The Enigma Of Validity: Speculations on the Last Paragraph of Donner Le Temps II
The Enigma Of Validity: Speculations on the Last Paragraph of Donner Le Temps II

Summary/Abstract: In the final paragraph of the concluding session of the seminar Donner le temps II, Jacques Derrida enunciates—but does not develop—what I shall term the “enigma of validity.” Following a close reading of Heidegger’s On Time and Being, the session abruptly ends with a promise to analyze a certain transition: from the es gibt (“there is,” “il y a”) to the es gilt (“it is valid,” “il vaut,” and “il doit”). This suggest that a set of questions organized thematically around the gift—prominent among these is the idea of a Being that is there and gives itself as a gift—needs a supplement. The enigma of validity pertains to the emergence of a normative vocabulary divided into value, obligation, and interest. In this paper, I will trace some of the clues Derrida leaves in Donner le temps II and other texts, arguing that the “mystery of normativity” is bound to the ambiguous status of legality within metaphysics. Validity, as the mystical foundation of normativity, functions simultaneously as a metaphysical shortcut to secure self-reference in philosophical thought and as the impossibility of any foundational grounding (Grundlegung).

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