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

Observations

Observations Derrida begins §36: ‘‘In the beginning, the title will have been my first aphorism. It condenses two traditional titles, entering into a contract with them. We are committed to deforming them, dragging them elsewhere while developing if not their negative or their unconscious, at least the logic of what they might have let speak about religion independently of the meanings they wanted to say.’’ Derrida goes on in this section to speak of the theme of light and of Enlightenment, and he cites in relation to these themes Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone and Bergson ’s The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. These are the two titles Derrida would appear to be referring to in the passage cited above, the two traditional titles condensed in the subtitle of ‘‘Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone.’’ What Derrida passes over in silence, as we saw in Chapter 1, is the fact that the title is itself borrowed without any deformation (beyond translation) from Hegel. Hence Derrida’s aphoristic title really brings together three traditional titles, three more or less canonical texts on the question of religion. However one might wish to understand what Derrida calls here a deformation of these texts by means of the development of a logic or meaning beyond what the texts themselves consciously intend, it is pretty clear that Derrida does not intend to enter into an extended critical debate with any of these texts, whether considered on their own, in the context of the critical debate each has generated, or in relationship to one another (the way in which, for example, both Hegel and Bergson are responding in large part to Kant). That this is not Derrida’s intention can be gleaned from the fact that almost all the comments on Kant, Hegel, and Bergson are confined to the ‘‘Italics,’’ that is, to the portion of the text read or at least presented in some improvised form at the Capri conference. When we get to the ‘‘Post-scriptum,’’ that is, to the twenty-six sections presumably added after the conference and written between the time of the conference (28 February 1994) and the date on which the text was signed (26 April 1995), little more than the two titles condensed in the subtitle really appear in the text, along with a citation of the final, ‘‘memorable’’ words of Bergson’s text, about which Derrida will then ask: ‘‘What would happen if Bergson were made to say something entirely different from what he believed he wanted to say but what perhaps was surreptitiously dictated to him?’’ (§37). I will return to this question later, but for moment let me simply emphasize the relative absence of Kant and Bergson—and the total absence of Hegel—in these final twenty-six sections, along with, interestingly , the ever-growing presence of Heidegger. If these four thinkers—Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Heidegger—provide Derrida with many of the themes he will treat and the majority of the terms he will use, from the title and subtitle onward, ‘‘Faith and Knowledge ’’ is not a straightforward reading or commentary on any of them, with the possible exception of Heidegger, the only one of the four who is not alluded to in any obvious way in the title. These four figures form the border, so to speak, of the discussion of religion in ‘‘Faith and Knowledge ,’’ but they can in no way be construed to be at its center. Instead of treating these figures in any detail within the foregoing analysis of ‘‘Faith and Knowledge,’’ I have opted to devote to each of them what might be considered—imitating Kant—a brief ‘‘Observation’’ or, better, a parergon , in order to provide some of the historical background for ‘‘Faith and Knowledge’’ that Derrida assumes and so does not himself spell out. Because subsequent figures sometimes refer to former ones, I will take the four in historical order: Observation 1, Kant (1724–1804); Observation 2, Hegel (1770–1831); Observation 3, Bergson (1859–1941); Observation 4, Heidegger (1889–1976). Observation 1 Kant Derrida focuses on the themes and terms of Kant’s 1793 work Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone in a few of the central sections of the ‘‘Italics’’ (§§11–17).1 These comments on Kant can be organized around four basic themes: (1) the notion of radical evil;2...