I explore three challenges for the current dialogue between science and religion: the challenges from hermeneutics, feminisms, and postmodernisms. Hermeneutics, defined as the practice and theory of interpretation and understanding, not only deals with questions of interpreting texts and data but also examines the role and use of language in religion and in science, but it should not stop there. Results of the post‐Kuhnian discussion are used to exemplify a wider range of hermeneutical issues, such as the ideological potential of (...) scientific concepts, the dynamics of interdisciplinarity, and the significance of the socioeconomic situatedness of science and religion. Feminist research analyzes the consequences of the interplay of masculine, feminine, and gender typologies in religion and science. Examples from the history of science as well as current scientific conceptualizations indicate that beliefs in the inferiority of woman form part of our inherited scientific, religious, and metaphysical framework. It is argued that postmodernism in its most constructive form shares the best fruits of modernity, especially of the Enlightenment, while avoiding some of its most serious mistakes. In conclusion, reflecting on the three publics engaged in the dialogue between science and religion—academe, religious communities, and societies—I offer constructive suggestions and critical observations concerning the future of this dialogue. (shrink)

In this essay I present the postmodern phenomenological approach of Levinas, Derrida, and Marion to the problem of naming the unnameable God. For Levinas, God is never experienced directly but only as a third person whose infinity is testified to in the infinity of responsibility to the hungry. For Derrida, God remains the unnameable "wholly other" accessible only as the indeterminate term of pure reference in prayer. For Marion, God remains the object of "de-nomination" through praise. In all three, the (...) problem of naming the unnameable God is necessarily linked to how we relate to fellow human beings, to the hungry in Levinas, justice in Derrida, and charity in Marion. I also reflect on the merits and adequacy of phenomenology as such for speaking of divine transcendence. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida’s ‘Faith and Knowledge’ presents an account of the complex relationship between religion and technoscience that disrupts their traditional boundaries by uncovering both an irreducible faith at the heart of science and an irreducible mechanicity at the heart of religion. In this paper, I focus on the latter, arguing that emphases in Derrida’s text on both the ‘sources’ of religion and its interaction with modern technologies underemphasize the ways in which a general ‘mechanicity’ is present throughout religion. There is (...) no faith, I contend, that is not in some way materially constituted according to a mechanicity operative not only at its origin but continuously and in ever-changing forms, and not only in its interactions with other fields and institutions but within its own structure and daily life. By closely examining ‘Faith and Knowledge’—along with examples from his essay ‘A Silkworm of One’s Own’ and Michael Naas’s Miracle and Machine—I argue that more attention should be paid to the mechanisms, both human and non-human, that populate and perform religion in its factical life. Mechanical bodies and practices are enlisted by religious traditions in order that these traditions continue to exist by continually reconstituting themselves in, for example, the repetitive use of religious objects or the vocal recitation of creeds. Such mechanical acts of religion are not ultimately opposed to the faithful experience that is often taken to be the wellspring of religious life; on the contrary, they are the conditions for the possibility of this experience. (shrink)

In this essay I offer a reading of Fear and Trembling that responds to critiques of Kierkegaardian ethics as being, as Brand Blanshard claims, “morally nihilistic,” as Emmanuel Levinas contends, ethically violent, and, as Alasdair MacIntyre charges, simply irrational. I argue that by focusing on Isaac's singularity as the very condition for Abraham's “ordeal,” the book presents a story about responsible subjectivity. Rather than standing in competition with the relation to God, the relation to other people is, thus, inscribed into (...) this very relation. Fear and Trembling, I contend, advocates a bidirectional responsibility that is constitutive of subjectivity itself and, as such, actually resonates with certain aspects of Levinasian ethics. I conclude by suggesting that Abraham's ordeal is not due to the conflict between a nonreligious duty and the duty to God, but instead reflects a tension that is internal to the life of faith itself. (shrink)

The article explores 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 by (...) opening up to some form of the theological that is not reducible to 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. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The contemporary philosophical debate about "gift" brought into light above all by French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, brought about new and live discussions regarding what gift is and what is its nature. The present article analyses whether or not love can be regarded as a gift or, rather, follow the same problem showed by Derrida. According to him, every gift carries an internal contradiction and can never be and, therefore, will never be gift. A gift is impossible. (...) What is as gift to people, is, actually a commodity, an economical circle for Derrida. This article seeks to inquire whether can or cannot love follow the same gift pattern or if it, rather, builds his own path and follows its own internal logic. Is it possible to analyze love following on the footsteps of phenomenology? If love can be analyzed in a phenomenological fashion - reduction of love - then a new horizon will be opened. RESUMO O problema do debate filosófico contemporâneo acerca do dom, trazido à tona sobretudo pelos filósofos franceses Jacques Derrida e Jean-Luc Marion, trouxe novas e vivas discussõets sobre o que é e qual a sua natureza. O presente artigo analisa se o amor pode ser considerado como um dom ou se segue o mesmo problema sublinhado por Derrida. Segundo o autor, todo dom tem uma contradição interna e não pode ser considerado como tal. O que é dom para as pessoas, para Derrida é uma commodities, um círculo econômico. Em outras palavras, o dom é impossível. A análise que se faz neste artigo é se o amor segue este paradigma, portanto é impossível, ou se ele constrói um caminho próprio e segue sua própria lógica. É possível analisar o amor seguindo os passos da fenomenologia? Reduzindo o amor a fenômeno, então a análise se abre a novos horizontes. (shrink)

