ABSTRACT
The Enlightenment conception of critical responsibility hinges not only on the impossible primacy of logic with respect to rhetoric but, more fundamentally, on the autonomy of the two categories vis-à-vis one another. The accusation that deconstruction reverses the categories by aestheticizing philosophy, for example, already supposes that they are distinct. The chapter contests that supposition through a reading of Jacques Derrida’s essay “Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy.” It demonstrates that the rhetorical function of language is essential to its logical function, not antithetical to or separable from it. The consequence of the analysis is that any democratic or emancipatory project that is founded on the classical separation of logic and rhetoric is vulnerable to the charge that it embodies unacknowledged political interests and stakes. This insight provokes a re-examination of the fundamental assumptions concerning ethics and politics, particularly with respect to political theories that are understood as examples of critique.
