The Necessary Contamination of the Unconditional Ethics of Hospitality by Its Other: Sacrificing the Other in the Name of Others

This chapter is concerned with Derrida’s reading of Levinas’ ‘third’ in Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas. One of the main aims of this reading is to show the violence inherent in a face-to-face ethical encounter and the necessity of its ‘contamination’ by its other, namely, justice and politics, in order to mitigate this violence. The inevitable and at the same time necessary ‘betrayal’ or ‘perjury’ of the face-to-face ethical encounter by the presence of the third alongside the other makes it impossible to maintain ethics and justice or politics as two entirely separate spheres, as Levinas might have wished. The ethics of unconditional hospitality remains exposed to the same possibility of violence so that its contamination by politics and law becomes necessary.