This essay considers the philosophical and theological significance of the phenomenological analysis of Christian faith offered by the early Heidegger. It shows, first, that Heidegger poses a radical and controversial challenge to philosophers by calling them to do without God in an unfettered pursuit of the question of being (through his ‘destruction of onto-theology’); and, second, that this exclusion nonetheless leaves room for a form of philosophical reflection upon the nature of faith and discourse concerning God, namely for a philosophy (...) of religion in a phenomenological mode (as exemplified most clearly in Heidegger’s 1920/21 lectures on the phenomenology of religious life). However, it is argued that the theological roots of Heidegger’s own phenomenological analyses subvert his frequently asserted claim concerning the incompatibility of Christian faith and philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

In this essay I present the postmodern phenomenological approach of Levinas, Derrida, and Marion to the problem of naming the unnameable God. For Levinas, God is never experienced directly but only as a third person whose infinity is testified to in the infinity of responsibility to the hungry. For Derrida, God remains the unnameable “wholly other” accessible only as the indeterminate term of pure reference in prayer. For Marion, God remains the object of “de-nomination” through praise. In all three, the (...) problem of naming the unnameable God is necessarily linked to how we relate to fellow human beings, to the hungry in Levinas, justice in Derrida, and charity in Marion. I also reflect on the merits and adequacy of phenomenology as such for speaking of divine transcendence. (shrink)

Marcel Mauss’s discussion of the gift relies on a paradox: although gift-giving is the foundational act of building a society, in order for a gift to be circulated, society must be always-already presupposed so that the gift can reach and be recognized by its destination. This article focuses on how this paradox has been addressed in anthropological and philosophical studies of the gift, by reviewing work by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Maurice Godelier and Jacques Derrida. By illuminating each position through the lens (...) of the Lacanian triad of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real, I first show how Lévi-Strauss and Godelier, respectively, focus on the symbolic and imaginary economies of the gift and how their perspectives are still bound by Mauss’s paradox in assuming the totality of society as the ultimate basis of gift exchange. I then read Derrida’s critique of Mauss as an attempt to explore the space for the aneconomic that grounds but simultaneously threatens the symbolic and imaginary economies of society. In doing so, I argue that the gift always includes the effaceable negativity and uncertainty that serve as the condition of (im)possibility for the social. (shrink)

Derrida made the case that the ‘pure gift’ is impossible. Because of the element of obligation and reciprocity involved, gift relationships are inevitably reduced to relationships of economic exchange. This position echoes the exchange theory of the social behaviourists, the cost-benefit analyses of evolutionary psychology, and other reductionist conjectures. In this paper, 18 written accounts of gifting are analysed using established phenomenological tools of reflection. It is shown that the dynamics of the gift relationship are complex and, specifically, reciprocation in (...) gifting is not akin to ‘repaying’ the gift, but should rather be seen as a response to the gift as an expression of affective affirmation, rendering this mutual. Gift giving is in the expressive realm rather than the practical . This was, intriguingly, known explicitly by Adam Smith. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida nam predlaga kritiko govorice, izhajajoč iz analize eksemplaričnega primera negativnih teologij, saj so prav te najbolj primerne za razmišljanje o mejah govorice. Tako dekonstrukcija kot negativna teologija priznavata, da nam »preostanek« naših izkušenj uhaja, zaradi česar nismo sposobni, da bi ta preostanek razpoznali v okvirih našega védenja in govorice. Kako lahko torej sploh govorimo o tistem »onkraj«, pa najsi gre za transcendentnost drugega ali pa za transcendentnost Boga? Enega od odgovorov na to lahko najdemo v Derridajevem eseju Sauf (...) le nom, v katerem komentira zapise Angela Silezija: S tem, ko se poskuša osvoboditi vsakršne govorice in pripovedi, začne negativna teologija vršiti kenozo govorice, in prav to predstavlja pogoj za dogodek, ki se ima pripetiti. Tako se znajdemo na paradoksalnem kraju, kjer se dekonstrukcija sreča z apofatičnim: pragmatična pot nedoločne vere kot take razkrije pojav absolutne singularnosti povsem Drugega. (shrink)