“Why this language, which does not
fortuitously resemble that of negative theology? How to justify the choice of negative form (aporia) to designate a
duty that, through the impossible or the impracticable, nonetheless announces
itself in an affirmative fashion? Because one must avoid good conscience at all
costs. Not only good conscience as the grimace of an indulgent vulgarity, but
quite simply the assured form of self-consciousness: good conscience as
subjective certainty is incompatible with the absolute risk that every promise,
every engagement, and every responsible decision—if there are such—must run. To
protect the decision or the responsibility by knowledge, by some theoretical
assurance, or by the certainty of being right, of being on the side of science,
of consciousness or of reason, is to transform this experience into the
deployment of a program, into a technical application of a rule or a norm, or
into the subsumption of a determined ‘case.’”
--Jacques
Derrida, Aporias, 19.