2011, god, justice, love, beauty

7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty

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Copyright 2011 Fordham Universiy Press

All righs reserve No par of his publicaion may be reproduced,sored in a rerieval sysem, or rasmied in any form or by anymeans-elecronic, mechanical, phoocopy, recording, or any oherexcep r brief quoaions in prined reviews, wihou he prior permission of he publisher

Fordham Universiy Press has no resposibiliy for he persisence oraccuray of URLs for exernal or hirdpary Inerne websies referredo in his publicaion and does o guaraee ha any conen on suchwebsies is, or will remain, accurae or appropriae.

This work was originally published in French as Dieu, La justiceL'amoul La beaut: Quatre pette onfence Bayard Ediions 009.

This work has bee published wih he assisance of he Naional Cener r he Book-French Miisry of Culure

Ouvrage publi avec e souien du Cenre naional du livre-minisreanis charg de la culure

Nancy, JeanLuc.

[Dieu, la jusice, 'amour, la beau nglish]God, jusice, love, beauy: four lile dialogues / JeanLuc Nancy;

ranslaed by Sarah Clifp. cm

Icludes bibliographical rerencesISBN 9780833457 (cloh: alk. paper)ISBN 97808334264 (pbk.)1. God. . Jusice (Philosophy) 3 Love. 4. Aesheics. Tile.

B40N33D5413 011194-dc22

Prined i he nied Saes of Amerca13 1 11 5 4 3 Firs ediion

011010768


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Authrs Nte vii

God

uestins and Answers

Justice The Idea f the Just 5

That Which Is Due t Each 4

Lve Impssible Justice 4

uestins and Answers 5

Love 6uestins and Answers

Beauty

uestins and Answe


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The llowing texts are transcriptions of talks given at

Montreil s Center r the Draatic rts as part of a series

entitled Little Dialoges" Organized b Gilberte Tsa

Director of the Center the series was designed to address

children The transcriptions were done with care and pre

cision and I wold like to express ratitde here rthis work Nonetheless a transcription can never captre

the rhth or the tones to sa nothing of the whole prag-

atic context of a talk which theselves conve a great

deal of inration s we well know conication"

is inseparable fro its evet This is all the ore tre of

talks addressed to children and of the exchanges that llowed The children, both bos and girls were between s ixand twelve ears of age The were extreel attentive

dring talks and as o will see the were not withot

qestions at the end hat these enconters cold have

eant r the I cannot sa bt r e the were riskendeavors

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I only know that r me the aim of the talks was not to

popularize the issues nor was it to indulge in a kind ofat" of skil regarding my treatment of them It was a

matter of once again nding myself in cntact with think

ing in the very process of its awakeningr whateverthe rms or degrees of its elaboration thinking is always

essentially in this state or better in this movement It is

not the case then that an elderly thinker is placing himselfwithin reach of children here: rather within him a contact

with this awakening is searching for itsel an awakening

without which there would be no thinking [i ny auit de

penser] (I indeed used the innitive form of the verb)

viii


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It is not without trepidation that I am allowing this tran-

scription to be published. It should thus only be read itseems to me in an attempt to hear something of it s actual

articuation. This was also the result of diculties inher

ent in the theme I had chosen I had selected it because of

certain philosophical interests I have tried to develop in the

course of a work I have elsewhere called a deconstruction

of Christianity But since it was out of the question tointroduce this theme or this concept as such it was necessary r me to proceed without oending the religious con

victions of the children but also without giving in to any

simplication (it being the case that r me atheism and

theism are but two symmetrical and connected postula-

tions both based in the same metaphysical presuppositionswith regard to being). transposition into writing ofsomething that was not at all a text and that was the result

o a very particular rm of address risks at each step eras-ing both the diculties encountered and the precautions

taken I can do nothing but warn the reader of this here atthe outset


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GOD

in antiquity it was thought that there were many cieu,

many heavens It was thought that the ciel was a spherethat what we see as the ciel was a sphere surrounding the

earth and that there was a set of onentri spheres one

inside the otherThere are d irent versions of this belie but aording

to the best known there were seven heavensthe number

seven having always had a sared valuewit the seventhheaven being the highest Sometimes still today when we

want to say that we are absolutely delighted or estati we

speak of being in seventh heaven "

There are thus many heavens [eu], as if to indiate

the extreme or utmost nature of the highest heaven thehighest heavenly region And this plural exists in Frenh

beause the Frenh omes om Latin whih omes om

the Greek whih omes om the Hebrew of the Bible

The same plural also exis ts in the Arabi of the Koran

As r the other ciels, those of painting this rers to the

way in whih a painter represents the ciel, that is the skyBut why is there a plural unique to painting? o doubtbeause the ciel is a dimension or a partiular element of

our v ision of our pereption of the world and of our way

of being in the world

There is the earth there is what we see on the horizon

and then there is what is above The sky [el] appears raway at a distane elevated transparent transluid al-

most immaterial We might say that the sky is on the side

of the open It is the dimension of opening When we look

at the earth bere us on the other hand everything is

always losed everything stops at a ertain distane Wewill ome bak later to what is involved in this dimension

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GOD

of the to the place of the in our experience and in

relation to th e ro le it plays in religious traditionsBut r now let's ask about what's in heaven [ ]

Already I am speaking the language of religion or at

least of the three great socalled monotheistic religionstha t is those religions with a single god the three great

religions that predominate in the West Later on I will

say ust a wo rd or two about those religions that are notmonotheistic

In heaven" [{ ] is also a phrase that belongs to

religious language It is oen said in religion that those

who have died or the souls of those who have died are in

heaven" It is also sometimes said that angels are inheaven" I won't be speaking to you today about angels

however or about the souls of the dead though we can

discuss this later if you want Finally it is also said that

god is in heaven"

So le t' s ust note this: in heaven" [ ] has to do

with god with the realm of god with what is div ine Indeed the divine is the heavenly the celestial [] The

adective heavenlyis also a word that is more

or less restricted to a religious vocabulary though it also

sometimes appears in a certain poetic language. is

also a rst name a girl's name with the diminutive

and the masculine Perhaps there are someClestes Clestines or Clestins here in the audience

though I myself have yet to meet anyone with this name

The heavenly is the dimension of the divine the div ine

as what is elevated lied up above the earth and also as

a result so elevated and so immaterial that it is innitelydistant Finally heaven [ ] like the seventh heaven of

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GD

antiquity or the seventh heaven in the Koran is always the

highest the ost elevated . I t is the place of the one who iscalled in the Bible the Most High" the one who is abso-

lutely high.

ow this is not unique to the three great Western

monotheisms. There are many religions in which god or

the gods bear the name of height. To give ust one exam

ple: the main god of the Iroquois Indians at least in their

taditional culture is called or used to be called Oki"

which means the one on high." There are many other

religions like this in many other cultures I know I have

probably not yet said anything that surprises you Heaven

[e ciel] is divine and reciprocally the divine which has todo with god is celestial.

Today in the twentyrst century what is up there in

the sky in the heavens [le ciel]? We all know quite well

what s up there There is a whole bunch of things that are

not at all gods. There are clouds airplanes and furtheraway satellites and spacecraft; there are all the other plan-

ets of the solar system; there are all the other systems be-

yond our solar system and then a very large number of

other systems called galaxies. I ts hard to get an idea of the

magnitude here but I know that with a telescopeyou

may have heard of the Hubble telescope which is currentlyin orbit and was ust recently repaired with considerable

ertone can observe what is very very far away I dont

know exactly how far but its at an enormous distance.

ou know that we measue these things in l ight years that

is the distance that light or a photon of light which travels at 186,000 miles per second can travel in a year.

