Transcendence and Beyond: A Postmodern Inquiry

Introduction: Do We Need to Transcend Transcendence?

1 Introduction Do We Need to Transcend Transcendence? John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon To Jacques Derrida The idea behind the Religion and Postmodernism conference series, of which the present volume is the latest installment, has been to bring central ideas from the classical tradition into dialogue with the idea of postmodernity. A first conference on the gift was followed by one on forgiveness and a third on St. Augustine’s Confessions.∞ We were blessed in these first three conferences to undertake these explorations in dialogue with Jacques Derrida, whose good humor and modesty touched everyone who was able to attend them. Derrida’s work on these most classical of topics in the last fifteen years of his life has provided a profound impetus to all of us who have been driven to reflect upon and revisit our religious traditions under the impact of his powerful provocation . He charged the air of our conferences and captured the hearts of the many hundreds of attendees over the years with his sparkling wit and intelligence . Derrida himself, of course, was something of a reluctant bride in this marriage. He quite disliked the idea of ‘‘post-modernity’’ inasmuch as he refused to dissociate himself from the deeper ideals of the modern age and the Enlightenment, especially the ethical and political ideal of emancipation, much preferring to speak of a ‘‘new Enlightenment,’’ one that was more en- John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon 2 lightened about Enlightenment and more critical of the pretension to pure critique. He was also never very comfortable with the idea of religion. So getting him to a conference on religion and postmodernism was a tribute to his enormous graciousness, if not to our resourcefulness. His death on 8 October 2004 deeply saddened everyone at Villanova, for he was a great friend to this institution, even as it saddened the hundreds of people who have attended these conferences over the years and were touched by the magnetism of his person, as well as the many thousands of his friends and readers around the globe. So it is with much pride, no little gratitude and a deep sense of mourning—about which Jacques often wrote so movingly—that we dedicate this volume to Jacques (‘‘Jackie’’) Derrida, whose spirit will always animate these conferences. It was not only a pleasure to know him—it was a grace. Beyond the Beyond In the present volume we have taken up the question of ‘‘transcendence and beyond.’’ In putting it this way we were, in the spirit of Derrida, setting the dynamics of this word loose upon the word itself: For if to transcend is already to pass beyond, we are trying to press forward beyond the beyond. Our most straightforward intention was to see whether and how this classical idea of transcendence plays out in a postmodern context—what it would mean, how it would need to be rethought, and whether we need in fact to get beyond its classical beyond to a more postmodern beyond. There is (no surprise!) a planned ambiguity in our ‘‘beyond.’’ Do we need a transcendence that is ever-more beyond, a still-more transcendent transcendence—plus de transcendance? Or should we give up on that as an impossible attempt to make water wet, as Catherine Keller puts it so wittily, and take ‘‘beyond’’ transcendence to mean that we should put transcendence, like Satan, behind us—no more transcendence —plus de transcendance? Is it the case that, when seen in a postmodern light, transcendence must be itself transcended? If so, is this because the classical concept—if not the word ‘‘transcendence’’—does not go far enough, and we must go farther? Or because it goes too far and must be rehabilitated for a more worldly life, where it must be refitted for a more material, gendered and planetary existence? After all, for all its authority and prestige, the word ‘‘transcendent ’’ is a relative term: It depends on what is being transcended, and there is a long list of candidates—the subject, the self, the sensible world, beings, even Being itself—and so there is nothing to stop us from wondering whether transcendence itself is to be added to the list as still one more thing to be transcended. Jean-Luc Marion and Gianni Vattimo are paradigmatic representatives of these two tendencies, of what we might call a certain ‘‘hypertranscendence,’’ an even more transcendent transcendence; and ‘‘post-transcendence,’’ where classical transcendence is left behind as so...