A right to existence?

My very post-structuralist (foucauldian, derridean, gramscian) partner and I got into a 'discussion' yesterday evening, one of those 'discussions' that quickly deviates from its initial setting to become something else. We had started talking about Hamas and the quick retreat of many commentators and officials from a pro-democracy position. For such commentators, democratic election was insufficient for legitimacy. Of course, one of the interesting puzzles in democratic theory is how to think the limits of democracy, but that's not where our 'discussion' led.

Instead, we went from the right of Hamas to govern to the right of Israel to exist to a right to exist per se. And, I found myself taking the position that there is no right to exist; that nothing has a right to exist.

Why? It seems to me that the fact of existence is morally neutral, that it is a matter of ontology. And, to say that existence is a right is to make a kind of category mistake (one that I think Hobbes makes): one takes the fact of persistence, that what exists may strive to keep existing, to mean a right of persistence.

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A recommend

Simon Critchley is interviewed today by Mark Thwaite at the rather peerless ReadySteadyBook. An excerpt below the fold:

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