The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida

John D. Caputo

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A powerfully articulated account of the religious dimension of Jacques Derrida's thought.

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"Caputo's book is riveting. . . . A singular achievement of stylistic brio and impeccable scholarship, it breaks new ground in making a powerful case for treating Derrida as homo religiosis. . . . There can be no mistaking the importance of Caputo's work." —Edith Wyschogrod

"No one interested in Derrida, in Caputo, or in the larger question of postmodernism and religion can afford to ignore this pathbreaking study. Taking full advantage of the most recent and least discussed writings of Derrida, it offers a careful and comprehensive account of the religious dimension of Derrida's thought." —Merold Westphal

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: A Passion for the Impossible
A Map for the Perplexed

I. The Apophatic
1. God Is Not différance
2. Dreaming the Impossible Dream: Derrida and Levinas on the Impossible
3. Affirmation at the Limits: How Not to Speak
4. Save the Name: Wholly Other Towards a General Apophatics
Edifying Divertissement No. 1. Bedeviling Faith

II. The Apocalyptic
5. Viens!
6. Messianic Time: Derrida and Blanchot
7. An Apocalypse sans Apocalypse, To Jacques of El Biar
8. The Secret
Edifying Divertissement No. 2. From Elea to Elohim: God of the Same, God of the Other

III. The messianic
9. Of Marx and the Messiah
10. Messianic Passion and the Religion of Saint Jacques
11. Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (Almost)

IV. The Gift
12. The Time of Giving and Forgiving
Edifying Divertissement No. 3. Traditions and the World-Play
13. Abraham's Gift
14. Abraham and the Pharisees
Edifying Divertissement No. 4. Deconstruction and the Kingdom of God

V. Circumcision
15. Hegel and the Jews
Edifying Divertissement No. 5. Deferring Incarnation—and Jesus the Jew
16. Circumcision
17. Is Deconstruction Really a Jewish science?

VI. Confession
18. The Son of These Tears: The Confession of Jacques de la Rue-Augustin
Edifying Divertissement No. 6. A Prayer
19. These Weeping Eyes, Those Seeing Tears: The Faith of Jacques Derrida

Conclusion: A Passion for God
Bibliography on Derrida and Religion

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• PHILOSOPHY
• General officer
• Cultural studies
• Judaism
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 22 septembre 1997
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253112842
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE Prayers and Tears OF JACQUES DERRIDA
T HE I NDIANA S ERIES IN THE P HILOSOPHY OF R ELIGION M EROLD W ESTPHAL, GENERAL EDITOR
THE Prayers and Tears OF JACQUES DERRIDA
Religion without Religion

J OHN D. C APUTO
I NDIANA U NIVERSITY P RESS   B LOOMINGTON & I NDIANAPOLIS
© 1997 by John D. Caputo
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Caputo, John D. The prayers and tears of Jacques Derrida : religion without religion / John D. Caputo. p. c. — (The Indiana Series in the philosophy of religion) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–253–33268–0 (cl.) — ISBN 0–253–21112–3 (pbk.) 1. Deconstruction. 2. Derrida, Jacques—Religion. 3. Religion. 4. Irreligion. I. Title. II. Series. B809.6.P37   1997 194—dc21             96–47839
1 2 3 4 5 02 01 00 99 98 97
To Katie, for songs and laughter, for Parisian phantoms and Italian jumping ropes
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: A Passion for the Impossible
A Map for the Perplexed

I. The Apophatic
§1. God Is Not différance
§2. Dreaming the Impossible Dream: Derrida and Levinas on the Impossible
§3. Affirmation at the Limits: How Not to Speak
§4. Save the Name, Wholly Other: Toward a General Apophatics
♦ Edifying Divertissement No. 1. Bedeviling Faith
II. The Apocalyptic
§5. Viens!
§6. Messianic Time: Derrida and Blanchot
§7. An Apocalypse sans Apocalypse to Jacques of El Biar
§8. The Secret
♦ Edifying Divertissement No. 2. From Elea to Elohim: The God of the Same, the God of the Other
III. The Messianic
§9. Of Marx and the Messiah
§10. Messianic Passion and the Religion of Saint Jacques
§11. Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (Almost)
IV. The Gift
§12. The Time of Giving and Forgiving
♦ Edifying Divertissement No. 3. Traditions and the World-Play
§13. Abraham’s Gift
§14. Abraham and the Pharisees
♦ Edifying Divertissement No. 4. Deconstruction and the Kingdom of God
V. Circumcision
§15. Hegel and the Jews
♦ Edifying Divertissement No. 5. Deferring Incarnation—and Jesus the Jew
§16. Circumcision
§17. Is Deconstruction Really a Jewish Science?
VI. Confession
§18. The Son of These Tears: The Confession of Jacques de la rue Saint-Augustin
♦ Edifying Divertissement No. 6. A Prayer
§19. These Weeping Eyes, Those Seeing Tears: The Faith of Jacques Derrida