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GOD

As far as we can see there are things but there is no

god; no telescope has ever seen god ou will of coursesay that this is to be expected because you all have somesense whether you are believers or not whether you ome

from a religious mily or not that god is not visible Soit' s perfectly to be expected that we don't see him But that

also means that heaven [le ciel], in the reigious sense of the

term is not the heavens [le ciel] above what we see withour eyes or through a telescope You know that some time

back we sent to Mars a little space probe which could be

seen trekking across the surce of the planet Someday

soon we may be able to send something even further away

It's thus not the same l.When religions speak of heaven [le ciel] and of the

height of the heavenly [cleste] of the Most High they are

not speaking of what is up above In ct our sky or our

heavens [e el] are not above either because they are also

below All you have to do is dig through to the other side

of the earth to see the heavens above the Australians whoare below us as you know because they are in the souther

hemisphere in the land down under" as we say

So the heaven [le el] of religions means something else

e el, or les eu, the celestial the most high It means a

place very dierent from the world as a whole In this

sense we have to say that the sky or heavens [e ciel] ofairplanes spacecra and galaxies the heavens of the as-

tronomers are a part of the world They are part of the

world part of what is called as you know the universe

This religious idea of heaven [le el] rers not to some-

thing in the world something higher than everything elsenor to another world a world that would be above the


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GOD

world because that would ust be the same thing It desig

nates we migt say a place dirent from the world as awhole But a pace dirent from the world as a whole

means a place that is dirent from all places. That then

means a place that is not a place Playing a bit with the

French word endt which as a noun means pace, and

as an adverb n the rght de I would say that it's a place

that is not a place not even a raway place but not an

enve or ipside either It is not a place in the world but

it's also not as if we were going to the other side of the

world as if we were looking at another side or ce of the

world As if thi s other side or ce were god as if the face

of god were on the backside of the world like the backsideor hidden ce of the moon

ou know perhaps that we always see the same side or

ce of the moon because of the way it turns around the

earth and the way the earth turns on itself Only spacecra

circling the moon have been able to photograph the otherside But it's s till another side whereas in the case of the

world the world in its totality the universe in its complete

totality assuming we could get to the end of it in every

direction there is no other side by denition Since space

ends at that point there are no other spaces places or

locations There is no place outside the worldSo when we say heaven [e e] or the divine as what

is in heaven we are talking about something that would

be nowhere in no place and at the same time as a result

everywhere Something assuming we can say some

thing" or someone" who would be nowhere andeverywhere


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GOD

And ne being nowhere and everywhere means

stritly speaking nothing when we are talking about thethings of the world this means that the heavenly or the

divine designates something that is nothing We really

don t have any other way of saying this Something tha t is

not a thing neither a thing nor a person in the sense that

a person is a thing For a person is there ust as muh as

this glass is So we are talking about something with an

other manner or way of being than the being of all things

and all persons

To give you an analogy its a bit like air whih is more

or less everywhere and nowhere though this isnt om

pletely true beause there are plaes where there is no airwhere matter is so dense that a moleule of air annot

penetrate But if you nd the analogy at all helpful you

an use it so long as you remember that air itself is none

theless something

This something or someone that would not be outside

the world beause there is no outside of the world but

that would be something other than the world as a whole

other than all things is nowhere neither within nor else

where and it is at the same time present everywhere but

in a very partiular mode of preseneand thats what

religions all god or the godsWhat an we say about god or the gods if we dont start

with religion if we dont plae ourselves in a religion that

says god goes by this name and has these harateristis" ?

For instane some say that god goes by a name that one is

not allowed to pronoune This is the Jewish god: four

letters that must not be pronouned Or else he is simply

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GOD

alled godwe will return to thisand that's the Chrs-

tian god, alog with the question of Jesus Christ, whihwe an also return to later Or else god is alled Allah, the

god of Islam Or else he goes by many dirent names in

all those religions where there are many gods , in what arealled polytheisti religions In these ases, the gods have

proper names For example, in the Shinto rel igion of Japan

there are millions of gods The way in whih god or thedivine is everywhere an be seen there in the way gods areeverywhere, on every orner and in every plae In the

streets of Japan you see statues of gods or of divine beings

more or less everywhere

But I'm not going to get into this direne betweenpolytheisti religions, those religions with many gods, and

monotheisti ones, religions with a single god, beause this

would be muh too long and ompliated For our pur

poses we an assume that god or the gods play the same

role or have the same ntion more or less everywhere, at

least up to a ertain point, and that we an try to thinkwhat this means in the same way

From here on, I'm going o stay within the amework

of our Western, Mediterranean, European ulture, and

thus within the amework of the three religions with a

single god, within the three monotheisms, and these are

the Jewish religion, the Chri stian religion, and Islam And

I am going to ignore all the internal direnes, the inter

nal divisions, within eah of hese religions

Common to this group of religions is the notion tat

there is only one god And in eah of these religions god is

alled god" Notie here that gd is a rather peuliarname: gd is a ommon namea god," or the gods" in

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GOD

polytheisti religions with many gods example in the

Geek and Roman eligions of Western antiquity One thusspoke of the gods" but no god was alled god " Zeus r

example was a god and even bere Greee the Egyptian

Osiis was a god and I sis a goddess But none of these godswas alled god"

When we use the name gd as the name of the one god

we are doing something rather unique sine we ae sayingthat thee is a divine heavenly being who goes by the name

of all div ine beings It is as if we were to say that the name

of a poplar" tree is simply tree As a result the name gd

perhaps does not name someone it is not the proper name

of someone but names the divine as suh the divine as aunity or single thing as if it wee a person And this is the

ase let me say in passing of dieu in the Fenh language

as well as r all European languages and it is also the ase

r Allah, whih is the name of the god of Is lam But Allah

is a transrmation of a very old omon name or noun

of Semiti origin namely the word meaning god"This language is the origin of a group of ommon lan

guages that then gave rise both to Hebew and to Arabi

and other languages Already in very anient ivilizations

then thee was a supreme god who was alled preisely

god" and Allah is a transrmation of

But now we ome to the key question: oes god exist

I hope you have already understood that this question is

pehaps not the right one Asking whether god exists in

th is way would be a bi t like asking whether Clestin u-

pont exist Is there someone named Clestin upont? I

ould look on the Internet I ould look at all existingnames and I either wi ll or will not nd a Clestin upont


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GOD

But to ask whether god exists is to ask the questio of

whether ther is somewhere a someoe or a somethigthat would aswer to the ame of god

Whe eligio says that god exists it perhaps ever says

exactly that But let's say that the religious aswe more orless comes dow to armig: Yes god exists" If that is

the case let me assure you that amog all religious people

ad ot simply amog theologias that is scholars who

study various aspects of religio but amog priests

imams o rabbis those who ae ot ecessarily scholars

but who are cocered with what religio represets ad

with the relatioship betwee religio ad the people of a

particular religious commuity there are very w peopletoday who would say: es god exists ad he is i ct

ight up there i the seveth heave al l you have to do is

go up there ad you will see him He has a face with a

log bead " A Muslim especially will ot say that It is

perhaps i Islam that there is the most acute sese that

god looks like othig absolutely othig This i s repeatedthroughout the Kora

More geerally what religio says i this form ca be

uderstood I thik eve outside religio I myself for

example am speakig to you completely outside ay reli

gio We ca thus uderstad these thigs i a differet

way Fially i speakig of god we are speakig of thisame that is like a proper ame ad yet is ot a proper

ame sice it does ot ame someoe who would be some

where someoe who would have certai characteristics

proper to him or her like those of Clesti upot But

god ames the possibility that there exists for us collectively as well as for each of us sigularly ad idividually


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GOD

a relationship with this nowhere and everywhere In othe

words god or the divine or the celestial would name thect that I am in relation not with something but with the

ct that I am not limited to all those relations I have with

all the things of the world or even with all the beings ofthe world It suggests that there is something else which I

will here call the opening something that makes me be

that makes us be as humans open to something more thanbeing in the world more than being able to take things up

manipulate them eat them get aound in the world send

space probes to Mars look at galaxies through telescopes

and so on It suggests that there is all this but also some

thing elseWhat is this something else ? We have some idea of thisother thing and perhaps more than an idea a eling

through the ct r example that we know what it is to

feel great oy or great sadness what it is to el love or I

wont say hate but at least a eling that is very r from

love When I have such feelings or moods I sense that thereis something immense innite which I cannot simply lo

cate somewhere For when I el oy or sadness love or

hatred force or weakness there is in all this something

that innitely exceeds what I am my person my personal

ity my means my location my way of being someone in a

particular place in the world In all this there is some kind

of opening Now the god of the three monotheistic reli

gions and all the other gods as well god himsel repre

sents nothing other than this

To take the three monotheistic religions in their histori

cal oder what is the Jewish god? We might say that theJewish god is the Father but perhaps thats not the best


