Religion without religion, negative theology, and the Caputo–Hägglund debate: is the late work theological-without-theology, rigorously atheist, or structurally distinct from both?

Jacques Derrida, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

The late work on religion is structurally distinct from negative theology and from atheism in their classical forms. "Faith and Knowledge" (1996) works on the two sources of "religion" — the Latin religio (binding, obligation) and the testimonial structure of faith (croire, the swearing of belief that precedes any propositional content).1

"How to Avoid Speaking" (1989) explicitly distinguishes deconstruction from negative theology: negative theology preserves the divine name and the mystical referent, however hidden; deconstruction does not. The Gift of Death (1992) reads Patočka, Levinas, Kierkegaard, and the Akedah on the structure of responsibility and the tout autre est tout autre (every other is wholly other). Khôra (in On the Name, 1993) reads Plato's Timaeus on the place that gives place — older than the opposition intelligible/sensible, neither divine nor created.

The position refuses the Caputo "religion without religion" reading (which makes the work faith-affirming), refuses the Hägglund "radical atheism" reading (which makes the work flatly this-worldly), and refuses the negative-theology assimilation. The work is neither for nor against religion: it is the structural inquiry into the conditions of any faith, any testimony, any address to the wholly other.23

Sources

  1. I t is with such a quotation (within invisible quotations marks as well, then) that Derrida ends this final paragraph of "Faith and Knowledge." Derrida quotes Genet: '"One of the questions that I will not avoid, une des questions que je n'eviterai pas, is the question of religion. " Of course, in some respects Abraham does speak. He says a lot.
    Acts of Religion, pp. 26–27
  2. It is (now) ry that there Aave been some trace (in an immemorial past, and it How to Avoid Speaking: Denial Ist is because of this amnesia that the "it is necessary" of the trace is necessary). But also, it is necessary (as of now, it will be necessary, the "it is necessary" always also holds for the future) that in the future there will have been some trace. But let us not be too hasty.
    Psyche, Inventions of the Other Vol II, pp. 151–152
  3. But as we will see, for essential reasons, one is never certain of being able to attribute to anyone a project of negative theology as such.
    Psyche, Inventions of the Other Vol II, p. 144

Where the argument is made

  • 'Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of “Religion” at the Limits of Reason Alone' (1996, in Acts of Religion ed. Anidjar, 2002)
  • 'How to Avoid Speaking: Denials' (1989, in Languages of the Unsayable and elsewhere) on negative theology distinguished from deconstruction
  • The Gift of Death (1992, Wills trans.)
  • On the Name (1993, Dutoit ed., three short books — Sauf le nom, Khôra, Passions)
  • 'Sauf le nom (Post-Scriptum)' on negative theology and the name
  • 'Khôra' on Plato's Timaeus
  • Of Hospitality (with Anne Dufourmantelle, 1997)
  • Acts of Religion (2002)

How the argument was received

The Caputo/Hägglund debate is the live contemporary contest in the religion-and-deconstruction field. John D. Caputo's The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida (1997) inaugurated the "religion without religion" reading: deconstruction as a faith-affirming structure of expectation, prayer, and the to-come. Martin Hägglund's Radical Atheism (2008) countered with a rigorously atheist Derrida: the messianic structure is non-religious, the to-come is the time of finite beings without transcendence. Both readings are partial; both seize on real features of the texts; both miss what Bennington's Derridabase warned: my work is not a theology, even a negative one, and it is not the simple denial of God or religion either. Hent de Vries' Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (1999) and Jean-Luc Marion's engagements are more careful; Edith Wyschogrod's posthumous work develops the Levinasian-deconstructive religion-thinking.