The ethics of hospitality by Jacques Derrida is perhaps the most important and extensive attempt of philosophical reflection to critically respond to the increasing hostility of European governments towards specific categories of foreigners, such as refugees and immigrants. Derrida argues that the notion of hospitality is governed by an unresolved "aporia": on the one hand, there is the "unconditional law of unlimited hospitality," which commands the unconditional reception of the other, that is, the provision of hospitality to the stranger without conditions, restrictions, and exchanges; on the other hand, there are the "conditional" laws of hospitality which, while establishing a right and a duty in hospitality, at the same time subject their fulfillment to political, legal, and ethical conditions.

Although the two concepts of hospitality are heterogeneous and cannot be reduced to each other, they simultaneously invoke each other. This is because, on the one hand, political or ethical action needs to relate to an unconditional or infinite responsibility in order not to be reduced to the controversial demands of the respective historical, social, and political context. On the other hand, the laws of a right and a duty in hospitality are necessary in order to establish the conditions that will allow hospitality to become real and not remain a pious wish or utopia. This asymmetry between unconditional and conditional hospitality maintains hospitality as a constant stake, since every specific event of receiving the other can only fall short of the requirements of the unconditional law of unlimited hospitality.

Derrida's views on hospitality are critically examined in this book in light of the philosophical thought of Emmanuel Levinas, Immanuel Kant, and René Serres, among others. Among other things, the dialectical distinction that Derrida establishes, at an initial level, between unconditional and conditional hospitality is problematized, as well as his use of terms such as "pure," "real," "true," or "absolute" hospitality, terms that Derrida's own deconstruction has put into question.