Habermas and Derrida also share an interest in how the rest of the world has been affected by and has responded to the attack. Indeed, it is through the symbolic force of their acts, as Habermas suggests, that they incite terror and, thereby, inflict their wounds.ģ. They do not seek to overthrow but to destabilize the systems of countries such as the U.S. This is part of the power wielded by terrorists. Derrida writes, 'there is traumatism with no possible work of mourning when the evil comes from the possibility to come off the worst, from the repetition to come-though worse' (97). Since there is no way to know when or where a terrorist attack might occur, a sense of impending doom threatens us just as it keeps us from coming to grips with terror already faced. We are not only unable appropriately to name and, in doing so, to grasp the significance of 9/11, but we must also live in a world where terrorist attacks hinder our ability to carry on our lives. For Derrida, the way the attack has been named-'as a date and nothing more' (85)-signifies that 'we perhaps have no concept and no meaning available to us to name in any other way this 'thing' that has just happened, this supposed 'event'' (86).

He explains, however, that the attack on the World Trade Center was itself unprecedented because of 'the symbolic force of the targets struck' (28).

With her initial question, for instance, she asks each to explain the significance of 9/11 as an 'event.' Habermas, for his part, offers a historical analogy, suggesting that 9/11 is similar to the outbreak of World War I in that it 'signaled the end of a peaceful and, in retrospect, somewhat unsuspecting era' (26). The terms of Borradori's questions reflect her broader aim of understanding how Habermas and Derrida situate 9/11 in a cultural, historical, and philosophical context.

Philosophers view on terrorism