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GD

man his shotomings and frailties, and who gives him the

possibility of standing tall and worthy despite his shotomings and ailties

The Just, Love, the Merilthat is in the end what

heaven is or the elestial in the sense of the divine This

brings us bak to the image of the sky or the heavens, that

is, to the fat that , above the eath , there opens a dimension

that is no longer even a dimension but the opening, wide

open and bottomless There is nothing to see at the bottom

of those heavens, just as there is nothing r our physial

eyes to see at the bottom o end of the sky Its not a ques

tion of sending spae probes or of looking through tele

sopes There is nothing to see at the bottom of this sky orthis heaven iel] But what has to be seen, or known, or

undestood, or t is that there is this dimension of open

ing At this point, at least r the moment, it matters little

whether one is a believer or a nonbeliever It atters l ittle

whether one belongs to one religion or religious ommu

nity rathe than another or to none at all Of ourse, this

does beoe important late on, and there is muh to say

about it But at the point we are at right now, I would say

that this doesnt matter hat matters instead is under

standing that what is at stake here is the impossibility of

losing this opening That is, the impossibility of being ahuman being as one might be a stone a tree, or perhaps

also an animal I say pehaps" in order to simplify things,

beause there are some people who would be unhappy to

hea me make suh a sharp distintion between human

beings and everything else To be a human being is to beopen to innitely more than s imply being a human being

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GOD

You are probably going to say to me This is a very

general idea, nd I understand what you are saying hereOne an all this idea Love Justie, Mery, or the open

ing Aording to Pasal, who was a thinke, philosopher,

religious gure, and very learned man of the seventeent

entury, man goes innitely beyond man ou are going

to tell me that these are al l j ust ideas hy all any of themgod? hy have religions used this word god? hy even

outside of religion is it not so easy to do without naming

god in one way or another? Beause it is not enough to use

abstrat names like Love, Joy, Mery, or Justie in order to

name this dimension of opening and of going beyond t is

neessary to be able to address oneself to or to relate tothis dimension hy address oneself to this dimension o

establish a onnetion with it? In order to be ithful to it

hat does it mean to be oneself as muh as possible,

and thus to be as muh a human being as possible? t

means nothing other than being ithl to this opening orto this innite going beyond of the human by the huma

It means being ithl to the sky or the heavens, in te

sense I've spoken o This del ity might look like a delity

to someone, just as indelity is usually understood as an

indelity to someone The rel igious name of this del ity is

ith" or i, from the Latin des; this same word andthis same notion of delity an also be found in the word

condence

Faith is the relationship of del ity As a result, as a rela

tion of delity to , faith takes the shape of a delity to

someone, someone who is not of this world , and who as aesult is not some person outside the world either, but who

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GOD

is to be understood as I just said in terms of this relation

ship of delity This faith delity or condence has in acertain sense nothing to do with what is called belie

In religion there is belie When one believes one says

that god does this or that In Christian belie for example,which is probably the one most of you know best it is said

that god has a son Jesus Christ who was incarnated and

who died on the cross to save mankind And then there isa third person cal led the Holy Spirit There are so many

things that could be said about this But all that is the

content of belie that i s the way things are presented in a

particular religion the way one explains the reality of god

But belief can always lead to thinking that things are l ikethisOne imagines a ther and a son How is the ther able

to have a son when the ther is a god and the son is a

man? The Christian religion hre speaks of a mystery

Islam on the other hand says that this simply cannot be

that it runs absolutely contrary to the nature of god that itis impossible for god to be in many persons that he is

absolutely one that it is impossible r god to have a

human son and so on

This huge opposition is in the end an opposition only in

the way of presenting things I t has to do with belief And

belief has to do with a way of presenting things I believethat right now it is nice outs ide for example I t's a supposition I would have to go outside to know whether it's true

I on the contrary I say I don't know what it's like out

side but I am ithful to the idea that it's nice out [This is

of course absurd] And so I am going to go out in shortsleeves and I won't take a raincoat or an umbrella es I


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GOD

would be takng a bg rsk, and that would be rather slly

But thats elty Fdelty does not onsst n belevng,and tus n supposng, n aordane wth what we know,

that thngs wll be n onrmty wth what we beleveFdelty means not at all knowng about ths hen one sthl to someone, one does not know n the end about

ths person at all, nor about what he or she wll beome

later on n l But f one s thful to hm or her, one sthful wthout knowng

Let me stop there One an say at least that n the name

of god and n the name of god as the elestal or the heavenly there s at least the ndaton of the possblty, per-

haps the neessty, of beng thful wthout any knowledgeor even any quasknowledge, and thus any bele of beng

fathl to what I alled the openng, wthout whh we

would perhaps not even be human bengs, but smply

thngs among other thngs wthn a world losed upon

tsel

Montreul, May 4, 00


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Qestins and Answers

ou said that in the Jewish religion god is just But ifgod is j ust, why ae thee childen bon with handicaps o

things like that ?

JLN ell, youre ight ou are asking one of the most

important questions in relationship to god, a question thathas often been asked since the beginning of modern t imes

I t's a question that has oen appeared since the eighteenth

century, though it was also raised bere that

hy is there evil ? In the three great monotheisms there

is a single, common answer In religious terms, it is said

that if god ceates man, it i s in oder to create a free being,one that is le to be or to become what he is And so if god

guaranteed human beings in advance al the conditions of

a perfect existence, one that required no questions, then

we would obviously not be free

You are among those who were born handicapped Twothings might be said here It is possible that certain people

seem to be more unjustly teated than others by god or by

nature But this goes hand in hand with the fact that men

have been able to invent all sorts of solutions to problems

of handicaps and diseases, even if we are vey far om

solving all these problems But man is also the one who canallow a handicapped person to realize himself as a person,

whether this be by medical means, technical means, or

some other

Justice, in the sense of divine justice, justice r the

whole world , does not mean that everything is evenly distributed and that nothing else needs to be done That

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GOD

would be to imagine the creation of the world as a sort of

Lego game where there is nothing leto do

Whee does the sky, or where do the heavens, begin?

JLN heard just a little whi le ago an extraodinary phrase

from an astronomer who was here earlier He said that

someone had told him that The heavens [le iel] beginright at gound level This wonderful statement suggests

that the sky begins ight on the gound 'm speaking inan imagistic and symbolic way t means that where the

earth ends, the sky or the heavens begin, that is, the dimen

sion of opening begins At the same time, wheever thereis ground, however close to the earth we may be, there is

sky

This question might suggest something else, precisely in

relation to painting and to the skies w e spoke of earlier in

painting Try to look at th e way th e great landscape paint-

ers, like the Flemish painter Jacob Ruisdael or the Englishpainter John Constable, worked with landscapes ou will

see there precisely this relationship between a big sky, oen

full of clouds, and the earth t is as if the whole painting

were done simply to show this opening of the two, and

thus the line that runs between them and keeps them apart

[qi les page]

When you were speaking earlier about the god of the

Jews, why is one not allowed to pronounce his name ?

