This paper argues that Jacques Derrida provides a compelling rebuttal to a secularism that seeks to exclude religion from the public sphere. Political theorists such as Mark Lilla claim that religion is a source of violence, and so they conclude that religion and politics should be strictly separated. In my reading, Derrida’s work entails that a secularism of this kind is both impossible (because religion remains influential in the wake of secularization) and unnecessary (because religious traditions are diverse and multivalent). (...) Some attempt to contain the disruptive force of religion by excluding it from the public sphere, but Derrida argues that one may endure instability for the sake of something more important than safety. Although Derrida admits that religion is dangerous, he demonstrates that it is nevertheless an indispensable resource for political reflection. (shrink)

The tradition of negative theology has very deep roots which go back to the Late Greek Antiquity and the Early Christian period. Although Dionysius is usually regarded as “the Father” of negative theology, yet he has not initiated a revolution in the religious philosophy, but rather brought together various elements of thinking regarding the knowledge of God and built a system which is a synthesis of Platonic, neo-Platonic and Christian ideas. The aim of this article is to illustrate the views (...) of some more modern theologians on the nature, types and levels of apophaticism in the Greek Patristic tradition, trying to establish the role that negation can play in facilitating man’s attaining to the knowledge of God. (shrink)

The author proposes a neophenomenological interpretation of the late Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction, by bringing it into the light of (post)secular negative philosophy and indicating the application of its mystic/ecstatic implications on a media techno-vision basis. In this conceptualization, deconstruction/negation, as an ,epoche strategy, not only denudes (kenosis) cognition of the idolatry, characteristic of the traditional methaphysics of presence and the dogmatic religion, but also suspends “the source” itself (the Offenberkeit register), and thus, causes the experience of radical emptiness (chora) as (...) a condition of an opening to the Impossible. The author, by presenting the concept of negative image, demonstrates that technology visual media provide a suitable space (groundlessness) for Impossible to manifest itself in post-industrial culture. (shrink)

This is an essay on Kant's neglected late tract On a Recently Adopted Prominent Tone in Philosophy (RTP) and Derrida's oblique commentary on this work in his D'un ton apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie. The theme of the essay is metaphilosophical and considers issues concerning the nature of critical philosophy, fanaticism (Schwärmerei), and the use of religious tropes in philosophy. I am primarily interested in the ways in which RTP thematises the legitimacy of speaking in an exalted, quasi-religious tone apropos (...) of the authority of Reason as a self-legitimising capacity in philosophical speech. An important additional reason for taking a closer look at this text is because the late Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) took a great interest in this work of Kant’s and, indeed, emphasised, rightly I think, that despite its prima facie rhetorically charged, polemical nature this work—which might at first be taken to be merely a lampoon—is anything but insignificant in Kant’s œuvre. Derrida’s On a Recently Adopted Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy, originally published in 1983, is an oblique commentary on Kant’s RTP, and aims to expose to view the alleged hidden underpinnings of Kant’s polemic against exaltation or fanaticism (Schwärmerei) in philosophy. Derrida tries to show that Kant’s appeal for tonal moderation in philosophy, for a measured speech, which should rein in exalted modes of speech, is itself not neutral and rather fundamentally biased against an exalted, quasi-religious, manner of thought. It is evident that, as he himself notes early on in RTP, Kant is predisposed towards a more Aristotelian, academic kind of philosophy, which adopts a “proper” tone or pitch in philosophical debate, but Derrida claims that Kant himself raises his voice precisely in lampooning exalted thinkers. I am particularly interested in the extent to which Derrida’s critique manifests a fundamental misapprehension of the Kantian mode of moderating critique. By expounding this misapprehension, Kant’s own reasons for his philippic against religious or quasi-religious talk in philosophy are foregrounded, thus showing the nature of properly critical thought. At the same time, I shall show how Derrida underestimates the self-reflexivity, and hence properly critical, self-authorising mode of thinking, underlying his own oblique references to the adieu as a trope for quasi-transcendental intentionality towards the so-called ‘Other’. (shrink)

