An Ethics Worthy of the Name

Abstract:

This paper sheds light on the relation of mutual exclusion and implication that binds Derridean ethics with the figure of God. In rupture with existing scholarship that categorizes Derridean ethics as either radically atheistic or dialectically pertaining to the Judeo-Christian moral order, I put forward the argument that Derrida’s ethical thinking is best considered outside of the dialectics of a/theism. I demonstrate that, far from plainly disproving or falling within the bounds of existing religious discourses, Derrida inaugurates a new way of relating to the absolute – whether it be named God, the infinitely other, or justice – beyond nihilism and idealism, atheism and theism, or more precisely between the two, in a space Derrida refers to as the space of spectrality. I thereby hope to finally do justice to the subtlety of Derridean ethics and foster the recognition that, twenty years after Derrida’s death, his ghosts can be of use in tackling some of the greatest ethical and political challenges of the twenty-first century, including the pursuit of peaceful pluralism in the context of rampant violence carried out in the name of God.

Keywords:

• Derrida
• ethics
• God
• naming
• specter

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 On Derrida’s experience growing up as “a French Jewish child from Algeria” (Monolingualism 49), see his Monolingualism of the Other and “Circumfession.”

2 See Derrida, “Circumfession” 154–57.

3 Emphases in quotes are in the original sources, except where indicated otherwise.

4 Jean-Luc Nancy famously picked up upon the notion of the “infinitely finite.” See, in particular, Nancy’s “Finite History,” “Infinite Finitude,” and A Finite Thinking, as well as Rodolphe Gasché’s “‘Infinitely Finite’: Jean-Luc Nancy on History and Thinking.”

5 Details for this conference, including the cited description (which I translated from French) may be found online: https://decolonialisme.fr/?p=6333.

6 Derrida may here be said to pertain to a lineage of French thinkers including Georges Bataille, Pierre Klossowski, Gilles Deleuze, and, more recently, Jean-Luc Nancy, who have sought to rewrite Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence in terms of the return of the Same as different in each occurrence (see Le Rider 198–99).

7 Much more could, and should, be said about the subtle resonance (and divergence) between Deleuze’s and Derrida’s respective treatment of difference. Because I cannot do so in this paper, I refer the reader to several key works that deal with this issue, including Nancy’s “Parallel Differences: Deleuze and Derrida,” Paul Patton and John Protevi’s Between Deleuze and Derrida, and Todd May’s Reconsidering Difference.

8 For a detailed account of the theological responses to Derrida’s thinking of différance, see Shakespeare’s Derrida and Theology as well as to Deconstruction and Theology, by Thomas Altizer et al.

9 I thereby also align with scholars such as Christopher Norris, Giovanna Borradori, and James K.A. Smith. See, in particular, Smith’s Jacques Derrida (88–91), Borradori’s preface and introduction to Philosophy in a Time of Terror, Norris’s Uncritical Theory, and Derrida’s “The ‘World’ of the Enlightenment to Come.”

10 For details on the question of the future of religion, and specifically of the Catholic Church, see Caputo’s In Search of Radical Theology and my own “A Radical Fidelity.”