20. Oktober [1917]
"Es gibt zwei menschliche Hauptsünden, aus welchen sich alle andern ableiten: Ungeduld und Lässigkeit. Wegen der Ungeduld sind sie aus dem Paradiese vertrieben worden, wegen der Lässigkeit kehren sie nicht zurück. Vielleicht aber gibt es nur eine Hauptsünde: die Ungeduld. Wegen der Ungeduld sind sie vertrieben worden, wegen der Ungeduld kehren sie nicht zurück."
If it is, as Kafka writes, because of their impatience that "they" were expelled from paradise, and if it is because of their impatience that they don't return, Jacques Derrida's work could be described as a practical guide on how to step onto a path to paradise: His work is an untiring exercise de la patience, an almost infinitely patient listening, reading and writing. In order to be just, no question, no differentiation, no fold, no detail can be skipped – and no day. Patience cannot be deferred until tomorrow.
Of the four Rabbis who entered Pardes, and among whose voices Derrida "mingles" his, as he writes in "Circumfession", one saw and died, the second saw and lost his reason, and the third became an apostate. Only one of them "entered in peace and came out in peace." In Kafka's thought, he would have been the most patient one. The path of patience then is not without danger, quite to the contrary. As the stories surrounding the four who entered Pardes show, those who embark upon that path are confronted with numerous obstacles, including terrifying doorkeepers and deadly threats. On the other hand, avoiding the obstacles and dangers is not tantamount to a practice of patience: In Kafka's story about the man from the countryside who waits for years in front of an entrance and its doorkeeper, the man is not described as "patient". One cannot wait to take the path of patience – that might be its paradoxical law. Patience cannot be deferred until a more promising day arrives.
The day before his fragment on patience and paradise, Kafka wrote: "All human errors are impatience, an untimely breaking-off of the methodical, an apparent hammering-in of the apparent matter (Sache)." Jacques Derrida's work proves that patience constitutes the very core of the "methodical" approach to the "matter". For Jacques Derrida, that "matter" is nothing less than justice. The matter is justice, because we need to be vigilant, every day, on how justice is defined, practiced, remembered, and that means all too often, denied. Justice, too, cannot be deferred.