Derrida and "Hospitality"

The term "hospitality," in conjunction with friendship, cosmopolitanism, forgiveness, etc, frequently appears in Derrida's works in the nineties and constitutes a discourse of the other. This discourse on the one hand revisits the cultural heritages of hospitality, and on the other hand, critiques the current trend of exclusionism in Europe. To study Derrida's thinking on hospitality, this paper at first traces Derrida's exploration of this cultural memory, and then underscores his "inheritance" of the Enlightenment to examine his discourse of hospitality in the context of globalization. For Derrida, hospitality, in contrast to Kant's "tolerance," is the unconditional welcome to the other; it unconditionally welcomes the infinite possibilities brought by the other, including the risks of danger. From the perspective of unconditional hospitality, Derrida points out the limits in Kant's cosmopolitanism, and calls for an other, new cosmopolitanism to come.