(Ebook) Before the Law: The Complete Text of Préjugés by Jacques Derrida; Sandra Van Reenen; Jacques De Ville ISBN 9781517905514, 1517905516

(Ebook) Before the Law: The Complete Text of Préjugés by Jacques Derrida; Sandra Van Reenen; Jacques De Ville ISBN 9781517905514, 1517905516

Thinking judgment in relation to the work of Jean-François Lyotard“How to judge—Jean-François Lyotard?” It is from this initial question that one of France’s most heralded philosophers of the twentieth century begins his essay on the origin of the law, of judgment, and the work of his colleague Jean-François Lyotard. If Jacques Derrida begins with the termpréjugés, it is in part because of its impossibility to be rendered properly in other languages and also contain all its meanings: topre-judge, to judgebeforejudging, to hold prejudices, to know “how to judge,” and more still, to be already prejudged oneself. Striving to contain that which comes before the law, that is in front of the law and also prior to it, how to judge Jean-François Lyotard then becomes perhaps a beneficial attempt for Derrida to explore humanity’s rapport with judgment, origins, and naming. For how does one come to judge the author of theDifferend? How does one abstain from judgment to accept the termpréjugésas suspending judgment and at once as taking into account the impossibility ofspeakingbefore the law, prior to naming or judging? If this task indeed seems insurmountable, it is the site where Lyotard’s work itself is played out. Hence this sincere and intriguing essay presented by Jacques Derrida, published here for the first time in English.