{"agent_id":"derrida","agent_name":"Jacques Derrida","slug":"religion-without-religion-negative-theology-and-the-caputo-h","label":"Religion without religion, negative theology, and the Caputo–Hägglund debate: is the late work theological-without-theology, rigorously atheist, or structurally distinct from both?","topic":"Religion without religion, negative theology, and the Caputo–Hägglund debate","question":"Is the late work theological-without-theology, rigorously atheist, or structurally distinct from both?","position":"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). \"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.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The late work on religion is structurally distinct from negative theology and from atheism in their classical forms.","n":[]},{"t":"\"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).","n":[1]}],[{"t":"\"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.","n":[2]}],[{"t":"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.","n":[]},{"t":"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.","n":[3,4,5]}]],"texts":"'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). Reception: John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Indiana, 1997) the canonical 'religion without religion' reading; Martin Hägglund, Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life (Stanford, 2008) the canonical opposing reading; Hent de Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (1999) and Religion and Violence (2002); Jean-Luc Marion's earlier engagements with deconstruction and theology; Richard Kearney, The God Who May Be (2001); Edith Wyschogrod's posthumous engagements.","works":["'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)"],"reception":"John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Indiana, 1997) the canonical 'religion without religion' reading; Martin Hägglund, Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life (Stanford, 2008) the canonical opposing reading; Hent de Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (1999) and Religion and Violence (2002); Jean-Luc Marion's earlier engagements with deconstruction and theology; Richard Kearney, The God Who May Be (2001); Edith Wyschogrod's posthumous engagements.","status":"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.","era":"1930-2004","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Acts of Religion","page":"pp. 28–29","canonical":"","quote":"It 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'éviterai pas, is the question of religion.\" Of course, in some respects Abraham does speak. He says a lot.","label":"Acts of Religion, pp. 28–29"},{"n":2,"work":"Acts of Religion","page":"pp. 30–31","canonical":"","quote":"I imagine its title: 'How to Avoid Speaking', On pourrait s'engager ici dans l'écriture d'un chapitre destiné a un autre livre.","label":"Acts of Religion, pp. 30–31"},{"n":3,"work":"Acts of Religion","page":"pp. 45–46","canonical":"","quote":"Religion and its others, religion as its others (itself and that from which it could not be dissociated: \"the concepts of ethics, of the juridical, of the poli I or of the economic\" [section 28]), indemnifies and immuniczes itself from its others, gathers itself in its dissociations from itself, making itself in a process where \"the same unique source divides itself mechanically, automatically, and sets itself…","label":"Acts of Religion, pp. 45–46"},{"n":4,"work":"Psyche, Inventions of the Other Vol II","page":"pp. 157–158","canonical":"","quote":"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.","label":"Psyche, Inventions of the Other Vol II, pp. 157–158"},{"n":5,"work":"Psyche, Inventions of the Other Vol II","page":"p. 150","canonical":"","quote":"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.","label":"Psyche, Inventions of the Other Vol II, p. 150"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"deconstruction-as-philosophy-or-literature","label":"Deconstruction as philosophy or literature: is deconstruction a rigorous post-Hegelian philosophical method or a literary practice that plays at the margins of philosophy?"},{"slug":"diff-rance-the-infrastructural-chain-and-the-quasi-transcend","label":"Différance, the infrastructural chain, and the quasi-transcendental: is *différance* a master-word, a name of God, or the rigorous quasi-synthetic condition of possibility-and-impossibility for any concept whatsoever?"},{"slug":"iterability-parasitic-uses-and-the-searle-exchange","label":"Iterability, parasitic uses, and the Searle exchange: is iterability the necessary condition of any sign whatsoever, and did Austin's exclusion of 'non-serious' performatives miss the structural point?"},{"slug":"phallogocentrism-sexual-difference-and-the-deconstruction-of","label":"Phallogocentrism, sexual difference, and the deconstruction of 'woman': is the deconstructive use of 'woman' as figure for the undecidable a rigorous philosophical move or an erasure of empirical women?"},{"slug":"the-heidegger-relation","label":"The Heidegger relation: Nazism, spirit, and the Geschlecht series — can the conceptual apparatus be inherited without inheriting the politics?"},{"slug":"marx-hauntology-and-the-messianic-without-messianism","label":"Marx, hauntology, and the messianic without messianism: does *Specters of Marx* evacuate materialism in favor of a meditative messianism, or does it name a structural condition of justice that any inheritance of Marx must address?"}]}