The Right to Hospitality

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop, on the basis of the comparison that Derrida engages with Kant on hospitality, some remarks on Kant’s concept of reason, and to show how the “right to visit”, in which space Kant defines cosmopolitan right, implies a radical openness to the needs of the other, which Kant places at the heart of the concept of reason and which decides, therefore, the way each of us, as a man, can be said to be rational. Rationality and hospitality are placed on the same edge in the reflection of J. Derrida, who radicalizes the link between responsibility and practical reason and transforms the Kantian ‘Du sollst, also kannst du auch’ into an aporia, a term that does not indicate an impasse but fidelity to two irreconcilable and yet inseparable imperatives: the law of single and the law of the majority.