JLN Because thats the Jewish way of saying things TheJewish god is the rst in the history of monotheisms All

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GOD

ou're making some people laugh I said earl ie that the

question of te existence of god cannot be asked It's sucha hard question

There are two aspects to your question First, as I was

saying earlier, god does not exist as some thing o someperson So far so good? Thus even if I say that god is

nowhee, he is at the same time everywhere If I say, as

Chistians do, that god is Love," then love is at the same

time nowhee and everywhere ou no doubt love certain

people you understand quite well that love is not a thing

that can be located somewhere Sure, you can send a cad

with a heart on it, but this is just a sign of love, not love

itsel An so, in this sense, god does not existAnd when you ask why or how god exists, then you

have aleady begun to think of a person, a very powerful

person who created the worldand this is something I

haven't spoken about at all yet Isn't that what you ae

thinking of? ow if one imagines god as someone who

created the world, and if one understands creating teworld to mean making it, then it's a little like imagining

god to be like the person who made, well, this bottle In

ct this is a good example Who made this bottle? A ma

chine, a set of machines, no doubt, along with people in a

ctoy Probably few people and many machines If I

imagine that god ceated the world in this way, then thismeans that god is an enomous machine, with a vey small

brain somewhere, perhaps, but especially a very powerl

machine able to make this huge thing in which we nd

ourselves But that's going o pose all kinds of problems

Because we would then immediately have to ask whomade the machine It's r that reason that in the three

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GOD

must not pronounce his name That means that god alone

reveals himself, that he is the only one able to reveal himsel to be ale to say a name that at the same time isunspeakable

From where do we get the idea of believing in god?

Because if god in the beginning created the world om

nothing, who created him?

JLN was trying to address that just a moment ago, butwe would really have to have another talk just on creation

Believing in god is something that is a part of all civil izations, all human societies, except our own modern or

contemporary society, which no longer believes at all ingod, or at least not in the same way There are, of course,

exceptions, people who are completely within a particularreligion, who take up a ll i ts terms, who speak, r example,of the world being created by god But today even someone

who epresents things to him or herself in this way under

stands, or at least should understand, that creation, or whatis caled creation, has absolutely nothing in common withthe making of some thing Do you understand that? tsnot as if creation were just a bigger and more powerfulmaking f it were, it would mean that we were imagininggod as a someone with great means at his disposal Thecreation of the world is a way of saying that the world isthere There is nothing to look r bere, ecause there isno bere There is nothing to look for outside, becausethere is no outside Yet there is still the inside to be askedabout hat is happening inside? hat is happening is

precisely that it opens, that it opens up, that it opens innitely to something other than the things of the world

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GOD

This is very diult I grant you But that is what a

reator god means in the end This reator is not something that an take the plae of what physiists have ana

lyzed as the rst moments of the world You've probably

heard people speak of the big bang or of what some physi

ists even all the rst void of the word whih is never

ompletely a void one of this prevents there being some

thing given at the beginning of the world If it is given

you an always say to me that it is given by someone It is

indeed given But the giving of this donation of this parti

ular gi has nothing to do with an operation that would

have taken plae at an earlier time by another being om

another world beause then all we are doing is pushingthings bak in an innite regress

othing what is that exatly if it is nothing? I wish I

had with me here an enormous book I reeived a ouple

of months ago om a German olleague in philosophy

a huge vehundredpage book alled Nohing, Nihs in

German Your question is really right on Let me try to say

this othing is the something of that whih is no thing

Hene it is not something And yet it's not nothing It's the

t that there is something For exampe I an say to you

that that glass there is something If I take the glass away

there is no longer anything For the glass to be there therealso needs to be nothing otherwise I anot plae the glass

there I f there i s a bottle there I annot put the glass in the

same plae If there had been something in the plae of the

world the world ould not have been plaed there Hene

there is preisely the nothing And the world omes in

this nothing

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GOD

ill we ever be sure one day that gd exists o doesn't

exist?

JLN o neve beause that is not the question I an seethat this is a very diult question beause it keeps on

oming bakIf god exists in the way religions say then this would be

preisely the only existene of whih we annot be sureabout whih it is not at all a question o being sure not at

all a question of knowing It is simply a matter of being

faithful Let me return one more time to the example oflove or justie or mery To be just or to be not exatly in

love but loving to be in iendship hen we have iends

we are often operating in the realm of knowledge e say

know that this iend has done this or that and so

don't like him any more he is no longer my iend This

is normal and 'm not saying that there are not sometimes

reasons r saying this But nevertheless one also some

times says If you are my iend you are going to get overthis you are going to rgive me for this you are going to

understand this In suh ases it is not at all a question of

proving the existene of something or the

That is why from thi s point of view it an truly be said

and we would be in agreement with many people with

the greatest thinkers in all the great religions that to laimthat god exists o that he does not exist really omes down

to the same thing hen one says that he does not existone is saying that he does not exist like someone o some-

thing that would be omparable to everything else that

exists but simply in a greater more powerful and higher

way And when one says that he exists one is saying more

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OD

or less the same thng one s sayng that he exsts dr

ently om eerythng else that exsts One s sayng thaths presene, hs exstene, s a ealty wth whh we havea elaton that has nothng to do wth any of the otherrelatons we have wth thngs n the world

hy are there people n some elgons who beleve n

many gods?

]LN I went b y ths petty qukly, s o you're ght to wantto ome bak to t

Fst, I would say that ths shows that god an take onmany drent rms or es Ths does not mean that god

s a beng apable of metamorphosng hmsel of transrmng hmself and takng on all knds of guses or dsguses It means, rather, that one an relate to the prnpleof the dvne, to what s absolutely drent om the thngsof the world, through a plualty of gods It s at ths pontthat they beome persons, or quaspesons, eah wth a ds

tnt name and eah dented wth a partula tonOne alls on eah god n a partular rumstane r ex-ample, there s a god whom one alls on r brths, anotherwhen there s a death, another so that the havest s good,another so that a voyage s suessl, and so on These aregods from whom one asks somethng In ths askng theres always an appeal to what s ompletely other

There s, o ourse, a great drene between elgonswth many gods and relgons wth just a sngle god Ev-erythng I have sad has been om the perspetve ofmonothesm, that s , of elgons wth a sngle god But, on

a deeper level, thee s somethng n ommon e shouldalso speak hee of a very mportant rm of thought that I

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GOD

dont quite know how to address I am speaking of Bud

dhism, whih is not a eligion with a relationship to godsor to the divine, but whih an nonetheless be presented asa form of thought or of spiituality absolutely without god

But it would take too long to develop this in an y detail

How was god able to open the void fo the earth when

he was already in the void?

JLN Preisely, he ouldnt He didnt do anythingThats what I was talking about earlier with the sim

sm. At that moment, god did not open the void to the

earth rather, god is the void that is opening up This will

always be a ather poor way of putting it You ould ask

me how it is that the void is able to open up If I myself

want to open up But one annot treat this as if it were

the ation of some person You say How was he able?

but one might j ust as well say that i t is a question of a sort

of nonability or powerlessness

And what about the underworld [les enfers], and every-

thing that happens after one is dead?

JLN Yes, the underwold You are right to ask about that

Its interesting that you put this term in the plural,beause les enfers is an expression from antiquity and be

re that, from Greek, Roman, and Egyptian religions I t

has t o d o with the idea of j ustie, a n idea o f j ustie trans-

lated into human terms, that is, the idea of a justie that

rewards and punishes And so its the idea that god, as

j udge, sa ys Youve don e wrong, you are ondemned to

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GOD

this punishment" O else the opposite You have done

nothing wrong and you are not ondemned " t is a wayof imagining or epresenting things

t is in fat rather remarkable j ust how large a role thisrepresentation has played in ertain religions, and espeially in etain rms of the Christian religion, eventhough it plays a muh less important role in ontemporary

Christian religion But while this epresentation of hell andof the devil has muh less urreny today, it still has meaning Its just that it does not have to do with saying, Afterdeath you wil l be punished or rewaded r what you havedone in li," but rather, Ae you able during your litime to be faithful to what tied to explain earlier, that is,

ae you ab le to remain faithful to something that innitelyexeeds you ? " This is hard And its just as had r me asit is you and everyone else Hell means that if youare unable to do this, you are ondemned t means thatyou ondemn yourself You ondemn youself not to buning in hell among a bunh of demons that tortue youbut, rathe, you ondemn yourself to shriveling up andwithering away as you ae, in your li, right now

When you believe in one religion, why an t you believein another religion at the same time ?

