Before the Law: The Complete Text of Prjugs
(Paperback)
Publishing Details
Before the Law: The Complete Text of Prjugs
By (Author) Jacques Derrida
Translated by Sandra van Reenen
Translated by Jacques de Ville
University of Minnesota Press
University of Minnesota Press
1st January 2019
United States
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
Ethics and moral philosophy
194
Physical Properties
Paperback
96
Width 127mm, Height 203mm, Spine 51mm
Description
"How to judge Jean-Francois Lyotard" It is from this initial question that one of France's most heralded philosophers of the twentieth century begins his essay on the origin of the law, of judgment, and the work of his colleague Jean-Francois Lyotard. If Jacques Derrida begins with the term prjugs, it is in part because of its impossibility to be rendered properly in other languages and also contain all its meanings: to pre-judge, to judge before judging, to hold prejudices, to know "how to judge," and more still, to be already prejudged oneself.
Striving to contain that which comes before the law, that is in front of the law and also prior to it, how to judge Jean-Francois Lyotard then becomes perhaps a beneficial attempt for Derrida to explore humanity's rapport with judgment, origins, and naming. For how does one come to judge the author of the Differend How does one abstain from judgment to accept the term prjugs as suspending judgment and at once as taking into account the impossibility of speaking before the law, prior to naming or judging If this task indeed seems insurmountable, it is the site where Lyotard's work itself is played out. Hence this sincere and intriguing essay presented by Jacques Derrida, published here for the first time in English.
Reviews
"This excellent translation gives the whole text, parts of which had remained untranslated into English. It has discreet and careful annotation, giving full details for the references and quotations, something the original publication did not do, thus pinning down what was being encouraged to slip away."French Studies
Author Bio
Jacques Derrida (19302004) was director of studies at the cole des hautes tudes en sciences sociales, Paris, and professor of humanities at the University of California, Irvine.
Sandra van Reenen is lecturer in French at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.
Jacques de Ville is professor of law at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. His recent publications include Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality and Constitutional Theory: Schmitt after Derrida.
