Copyright © 2000, Glenn Mason-Riseborough - where what I mean by "copyright" is spelled out eloquently by Peter Suber on his Copyright page (and taking it as read, in the context, that where Suber refers to his documents, pages, and site I am referring to my documents, pages, and site).

However, whereas Suber is a professional academic, I am not. Before reading any further, read my disclaimer and warning on my My Writings page.

Back to My Home Page | Back to What is Philosophy? (in a nutshell) | Back to My Writings

Theology without a Metaphysics of Presence

Glenn Mason-Riseborough (14/11/2000)

 

1.0 Introduction

Trying to narrow down and identify exactly what I am wanting to write about here has been somewhat difficult.  I am wanting to investigate Jacques Derrida’s philosophy, to try to get a better idea of how he sees religion, and whether his philosophy is compatible with theism.  Yet this is made difficult because Derrida claimed in 1989-90 that nobody, including his mother, knew anything about his religion.[1]  Even if that was true back then (and arguably Derrida was merely trying to appear overly enigmatic and mysterious, for rhetorical reasons), it is certainly less true now, given that in the past ten years since Derrida’s claim, Derrida has written a number of books and articles on precisely this subject.[2]  In addition, there have also been numerous secondary texts published on Derrida and religion.[3]  Assuming that some of these texts give at least some insights into Derrida’s views on religion, then we are now in a position to know at least something about his religion.  And of course, even if this is not true, and the past ten years have produced nothing but hot wind and wasted trees with respect to Derrida’s religious views, then perhaps I can be consoled by Derrida’s words on the impossible, in which he recommends himself to “only write here what is impossible, that ought to be the impossible-rule.”[4]  Taking this to heart then, in what follows I will write on Derrida’s Religion.

First of all, a word about Derrida’s style of writing.  Derrida’s writing on religion is writing on religion in his own fashion.  Unlike many philosophical texts on religion in the analytic tradition, we do not get in Derrida any clearly structured and numbered proofs of God’s existence or non-existence.  Neither do we get any clear descriptions of God’s nature, or any clear analysis of the varieties of conceptualisations of God on offer.  That is, we do not see Derrida engaging in discourse with analytic philosophers of religion like Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, or J. L. Mackie.  Instead we see him more in tune with thinkers like Meister Eckhart, Søren Kierkegaard, and Martin Heidegger, though even drawing out these connections requires effort.  And unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on one’s perspective) we get a lot of texts by Derrida saying a lot about a lot, but (at least from my perspective) not a lot of text saying what I would like it to say (in terms of clear, precise prose, defending one position in opposition to others).  Sometimes it seems to me that Derrida could have said what he had to say in far fewer words, and with far greater clarity.  To Derridise this, Derrida’s texts say a lot, and they also say not a lot.  And I have to say in advance that this frustrates me a great deal.  But this is in accordance with Derrida’s views on language and metaphysics, so it should come as no surprise.

My task in this essay, then, will be to draw out whether it is possible for one to hold any coherent theological view that is also consistent with Derrida’s philosophy (and is consistent with Derrida saying of himself that he “rightly pass[es] for an atheist.”[5]).  In particular, I will be examining the ideas of John D. Caputo and Kevin Hart, who both answer yes to this question, though in different ways.  It is the opinion of Caputo that while Derrida is not doing negative theology, it is still possible for some negative theologians to be engaging in deconstructive projects (negative theology, according to Caputo, is a form of deconstruction, not vice versa as has been claimed by some).  Hart disagrees with this, although he thinks that one would not necessarily be forced into atheism even if one accepted Derrida’s theory.

