Ars Disputandi Volume 2 (2002) ISSN: 1566 5399

Victor Kal
UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

Acts of Religion
By Jacques Derrida
Edited and with an Introduction by Gil Anidjar; New York and London: Routledge, 2002; 436 pp.; hb. 50.00, pb. 15.99; ISBN: 0-415-92400-6/0-415-92401-4.

1 An aporetic `a priori' Presumably there is a fair number of intellectuals who would not hesitate to declare that, in our day and age, religion represents an anachronism. Although these intellectuals admit that religions in fact still play a signi cant role on the global stage, this datum does not discourage them from cultivating for themselves a life atmosphere in which religion, in whatever form, appears super uous. In these circles, the supposed archaism of religious institutions, their repressive nature and their tendency to frustrate progress have rendered any form of religious engagement potentially alienating. Among the intellectuals concerned, however, philosophers constitute a special case. Their position is easily misunderstood. On the one hand, their dependence on religious traditions is limited. Philosophers have their own, Greek tradition, which has been strongly secularised from the very beginning. Thus any loyalty on their part to a religous tradition tends to be viewed with some suspicion. In the modern period, moreover, philosophy has been emancipating itself with renewed vigour from the authority possessed by any and every religious institution. The possibility of insubordination in the name of reason was always present in Descartes and Spinoza, Hume and Kant. Somewhat later, such insubordination seems entirely to have lost its relevance; after all, the required institutional context no longer obtained. On the other hand, this development has not prevented many philosophers from attaching much importance to a god elevated far above the religious institutions. After all, the radicality that is so characteristic of the whole philosophical tradition, confronts philosophers ever anew with the necessity, posed by thought, of being able to point to truly decisive principles and truly tenable aims. In doing so, the association of such principles and aims with the title of `god' has turned out to retain its meaningfulness. Insofar as reference to a god causes trouble among intellectuals, this is due, in the rst place, to the way in which Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, and we might add Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre, have won the allegiance of a section among the intelligentsia, however limited the latter's exposure to philosophy might be. Among philosophers, the aversion to parochial, closed or even totalitarian institutions and theologico-political ideologies has, by contrast, repeatedly proved a
c November 20, 2002, Ars Disputandi. If you would like to cite this article, please do so as follows: Victor Kal, `Review of Acts of Religion,' Ars Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi.org] 2 (2002), section number.

Victor Kal stimulus for the recognition of another sort of relation, possibly even a relation to another kind of authority, one that cannot be so easily exploited by humans. Precisely with reference to that `Other', to this new `god of the philosophers', the insubordination has continued even in the modern world, not only, as previously mentioned, from Descartes to Kant, but also from Sren Kierkegaard to Theodor Adorno, or from Hermann Cohen to Emmanuel Levinas. At this point, the philosophical tradition has never lost contact entirely with Plato's Socrates. It is not beyond dispute, moreover, whether Nietzsche and Sartre necessarily stand outside this tradition. In his Glauben und Wissen, even Jrgen Habermas concludes, anno 2001, that although philosophical reason is profane, it ought to have respect for the critical perspective represented by religion: it is precisely `over against God' that people have never ceased to reject as unacceptable all the evil found in the world.1 Jacques Derrida also belongs to the philosophical tradition outlined here. He too engages with religion precisely as a philosopher. Hence the title of the book under consideration: Acts of Religion. Like most other philosophers, his intention in this connection is not an engagement with any speci c religious movement or institution. Derrida is still the `independent' intellectual he has always been, that is to say, his most important point of reference is still profane reason and its supposed universal and correct normality. In the case of Habermas, a comparable point of reference compels him to keep religion at a distance from his own, philosophical project. In the case of Derrida, there is no need for that. While identifying with profane reason, he constantly permits himself to cross the bounds. Without such a crossing of the bounds, he would be unable to raise the matter of `the Other'. However, this step brings him unavoidably within the sphere of religion. Nevertheless, he cultivates a sharp awareness of what is at stake in this crossing of the bounds, and he never fails to refer to the resulting thought as `aporetic'. This aporetic `a priori' enables him, on the one hand, to take hold of religion, yet, on the other, never to let go of profane normality altogether. At this point, the work of Derrida has some af nity with that of Plato. Yet in the papers collected in Acts of Religion, Plato is encountered only sporadically. The easiest way to gain insight into Derrida's `proof' that there can be no thought apart from something akin to religion, is to start with the fth chapter of Acts of Religion: `Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority '. 2 The `Mystical Foundation of Authority' Every authority, in whatever form, every regime, every law and every rule, enables people to legitimise their own position, their own behaviour, or their own thinking. All they need to do, is to inquire whether their own, speci c position can be subsumed under the generally applicable law that obtains by virtue of a particular authority. As soon as we inquire into the legitimacy of the authority
1. Jrgen Habermas, Glauben und Wissen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2001), 27 29; p.28: `Demgegenber hat die profane, aber nichtdefaitistische Vernunft zu viel Respekt vor dem Glutkern, der sich an der Frage der Theodizee entzndet, als dass sie der Religion zu nahe treten wrde'. (`On the other hand, the profane, though not defeatist, reason has too much respect for the glowing kernel ignited by the question of theodicy, to step on the toes of religion'.) Ars Disputandi 2 (2002)