JLN This is ompliated n Ameria there are Jews whoall themselves Jews r Jesus" n Ameia it s sometimesa little like those restaurants that seve CambodianBasqueuisine f you want to be strit about things, this is abso

lutely impossible

dont know exatly how this works r these Jewsr Jesus" ts etainly respetable, but its ontraditory,

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GOD

beause the Jewish religion says that it awaits the Messiah

who will be sent by god and Christianity says that theMessiah has already ome and that he is Jesus ow I

might very well say if we had the time that the fat that

the Messiah has ome does not mean that he has truly

ome

Within a partiular religion there is a preise way of

guring or representing god what he is what he does and

so on So normally one annot mix everything up Yet

there is something ommon to all religions as tried to

bring out earlier So an understand why people would

want to take a little of this and a little of that why they

would like one aspet of one religion and another aspetof another religion At that point there is no ontradition

I t means that one is not of any partiular religion

n any ase we would have to distinguish between the

t of being of a partiular religion and belonging to a

partiular religious ommuni ty f you belong to a religious

ommunity if you are Jewish for example if you are a

little Jewish boy you must be irumised If you are a

little Christian boy this isn't an issue though you do have

to be baptized The two things are not mutually exlusive

So it's possible to do all kinds of dirent things If you

are a little Muslim hild you must pray ve times a day I tis not the same prayer that it would be for a Jewish or

Christian hild; you are not going to all on god in the

same way So if you want to belong to all three religions at

the same time it's going to be a little ompliated

There are some people who do this very well 'm think

ing r example of the Japanese There are many Japanese


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GOD

who are at once Buddhist and Shintoist I won't even en

tion those who are also Christian, because they are reallyChristian oly r certain ceremonies

There is no contradiction in being both Buddhist andShintoist For the Shintoists, thee are mill ions of gods whoare present everywhere, in everyday li, presences of anorder dirent from any other presence, but presences

nonetheless, whereas, the Buddhists, there is no presence at all And these two things are not contradictoyeach can very eas ily be related to the other

ithin monotheism ths going between eligions canget rather tricky There is, r example, the case of a verygreat Muslim mystic named alHaj, who was con

demned by the I slamic authorities of his time, that is, longlong ago, because he had practically become Christianfom within the Islamic religion Thee are texts of alHalj that address Christ, a ll the while emaining withinIslam

hile there ae very clear dirences in the way things

are epresented in the three geat monotheisms, and evensome very big dirences between the three major rmsof ChristianityCatholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodoxythere is at the same time something that runsthrough all these monotheisms om the very beginning ofestern civilization, and that is pecisely the notion thatgod is the one who is not there, who is not someone, whois somewhere else, always somewhere else In this regard,there is truly a great proximity between the Jewish god,the Christian god, and the god of Islam It's even becauseof this that between the three the worst sometimes hap

pens At the same time, these three religions are incrediblyclose to one another


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The Idea of he us

C_ eraps you do't quite kow what is just adwhat is't ad from ow o, whe say you" this aer

oo, will be addressig the hildre ad ot the adultspreset You probably a 't ome up with a idea of it o

the spot like this, but oetheless you ertaily kow what

it is to experiee a ij ustie, to el that it's ot fair" oreve tha t that's a real ijustie," as the artoo harater

Calimero always used to say Perhaps he is ot so well

kow aymore he's a little bird with a piee of eggshello his head So you do all kow somethig about the subjet we all the just ad the ujust A little while ago, a

boy who is somewhere i the room, after learig that

was goig to talk about the just ad the ujust, expressy

asked me st what are you goig to talk about ? [De q

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va pa1 au juste ? " This remark poves that he has an

idea of what this representsFor that atter, we could begin with this remark Just

what are you going to alk about?" The boy who askedme this questionlet's call him Simonwas well awarethat he was making a play on words, even if he pehaps

didnt yet know how to explain its subtleties In posing this

question to me, he hoped to nd out what precisely, orexactly, we were going to talk about Thats not the samething as saying it isnt j ust," which has nothing to do with

precision or exactitude Ths difference between the just,"

as moral and as opposed to the unjust, and the just" of

exactitude could be the undation r all of our thoughts

during this dialogue we might even come back to it at theend

Its easy to see that the just" of exactitude does not

mean the same thing as the just" that is the opposite of

the unjust " For instance, one could say, The contents of

this bottle ll s just two glasses" If it doesnt end up beingthe case, say, if the contents of the bottle lls only one and

a half glasses, one wouldn't say that it was unjust As with

many of our words, our ideas, our noion, to use a more

learned term, or an even more learned term that philoso-

phers use, our onep, we have an understanding of the

wordus that could be called intuitive or spontaneous Weknow well enough what it's about, but we still have toopen up the idea or the concept Perhaps by opening it

up, well come to realize that the word we thought we

understood opens onto difcult problems and questions

that we hadnt suspected bere That's what we are going

to try to see together

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Let's go bak to what I alled the moral" sense of the

word st, that is to what is just in opposition to what is

unjust I think that many of you would agree that what isjust is what aords with justie For the original title of

the dialogue we hose the j ust the unjust" the j ust being

the quality of what is just and onsequently the quality ofwhat belongs to justie and what is unust being what is

ontrary to justie A diulty immediately ar ises thoughonly a minor diulty of language but one that obviously

opens onto other problems When I talk about justie"

many of you probably think about what happens in theourthouse [a palazs de ie] The ourthouse as you

know is the plae where hearings are held where judges

sit and where trials take plae People an be aused defended by lawyers and then judged and what we all a

trial results either in a onvition or in what is alled a

aquittal of the dendant Aording to its everyday usage

the word sice makes us think rst of all of the justie

that rms a part of our large state institutions There is aministry and a minister of justie But in the ourthouse

and in a hearing the law is applied through being inter

preted by judges by lawyers by the dendants themselves

or by those making the ausations Th is justie justie as

institution is not the quality of what is jus t It is the insti

tution that applies the lawIs the law always just ? All of you are prepared to say

no though perhaps you have no example to give as to why

We are spontaneously mistrustful of the aw I think every

one has a irly strong sense that if the idea of justie or

ofwhat is just gets onsed with the law then somethings

gone wrong In a w months it will be illegal in Frae


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knowng how the law s deded, through whh dsussons of tzens or ther representatves, and so on For our

purposes, though, onsder the followng f we know that

the law on ts own s not always j ust, that must be beausewe have an dea of the just n tself, of the true just, of

juste as an dea or deal and not only of juste as an

nsttuton So we have an dea of juste beyond laws , per-

haps even of a juste r whh there an be no law, or ajuste that annot be enlosed n a law one that exeeds

law All of us have had the elng or the sense that there

s the just and the unjust wthout ther neessarly bengrelated to the law Many of you probably know how t

els, n lass or at home, to reeve a punshment that was

not objetvely warranted Some of you have ertanly beenpunshed beause a buddy of yours was olng around and

the teaher punshed both of you, or perhaps even the

whole lass The role of a teaher s not to be r to eah

ndvdual t s to mantan order r everyone o matter

you reeve an undeserved punshment, and you exlam,

Thats not r!" ou know other rms of njuste as

well a end shows up wth a new vdeogame onsole

that you dont havet doesnt matter whh one, t

wouldnt be far of me to do advertsngand your parents

refuse to buy one r you Thats not far But why ? It has

nothng to do wth the law The reason ould nvolvemoney, the t that your frends mly has greater means

at ts dsposal than yours does It ould also nvolve the

prnples of your parents, who prer that you not spend

threequarters of your tme playng vdeo games Inden

tally, ths deson about your upbrngng ould be ex

tremely r wth respet to your work and your future

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But I'm not here o play the role of your parents You

know, then, you have a eling or an idea that there aresuh things as the just and the unjust without being able

to give a general meaning o pr iniple r them For example, s it just r everyone to have a whatsit" onsole?

