Deconstructing Derrida On Religion, Channeled via John Caputo: If You Understand This, You’re an Atheist. Or Maybe Not. John Caputo: I like to joke that Derrida is a slightly atheistic quasi-Jewish Augustinian, but I am also serious. . . . Gary. Gutting.: But why call this “religion”? J.C.: Derrida calls this a “religion without religion.” Other people speak of the “post-secular,” or of a theology “after the death of God” . . . . J.C.: Maybe it disturbs what “most people” think religion is — assuming they are thinking about it — but maybe a lot of these people wake up in the middle of the night feeling the same disturbance, disturbed by a more religionless religion going on in the religion meant to give them comfort. . . . [Derrida] describes himself as a man of prayer, but where Augustine thinks he knows to whom he is praying, Derrida does not. When I asked him this question once he responded, “If I knew that, I would know everything” . . . This not-knowing does not defeat his religion or his prayer. It is constitutive of them, constituting a faith that cannot be kept safe from doubt, a hope that cannot be kept safe from despair. We live in the distance between these pairs. From “The Stone” blog, in the New York Times opinionator.blogs.nytimes/2014/03/09/deconstructing-god/?_php=true&_type=blogs&partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 15:09:37 +0000
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