Through a re-articulation of Derridean différance, Bernard Stiegler claims that the human is defined by an originary default that displaces all psychic and social life onto technical supplements. His philosophy of technics re-articulates the logic of the supplement as concerning both human reflexivity and its supports, and the history of the différance of life itself. This has been criticised for reducing Derrida's work to a metaphysics of presence, and for instituting a humanism of the relation to the inorganic. By refuting (...) these claims, this article will show that Stiegler's doubling of différance enables him to articulate the human as constituted by both the individuation characteristic of ‘life’, and that of a technical, psychic, and collective individuation. Putting forward a reading of the logic of the trace in life, and emphasising the aspects of Leroi-Gourhan, Simondon, and Canguilhem that Stiegler uses in his reading of Derrida, I will demonstrate that the political stakes of adaption and adoption in his Noopolitics require this re-articulation of différance. Technics shapes the human future, arising from this differential mutation; marking the invention of the human as the site of the political. (shrink)

This paper examines Derrida's treatment of the quasi-transcendental structure of hospitality, particularly as it pertains to religious traditions, conceptions of human rights, and modern secularism. It begins by looking to the account Derrida presents in 'Hostipitality', focusing especially on his treatment of the work of Louis Massignon. It then proceeds to an exploration of Kant’s concept of cosmopolitanism and some of its contemporary descendants before returning to Derrida’s treatment of hospitality by way of his critique of this Kantian heritage. The (...) paper argues both that religious traditions exhibit (though, perhaps, often not explicitly) the kind of structures of openness to difference to which Derrida’s notion of hospitality refers, and that modern Western conceptions of secularism too easily preclude understanding and fostering those aspects of religious traditions which can contribute to more peaceful coexistence in pluralistic environments. (shrink)

This article aims to explore the philosophical approach to faith after deconstruction as manifested in the work of Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Luc Nancy. By taking the saturated phenomenon as its focus, the analysis seeks to demonstrate that whilst Marion’s thinking proves to be an innovative re-imagining of the possibilities of phenomenology, its problematic recourse to a supplementary hermeneutic means that saturation can never be adequately applied to faith without simultaneously compromising the excessive intuition upon which it relies. The article then (...) explores whether Nancy’s suggestion that saturation be re-framed as faith can offer a viable alternative approach. Whilst the post-phenomenological modality within which Nancy operates means it may be problematic to retain the term ‘saturation’ in the exact sense Marion gives it, it is argued that Nancy’s version of saturated faith allows us to approach the binary divide between philosophy and theology from a different direction, resulting in a vision of faith that cuts across theism and atheism, destabilising them from within. Although Nancy’s thought in this area certainly does nothing to respond to persistent questions surrounding the place of institutionalized religion within secular modernity, it nevertheless serves as a powerful tool for thinking the possibilities of faith in the twenty-first century. (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)

Trust has been widely investigated both theoretically and empirically. Whether thought of as the result of a calculation of costs/benefits, a shared identity, or a leap of faith, there always seems to be an ‘as if’ rhetorical gesture which is ultimately needed to explain how actors move from the base of trust to expectations of trust via suspending judgment on uncertainty and fear of vulnerability to betrayal and exploitation — the actors ultimately act ‘as if’ they do not fear uncertainty (...) and vulnerability to betrayal. Yet this ‘as if’ element has remained seriously under-theorised. Drawing on Derrida's deconstruction, I propose a way of thinking this ‘as if’ element of trust. I thus argue that the decision to trust occurs in a terrain of structural undecidability. The latter is thought of as the possibility condition of trust as well as the subject of trust and a sense of responsibility for this trust. The aporiatic nature of undecidability makes this trust an auto-immune trust which obeys the tripartite logic of ‘without’ which both negates and affirms trust. (shrink)

Popular filmic and literary stereotypes of teachers from Brodie and Chips to Keating and Schneebly have not only reflected a public desire for radically innovative and perverse teaching practices, but also created those paradigms in ways that are not always readily identifiable or traceable. This article seeks to analyse tensions between traditional institutional protocols and contemporary populist opinion on the role of the effective teacher. In doing so, the article takes Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society (1989) as a primary example (...) of those tensions and argues for a perverse ‘foolosophical’ view of pedagogical performance and a new appreciation for the necessity of ignorance in the classroom. Since ignorance and understanding are not taken as unambiguous antonyms, the article proposes that effective teaching and learning occur most effectively in the interstices between humility and hospitality. (shrink)

Durante más de 3000 años, las religiones patriarcales han simbolizado un sistema socio-político e ideológico, que dominó hasta hoy la historia universal. Sin embargo, desde hace por lo menos dos siglos, el pensamiento y la cultura vienen anunciando la muerte del Dios Padre e indagando el destino de la humanidad futura. El presente trabajo intentará mostrar por qué la Gran Diosa Madre simboliza el Otro Nombre, en el cual la subjetividad y la cultura han comenzado a pronunciarse.