Maybe you're prepared to answer yes," but how many

onsoles of how many dirent types is it ir r everyone

to have It's very diult to take suh things into onsideration If you read magazines or wath television, you

know that we live in a world in whih we are made to

believe that everyone should have every onsole, every

omputer, and every possible or oneivable video game

However, you also know that all this has gotten a l ittle out

of hand and that it annot really be an issue of justieSo we have an idea of the just and the unjust, but we

don't know how to dene preisely what they are e have

a sense that they must rer to something in exess of the

law, to something other than the law, and perhaps that

they rer to underlying prniples that would allow us tosay what is truly just But what are those priniples ? If one

leaves aside the law as it is written in the penal ode and

understood by lawyers, what does one enounter? One

nds another law, alled the law of the strongest This

ould perhaps aount r why the friend has one onsole

more than I do or why he has a onsole and I don't, sinehe is stronger in the sense that his mily has more money,whih is a kind of strength Many of you perhaps thin

that the physia lly strongest is in the right and that it's fair

r him to win if he overpowers his opponent At that

point, justie has beome onsed with the results of a

ght However, I'm sure that many others among you

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thnk that the law of the strongst s not a law at all and

that t can't be a law It s otherwse known as the law othe jungle" and precsely n the jungle where only an-

mals lve the strongest domnate the weakest. So the expresson the law of the jungle" plays on a contradcton

n the jungle there are no laws but rather relatons of

strength.

The use of strength alone cannot be just that too weknow well Even f we are oen tempted to assume that

mght makes r ght " we know that strength by tself can

not be j ust I t s nonetheless a model that s oen used the

lms of Schwarzenegger r example though he has been

makng wer of them recently snce he's now governor of

Calrna and no longer has tme to make moves those

of Van Damme or even vdeo games lke Street Fghter.

All of these deploy a model of the upholder of the law of

he who s n a poston to do j ustce because he s the stron

gest because he s more muscular because he has lke

Schwarzenegger two submachne guns and three bazookas and because he has the power to destroy everythng.

So we say that he takes the law nto hs own hands Ths

model can be very seductve one could easly be convnced

that ths s what s just Stores of ths knd always take

place beyond the law the law s powerless and the polce

can't do anythng but then Schwarzenegger appears de-molshes everythng and saves the day ctvely he de-

stroys everythng but actually he's always actng n the

name of a just cause n these lms There s r example

some poor lttle grl who s threatened by terrble gang-

sters Even n Schwarzenegger lms even accordng to the

vew that the strongest are capable of makng ther own


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laws, we still nd the idea that tere must be a just cause

into whose service that strength is putSo deep own, we do know what the wod js means

We know, for example, that it is unfair to divide a cake

into unequal pats t would be unir, yes, even ifSchwarzenegger did it, even if he came and cut a big

piece r one person and a vey small one r you You

know this situation well , r it happens a lot at mealt imeou check to see if the person beside you has the same

amount as you do Yet you also undestand that it can be

entirely fair to give a very small piece of cake to someoneor, indeed, not to give him or her any cake at all f a

child is diabetic, r instance, it is dangerous for him orher to eat too much cake So what is just for that child

and r his or her health s to give him or her as little

sugar as possible We also know that its unfair to pay less

r wo rk done by a woman than r wo rk do ne by a man,

but this happens very oen t i s unfair, but the law does

not prevent it from happening However, it is ir to bepaid more r work that is 0re di cult or more danger

ous than r work that is less so

What do we nd at the end of all these observations?We all know that it is just to give to each what he or she

is owed To render to each his d ue or to give to every-

one what he is owed is a very old denition of justiceThe formula or phase has been around ever since antiq-uity, so it really is as old as our civilization And, al

though people have been discussing it during all that

time, it continues to occupy us today; in ct, maybe its

not possible to put an end to this discussion Thats what

m going to show you now

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Tha Whih Is De o Eah

In saying that it is just to give to each hat he or she isdue, e have a pretty good denition of the just. et I'm

sure that you see here probles immediately arise. What

is actually due to each? We'll come back to this, but rste need to talk about a preliminary diculty that is per-

haps less easy to see. To give to each hat is due to him orher brings together to principles under the term eah.

First, there is a principle of equality: each" person is con-

sidered eactly like all the others. Then there is a principle

of dirence proper to each person hat is due to icole

is perhaps not hat is due to Sad, and hat is due to Gal

is not necessarily hat i s due to Jonathan Thus there areto principles at ork here: equality and dirence.

If you'll agree, I propose that e call these to princi-

ples equality" and singularity." Singularity is hat is

proper to each person insoar as he or she is a singular

being, insor as he or she is unique Equality and singular-ity are inseparable in the idea o justice, and, at the same

time, they can come into onict ith each other, though

perhaps not into contradiction. This gives us insight into

something very important the just and the unjust are al-

ays decided in relation to others. In the just and the un-

just, it is about others and about me, but its alays aboutme in relation to others. I must be given hat is due to mejust as others must be given their due. This means that

there can never be justice r one person alone; su a

thing doesn't even make sense. So justice eists solely i

relation to the other. I t is r that reason that the notion o

making ones on justice is utterly meaningless Hoever

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it is certainly true that each f us in ur singula pesn

has the right t a recgnition that is cmpletely particulart us It wudnt be j ust, r example, t decide that evey

ne had t have red hair r that everyne had t wear her

hair tied back T the contrary, the particular nuances fhairstyle make up a par t f what each peson is in h is rher singularity, even if it is nly a tiny part

But thenthis is the secnd part f the denitinwhat is due t smene? Wee not posing the questin

here f hw t give r rende t each persn what he rshe is due But one can easily distinguish sme elements f

what is owed t everyne everyne has the right t live,

s that means that everyne is wed the means t live, t

ed himself or to ptect herself fm the elements Every

ne has the right t be educated, s its i each child

t be able t go t schl I am well awae that sme of

yu ae prbably thinking, Im nt s sure thats ir"

And yet, schling r all children is an aspect f justice,

since to have n educatin r culture is t be incapable fdevelping all f nes pssibilities thrughout ones li

Likewise, f curse, eveyne has the right t health and

s to being caed r, and everyne als has a right t those

things when a particular tene that could perhaps

qualify as unjustinvlves being brn disabled It is just

tha t peple in that situatin have access t certain kinds care, that they be given the use f wheelchairs, perhaps,

that there be access r the disabled, and s n S it is just

r thse prvisins t be put int place by the law Fr

instance, these days the law requires that there be wheel-

chair access in transprtatin systems and in public places

This discussin abut what s just and abut what must be

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reognized by eveyone as being just in a given soiety

ould go on r a very long time thee ae lots of thingswe eognize as being just in matters of eduation hous

ing health salary work onditions and the onditions of

liIf we had moe time to pursue it this disussion would

also bring us around to the side of the law. The reason

why the law is always hanging and evolving is beausewe realize that there is suhandsuh a emand justieregarding something that up to that time we hadnt paid

muh attention to or that wasn't very visile. So this wouldbring us one again to the side of the law and to what

will always be in need of hange rerm and modiation.

For instane we now realize that smoking is vey bad ryour health an r the management of what is al led pub-

li health owing to the treatment of all those who sur

from aner or pulmonary diseases aused by tobao use

It is r this reason that the law must hange. The law

doesnt hange evey day but thee ae always good easons to onside transrming it or to onsider reating

new laws so that soiety an beome more just.

