Secrets of Responsibility

Jacques Derrida on the problem of secrecy, the first in a ten-seminar series on questions of responsibility. Delivered at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris during the 1991–92 academic year, Secrets of Responsibility is the first of ten seminars given by Jacques Derrida under the umbrella “Questions of Responsibility,” a cycle that includes Hospitality, Perjury and Pardon, Death Penalty, and The Beast and the Sovereign—each also published by the University of Chicago Press. In this seminar, Derrida asks a basic question—what is a secret?—which he then explores across scientific, technical, social, political, and religious domains. Over twelve sessions, we are treated to analyses of industrial, state, military, professional, and religious secrets as well as secret societies and secret police. Derrida also tackles secrecy in literary fiction (especially in Melville, James, Poe, and Baudelaire) and philosophical texts (including Freud, Kant, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Patočka, Nietzsche, Levinas, and others). The result is a set of profound and surprising insights delivered as only Derrida can.