Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality presents a comprehensive account, and understanding, of Derrida’s approach to law and justice. Through a detailed reading of Derrida’s texts, Jacques de Ville contends that it is only by way of Derrida's broader deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence, and specifically in relation to the texts of Husserl, Levinas, Freud and Heidegger - that the reasoning behind his elusive works on law - including 'Before the Law', 'Declarations of Independence', 'Cogito and the History of Madness', Given Time, 'Force of Law' and Specters of Marx - can be grasped. Derrida is thus revealed as neither a postmodernist nor a critical political liberal; but as a radical revolutionary. It is Derrida’s notion of absolute hospitality that provides the basis of this argument. And, insofar as it gives expression to what Derrida understands by justice, it is this idea that de Ville elicits, and explains in relation to a range of contemporary ethical and political issues. A much needed account of Derrida's influential approach to law, Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality will be an invaluable resource for those with interests in legal theory, and for those with interests in the ethics and politics of deconstruction.