The theme of the ‘deconstruction of Christianity’, which was selected for this special issue of Derrida Today, is one that arises not from the work of Derrida himself in the first instance but instead from that of Jean-L Nancy. Not only is this so but Derrida's ([2000] 2005) own view of the notion of the ‘deconstruction of Christianity’ seems, on the evidence available, to be at least open to quite a bit of interpretation given the ambiguous nature of some of (...) his comments on the question. Given this is so it might not be thought at all obvious why this theme should be selected for a special issue of Derrida Today and in this introduction I want to address both this possible disquiet and also provide some background to the arrival of concern with this topic. (shrink)

In his essay ‘The Deconstruction of Christianity’, Jean-Luc Nancy identifies Christianity with the heart of the West, thus following René Girard's claim that Christianity is the religion that exposes the workings of scapegoating and mimetic violence that drive most religions and cultures. However, in On Touching, Derrida distances himself from Nancy's project, and I argue that this is precisely because he is aware that a straightforward embrace of the deconstruction of Christianity is a ruse, as it will end up in (...) a Christian victory that ultimately overcomes deconstruction. The problem, however, is that a simple opposition to Christianity is also insufficient because it gets caught in a similar trap where Christianity ultimately wins (religion will always triumph, as Lacan says). The workings of this ‘trap’ will be explored through a reading of Derrida's essay ‘What is a Relevant Translation?’ and particularly his discussion of Shylock's situation in Merchant of Venice, where Derrida recognizes the ruse of Christianity in its ability to trump Shylock's literal translation of the law, but still he ‘insist[s] on the Christian dimension’. Why? To answer this question this paper turns to another: how do we survive Christianity? (shrink)

“I quite rightly pass for an atheist,” Jacques Derrida announces in Circumfession. Grace Jantzen's suggestion that the poststructuralist critique of modernity can also be trained on atheism helps us make sense of this playfully cryptic statement: although Derrida sympathizes with the “idea” of atheism, he is wary of the modern brand of atheism, with its insistence on rationally arranging—straightening out—religion. In this paper, I will argue that poststructural feminism, with its focus on embodied epistemology, offers a way to re-explain Derrida's (...) “I rightly pass,” and also to carry it forward. Poststructural feminist atheism leads us through Derrida to an embodied disbelief drawing on three dimensions of poststructural feminism: feminist epistemology and material feminism, relationality, and affect theory. (shrink)

I reply to seven objections to anthropomorphic theism: (1) That anthropomorphic theism is idolatrous. In reply I rely on the concept/conception distinction. (2) That faith requires certainty. In reply I argue that full belief may be based on probable inference. (3) That the truly infinite is incomprehensible. In reply I distinguish two senses of knowing what you mean. (4) "You Kant say that!" In reply I distinguish shallow from deep Kantianism. (5) "Shall Old Aquinas be forgot?" In reply I discuss (...) the simplicity of God. (6) What those garrulous mystics say about the ineffable. In reply I argue that mystics should be anthropomorphites. (7) Antitheodicy. In reply I distinguish the community of all agents from the community of finite frail agents. (shrink)

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 inquires into a paradoxical position held by the concept of ‘nature’ in Derrida's thought. While a pivotal part of his project of deconstruction is devoted to a critique of the metaphysical privileging of nature over its others (technics, culture, and so on), the same project also aims at dismantling the hierarchical binary opposition of man/animal. Insofar as the term ‘animal’ or ‘animality’ to a large extent overlaps with nature, these two strands of his thought appear to stand in (...) a significant tension with each other. I explore this conceptual tension by re-examining Derrida's early critique of the notion of nature – specifically in his reading of Rousseau – in conjunction with his later engagement with the question of animality. As my reading shows, deviating from his early approach, his later work indicates the way in which animal others (and, by extension, all living and non-living others) are indeed constituted by supplementarity and yet, in their irreplaceable singularity, exceed the very structure of supplementarity. This opens up a new way of conceiving nature, no longer as originary presence nor simply as an effect of supplementary play, but in terms of the aporetic relation between supplementarity and what may be termed ‘the unsupplementable’. (shrink)