 

2.0 Negative Theology, Différance and Deconstruction

We can see early on in Jacques Derrida’s thinking that there have always been, at least implicitly, affinities with, and an interest in, religious discussion.  For example, shortly after Derrida had presented his original 1968 paper “Différance,” Brice Parain responded with: “I begin to wonder what this différance might be since, in short, it is the source of everything and one cannot know it: it is the [g]od of negative theology.”[6] [7]  Derrida’s response was “it is and it is not” – so much for simply yes or no answers.  He then continued with: “it is above all not … nothing in such a discourse [the paper he had just read] strikes me as more alien to negative theology.  And yet, as often happens, this infinite distance is also an infinitesimal distance.  That is why negative theology fascinates me … negative theology is also an excessive practice of language”[8].  But, presumably, we should not leave things here in this apparently contradictory state, and presumably Derrida is not meaning to suggest that différance both is and is not the god of negative theology in the same sense.  Presumably, all that Derrida means, once we strip it of its paradoxical flair, is that différance and the god of negative theology hold some attributes in common, but not others.  Our task is then to flesh out this claim into a coherent story that shows how, according to Derrida, différance has some similarity with the god of negative theology, but in other senses it is different (and similarly the relationship between deconstruction and negative theology).  As Caputo tells us, the reason for it not being God is relatively simple, though the reason for it being God is a bit more complex.  Thus, my first task will be to examine and unravel this connection between différance and negative theology.  I will firstly look at negative theology, secondly looking at Derrida’s account of différance and deconstruction, and thirdly looking at their relationship.

 

2.1 Negative Theology

Firstly, then, what is negative theology?  Essentially, it is the project in which one looks at various positive theologies – claims about the nature of God – and finds them all inadequate.  It is about analysing various concepts of God to show how they are all insufficient articulations of the nature of God.  A person who does negative theology is a sceptic, not with respect to God, but with respect to our ability to express or understand God’s nature.  His or her response is, when confronted with a claim about God’s nature, to say God is “not this, not that,” (“neither-nor”) and often one doing negative theology will resort to producing lists of what God is not.  At heart, he or she wants to say that language is always inadequate to completely articulate the full nature of God.  He or she will claim that God cannot be conceptualised, and often this person will also report mystical experiences.  We might wonder here to what extent negative theology gets away from conceptualisations, since we might say, pithily, that the God-concept of negative theology is that God cannot be conceptualised with necessary and sufficient conditions.  Sure, it is not a fully fleshed out concept, but neither is it completely lacking in substance.  What is more, this inconceptualisable, hidden God is still conceived to exist, or, as Caputo puts it more grandiosely, negative theology “affirm[s] that God hyperexists, or exists-by-not-existing, that God is really real or hyper-real or sur-real.”[9]  With a bit less flourish, Hart says the same thing when he says the god of negative theology “transcends the world and the language appropriate to it.”[10]  Negative theology is positive about God’s existence, and is thus a metaphysical claim about the nature of reality (God exists; He[11] doesn’t not exist), but is negative about our ability to discern anything substantive about what form He/She/It takes, and content-wise it is a mostly empty description of that reality.  The god of negative theology is transcendent, in the sense that it exists beyond our ability to understand it or articulate it in language.  It follows from this that one who is engaged in this enterprise is unlikely to be concerned with arguments for or against God’s existence.  After all, how could one prove or disprove God’s existence when one knows nothing about the nature of God?  For example, the Argument from Evil does not bear on negative theology because negative theology does not attach a concept such as omnibenevolence to God.  Likewise, cosmological (God is conceptualised as cause distinct from effect) or teleological (God is conceptualised as creator distinct from creatures) arguments are irrelevant and flawed.  Thus, any expression regarding the god of negative theology is more than likely going to be an articulation of faith rather than a rational argumentative proof or conceptual analysis.

 

2.2 Différance and Deconstruction

Secondly, let’s now turn to an examination of two key pieces of Derridean jargon, différance and deconstruction.  But as Christopher Norris[12] notes rather pessimistically, to answer the question of what these terms mean, one needs to do a lot of hard work, not only meticulously reading Derrida’s work, but also much of the philosophical background that Derrida is working within.  If this is true, then this means that it would be immodest and inaccurate for me to claim to understand completely Derrida’s usages of these terms.  Nonetheless, once again the impossible (or at least the very difficult) drives me on.