Conclusion: A Passion for God
Notes
Select Bibliography on Derrida and Religion
Index
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of Part IV, §§13–14 appeared in “Instants, Secrets, Singularities: Dealing Death in Kierkegaard and Derrida,” in Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity , eds. Martin Matustik and Merold Westphal (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 216–38. Excerpted sections of Part V appeared in “A Community of the Impossible,” in Research in Phenomenology , Vol. 26 (1996). With the permission of the editors, a few passages in Part I have been excerpted from “The Good News About Alterity: Derrida and Theology,” Faith and Philosophy , 10 (1993): 453–70; and “Mysticism and Transgression: Derrida and Meister Eckhart,” Continental Philosophy , II (1989): 24–39. A few paragraphs of §10 appeared in German translation in “Soll die Philosophie das letzte Wort haben?,” in Annäherungen an Martin Heidegger: Festschrift für Hugo Ott . Ed. Hermann Schäfer (Bonn: Haus der Geschichte, 1996), pp. 209–31.
I wish to thank Janet Rabinowitch, my editor at Indiana University Press, and Merold Westphal, the Series Editor at Indiana, for their extremely helpful advice in improving the final shape of this manuscript. The reader will notice throughout the improvements that have been made on this manuscript as a result of the astute comments of Edith Wyschogrod whose kindness in reading this manuscript for Indiana I am pleased and honored to acknowledge. Finally, I am deeply indebted to my copy editor at Indiana, Nan Miller, who has saved me from myself more times than I can count.
The time to undertake and complete this project was provided by a sabbatical leave and a subsequent reduced load that was kindly granted to me by Villanova University whose support of my work, both now and in the past, has been strong and constant. I am indebted to the students in my “Honors Program” seminar at Villanova who had the good will (well, it was required!) to work through this manuscript in a course on “Derrida and Religion” that it was my great pleasure to conduct. Keith Putt, of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, who spent a sabbatical semester with me at Villanova, was a constant source of encouragement and perceptive advice. Barbara Romano deserves many thanks for help in preparing the index.
I am grateful to Jacques Derrida for his work, for his inspiration, and for the kind encouragement he gave to this project, although he can hardly be held accountable for the risks I have taken in this reading of his work.
Above all, I thank my wife, Kathy, my best friend and favorite artist, who put up with the hours this work demanded and who, as she has in the past, did the art work for the cover of this book.
Abbreviations
Note: References to Derrida’s work will be made to the French, followed by the English translation, separated by a slash. The French and English editions will bear their own abbreviations, with the exception of Glas , where the titles are the same, and Cinders , which is a bilingual edition.
  AC L’autre cap . Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1991. Eng. trans. OH. AF “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression.” Trans. Eric Prenowitz, Diacritics , 25 (1995): 9–63. AL Jacques Derrida: Acts of Literature . Ed. Derek Attridge. New York: Routledge, 1992. Aporias Aporias . Trans. Thomas Dutoit. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. Apories Apories: Mourir—s’attendre aux limites de la vérité . In Le Passage des frontières: Autour du travail de Jacques Derrida . Colloque de Cérisy. Paris: Galilée, 1994. Pp. 309–38. Eng. trans. Aporias . Archive Mal d’archive: Une impression freudienne . Paris: Galilée, 1995. Eng. trans. AF. Cinders Cinders . Trans. Ned Lukacher. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991. A bilingual edition containing the text of Feu la cendre (Paris: Des femmes, 1987) in facing columns. Circon . Circonfession: cinquante-neuf périodes et périphrases . In Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida . Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1991. Eng. trans. Circum . Circum . Circumfession: Fifty-nine Periods and Periphrases . In Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. DCR Derrida: A Critical Reader . Ed. David Wood. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. DDP Du Droit à la Philosophic Paris: Galilée, 1990. Eng. trans. of pp. 461–98: PR. DiT Difference in Translation . Ed. Joseph F. Graham. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985. DLE De l’esprit: Heidegger et la question . Paris: Galilée, 1987. Eng. trans. OS. DLG De la grammatologie . Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1967. Eng. trans. OG. DM “ Donner la mort .” In L’Éthique du don: Jacques Derrida et la pensée du don . Paris: Métailié-Transition, 1992. Eng. trans. GD. DNT Derrida and Negative Theology . Eds. Howard Coward and Toby Foshay. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992. DPJ Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice . Ed. Drucilla Cornell et al. New York: Routledge, 1992. DT Donner le temps, I. La fausse monnaie . Paris: Galilée, 1991. Eng. trans. GT. ED Écriture et la différence . Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 1967. Eng. trans. WD. FL Force de loi: Le ‘Fondement mystique de l’autorité .’ Paris: Galilée, 1994. Eng. trans. “The Force of Law: ‘The Mystical Foundation of Authority.’” Trans. Mary Quaintance. In DPJ, pp. 68–91. Foi “Foi et Savoir: Les deux sources de la ‘religion’ aux limites de la simple raison.” In La Religion . Ed. Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo. Paris: Seuil, 1996. Pp. 9–86. GD The Gift of Death . Trans. David Wills. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Glas Glas . Paris: Galilée, 1974. Eng. trans. Glas . Trans. Richard Rand and John Leavey, Jr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. GT Given Time, I: Counterfeit Money . Trans. Peggy Kamuf. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. HOdG Husserl: L’origine de la géométrie . 2nd. ed. Paris: PUF, 1974. Eng. trans. HOG. HOG Edmund Husserl’s Origin of