Two themes run through Kierkegaard’s authorship. The first defines existential requirements for “becoming human”—reflective honesty and earnest humor. The second demarcates the religious phenomena of sobriety when human becoming suffers insurmountable collisions. Living with existential pathos teaches the difference between the either/or logic of collisions and the both/and logic of development and transitions. There is a difference between self-transformation and a progressive individual and social development. In the developmental mode self experiences gradual progression or adaptive evolution; in the self-transformative mode (...) self undergoes qualitative upsurges, leaps, gestalt switches, musical key transpositions of becoming in individual and social evolutions. Each individual in every epoch begins at the beginning. The author traces the movements of becoming in their parallel dimensions, drawing a fork through Kierkegaard’s writing. The first leads through the existence spheres of his pseudonymous authorship. The second intensifies the movement on the spot and in the moment. (shrink)

This is a phenomenological description of what is happening when we experience the death of another that interprets surviving or living on after such death by employing the term event. This term of art from phenomenology and hermeneutics is used to describe a disruptive and transformative experience of singularity. I maintain that the death of the other is an experience of an event because such death is unpredictable or without a horizon of expectation, excessive or without any principle of sufficient (...) reason, and transformative or a death of the world itself. (shrink)

Taking Jacques Derrida's multi-faceted notion of invention as a common denominator of on the one hand artistic practice and, on the other, the writing strategies of deconstruction, this article investigates the ethics of cinematic expression in a reading of two examples of twenty-first-century British filmmaking, Sally Potter's Yes and Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering. Both films deploy the demographically diverse cityscape of contemporary London as the stage for their respective geopolitical concerns – that is, post-9/11 in the case of Yes (...) and anxieties surrounding the EU expansion in the case Breaking and Entering – and set out to explore the destructive as well as the convivial possibilities of serendipitous encounters along cultural, social and gender divides. In so doing, they articulate a dual ontology, one which is situated in the reality of present-day politics and one which enacts the messianic structure of deconstruction. More importantly, they do so by reflecting on the transformative potential of invention, whether in the guise of literature, architecture, acrobatics, music or film. The first part of this article touches upon experimentalist features and themes in Yes and relates them to instances of Derridean ethics; the second part is more narrative-oriented and focuses on a parallel reading of Derrida's ‘On Cosmopolitanism’ and Minghella's portrayal of King's Cross, a north London area in transition, as a deconstruction of cosmopolitanism, that is an instantiation of the semi-concept of the city of refuge. (shrink)

In one of his essays on art, Dutch author and essayist Joost Zwagerman reflects on the work of South African artist Marlene Dumas. Zwagerman addresses in particular Dumas' My Mother Before She Became My Mother, painted 3 years after her mother died. In his reflections, Zwagerman proposes an interpretation of Dumas' work. He suggests that Dumas, in her art, does not accept the omnipotence of death. Maybe against better judgement, but Dumas keeps creating images that not only illustrate the desire (...) for meaning but also embody this desire. The image and the desire for meaning merge in Dumas' paintings. The painting itself becomes an autonomous 'desire machine', according to Zwagerman. In this article, a theological reading of Zwagerman's own posthumously published volume of poetry, 'Wakend over God', is presented, with a specific interest in art, death and God. The sacramental hermeneutics of Richard Kearney and the theopoetics of John Caputo are brought into the conversation to elicit the dimensions of faith and religion in Zwagerman's own 'desire machine'. (shrink)

Originally presented at Monash University, the two lectures offer a very accessible introduction to a number of the major aspects of the work of John D. Caputo, perhaps/probably the most original and consequential postmodern philosopher of religion. The first lecture contextualizes the place of Caputo’s thinking, contrasts his contribution to Mark C. Taylor’s “a/theology”, and examines Caputo’s postmodern figuration of the “Kingdom of God”. The second lecture focuses on Caputo’s philosophico-theological rendering of four key Derridean themes: justice, forgiveness, the gift, (...) and hospitality. Throughout the text, certain critical issues are raised, though the overall appraisal is one of affirmation and admiration. (shrink)

I would like to thank the following for their comments on earlier drafts: Yves Le Juen, Moya Lloyd, Iain MacKenzie, Shane O'Neill, and the two anonymous reviewers of Contemporary Political Theory.