Without a doubt, Martin Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics strongly influences Derrida.  It was Heidegger who claimed that Western philosophy from Plato onwards had taken a wrong turn.  With the exception of the pre-Socratics and a few mystics, Heidegger claimed that Western philosophy is based on a “metaphysic of presence,” in which it is assumed that something is if and only if it is present or presentable.  In this sense, it is claimed that there is fundamentally only one metaphysics, though over the centuries philosophers have often argued, debated and disagreed as to what the details of this one metaphysics is.  Like Heidegger, Derrida accepts that there is just one metaphysics, but unlike Heidegger he does not try to overcome metaphysics or claim there is an outside to metaphysics.  The problem with this, as Derrida sees it, is that talking about an inside or outside to metaphysics is still metaphysical.  For this reason, Derrida is even more radical than Heidegger, and includes both the pre-Socratics and Heidegger himself in with this type of thinking.  This conclusion leads Derrida to focus in on language, and it is with this that we can begin to appreciate the reasons for Derrida’s uniquely difficult style of writing.  He claims that, contrary to what is assumed by a metaphysics of presence, being and meaning are not identical.  That is, what Derrida is critical of is the practice by Western philosophers of starting out assuming that there are essences that are articulatable in language, and one’s task is to articulate them as clearly and unambiguously as possible.  Those in the Western tradition will often say that any ambiguity is as a result of poor expression, and is potentially avoidable (good writers write clearly and unambiguously, and bad writers are unable to express themselves properly).  Thus we get definitions of ambiguity like:

The presence of two or more distinct meanings for a single word or expression. In itself, ambiguity is a common, harmless, and often amusing feature of ordinary language. When unnoticed in the context of otherwise careful reasoning, however, it can lead to one of several informal fallacies.[13]

 

Derrida rejects this claim of harmlessness, putting a much more serious spin on the problem.  He instead says that there will always be this ambiguity in writing, and this is a huge and unavoidable problem for any metaphysics of presence.  One example of where this ambiguity is exemplified is when writing is repeated.  According to a metaphysics of presence, repeating (for example quoting) a sentence is unproblematic, since there is no difference between the quote and what is quoted.  However, if we accept Derrida’s line of thinking, then quoting a phrase results in that phrase being placed in another context, and, being thus out of its original context, the phrase will be inscribed with a different meaning, subtle or otherwise.  To make this work, Derrida is also buying into a popular theory of linguistics in which the meaning of a word is given by the context within a certain language’s structural network of oppositions.  If a word is placed within a different oppositional structure then its meaning changes.  The label Derrida gives to this difference between being and meaning is “différance.”  This label is supposed to convey the silent nature of différance – as something that works silently within discourse, as for the most part we are unaware of it (since linguistically différance is only one letter removed from the French word différence and is pronounced identically).  Yet différance is puzzlingly paradoxical, because, according to Derrida, it can never be identical with itself.  What does this mean?  Well, one definition of différance that we might apply is that it is the slippage between being and meaning, but yet if we apply the idea of différance to itself we find that our definition must not suffice, since, by definition, what we said différance means, is not the same as what it represents.

