Democracy: regulative Idea or a-venir

Derrida gathers his reservations with respect to the regulative idea into a set of three. The first two concern the question of possibility. The Kantian notion remains, claims Derrida, within the horizon of possibility, even if it is infinitely deferred. He says the regulative idea “partakes of what would still fall, at the end of an infinite history, into the realm of the possible, of what is virtual or potential, of what is within the power of someone, some “I can,” to reach, in theory, and in a form that is not wholly freed from all teleological ends” (p.84). If the future is subject to the law of différance and if différance is meant to signify both difference and deferral, it is certainly not meant to signify this Kantian deferral, or at least democracy would not be deferred according to an infinite line of time.

If possibility presents a problem for thinking the a-venir, then so does impossibility. Derrida's is not a dialectical thinking and the negation of possibility through impossibility moves one no closer to the absolute future of the to-come – both retain a relation to the “I can” (or, as the case may be, the “I can’t”) of the Kantian subject. Derrida appeals instead to a notion of the "im-possible." The im-possible would be that which subtracts itself from a dialectical relation. It would be, for Derrida, that space (as in the spacing of différance) between the possible and the impossible.

The impossible is not privative. It is not the inaccessible, and it is not what I can indefinitely defer: it announces itself; it precedes me, swoops down upon and seizes me here and now in a nonvirtualizable way, in an actuality and not potentiality. It comes upon me from on high, in the form of an injunction that does not simply wait on the horizon, that I do not see coming, that never leaves me in peace and never lets me put it off until later. Such an urgency cannot be idealized any more than the other as other can. This im-possible is thus not a (regulative) idea or ideal. It is what is most undeniably real. And sensible. Like the other. Like the
irreducible and nonappropriable différance of the other
(p. 84).

The im-possible, in short, is the other in a profoundly Levinasian sense. The proximity of the category of the other to the fact of the neighbour (i.e. the one who demands my responsibility) is a little less clear in Derrida than in Levinas, but the proximity remains. The future as a-venir comes upon me much like the neighbour does: as an unexpected arrival that places a demand on me, a demand to which I must respond here and now. Kant’s thought of the regulative idea as an infinitely deferred possibility of the sensible appropriation of the supersensible would thus differ form Derrida’s. While différance – thus, deferral – is irreducible in terms of presence, what is not deferred is the immediacy of the demand (e.g. for democracy). It cannot be idealized or made into a model that we might approximate. The border between the sensible and the supersensible would be problematized in Derrida; and the stability of such limits undone. The a-venir “swoops down” in an undecidable moment. (This presents an interesting reversal of Benjamin’s concept of history: where for Benjamin the past “flashes up” (cf. Theses V & VI), for Derrida the future “swoops down”).

The second reservation Derrida has with respect to the regulative idea concerns the means of its implementation. For Kant the approximation of the regulative idea (e.g. the kingdom of ends) proceeds according to a rule: the moral law. For Derrida, on the other hand, the availability of a law annuls any real decision a priori: “It is simply deployed, without delay, presently, with the automatism attributed to machines. There is no longer any place for justice or responsibility (whether juridical, political, or ethical) (p.85). To appeal to law as a condition for justice or responsibility would be to circumvent the différance which is the condition for both.

The third reservation Derrida offers concerns the philosophical maze of the Kantian architectonic. To simply take up the theme of the regulative idea into a new discourse without doing justice to the entire Kantian system would be irresponsible. I don’t blame him for this reservation.