Upload
graca-nunes
View
219
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
1/134
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
2/134
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
3/134
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
4/134
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
vii
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
5/134
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
6/134
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
7/134
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
8/134
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
9/134
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
4
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
10/134
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
5
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
11/134
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.
6
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
12/134
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
13/134
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
14/134
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
9
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
15/134
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
0
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
16/134
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
17/134
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
18/134
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
19/134
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
20/134
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
5
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
21/134
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
6
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
22/134
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
23/134
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
24/134
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
9
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
25/134
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
0
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
26/134
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
27/134
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
22
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
28/134
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
29/134
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
24
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
30/134
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
25
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
31/134
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
32/134
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
2
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
33/134
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
2
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
34/134
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
9
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
35/134
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,
0
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
36/134
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
37/134
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
38/134
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
39/134
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
40/134
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
5
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
41/134
S C
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
6
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
42/134
S C
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
43/134
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
44/134
S C
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
39
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
45/134
S C
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
40
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
46/134
S C
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
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
47/134
S C
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
42
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
48/134
S C
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
4
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
49/134
S C
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
44
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
50/134
S C
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
45
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
51/134
S C
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
46
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
52/134
S C
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
4
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
53/134
S C
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.
4
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
54/134
S C
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
49
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
55/134
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
50
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
56/134
S C
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
5
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
57/134
S C
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?
5
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
58/134
S C
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
5
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
59/134
S C
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,
54
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
60/134
S C
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
55
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
61/134
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
62/134
S C
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
5
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
63/134
S C
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
5
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
64/134
S C
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
59
7/27/2019 2011, God, Justice, Love, Beauty
65/1