Similarly, Norris makes an interesting observation after giving his description of différance.  He points out that however we explain différance, we are always lifting it out of the context of Derrida’s original text, and thus there is always slippage.  And further, even if we were to pull out a short descriptive quoted definition of it (assuming we could find one), this quote would still be out of its original context, and there will be slippage between it and its meaning.  A similar point can be made here when I turn, more reflectively, to what I am writing/have written and what you will read/are reading. Throughout this essay to date I have been writing as if I can articulate clearly and unambiguously the content of Derrida’s theory.  I have been writing using the standard practices of essay writing, with an introduction above (past) and conclusion below (future), and clear pointers showing where I am going and why it is relevant to go there.  Essentially, I have been writing a Western metaphysical text, claiming that I am articulating (or at least trying to articulate, bearing in mind the possibility of errors of understanding, as one must humbly do) the true account of Derrida’s philosophy.  But now, if what Derrida is saying is correct, then I cannot do this.  If what Derrida says is correct, then there is always going to be something supplementary between what I am trying to represent and what I am saying (and likewise, between what I am saying and how you are reading it).  Even if I was to reproduce, word for word, all of Derrida’s texts, I would still have failed to adequately represent Derrida’s work, since I would have reproduced it in a different context (that of plagiarism).  This gets worse when we take this to a higher level of analysis, and realise that, if what Derrida says is correct, then, whatever I do, there is no way I can ever possibly understand completely what Derrida has to say, since my reading of Derrida will always miss some of the multiple meanings inherent in the ambiguity of the text.  Essentially, there will always be an overabundance of meaning in the texts I am trying to read, and I will never be able to keep up with it all.  Likewise, there will always be an overabundance of meaning in the texts I am writing (that you could never fully repeat), but this overabundance of meaning will never correspond completely with what I am trying to represent.  This is paradoxical, since, if I cannot know, without remainder or slippage, the content of Derrida’s work, then surely I cannot claim to know, on the basis of Derrida’s work, that I cannot know it.[14]  This is certainly a problem, although it is one that I am forced to live with, and one that we are all forced to work with for everyday practicalities.  This leads me to a better appreciation (if not knowledge) of why Norris and Derrida are correct to say that one “has to find out the hard way” what différance and deconstruction are all about.  It is, truly, an impossible task of knowing what différance and deconstruction are all about.  With this in mind there would seem to be at least two options to the task of understanding any text – give up the task completely (and turn to backgammon[15]), or revolt, in a Camusian sense, and attempt to do the impossible.  With this insight, it becomes apparent why Derrida writes so prolifically.  When Derrida writes, he does not write on a topic, he writes on a specific text, and most of Derrida’s texts involve a close reading of some specific published text.  In these close readings he is trying to bring out the ambiguity of those texts, showing all their facets and how different words or phrases can have multiple meanings that not only turn the oppositional hierarchies upside down, but also fall apart.  Derrida is thus trying to keep up with the overflowing meaning in all the texts that he examines, and it seems to me that he can rightly be thought to exemplify the absurd philosopher.  He is trying to do the impossible, even though he knows he will fail.

One further Derridean term needs to be discussed – that of deconstruction.  This is a term that gets used in various different contexts with a variety of meanings, and it is important to understand (within the limits discussed above) Derrida’s usage of the term.  Once again, it is useful to turn to Heidegger to get an initial understanding of some of the themes.  In one sense deconstruction is a development of the Heideggerian term destruktion, and the two have been occasionally, although erroneously (according to Hart) equated.  Heidegger writes of destruktion:

If the question of Being is to have its own history made transparent, then this hardened tradition must be loosened up, and the concealments which it has brought about must be dissolved.  We understand this task as one in which by taking the question of Being as our clue, we are to destroy the traditional content of ancient ontology until we arrive at those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature of Being – the ways which have guided us ever since.

In thus demonstrating the origin of our basic ontological concepts by an investigation by which their ‘birth certificate’ is displayed, we have nothing to do with a vicious relativising of ontological standpoints.  But this destruction is just as far from having the negative sense of shaking off the ontological tradition.  We must, on the contrary, stake out the positive possibilities of that tradition, and this always means keeping it within its limits; … But to bury the past in nullity [Nichtigkeit] is not the purpose of this destruction; its aim is positive; its negative function remains unexpressed and indirect.[16]

 

Destruktion, in Heidegger’s sense, is thus not a nihilistic destruction, but rather is a destructuring or “loosening up” of the Western metaphysical tradition to find its true centre, the nature of Being.  In this sense destruktion is still metaphysical since it is still working with the idea that there is a centre that can be experienced.  This is the sense of the term that Hart[17] claims Caputo (at least in his early work, Heidegger and Aquinas) focused in on exclusively and equates with deconstruction.  To show this Hart quotes Caputo as writing:

A retrieval or deconstruction is not a destruction or levelling but a dismantling of the surface apparatus of its thought in order to find its essential nerve, its animating centre. … To retrieve or deconstruct is, not to destroy, but to shake loose from a text its essential tendencies which the text itself conceals.[18]

 

Hart further claims that Caputo misunderstood deconstruction, and saw it in a Heideggerian light instead of a Derridean light, which Hart claims is importantly different.  In The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, Caputo mentions Hart’s book on four separate occasions, and responds to Hart’s criticism in a footnote.[19]  In this response Caputo returns Hart’s criticism, claiming that Hart makes the same error.  Since this problem is also tied up with an analysis of negative theology, I will return to this issue below (in section 3), when I turn to an examination of the possibility of a theology in light of Derrida’s philosophy.

