On Friendship and politeness

Friendship as well as politeness would enjoin a double duty: would it not precisely be to avoid at all cost both the language of ritual and the language of duty? Duplicity, the being-double of this duty, cannot be addes up as 1+1=2 or a 1+2, but on the contrary, hollows itself out in an infinite abyss. A gesture “of friendship” or “of politeness” would be neither friendly not polite if it were purely and simply to obey a ritual order. But this duty to eschew the rule of ritualized decorum also demands that one go beyond the very language of duty. One must not be friendly or polite out of duty. We venture such a proposition, without a doubt, against Kant. Would there thus be a duty not to act according to duty: neither conformity to duty, as Kant would say (pflichtmässig), nor even out of duty (aus Pflicht)? […]

Doubtless it would be impolite to appear to be making a gesture, for example, in responding to an invitation, out of simple duty. It would also be unfriendly to respond to a friend out of duty. It would beno better to respond to an invitation or to a friend in conformity with duty pflichtmässig (rather than out of duty, aus Pflicht, and we cite once more the Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals of Kant, our exemplary “critical reader”, indebted as we are, as his heirs, to the great philosopher of critique). […] It is insufficient to say that the “ought” (il faut) of friendship, like that of politeness, must not be on the order of duty. It must not even take the form of  a rule, and certainly of a ritual rule. As soon as it yields to the necessity of applying the generality of a prescription to a single case, the gesture of friendship or of politeness would itself be destroyed. It would be defeated, beaten, and broken by the ordered rigidity of rules, or, put a different way, of norms. An axion from which it is not necesarry to conclude further that one can only accede to friendship or politeness (for example, in responding to an invitation, or indeed to the request or the question of a friend) by transgressing all rules and by going out against all duty. The counter-rule is still a rule. […]

Its rule is that one knows the rule but is never bound by it. It is impolite to be merely polite, to be polite out of politeness.  (7-9)

Jacques Derrida - On the name