This paper argues that Jacques Derrida and Meister Eckhart both construe love as a gift that is entirely free of economic exchange, and both conclude on this basis that love cannot be grasped or identified. In my reading, Eckhart and Derrida do not rule out consideration of one’s own well-being, but their accounts do entail that calculated self-protection is external to love. For this reason, they suggest, lovers should not expect to balance love against a prudential restraint: although both demands (...) are indelible, they function at different levels. A gift of this sort is ineluctably dangerous, but Derrida and Eckhart suggest that unsettling darkness must be endured in order to preserve the possibility of love. (shrink)

This article examines the impact of `exile' — as an individual or collective experience — on how human experience is theorized. The relationship between `exile' and thought is initially approached historically by looking at the period that Eric Dodds famously called the `age of anxiety' in late antiquity, i.e. the period between the emperors Aurelius and Constantine. A particular interest is in the dynamics of `empire' and the concomitant religious ferment as a context in which `exile', both experientially and symbolically, (...) appears to assume an overbearing significance. Plotinus' narrative of emanation and epistrophe as well as a group of narratives often classified as `Gnosticism' are juxtaposed as two radical examples of a wider spiritual trend at the time according to which `exile' could be considered constitutive of human experience. By way of an historical analogy, the insights gained from this study of late antiquity are then used to guide an analysis of the current, `restless' epoch, in which experiences of displacement and exile on a mass scale undermine traditional notions of belonging, thus reviving the gnostic vision of cosmic reality as an alien, exilic environment. The article concludes with a discussion of Jacques Derrida's work as an example of contemporary gnosticism, in which a `metaphysics of exile' is presented in the disguise of an `exile from metaphysics'. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe present paper examines the Eckhartian motives in Derrida's critique of Levinas’ concept of the “Other”. The focus is put on the Husserlian concept of alter ego that is at the core of the debate between Levinas and Derrida. Against Levinas, Derrida argues that alter is not an epithet that expresses a mere accidental modification of the ego, but an indicator of radical exteriority. Interestingly enough, this position is virtually identical with Meister Eckhart's interpretation of the famous proposition from Exodus (...) 3:14 “I am who I am”. Eckhart claims that the pronoun ego denotes the absolutely simple substance of the uncreated intellect, which can, by definition, never receive any accidental determination whatsoever. The reduplication of the “I am” is by no means tautological, but expresses the intra-divine dynamic of the Father who engenders the Son as his perfect equal and alter ego. This transcendental conception of egoity also governs the relationships between human beings: the ethical encou.. (shrink)