So, then, how does Derrida’s understanding of deconstruction differ from Heidegger’s understanding of destruktion?  According to Hart, Derrida “insists that ‘there is no experience of pure presence, but only chains of differential marks.’”[20]  Hart tells us that “[t]he difference between Heidegger’s and Derrida’s projects is that whereas Heidegger is often drawn, at least in part, to uncover a text’s ‘animating centre’ Derrida calls all such desires into question, even Heidegger’s.”[21]  Hart further claims that the term ‘deconstruction’ has two separate meanings; firstly his second meaning, as naming the philosophical position which I have been describing above with respect to différance and contrasting with destruktion, and secondly his first meaning, as a “particular process of self-subversion within an interpretation of a text.”[22]  It seems to me that Hart’s first meaning is similar to what Norris calls ‘American deconstruction,’ which Norris wants to distance from Derridean deconstruction.  Norris wants to avoid seeing deconstruction as a ‘method,’ which one might apply to certain texts.  In this sense of deconstruction one starts with some particular text and produces a close reading of it.  In such a close reading, one focuses in on specific words or phrases that are typically passed over (minor parts of the argument, footnotes, metaphors, etc), drawing out multiple meanings and hence ambiguity.  The aim is to show how, in a text that supposedly privileges one term of an oppositional dyad, there is also within the text an element that upsets the dyad and privileges the other term, and further, as a result, unsettles the whole oppositional structure.  So, although this methodological description might be a useful approximation of the deconstructive process, Norris claims that:

Derrida has good reason for resisting any attempt, on the part of his disciples or commentator, to reduce deconstruction to a concept definable in terms of method or technique.  For it is precisely this idea – this assumption that meaning can always be grasped in the form of some proper, self-identical concept – that Derrida is most determinedly out to deconstruct.[23]

 

So, to summarise and reiterate, différance and deconstruction, by their very nature, are not the sort of concepts in which it is possible to give a complete account of in necessary and sufficient conditions.  Thus, in this section my approach has been to pass over some of the main themes from two overlapping angles (firstly différance and secondly deconstruction) to show, respecting slippage, the ‘essence’ of the idea.  This now puts me in a position in which I can compare and contrast Derrida’s project with that of negative theology.

 

2.3 Negative Theology and Deconstruction: Differences and Similarities

The question that needs to be asked now, in light of the general overview of negative theology, différance and deconstruction above, is to what extent negative theology and deconstruction are different, and to what extent do they overlap (and similarly the god of negative theology and différance).

Firstly, the differences.  The essential difference, as Caputo[24] tells us Derrida explained, is that despite the ‘syntactic’ similarities they are ‘semantically’ very different concepts.  Caputo writes:

Negative theology is always on the track of a “hyperessentiality,” of something hyper-present, hyper-real, or sur-real, so really real that we are never satisfied simply to say that it is merely real.  Différance, on the other hand, is less than real, not quite real, never gets as far as being or entity or presence, which is why it is emblematized by insubstantial quasi-beings like ashes and ghosts which flutter between existence and non-existence, or with humble khôra, say, rather than the prestigious Platonic sun.  Différance is but a quasi-transcendental anteriority, not a supereminent, transcendent ulteriority.[25]

 

Hart expresses the same idea, minus the poetic prose, when he states:

Negative theology is driven to an “excessive practice of language,” as Derrida puts it, in order to approach the [g]od revealed in positive theology.  A syntax of “neither-nor” is called for because the divinity transcends the world and the language appropriate to it.  Deconstruction, by contrast, shows that language is excessive in that equivocity cannot be eliminated in fact or in principle. … Différance … too calls for a syntax of “neither-nor,” but only because it is transcendental: a condition of possibility (for talk of identity and presence, as much as difference and equivocity) that is also a condition of impossibility (for talk of self-identity, undivided presence, absolute difference, unbounded equivocity).[26]

 

Thus, the idea is that, in the case of negative theology, God, as an “ineffable transcendent infinite existent,” exceeds the language available to express, with necessary and sufficient conditions, His nature.  It is language that lacks the necessary range of expression, and thus God exceeds the bounds of language.  In contrast, when we examine deconstruction, it is language that is excessive in its meaning.  Language always says more than what we intend it to say, and thus it becomes impossible to talk in absolutes.  In this sense, language can be said to exceed God, since différance precedes, by its very possibility, any act.