The theologian Hugo Rahner argued that the homo ludens is a man of ‘Ernstheiterkeit’, a person who can smile under tears but also recognizes the gravity in all earthly cheerfulness. The primary aim of this study was to test the validity of this notion: Do homines ludentes exist? Two hundred sixty-three adult subjects were measured for seriousness and cheerfulness and playfulness. Results provided unequivocal support for Rahner's thesis. Numerous subjects scored high in both seriousness and cheerfulness thus confirming the existence (...) of homines ludentes. It was further found that these subjects were among those scoring highest in playfulness. Subjects scoring high in cheerfulness but low in seriousness were, however, even more closely associated with playfulness. The scores for homines ludentes did not differ from the rest of the subjects in the creative and dynamic facets of playfulness. The importance of developing empirical research to investigate hypotheses derived from non-scientific concepts is discussed. (shrink)

The theologian Hugo Rahner argued that the homo ludens is a man of ‘Ernstheiterkeit’, a person who can smile under tears but also recognizes the gravity in all earthly cheerfulness. The primary aim of this study was to test the validity of this notion: Do homines ludentes exist? Two hundred sixty-three adult subjects were measured for seriousness and cheerfulness and playfulness. Results provided unequivocal support for Rahner's thesis. Numerous subjects scored high in both seriousness and cheerfulness thus confirming the existence (...) of homines ludentes. It was further found that these subjects were among those scoring highest in playfulness. Subjects scoring high in cheerfulness but low in seriousness were, however, even more closely associated with playfulness. The scores for homines ludentes did not differ from the rest of the subjects in the creative and dynamic facets of playfulness. The importance of developing empirical research to investigate hypotheses derived from non-scientific concepts is discussed. (shrink)

In this paper I introduce John D. Caputo’s view of the divine and argue against his claim that we can preserve faith in God while dropping the idea of divine revelation. Despite Caputo’s apophatic point of view, he makes two claims with regard to God, or ’the divine’. First, he claims that we all have a divine call for justice and compassion in us. Secondly, he claims that God’s kingdom comes true if we make it happen and that this is (...) something we can hope for. In the first half of this paper I will argue that Caputo does not have to reject the idea of revelation if we understand revelation as involving an interpretation of the experiences with the divine. In the second half, I will claim that Caputo even has to allow for divine revelation if he wants to stick to his positive statements about God. We can only know that a desire is divine if we have criteria to distinguish the divine from the profane or the diabolic. Based on Richard Kearney and John Hick I argue that particular traditions offer such criteria and that they ultimately depend on what is taken to be God’s will. Likewise, to hope that the kingdom of God comes and to act in a way that realizes it presupposes that the agent believes this to be the way God wants him to live—and God’s will must have somehow been disclosed. (shrink)

Toward the end of his life, Derrida complained that he had been ‘read less and less well over almost twenty years, like my religion about which nobody understands anything'. Derrida, ever the trickster and shape-shifter, had outwitted his audience and even his ardent following by declaring himself religious. This seemed to oddly contradict the universal image of Derridean deconstruction as nihilistic, relativistic, subjectivistic and anti-religious. But Derrida disagrees with this impression of his work, claiming that deconstruction has always been affirmative (...) and has always delivered a yes to life. Deconstruction, according to the late Derrida, is a way of doing truth, of keeping things authentic and open to the possibility of transcendence. He wanted to unravel and deconstruct, not to arrive at nothing, but to affirm a sacred reality that he sensed was undeconstructible. This paper is concerned with the ‘other' Derrida that few seem to know. (shrink)

Toward the end of his life, Derrida complained that he had been ‘read less and less well over almost twenty years, like my religion about which nobody understands anything'. Derrida, ever the trickster and shape-shifter, had outwitted his audience and even his ardent following by declaring himself religious. This seemed to oddly contradict the universal image of Derridean deconstruction as nihilistic, relativistic, subjectivistic and anti-religious. But Derrida disagrees with this impression of his work, claiming that deconstruction has always been affirmative (...) and has always delivered a yes to life. Deconstruction, according to the late Derrida, is a way of doing truth, of keeping things authentic and open to the possibility of transcendence. He wanted to unravel and deconstruct, not to arrive at nothing, but to affirm a sacred reality that he sensed was undeconstructible. This paper is concerned with the ‘other' Derrida that few seem to know. (shrink)

