Abstract

The chapter examines the phenomenological underpinnings of Politics of Friendship. By reconstructing some of the key arguments in Derrida’s early reading of Husserl, it shows how his later thinking of politics and friendship flows from the specific critique of presence developed in these formative works. This critique had been aimed against what Derrida had taken to be phenomenology’s metaphysical foundations, but it remained faithful to many of Husserl’s own positions, notably on the experiences of time and the other. The chapter thus offers an assessment of Derrida’s continuing ‘fidelity’ to Husserl in his later political thought.