ABSTRACT
Sometime in the second half of the 18th century, philosophy begins to consider the law in a new way: to consider the law in relation to its other, to consider the law “in (its) difference.” This way of considering the law is new not in that the law is related to another but in that this relation, and hence the other of the law, are no longer understood in terms of its genesis. Since the 18th century, philosophy has engaged in this reflection on the law in its difference. However, it remains an open question how the philosophical reflection on the law in its difference relates to the performance of the law or within the law itself. To think the political character of the law means to think, against systems theory and reifications of “the political” alike, the internal, constitutive undecidability of its very mode of being.