This essay is a critique of Derrida's ethical works, using Camus's last novella The Fall as a critical sounding board. It argues that a danger pertains to any such highly self-reflexive position as Derrida's: a danger that Camus identified in The Fall, and staged in his character, Jean-Baptiste Clamence. Clamence is a successful Parisian lawyer, on top of his personal and professional life, whose equanimity is troubled after he is the unwitting passer-by as a young woman suicides one night on (...) the Seine. After this time, he comes to consider all his former virtues as concealed vices. He also becomes acutely aware of what he terms the 'duplicity' of human beings as such. In Part I, I consider how Clamence's fall from innocence can be read 'with' Derrida's deconstructive registration of a 'double bind' pertaining to our standing vis-á-vis what he terms 'logocentrism'. I argue that Derrida's is a post-lapsarian philosophy, which challenges all attempts to construct closed conceptual systems that would confer an epistemic and/or moral certitude upon their expositors. In Part II, I then enter into a more detailed exposition of Derrida's 'later' works broaching friendship, the invitation, the gift, and other 'matters moral'. I read these texts in the light of an examination of what is involved, for Camus, in being a 'judge-penitent' (what Clamence in The Fall calls his profession). I suggest that Derrida runs the risk of a certain 'puritanism of difference' in his moral reflections, which defend the aporetic formulation: 'tout autre est tout autre' [every other is every bit other] (The Gift of Death). The problem is that, while Derrida's position allows one (everywhere) to say what one is against, it problematizes any affirmative moral stance. Like Clamence, who assumes the right to judge everyone else because he has subjected himself to a severe penitence, I suggest that we have a right to wonder whether Derrida's deconstructive critique of metaphysics can validate only endless repetitions of itself. Key Words: Camus • Derrida • ethics • The Fall • innocence • 'puritanism of difference. (shrink)

Ong and Derrida are concerned with presence—for Ong the presence of the other; for Derrida the presence of the signified. These seemingly disparate epistemological meanings of 'presence' actually share some striking similarities, but differ about how reason should be figured, that is, what metaphors should be used to conceptualize reason. This disagreement is fundamentally about what Ong called 'analogues for intellect.' After describing the history of Ong's and Derrida's concept of presence, we indicate how the ethical and religious implications Ong (...) and Derrida draw from 'presence' proceed logically from the analogues for intellect that each assumes. We will conclude, first, that these implications reveal a conflict of traditions—philosophy and rhetoric—but we also indicate how Ong's own rhetoric may permit dialogue between traditions. (shrink)

This essay offers a broad historical exploration of the apeiron, the ancient principle of boundlessness and indeterminacy first brought to light by Anaximander in the 6th century BCE. Early Greek philosophy’s struggle with the apeiron and apeiron’s subsequent repression during the Renaissance and Enlightenment are noted. In the nineteenth century, apeiron is resurgent in science, art, and other fields—only to be repressed again with the early twentieth century rise of modernism. But with modernism's collapse into postmodernism, once again the apeiron (...) comes to the fore. The conclusion reached is that the apeiron can be effectively contained only by consciously acknowledging and accepting it as part of the process of individuation. (shrink)

Phenomenology is a well‐founded qualitative methodology that is frequently used by nurse researchers and considered of value when addressing research questions in nursing practice and nurse education. However, at present, nurse researchers using phenomenology tend to divide phenomenological methodology into the descriptive and interpretive formats. The nursing literature suggests that there is a deep divide between researchers following the methodological underpinnings and basic precepts pertaining to these two camps. If we are to reach a clearer understanding of the theory underlying (...) phenomenological methods it would be more helpful if we started to recognise that there are also important associations between transcendental and interpretive phenomenology. One such association is that a paradigm of movement exists that is not unique to transcendental and interpretive phenomenology but is common to them, as well as being inherent within a variety of fields of study. If we consider the universality of such imagery, looking to examples through parallel texts, we can obtain insights into phenomenology and its transposition into a workable scientific method that can be of use to the nurse researcher. (shrink)

In this paper reling on Agamben’s genealogical endeavour with regard to the concept of oath, I shall try to discuss how he renders the relation between language and the destituent power that will lead me to address ‘the new experience of the word’, namely, pistis (faith), which is placed at the centre of the messianic announcement. In order to open up this point, I will take into consideration Jacques Derrida’s arguments related to faith and language which appear to be one (...) of the main addressees of Agamben’s critical undertaking, even though he is never mentioned in Agamben’s later book The Sacrament of Language, in which he elaborates the contours of the relation between language and pistis. For Derrida the opening of language is based on an oath, a promise of saying ‘yes’ and thus, speaking is an act of faith. However, it is this functioning of language that has to be suspended according to Agamben, since it is this very dispositif that is connected to sovereign power. It is through this suspension the living being who has language may cease to be homo sacer before language and sovereign power. (shrink)

This article explores and extends Levinas’s ideas of singularity and community as multiplicity and argues that his identification of language and discourse as the means to create ethical communities provides tangible possibilities for rebuilding genuine democracy in a humane world. These ideas help us reimagine school and classroom as communities open to differences. They also give education the opportunity to support the emergence of the singular and the irreducible—infinite human beings.

