Happy Bastille Day!

No time today except to rather inappropriately leave this behind:

"Immediately after describing the Christian 'reversal' or 'repression' in the mysterium tremendum, Patocka writes,

In the final analysis [of Christian mystery], the soul is not a relation to an object, however noble (like the Platonic Good) [which implies, therefore, "such as in Platonism where it is the relation to a transcendent Good that also governs the ideal order of the Greek polis of the Roman civitas"], but rather to a Person who sees into the soul without being accessible to view. What a Person is, that really is not adequately thematized in the Christian perspective.

"The inadequacy of this thematization comes to rest on the threshold of responsibility. It doesn't thematize what a responsible person is, that is, what it must be, namely this exposing of the soul to the gaze of another person, of a person as transcendent other, as an other who looks at me, but who looks without the-subject-who-says-I being able to reach that other, see her, hold her within the reach of my gaze. And let us not forget that in inadequate thematization of what responsibility is or must be is also an irresponsible thematization: not knowing, having neither sufficient knowledge or consciousness of what being responsible mean, is of itself a lack of responsibility. In order to be responsible it is necessary to respond to or answer to what being responsible means. For it if is true that the concept of responsibility has, throughout a history that is as consistent as it is continuous, always implied involvement in action, doing, a praxis, a decision that exceeds simple conscience or simple theoretical understanding, it is also true that the same concept requires a decision or responsible action to answer for itself consciously, that is, with knowledge of a thematics of what is done, of what action signifies, its causes, ends, etc. In debates concerning responsibiliy one must always take into account this original and irreducible complexity that links theoretical consciousness (which must also be a thetic or thematic consciousness) to 'practical' conscience (ethical, legal, political), if only to avoid the arrogance of so many 'clean consciences.' We must continually remind ourselves that some part of irresponsibility insinuates itself wherever one demands responsibility without sufficiently conceptualizing and thematically thinking what 'responsibility' means; that is to say everywhere."

Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret, tr. David Wills. 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. pp. 26-27.

Only one point to draw, among so many:

And let us not forget that in inadequate thematization of what responsibility is or must be is also an irresponsible thematization: not knowing, having neither sufficient knowledge or consciousness of what being responsible mean, is of itself a lack of responsibility. In order to be responsible it is necessary to respond to or answer to what being responsible means.

"And they in their turn will reply: 'Lord, when did we see you....?' "