Secondly, the similarities.  According to Caputo, negative theology can be a form of deconstruction.  His primary example of this is the negative theology expressed by Meister Eckhart (“that is why I find in Meister Eckhart a great medieval deconstructive practice”[27]).  The claim here is that Eckhart, for example when he “pray God that he make me free of God,”[28] was trying to rid himself of onto-theological discourse.  Yet, this is where things get tricky, because in parallel with this ‘deconstruction’ we also get assurances by Eckhart that he “spoke with ‘brother Thomas’ (Aquinas), that he believed in the living God.”[29]  On the face of it, this seems to suggest an inconsistency in Eckhart’s view that may cross over into Caputo.  How is it possible to deny a metaphysics of presence and yet at the same time claim to believe in a living God in the same sense as Aquinas?  I will address this question in the next section, in which I turn to look at whether it is possible to have a belief that might correctly be called theism, which is also consistent with Derrida’s ideas of deconstruction.

 

3.0 What Happens to Theology?

The first thing to be clear about is that traditional theism, emphasised in the Analytic tradition as belief in an intentional agent who is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator ex nihilo of all else that exists (i.e. omniGod), does not stand a chance in the face of deconstruction.  Traditional theism, expressed in this way, is a metaphysics of presence, and clearly open to deconstruction.  Further, deconstructive principles, especially when one turns to the more ethical consequences (as I do below), is incompatible with exclusivist ideologies of more ‘fundamentalist’ religions, since it opposes the violence of churches that pray for conversions at Easter, or claims that a certain historical figure is the Only Way.  Thus, any person who wants to develop, or hold on to, a form of theism as well as accept Derridean deconstructive principles is going to have to firstly accept that a radical theism is possible.  This is certainly a controversial position to hold, especially in the Analytic tradition of Philosophy of Religion,[30] and many theists and philosophers are going to reject it outright.  Further, many forms of radical theism will have to be dismissed on the basis of being metaphysical.  To start with, many radical realist theisms (such as Pantheism or John Bishop’s ‘God is Love’), being claims about the nature of reality, are deconstructable.  Further, many non-realist radical theisms (perhaps such as those expressed by Don Cupitt or Lloyd Geering), are in exactly the same situation since they will often take as their starting point some form of naturalism (using, for example, current psychology, sociology and anthropology to understand the reasons for human’s creation of a god-concept).  That is, a non-realist theist will make the claim that God, really, does not exist (but it is a useful fiction to act as if he did).  And, since this is a metaphysical position it is also open to the deconstructive process.  Any radical theisms that are not metaphysical (either naturalistic or supernaturalistic) will have a chance of succeeding, such as those that focus exclusively on ethical issues, but arguably these are extremely minimalist theologies, and one could wonder at their right to be called theisms at all.  The issue may be brought up that any such radical theism departs too radically from its particular tradition, and to address this issue one would have to look at each theistic tradition in turn to examine whether that theism adheres sufficiently to the tradition it is claimed to be a part of.

Despite these initial worries, Caputo does not take much notice of any of this, and does not discuss it explicitly.  Caputo seems to assume, without argument, that radical theology is possible, and would still be within the theological tradition.  Turning now to Caputo’s view of God, we can see that he does not seem willing to defend a form of non-realist theism (or at least does not discuss it), since he seems to be attracted, for the most part, by Eckhart’s view of God, which, as I have said, still seems to posit some minimalist understanding of a realist god.  But the immediate worry that arises here is that, if this view is still ‘speaking with Brother Thomas’ then surely it is an assertion about reality, and is thus metaphysical.  Caputo’s reply is to turn this talk of God into a statement of mystical faith, rather than a knowledge claim about reality.  As I have already pointed out, Caputo’s earlier work (Heidegger and Aquinas), misunderstood deconstruction as destruktion, and talked of an experience of pure subsistent Being that ‘deconstructs’ Aquinas’ discussion of God.  In Caputo’s later work (The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida) he is much more careful, and does not assume that deconstruction will take one to pure subsistent Being.  Caputo seems much more aware of the impossible, and what seems to come out of Caputo’s discussion, more than anything else, is, to quote Derrida, a “passion for the impossible, for trespassing, and transgression.”[31]  In a Kierkegaardian sense, what we seem to get is an emphasis on the subjective (“The objective accent falls on WHAT is said, the subjective accent on HOW it is said”[32]).  Caputo attempts to get around having to deal with the problem above by ignoring it and concentrating instead on how it is said rather than what is said.  The how involves belief and passion, with a sense of aiming for something.  The idea is to be forever open to what is to arrive, knowing that it will never arrive and yet striving, nonetheless, for the impossible.  The difference between Derrida and Caputo is that for Caputo this something is called God, and even though this something is not presentable or intuitable, it is believed to exist.  Why this adds anything substantive beyond an additional signifier is not clear to me, and I suspect this is why Caputo calls it “Religion with out Religion” – only the religious language remains.

