friend/enemy dichotomy, typical of the German jurists concept of political, that opens the way to the idea of sexual difference, thanks to the observation that the friend or the enemy, in the feminine, is not mentioned. And the differences between the two authors with respect to the idea of eventuality, of possibility, with respect to perhaps and the event are interesting and suggestive. Derridas is not an unproblematic praise of friendship, but rather a passionate analysis of the scenarios opened up even in the public sphere by that apparently entirely private feeling that is iphilía/i, together with pure reciprocity and generosity without return, to quote Maurice Blanchot. A definition, linked to the Greek world, ever open, suggestive and ready to welcome others.