Acts of Religion itself, however, a problem arises. A highest authority is by de nition not amenable to legitimation. Thus a certain lawlessness seems to lie at the very source of the law. Derrida speaks of `the allegedly originary violence that must have established this authority and that could not itself have authorized itself by any anterior legitimacy' (234). The term `violence' indicates that the decision to implement (new) law implies an element of discontinuity, no matter how hard we try to hide this fact. At that point, the logos is embarrassed, and all that can be asked for are trust and faith: `The very emergence of justice and law, the instituting, founding, and justifying moment of law implies a performative force and a call to faith [un appel la croyance]' (241). Human reason, prepared as it always is to give an account of its own speech, here reaches its limit, and nds itself compelled to remain silent with regard to what ultimately drives it. In fact, however, reason has always already crossed this bound, for in its own execution it already presupposes the authority of rules and points of departure, usually without problematising its `mystical', because inexpressible, foundation. By contrast, Derrida explicitly recognises the problem. This recognition constitutes the core of what he calls an `experience of aporia' and an `experience of the impossible' (244). This somewhat disconcerting state of affairs has a very positive implication. Let us rst hear what Derrida has to say:
Law is not justice. Law is the element of calculation, and it is just that there be law, but justice is incalculable, it demands that one calculate with the incalculable and aporetic experiences are the experiences, as improbable as they are necessary, of justice, that is to say of moments in which the decision between just and unjust is never insured by a rule. (244)

Here, `law' represents the domain of the given rules and their concrete application. Justice, on the other hand, represents the domain of the decision to institute new rules or to give a new interpretation of already established rules; in this domain, the term `correct' no longer has any meaning. The fact that the past lying behind law cannot be traced through calculation, corresponds to the fact that its future is equally incalculable. Only at the boundary of what is as yet only law, can justice show itself. In the light of justice, de ned in this sense, law is always relative, while justice as such can only obtain in an absolute sense. Trusting that justice may still show itself, Derrida is concerned to investigate, in whatever context may arise, whether the locally established law might not be dismantled, so that it does not close itself off prematurely from renewal and supplementation. To use a technical formulation: `Deconstruction takes place in the interval that separates the undeconstructibility of justice from the deconstructibility of law' (243). This `deconstruction' can thus be regarded as `the political chance of all historical progress' (242). At the same time it presupposes an accountability of which no further account can be given. The `anguish' (249) that this evokes, can only be overcome where one is under the spell of a justice that goes beyond law; here, one is `mad about and from this desire for justice' (254). Thus, for Derrida, religious trust is equivalent to faith in an always incalculable yet promising future. Reason would do itself in, if it were to close itself off from such a future.
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Victor Kal 3 Faith and knowledge The rst chapter of Acts of Religion is entitled `Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of Religion at the Limits of Reason Alone'. The sub-title of this chapter refers, of course, to Kant's well-known book from 1796, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (`Religion within the bounds of reason'). Yet Derrida writes `at the limits' [aux limites], and not `within the limits' [dans les limites]; Derrida is no `Kantian'. The problem that arises when reason reaches its limit has already been sketched above: here, reason is embarrassed with itself and becomes receptive to an `experience of the impossible'. Both religion and reason turn out, then, to rest on an engagement (which is itself not amenable to further legitimation) in which one performatively takes up, as something meaningful, the promise of an as yet possible escape; the meaning of this promise and of this possibility thus precedes religion and reason. Derrida states that `without the performative experience of this elementary act of faith, there would neither be social bond nor address of the other, nor any performativity in general: neither convention, nor institution, nor constitution, nor sovereign state, nor law, nor above all, here, that structural performativity of the productive performance that binds from its very inception the knowledge of the scienti c community to doing, and science to technics' (80). This `act of faith' should not be confused with religion understood as a system of legitimations. Thus we see that the trust in an `escape', not calculable in advance, from the aporia has two sides to it: this resource [ressource] is always promise and possibility simultaneously. That is why Derrida also speaks of `the two sources of religion at the limits of reason'. The appearance of `the Other' in the world, for instance the coming of justice in the form of a revised law, presupposes, at one and the same moment, both that this justice is indeed promised and that this law is indeed receptive to the realisation of the promise. In `Faith and knowledge', Derrida plays a `Hegelian' game with the concepts he employs. The dialectic involved here implies, for example, that a religion which seeks to remain intact by discarding reason, can do so only by means of reason and with the help of the most modern information-technology. Religious fundamentalism is therefore at the same time a supremely rational, hyper-critical phenomenon. At the opposite side of the spectrum, reason transforms itself into religion as soon as it yields to the tempting thought that it might nally leave religion behind. Thus modern knowledge-technology should be regarded as a kind of religion, if not a form of mysticism. No less paradoxical, however, is the relation to that `Other' itself. By virtue of its relation to the `Other', the world acquires both a relative and an absolute character: one can no longer maintain reality as it happens to be (it represents, in the rst place, `possibility'), nor may one abandon it (it is connected with a great promise). In other words, while the sacri ce must occur, one is at the same time subject to the commandment to respect life in an absolute sense. Both here and in `Force of Law', Derrida's expositions appear to be closely linked to his reading of Kierkegaard and Heidegger. What strikes one, nally, is the extent to which Derrida (and herein he does not differ from Levinas) holds on to the universalistic parti pris of philosophy. If a philosophical recognition of religion is ever to occur, such recognition would
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Acts of Religion have to pertain to a `messianic religion'. Of this he says:

At issue there is a general structure of experience . This messianic dimension does not depend on any messianism, it follows no determinate revelation, it belongs properly to no Abrahamic religion. (56)

Derrida is looking for a `universal structure of religiosity'. The elements that constitute it `are not in themselves properly religious, they always open the possibility of the religious without ever being able to limit or restrain it' (86). He emphasises: `the gap between the opening of this possibility (as a universal structure) and the determinate necessity of this or that religion will always remain irreducible' (93), and, taking his departure in this standpoint, Derrida's philosophy of religion arrives at its method: `it seems impossible to deny the possibility in whose name thanks to which the derived necessity (the authority or determinate belief) would be put in question, suspended, rejected or criticized, even deconstructed' (93 94). Having arrived at this point, Derrida seems to have forgotten that even this `possibility', the heart of `universal religiosity', does not escape the aporetic a priori, and therefore can only come into being where an inescapably particular `aporetic experience' takes place. However, Derrida apparently wants here to x the priority of one of the two (the universal / the particular). Consequently, when it comes to the relation between what he calls, one the one hand, `revealability (Offenbarkeit)', and, on the other, `revelation (Offenbarung)' (54), he does not get beyond the Kantian position (without being wholly at peace with it). 4 Derrida as reader and writer With the above I tried to give an impression of the metaphysical and religiousphilosophical problems that constitute Derrida's theme. Naturally, it is only a sketch; my presentation is not by any means complete. In the papers collected in Acts of Religion, the systematic theme is, however, often overgrown with Derrida's activity as (deconstructing) reader of texts from the history of philosophy, with more or less cryptic reminiscences of various philosophemes, and with an extended series of verbal associations and language games. We see Derrida the reader at work especially in `Des Tours de Babel' (Walter Benjamin: `On Language as Such and on the Language of Man'), in `Interpretations at War: Kant, the Jew, The German' (Hermann Cohen: `Deutschtum und Judentum' and Franz Rosenzweig: `Die Bauleute'), in `The Eyes of Language. The Abyss and the Volcano' (Gershom Scholem: `An Unpublished Letter from Gershom Scholem to Franz Rosenzweig, on the Subject of our Language, a Confession'), in the second part of `Force of Law' (Walter Benjamin: `Zur Kritik der Gewalt') and in `Hostipitality' (Louis Massignon and Emmanuel Levinas). The read texts differ strongly in character, and the diversity of Derrida's comments on the read texts corresponds negatively to the extent to which these comments are systematically elaborated. The text often acquires the character of an intellectual causerie, which might as well have continued for many more pages. All this demands much patience and considerable tolerance from the reader. The course of events becomes acceptable only when one imagines that Derrida is perhaps
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Victor Kal in the rst place a speaker making free associations. Thus, in a number of the papers collected in Acts of Religion, one should expect the worst: once they are no longer supported by the charm of a living Derrida, they risk being left behind as the long-winded, monotonous and humourless expositions of an admittedly highly intelligent yet clumsy author. Derrida deserves better.

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