But straightaway it must added that we will never man-

age to state exhaustively what is real ly owed to eah singu-

lar person How ould one sum up what is due to eah of

us insofa as eah of us is a unique person insofar as thatperson is Niole or Sad or Gal or Brahim? In a ertain

way we ould say that the only thing that mattes is that

the person be reognized as someone singular Its an in-

nite list at what point ould I ever be nished being just

to Niole or Sad? At what point ould I eve be nished

reognizing him or her not only as a buddy o as someone

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who interests me becase he lent his console to me or

helped me with my math bt trly to recognize him orher? Jst by asking sch a estion we can see how the

moral sense of the word js cold not be frthe removed

om the jst" of a je in the sense of exactitde and

adjstment There is no adjstment possible with the rst

sense of jstice If yo like we might say that jstice is

necessarily withot pecision [an jsee] or adjstment Ican of cose by clothes for Nicole o Sad bt it wold

be bette if I boght those clothes in sizes that t them

(Addeed o a hild in he w) Sre yore laghing

now bt if I boght yo a pair of jeans in my size yod

look pretty sil lySo clothing mst be adjsted ntil the person has n

ished growing Bt what is to be adjsted when yore

inteested in the decorative aspect of c lothing What is the

most jst a ble black or gray pair of jeans? Obviosly

its not possible to say Of corse there are lots of things

that ae more important than clothes There are things that

each of s wants things that make each of s happy things

that each of s dreams abot Bt thee are also some isses

regarding which we are not necessarily very jst with or-

selves I am thinking abot the diabetic child whom I

talked abot earlier All of s or at least a lot of s likesweets bt it is dangeros to eat sweets when one is dia-

betic ikewise yo often dont want to do yor home

work and yet yo have to Bt if yo think abot it r

yoselves yo can always go even frther There is no

way to conclde the list of what is trly d e to each

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Love, Impossible stice

At the limit, theres only one thing that is owe to each,

an that is what we call love not only the love we n in

love stories, th e kin of lo ve that makes us snicker when a

boy kisses a girl or when a boy kisses a boy o a gil kisses

a girl, but love in its broaest sense. We know very wellthat to love someone means to consie him or her r who

he or she is, an to be reay to o everything r this

peson, to give him or her eveything because he or she is

owe everything This oesnt mean that you are pepare

to give anything whatsoever to this person, incluing what

is ba r him or her. Obviously, paents an caregiversare there to try to gure out what is just an goo. That s

why thee ae chilrens rights that are not the same as the

rights of aults. Aults have the task of thinking about

what is just, even if they can never know exactly what its

about. An ault who is j ust to chilren is not an ault whothinks he or she knows what is just youre going to stuy

math an Chinese, youre going to wear jeans of this color,

an youe going to take up this careerr if one takes

math an Chinese, one can o lots of things, an so on.

No An ault cannot know what is just precisely because

it is not a question of knowing. However, he or she muststill strive to think about whats best, an in a i ection r

which in the en only love can point the way.

As a consequencean I am going to stop aer this so

that we have time r iscussionone coul say that to be

just, once everything is sai an one, once the minimu

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o what is owed to everybody is recognized is to under-

stand that eeryone has the right to be recognized. won'tuse the word love again since this word can cause us to

mix up sentimental notions with other more serious ones

We'll use another word instead: reogniion This recognition must be innite. t is a recognition without limits soit's undamentally impossible to realize it in its entiretyit

is imossible to adjust. So now we can say that to be just isnot to claim to now what is just to be just is to thin that

there is still more just to be und or understood. To bejust is to thin that justice has yet to be done that it can

always demand more and can always go urther.

n the history o the Second World War those who werecalled the Righteous Ones [Le Jses], according to a desig-

nation o the Jewish tradition om the Bible were people

who not being Jewish saved Jews gave them shelter and

protected them against the laws that were at a certain mo

ment unortunately those o France and azi Germany

Why were those people called the Righteous Ones? Be-cause in spite o the law in spite o their natural anities

not being Jewish not having the lin o religion or com-

munity with Jews they nonetheless said to themselves

People cannot be persecuted because o their religion. t's

not a good reason. Actually it's the most unjust reason in

the world. t is totally unjust to say ou are being punished because you are Jewish Esimo Arab Malian orwhatever. This is quite simply what we call racism and

in this precise case racism as antiSemitism. So those who

were called the Righteous Ones were quite simly those

who new nothing about the peole they saved or tried tosave oen at great ris to their own lives.

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All those people knew was the llowing: these people

have the right to an innite recognition, without liit, including at the risk of y own life. a not saying that

this idea ust be the sole line of thought on the subject of

the just and the unjust. But do think the idea that wouldhave to doinate our thinking is that the just, this tie in

the sense of the quality or the idea of being st, is giving

to each person that which you dont even know he o sheis owed All you know is that he or she is a person an

that, as such, he or she has the right to an absolute respectYou ust think this r yourselves. o one will ever be

able to coe up to you and say This is what absolute

justice is f soeone could say that, perhaps we wouldn t

even have to bothe being just or unjust. We would only

have to apply, rathe indlessly, what would be a law.

Montreuil, October 1 , 006

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Questons and Answers

Which is ore ust, the le or the riht

]LN That's a very ood question f can ake a bit of a

caricature of thins, woud say that the riht and the e

are distinuished fro one another by two dirent vi

sions of ustice For the riht, ustice is iven by nature orby the natura order of thins The supposedy natura way

thins nction is ust There are, r exape, inequaities

in nature soe are physicay stroner and others have

ore oney, even if it is a itte dicult to attribute that

to nature Accordin to such thinkin, it is ony natural

that hey shoud reain stroner or wealthier and ustice

is done when these supposedy natura dirences are re-

spected That is why the riht is not vorably disposed to

the state ettin too bi The state shouldn't ipose too

any aws, shouldn't eislate too uch, since individuals

have to be abe to anae on their own As for those onthe le, ustice is not iven in a natura way, and so it has

to be ade And for that, we have to search r it

That, think, is how one coud direntiate these two

sides o the viewpoint of ustice To be sure, we could

be ore precise about the atter in fact, we woud have

to be To do that, we would need to distinuish betweentwo rihts and two es One riht wants the state to have

a very stron presence so hat it can ipeent what is

believed to be a natura law for exape, the ct of bein

French, born of parents who were theselves born in

France, who were theselves born of parents born inFrance, and so on This scenario invokes a sort of natural

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law, and so natural justie would be realized when those

born in this situation or, to use one of their expressions,good Frenh people," enjoyed a privieged treatment inomparison to others. The right that is alled liberal" is

something dirent. Similarly, there is a seond version of the le, one that

is pratially nonexistent today but that used to think it

knew of what means the mehanisms of the state and publi power ought to avail themselves to establish a new jus

tie through authoritarian hannels These two extreme

attitudes, on the right and on the le, both boil down to

the idea that justie an be shown. " To put it very simply,

either justie is in nature or it is in a poltial onguration

yet to be established. This brings us bak to the idea that

justie annot be shown" But there is still a fundamental

dierene between these two: r the le, justie is still to

be done. It i s rst neessary to gure out what it i s.

When I und out what this dialogue was alled, Ithought you'd use the word eqaliy a lot more than you

did In t you haven't used it muh, so I'd like to know

what you think of equality and justie.

JLN You're right, I've hardly used the word eqay. I

did use it at a irly entral plae in the disussion, butit's true that in what llowed, I talked mostly about thedirene that exists within equality. Your question also

intersets with the previous one regarding the direne

between the right and the le. Equality is the rst priniple

of justie. There is justie when, at the very least, there is

equality, when all individuals are onsidered equal. We

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could say ha he rs principle of jusice is equaliy and

ha he las principle of jusice is also equaliy. Tha iswha I wand o show you We are in a democraic counry which does no mean ha equaliy is assured bu idoes mean ha he principle of equaliy is recognized Iseemed o me imporan o show ha alhough i's easyenough o know wha equaliy demands in erms of he

basic condiions of li schooling or healh i is less easyo know wha equali y means in he conex of people whoare all diren and singular This is where hings ge dicul bu j usice demands ha we hink abou i We haveo keep in mind hough ha we canno raise he quesionof he equaliy of people in heir singulariy unil we have

hough abou he equaliy of people insofar as hey allhave a cerain number of needs ha have o be me in anequable way. Everyone mus have housing sheler andenough o ea Everyone has he righ o educaion work

healh and so on Aer hose needs are me anoher de-mand begins ha is no nonegaliarian bu ha mus exend as r as he d irene of each person one by oneHisorically bere jusice appeared in he sense ha weundersand i oday here had always been wha we mighcall a j usice of equaliy" Wha ha means is ha if youdid somehing wrong o someone hen hey had he righ

o do he same hing o you Bu his has o do wih aequaliy of srengh no a l egal or poliical equal iy [lga1-it de dit]

I have a quesion. A he beginning of e wor ld yousa id ha hings worked according o he law of he srong-

es o how did he ideas of equaliy of jusice and oinjusice come abou?