Derrida's key concepts or pseudo-concepts of différance, the trace, and the undecidable suggest analogies to some of the most significant results of formal, symbolic logic and metalogic. As early as 1970, Derrida himself pointed out an analogy between his use of ‘undecidable’ and Gödel's incompleteness theorems, which demonstrate the existence, in any sufficiently complex and consistent system, of propositions which cannot be proven or disproven (i.e., decided) within that system itself. More recently, Graham Priest has interpreted différance as an instance (...) of the general metalogical procedure of diagonalisation. In this essay, I consider the extent to which Derrida's key terms and the essential operations of deconstruction can be formalised. I argue that, if formalisation is indeed the technique of writing par excellence, then the formalisation of deconstructive concepts tends to show how the auto-deconstruction of total systems arises from the problematic possibility of writing itself. For instance, since diagonalisation permits the ‘arithmetisation of syntax’ whereby a formal system is able to formulate claims about its own logico-grammatical properties, we can understand its potential to inscribe the undecidable within the systematicity of language as simply one instance of the potential of writing, in figuring itself, to render inscrutable the trace of its own origin. (shrink)

Seeking to contribute to the recent emergence of critical phenomenology by clarifying the relation between ontology and ethics, this article offers a new account of the sources of normativity in the context of Heidegger’s critique of technological enframing (Gestell) and Derrida’s political philosophy. I distinguish three levels of normativity in Heidegger and show how moving between the levels permits the critical deployment of the affirmation (Zusage) in response to being’s address. On this view, not only are humans constitutively claimed by (...) being, but the claim calls for its express hearing and critical elaboration. I then show how Derrida reconceives Heidegger’s normativity by developing a notion of double affirmation that communicates with key concepts from his moral-political work, such as the gift, the advance, and friendship. I conclude by indicating what double affirmation entails for critique today. (shrink)

Traditional epistemology is often said to have reached an impasse, and recent interest in virtue epistemology supposedly marks a turn away from philosophers’ traditional focus on problems of knowledge and truth. Yet that focus re-emerges, especially among ‘reliabilist’ virtue epistemologists. I argue for a more ‘responsibilist’ approach and for the importance of some of the quieter and gentler epistemic virtues, by contrast with the tough-minded ones that are currently popular in education. In particular I make a case for what I (...) here call ‘unknowing’: a positive state that is not the same as ignorance. I acknowledge the mystical connotations of the term, and suggest that there is a strong interest in unknowing in writers such as Plato, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. In their style of philosophising they also address the paradox of being knowing about unknowingness itself. (shrink)

Straipsnyje aptariama Jacques’o Derrida interpretuojama platoniškoji chōros sąvoka. Permąstydamas šį terminą, Derrida kvestionuoja ontoteologinį Dievybės įvaizdį ir jo įtaką religinei sferai, kuri neatsiejama nuo žinojimo. Pirmiausia apžvelgiama chōros sąvoka, kurią galėtume pavadinti logocentrinės tradicijos „svetimkūniu“. Taip pat analizuojami negatyviosios kalbos raiškos būdai: hiperousiologinis ir chorinis, parodant, jog Platono „Timajuje“ išryškėja dviejų apofatinio diskurso formų galimybė. Atskleidžiama, jog hiperousiologinė diskurso struktūra perteikia ontoteologinį hierarchinį tvarkos modelį, o chorinė forma turėtų būti siejama su modelių daugialypiškumo bei diskursų išsicentravimo galimybe. Galiausiai išryškinamas tikėjimo (...) vaidmens nevienareikšmiškumas šiose negatyviose formose. Priešingai nei hiperousiologinis kalbėjimo būdas, kuriame Dievybė apibūdinama kaip „Būtis anapus būties“, chorinis neatveria jokio pažintinio tikėjimo turinio, kita vertus, pats tikėjimas nepaneigiamas, net jeigu jis glaudžiai susijęs su ateizmu kaip abejone. Tokiu būdu tikėjimo ir ateizmo sąveika atsiskleidžia kaip nežinojimo momentas, kuris neatsiejamas nuo sąvokos chōra. (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)