What is further interesting about this idea is that Derrida, in rejecting a messianic theory, a theory about a future to come, forces one into a more Jewish frame of mind rather than a typically Christian one (though Christians may still find it acceptable as long as they accept the relative unimportance of Jesus, the historical figure).  As Caputo says, “[w]ere we to come upon the Messiah, dressed in rags, we would still have to ask, ‘when will you come?’”[33]  The idea is that in a Christian context, the messiah has already come, but in a Jewish context the Messiah is still to arrive, and moreover, by Derrida’s thinking, is forever still to arrive.  Yet, even in a Christian context, even though Christ has already come (how could we ask him when he will come if he was not already present?), Caputo observes that Jesus had to die “so that we might wait for him to come again.”[34]  This is somewhat paradoxical – the Messiah both here and now and also yet to come.  Martin Kavka takes up this problem, acknowledging his worry that Caputo’s assertion that the Messiah will never come (which, as I see it, parallels Derrida’s claim about the impossible) will result in a lack of hope.  He writes:

If the always-deferred nature of the Messiah manages to command a model of action that is supererogatory, always going above and beyond the call of duty, in accordance with the singularity of the tout autre, the question arises: how I can hasten the arrival of justice if it will never come? Why should I hope? The delay of messianic arrival on every phenomenological stratum, I would think, would be too depressing to bear. Personally, it would compel me to act immorally.[35]

 

To solve this Kavka points out his attraction to Caputo’s claim that “the Messiah might simply be each one of us just insofar as we wait for the coming.”[36]  Caputo takes this to correspond with Derrida’s idea of justice and Kavka refers to Emmanuel Levinas’ Talmudic commentary of Jeremiah 30:21.  The idea, from Derrida, is that justice, which is always to come, at the same time cannot wait, and it is thus our duty to do justice.  Justice is here because we do it, even though it is always to come (we are always aiming for something better).  The same idea, from Levinas, is that the “Messiah is the King who no longer commands from outside. … The Messiah is myself; to be Myself [moi] is to be the Messiah.”[37]  Yet, this is not egoistic because the Messiah is the one who takes on the suffering of others, as one’s ethical duty.  Further, ‘moi’ does not refer to any particular person (it is the lower-case ‘moi,’ not the upper-case ‘Moi’) – it is the moi that gives itself completely, without reserve.  But, Kavka notes, like in Derrida, if the self is equated with the Messiah, then the Messiah in the self disappears.  This somewhat explains the paradox of the double nature of the Messiah, as one that is both present and yet still to come.  The Messiah is not present to his/herself, but is present when he/she takes on the suffering of others, doing justice in the name of a justice that is always to come.