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JLN The beginning of he world i no exacly he ame

hing a he beginning of humaniy. A he beginning ofhe world i he jungle he grea primordial oup ou ofwhich we are almo ure abou hi he ronge

emerged. Bu he ronge are no necearily he mo

reilien. Dinoaur perhap diappeared becaue hey be

came oo big oo rong or perhap becaue volcanic ac iv

iy wa more powerful han hey were.A concern he beginning of humaniy hough of

coure we know nohing abou i. I i no by going o ee

The e r Fire, even if i i a good lm ha we will

real ly become informed abou he beginning of humaniy.

On he conrary we have o hink ha he beginning ofhumaniy coincide wih he beginning of equaliy and ha

he ene of juice i here raighaway indiociable from

men even if heyre alo in conic wi one anoher and

making war launching heir in bludgeon a one an

oher or barring each oher om huning he gazelle on

each oher erriory. I ill doen preven he word hmaniy om meaning recognizing oher a equal o o

el ve" even if oher hing are of coure going o cloud

he iue ince ome people are going o be phyically

ronger while oher are going o have more preige

One hing clearly how ha he r men were a en

gaged a we are wih he ju and he unju and ha i

language. Ever ince here have been human being here

ha been language. And could we no ay ha language

eally i he mo ju hing in he world For language o

arie r u o be able o alk o each oher here ha o be

muual recogniion. Language ignie ha we underandeach oher and o underand each oher here ha o be

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equality That' what I nd o exating ute] about your

quetion Yo baially aked how we eer ame to peakof the jut and of the unjut That' a ery intereting way

of thnking about it At the beginning of a book alled

The Politi, Aritotle, a Greek philoopher om the hird

entury BeE, write that man i a politial animal Hee it

not a matter of politi in the ene of the dierene be-

tween the ight and the le Rather, Aritotle i onernedwith politi in the ene that man i an animal who by

nature lie in oiety Why doe he lie in oiety? Ari

totle ay that man lie in oiety beaue he poee

language with whih to diu the jut and the unjut So

you'e jut gued out the rt hapter of Aritotle Poltic. Now you an buy the book and ead the ret

Within the realm of what i onidered unjut, an

thee be exeption that are atually jut? For example,

let ay I kill you If I kill you beaue I dont like you,

that unjut, but if I kill you beaue you tried to ki ll methen that j ut

LN Firt o, youre mitaken if you dont like me ! Im

only kidding What i implied by your quetion i pre

iely the reaon why I abandoned the word love beaue

it i dangerou and riky But all the ame, I think we

ould hae ued anothe word that play an important roler youth thee day, the word repect. Only, we hae to

pay attention to the way in whih the word i ued, for

repect thee day uually mean repet r the tronger"

So omeone might be repeted beaue he or he i a bulyWhen you ay if I dont like you," one aume, of oure,

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that it's a questin f persnal prerence, which is, aer

all, perctly nrmal At the very least, yu can't be rcedt like peple Aer all, that's what iendship means

Everyne has his r her iends, his r her clsest buddies,

which is cmpletely nrmal but it des shw us hw dif

cult it is t think and practice the recgnitin f the the

persn in terms f what I called lve a little while ag.

ut t cme back t yur questin, if I try t kill yu,

d yu have the right t kill me ut f selfdense ? This

is an extremely delicate questin One has t knw

whether it's necessary t respnd t rce with rce Of

curse, t dend neself against an aggressin, it is ust t

use rce, a degree f frce that is as equal as pssible tthat f the aggressr ut even if yu physically dend

yurself against an aggressin, that desn't mean that

yu're nw in a psitin t udge the ne wh was aggres-

sive tward yu Justice demands that yu dend yursef

and if yu have abslutely n ther means available t yu

but t kil the ther, ustice wil invlve yur ding that

ut if yu d have ther means at yur dispsal with

which t avert the aggressin altgether r at least t ver

pwer the aggressr, ustice demands hat yu use thse

means In ther wrds, ustice extends further than simpy

ding the same thing in return It asks why the aggressrdid what he r she did That is hw the great passage t

law is pened up, t the idea f law as the scial functin-

ing f a rm f ustice. Fr instance, that's hw the pas-

sage was made in antiquity frm a law f retaliatin t a

law that, rst and remst, prceeds by way f speech andby way f an assessment f what is really at stake, ne

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what it means, but that would be the subject of another

dialogue.

Are there just wars

]LN That's also a very good question, but a dicult one.

It is complex because war is a phenomenon that does not

concern individual people but rather states or institutions.One could s ay that all war is unjust because of the harm it

brings to people who didnt do anything wrong. To sim

plify things, well say that those people are caught within

the logic of the states waging war. In a certain sense, there

are practically no wars between states anymore, since there

are no longer states r whch one recognizes the right to

wage war, either to dend their own territory or to con

quer that belonging to others.

In a certain way, even though we still use the word

wr there are no longer wars today corresponding to that

rmer relation between states. Also, even if it was consid-ered j ust to wage war in the past, this always l, at least

partly, on people other than those who entered into the

war, on civilians. And there are wer and wer distinc

tions between civi lians and the mil itary today.

o what in the past could constitute a principle of justice

between statesthe right to wage war against each otherhas disappeared today. Almost all the wars currently

taking place in the world are justied by the idea of justice:

it's said that it is unjust r a particular country to be gov-

erned by a particular person or that it is an injustice r

ertain economic interests to be threatened by some or mo-nopolized by others. For instance, certain states have gone

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to war in Iraq r supposedly demorati priniples They

laim to dend justie, a justie higher than that of allstates In othe plaes, it's te opposite rebel groups or

revolutionaries ae ghting against an establi shed power in

the name of justie The ontemporary world is in a verypeuliar situation: war is being waged all over the plae in

the name of justie. So there are neither j ust wars nor un

just wars anymore For that matter, tere is no longer warin te strit sense of te term. We are now in a si tuation in

wih a sort of onfusion has been produed between an

idea of general justie (everyone has the right to") and an

idea of genealized ombat, a elation of res nd in

tis sense I tink one ould say that tere is no just wartoday

This question is not so easily settled, tough I am

struk that you would raise the issue, given how young

you are. For older people like me, it is a question weve

been asking ourselves regularly ove the past twenty years

or so. But an it really be the ase tat there are no justwars?" Tis was a partiularly pessing question, fo ex

ample, during te war in Kosovo Was tis war just or

unjust? This question an only be raised within analyses

that are no longer onduted in terms of states First, i

the Kosovo war, it was preisely not a state that was being

dealt wit but the Serbian provine of Kosovo. This think-ing is distint om the old logi of states and onerns ageneral morality or an ideal of a great demorati justie.

We an rst ask ourselves what onlusions are to be

drawn om situations like te one in Kosovo Seond, and

this question is more serious, we an also ask ourselvesabout tis grand idea of just and universal demoray

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Ho easily can it be distinguished om the economic,

strategic, and poli tica l interests of certain countries Whatyou said is very important, because today humanity has to

ask itself ho to develop an idea of justice that is obviously

no longer the j ustice of states that possess the right to agear against one another So this is one of those moments

hen j ustice demands of us that e retun to the la and

that attempts be made to rmulate las, in this case, lasr humanity There are several intenational tribunals that

judge ar crimes, since there are such things as laws of

ar, but these tribunals are not recognized by al l countries

It i s as i in France, you ere to say no, I rese to recog

nize the courts in Montreuil It can't nction like that

Q My question relates back to that of the young lady

Do the accepted denitions of the jut and the unut have

the same signicance in all languages, religions, and

philosophies?

JLN ou are asking too much of me, especially as con

cerns languages When you speak of languages, religions,

and philosophies, you are raising very dirent cases In a

religion, there is one justice that comes bere all the oth

ers, and that is the act of rendering hat is due to the god

of the religion If the idea of religion has a meaning, i t i sto give priority to the right la dit] of a god considered as

a person who is superior to humanity and to hom it is

just to give hi s due This can be done through prayers or

adoration, through a particular ay of li or a particular

ay of consecrating his li, and so on According to thisdenition, a religion cannot be just, but that doesn' t mean

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2011, god, justice, love, beauty

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