In this Book
- Miracle and Machine:Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and the Media: Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and the Media
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: Fordham University Press
- Series: Perspectives in Continental Philosophy
summary
Miracle and Machine is a sort of "reader's guide" to Jacques Derrida's 1994 essay
"faith and knowledge," his most important work on the nature of religion in general
and on the unprecedented forms it is taking today through science and the media. It
provides essential background for understanding Derrida's essay, commentary on its
unique style and its central figures (e.g., Kant, Hegel, Bergson, and Heidegger),
and assessment of its principal philosophical claims about the fundamental duplicity
of religion and the ineluctably autoimmune relationship among religion, science, and
the media. Along the way it offers in-depth analysis of Derrida's treatment of
everything from the nature of religious revelation, faith, prayer, sacrifice,
testimony, messianicity, fundamentalism, and secularism to the way religion is today
being transformed by globalization, technoscience, and worldwide telecommunications
networks.But Miracle and Machine is much more than a commentary on a single Derrida
text. Through references to scores of other works by Derrida, both early and late,
it also provides a unique introduction to Derrida's work in general. It demonstrates
that one of the very best ways to understand the terms, themes, claims, strategies,
and motivations of Derridean deconstruction from the early 1960s through 2004 is to
read critically and patiently, in its spirit and in its letter, an exemplary text
such as "Faith and Knowledge." Finally, Miracle and Machine attempts to put
Derrida's ideasabout religion to the test by reading alongside "Faith and Knowledge"
an already classic work of American fiction that is more or less contemporaneous
with it, Don DeLillo's 1997 Underworld, a novel that explores the same relationship
between faith and knowledge, religion and science, religious revelation and the
World Wide Web,messianicity, and weapons of mass destruction in a word, in two
words, miracles and machines.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- Abbreviations of Works by Jacques Derrida
- pp. xi-xxiv
- Introduction
- pp. 1-12
- 1 Context Event Signature
- pp. 21-38
- PART II The Religion(s) of the World
- pp. 101-102
- Interlude I
- pp. 103-106
- PART III Underworlds and Afterlives
- pp. 197-198
- Observations
- pp. 285-330
- Reference Matter
- pp. 331-332
- Index to Sections of ‘‘Faith and Knowledge’’
- pp. 393-394
- Name and Subject Index
- pp. 395-408
Additional Information
ISBN
9780823249411
Related ISBN(s)
9780823239979
MARC Record
OCLC
787845998
Pages
432
Launched on MUSE
2012-08-22
Language
English
Open Access
No