In some senses this is theological, in others it is not, and Caputo is correct to subtitle his book Religion without Religion.  The rigid distinction between theism and atheism seems to disappear at this point – it is theism to the theists and atheism to the atheists (a Greek to the Greeks and a Jew to the Jews).  One could either express this idea in theological terms as Caputo does, or atheological terms, as Derrida does.  The content of both views is the ethical approach of aiming for justice (heaven, God) and resisting violent oppressive hierarchies (sin, man, Satan, hell).  Whether justice is called God or God is called justice seems to matter very little.  Yet, I still have two nagging worries.  Firstly, in my mind Kavka does not entirely dispel the worry of lack of hope, and we might get those who are more inclined to a Buddistic/Shopenhauerian attitude of lessening desires and fading out of existence, rather than fighting towards the impossible.  Secondly, and relatedly, if everyone, individually, acts for justice to oppose violence and oppressiveness, then it seems to me that this is just going to result in more violence, since the oppressed are going to react against the violence of the oppressors, and the oppressors are going to, in turn, react against the oppressiveness of the oppressed who claim that the oppressed ought not do what they are doing.  This seems to me to be ethically undesirable, and I wonder if, at a certain point it is preferable if some status quo of oppression is allowed, and at least some people should be the passive ‘faders out of existence.’  My only solution to this is from a theistic perspective, in which the sole additional feature of the belief in God is that it allows for hope.  It does not seem to me as if a Derridean atheism allows for this.

 

4.0 Conclusions

My aim in this essay has been to examine the question of whether it is possible to accept some recognisable form of theism in the light of Derridean criticisms of metaphysics of presence.  In Section 2 I presented a fairly brief analysis of both negative theology and the basic structures of Derridean philosophy.  I showed how Derrida is correct to maintain, despite contrary assertions, that his project of deconstruction is not a disguised negative theology and that différance is not the god of such a negative theology.  I then turned in Section 3 to the wider issue of whether it is possible to be a theist of some sort and yet still accept the practices and background theories of deconstruction.  That is, is it possible to assert a theistic doctrine and yet avoid articulating a metaphysics of presence?  My first response was to say that traditional (omniGod) theism is incompatible with Derridean deconstruction, and thus one is required to instead look for a radical theism.  If one allows for this, then it seems that the most plausible account turns out to be somewhere in between Judaism and Christianity, in the sense that the Messiah necessarily lose his uniqueness, and is only present when not self-present.  The only content that such a theism has over and above Derridean atheism is the guarantee of hope that a realist god-concept allows for.

Bibliography

Bennington, G. & Derrida, J. (1993). Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

 

Bishop, J. (19998). Can there be alternative concepts of God? Nous, 32(2) 174-188.

 

Caputo, J. D. (1989). Mysticism and Transgression: Derrida and Meister Eckhart. In H. J. Silverman (ed.), Derrida and Deconstruction, (pp. 24-39). New York: Routledge.

 

Caputo, J. D. (1997). The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

 

Derrida, J. (1978). Violence and Metaphysics: An essay on the thought of Emmanuel Levinas. In Writing and Difference. (pp. 79-153). (A. Bass Trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (original work published 1968).

 

Derrida, J. (1993). On a Newly Arisen Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy.  In P. Fenves (ed.), Raising the Tone of Philosophy: Late Essays by Immanuel Kant, Transformative Critique by Jacques Derrida, (pp. 117-171). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

 

Derrida, J. (1995). The Gift of Death. (D. Wills trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (original work published 1992).

 

Derrida, J. (1997). How to Avoid Speaking. In Ward, G. (ed.), The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader, (pp. 167-190). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

 

Derrida, J. (1998). Faith and Knowledge: the Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone. In J. Derrida & G. Vattimo (eds.), Religion, (pp. 1-78). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (original work published 1996).

 

Derrida, J. (1999). Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas. (P. Brault and M. Naas trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (original work published 1997).

 

Gasché, R. (1994). Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

 

Hart, K. (1989). The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, Theology and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Hart, K. (1997). Jacques Derrida: Introduction. In G. Ward (ed.), The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader, (pp. 159-167). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

 

Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time. (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. (original work published 1927).

 

Kavka, M. (1999). The Rationality of Derrida’s “Religion Without Religion”: A Phenomenological Gift for John D. Caputo. Retrieved 12 November 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.jcrt.org/archives/01.1/index.html?page=kavka.html

 

Kemerling, G. (2000). A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names. Retrieved 11 November 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/a4.htm

 

Kierkegaard, S. (1980). Concluding Unscientific Postscript (D. F. Swenson, trans.). In D. Steward (ed.), Exploring the Philosophy of Religion, (pp. 150-154). Prentice-Hall.

 

Norris, C. (1987). Derrida. London: Fontana Press.