Derrida and the Danger of Religion (Journal of the American Academy of Religion), 2018. (original) (raw)

Jacques Derrida on the Secular as Theologico-Political

Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2016

The essay articulates Jacques Derrida’s view of the secular as the field of the socio-political. It focuses on his argument as to why religion and politics cannot be strictly separated as in the classical modern paradigm. By engaging Derrida’s later writings, this article shows that the secular domain cannot be purified of all faith and is best thought of as theologico-political, where ‘theologico-political’ indicates the interrelatedness and distinction between the theological and the political. The article’s central claim is that that by opening up to some form of the theological that is not reducible traditional conceptions, and to a faith that is not necessarily religious, Derrida provides significant resources for understanding the secular today in more complex and critical ways than usual approaches offer.

Jacques Derrida and the Theologico-political Complex

2015

This dissertation investigates the relationship between the theological and the political in the contemporary predicament by exploring the undervalued political thought of Jacques Derrida. It examines the complex interaction between religion and politics, especially as it relates to political authority and community by also paying attention to the conceptions of language and time at work in the political understandings of and normative responses to cultural and religious diversity. Through a close reading of Derrida’s work on language, time, religion and politics, I argue that his political thought offers significant resources to re-think the theologico-political relationship in more complex and critical ways, especially beyond the radical separation between religion and politics so common in the classical modern paradigm. The project’s central aim is two-fold: first, to offer a theoretical response to the empirical significance of religions in the public sphere by seeking to furthe...

Jacques Derrida's Religion With/Out Religion and the Im/Possibility of Religious Education

Religious Education, 2004

We both have been reading the work of Jacques Derrida for a while. Gert has especially been interested in the ethico-political potential of deconstruction. So, to paraphrase Derrida, analysing all the hidden assumptions implied in a variety of issues, including educational issues. It turns out that deconstruction is responsibility, and that deconstruction is justice. Along this line deconstruction can deepen our understanding of education as preparing for the incalculable. Siebren has had more difficulties to understand what precisely the philosophical and practical bearings of Derrida's writing could be for him as a pedagogue. The key entrance, the disclosure came with On the name followed by other books on religion by Derrida, and such impressing books like Caputo's The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida and De Vries's' Philosophy and the Return to Religion. He became aware of the apocalyptic, versus just apophatic or kataphatic forms of religiosity, and even the messianic (hope and future) tones of religiosity in Derrida. Bringing our experiences together our contention became that deconstruction is a way of doing the truth, keeping things authentic, of living in faith, impassioned by a desire for and the experience of the (impossible) possibility of the impossible, of the most impossible. In this essay we present the yield of our shared learning process in which we rethink religious education from an engagement of Derrida's forms of reasoning and analysing.

Religion as Response: Derrida's Responsibility to the Question of the Question

2016

fullest treatment of religion comes . In it he states, Of the origins and borders of the question as of the response. In this thesis I explore to and fro of question and response as a means for thinking through what is taking place in the event of religion. nd the way it engages with four thinkers who influence his exploration of religion as response: Heidegger, Kant, Levinas and Kierkegaard. The thesis reveals that, rather than approaching religion as a site to be excavated and examined as if we might get to its interests lie in the event of religion that would exceed thematisation. As such, he attempts a way to speak of religion without ever saying what religion is, for when it comes to religion everything tends to drop out of sight as soon as knowledge is framed in terms of mastery. For Derrida, knowledge is not opposed to faith, but rather something that is infused with faith as it participates in the fiduciary opening that performativity affords. This faith-filled reasoning ope...

"Messianicity Without Messianism": On the Place of Religion in the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida

Changing Societies & Personalities, 2020

This article examines Jacques Derrida's concept of "messianicité sans messianisme" ("messianicity without messianism") as an important example of rethinking the role and nature of religion in the late period of the work of the philosopher. Historical and philosophical analysis demonstrates that the appeal to the problem of messianism is inherent to many Jewish philosophers of the early twentieth century. They tried to develop a concept of time that would maintain full openness to the future and at the same time remember the past. Their work affected the interpretation of messianism in Derrida, because he developed his concept in discussion with Walter Benjamin and Emmanuel Lévinas. As the most general structure of the experience of justice, openness to the undecidable future, and respect for other messianicity do not exclude the religious manifestations of messianism, calling instead for the unceasing deconstruction of their fundamentalist claims.

From Habermas to Derrida: A Weak Form of Secular Universalism

Problemos

In this article, I argue that a universalistic thrust of secularism should not be located in a Habermasian deontological liberal principle of the priority of universal morality over particularistic ethical doctrines. I show that Habermas cannot plausibly demonstrate that this principle can be invariably applied across different cases. However, in order not to succumb to parochialism, the failure of the deontological model should not prompt us to give up on the search for a universalistic drive behind secularism. To this end, I advocate a Derridean critique of religion and secularism as an alternative solution. By deconstructing the Kantian dichotomy of faith vs. knowledge, Jacques Derrida shows that secularism is, paradoxically, both a concrete socio-political regime and a possibility for a radical change.

Phenomenology’s Rejects: Religion after Derrida’s Denegations

Open Theology, 2017

Religion, as well as any individuals’ volitionally chosen ‟worldview,” generally get conceived solely in affirmative terms of value. ‟Religion” has been conceptualized almost solely on the terms of axiology: as the experience of ‟the greatest” holiness (Otto), the purely valuable sacred (Eliade); the most ‟ultimate concern” (Tillich); the symbols accepted to order life (Geertz), or the binding of oneself to deep value (Müller). Yet there are limitations of such axiomatic thinking, limitations that can be exemplified through an interpretation of Derrida’s ‟globolatinization,” which he described as a system of thought that promotes a universalism of pseudo or petit-valuations, and punishes those resistant and inflexible to them in the name of toleration. This essay investigates what happens when this ‟axiomatic” register (i.e. a reduction to a set of values) gets displaced in order to conceptualize religion also in terms of the nonvaluable or ‟rejected.” Rejection entails the paradox ...