How Not to Deconstruct a Dominican: Derrida on God and" Hypertruth" (original) (raw)
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Apophatic Elements in Derrida's Deconstruction
This paper explores how Derrida's concept of deconstruction (aiming at two targets: the logic of identity and the metaphysics of presence) challenges claims to final and unchangeable meaning and truth embedded in our language. While taking on board Derrida's own criticisms of negative theology and of apophaticism, it shows where and how his thought resonates with other elements of this theological tradition, beyond his critique.
This paper explores the philosophical ideas of Jacques Derrida and their application to theological hermeneutics, offering a deconstructive lens through which sacred texts and doctrines can be reimagined. It begins by outlining Derrida's intellectual biography and the core principles of deconstruction, such as différance and the critique of logocentrism, and demonstrates how these ideas challenge traditional approaches to interpretation. The discussion then examines how deconstruction enriches theological hermeneutics by embracing textual ambiguity, uncovering marginalized voices, and fostering interfaith and ethical dialogue. Despite critiques of Derrida's methods as promoting relativism or undermining theological certainty, this paper argues that deconstruction does not dismantle theology but deepens it, encouraging a dynamic, inclusive, and reflective engagement with faith. By applying Derrida's thought to doctrines, rituals, and contemporary movements like liberation theology, the paper highlights the transformative potential of deconstruction for modern theological scholarship. Through a multidisciplinary and multilingual approach, it seeks to provoke critical reflection and open new pathways for understanding the interplay between language, faith, and the sacred.
Impossible God: Derrida's Theology (review)
2006
content and Russian religious thought. This is a particularly strange omission coming from someone who is a specialist precisely in Russian religious thought. A second puzzle is that Kornblatt queries why Jews would convert specifically to Russian Orthodoxy, with its antisemitism, rather than another form of Christianity—as if antisemitism were not something that historically existed to an equal, if not greater, degree in Protestantism and Catholicism (though perhaps antisemitism is stronger in Russian Orthodoxy than in other Christian confessions today). Finally, students of comparative religion might wish for a deeper engagement with the theoretical literature on conversions. Despite any shortcomings, however, the book provides provocative insights into the nature of religious versus ethnic identity and the fluidity of multiple identities in a postmodern world, as well as deepening our understanding of Soviet Jewry. The book will be of interest to a broad range of students and sch...
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 ...
DERRIDA, DECONSTRUCTION AND MYSTICAL 'LANGUAGES OF UNSAYING'
Studies in Sprituality, 2006
This paper explores the relation between two very different ‘languages of unsaying’: the apophatic tradition of Christian mystical theology and the philosophy of deconstruction. Although they are produced within very different contexts, both discourses share a concern with the limits of language. Christian apophatic theologians begin from an awareness of the paradoxes involved in trying to speak of the transcendent and develop a complex form of writing which, in its very structure, preserves the intuition that God is unnameable and unknowable. Deconstruction begins from an awareness of an aporia between language and being and develops techniques for affirming this différance. Both discourses therefore perform a kind of ‘unsaying’.
AS YOU LIKE IT: THE DECONSTRUCTION OF JACQUES DERRIDA
As an introduction to Derridean thought and the agenda of deconstruction, one must truly be exposed to Derrida, even to the point of discomfort, in order to grasp the effect that he has had on modern theology. Too few overviews and summations of deconstruction actually interact with the broad body of Derrida’s speaking and writing, choosing instead to sum up the core themes rather tidily, while ignoring the impact of the personal style and approach that Derrida constantly maintained.