LAUSR

Abstract This article examines how the interviews given by Derrida and Habermas, which followed the events of September 11, 2001, measured the radicalism of these attacks, which America had never known; in the process, the article explores how these interviews constituted an upheaval in the way we could analyze terrorist violence. Almost twenty years separate us from Derrida’s and Habermas’ reflections, and, since then the world has experienced, everywhere, an unprecedented wave of that type of violence. Therefore, this essay is also dedicated to questioning the posterity and pertinence of the two philosophers’ thoughts, to exploring how their analyses of the theologico-political character of the event, of the way in which the theories of the Enlightenment and the international institutions which derive from them have been tested—and still are today—can help us to see more clearly the violence we face.