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Negative Theology and Conversion: Derrida's Neoplatonic Compulsions

Stephen Gersh

in Derrida and Antiquity

This chapter concentrates on two of Derrida's texts, How to Avoid Speaking: Denials and Circumfession, in order to show how the author reads major figures within the Platonic or Neoplatonic ... More

This chapter concentrates on two of Derrida's texts, How to Avoid Speaking: Denials and Circumfession, in order to show how the author reads major figures within the Platonic or Neoplatonic tradition—particularly Augustine and pseudo‐Dionysius—in counterpoint with such modern thinkers as Heidegger, Husserl, and Levinas. Contrary to the opinion of certain contemporary historians of ideas and post‐modern theologians, Derrida reveals a highly sophisticated grasp of what might be termed the negative‐differential, onto‐theo‐logical, and incipiently performative aspects of this ancient philosophical tradition. His only serious failing as a reader is perhaps to separate too radically the ‘mystical’ from the ‘Platonic’ aspects of late ancient thought, thereby missing the opportunity to release fully the deconstructive energy within many texts to which he had rightly drawn attention.Less

Language

George Pattison

in God and Being: An Enquiry

Heidegger's critique of Gerede and Kierkegaard's analysis of chatter show language in crisis. However, this also reveals tensions in the basic structures of linguistic representation. This is ... More

Heidegger's critique of Gerede and Kierkegaard's analysis of chatter show language in crisis. However, this also reveals tensions in the basic structures of linguistic representation. This is explored further through Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida. Particular attention is paid to the development in Heidegger's concept of language from his early lectures on Aristotle's Rhetoric through to his later concept of Ereignis. However, language is a human practice and what language ‘means’ is inseparable from how it is used or performed by those who speak it. Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky and M.M. Bakhtin are used to draw out the significance of the moral commitment of the speaker and the consequent problematization of language as a means of truthful communication in a human world characteristically moving in a fog of lies, prevarications, and misunderstanding. The question of language therefore leads to the question of human relationships, and their capacity to reveal Being.Less

CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Merold Westphal

in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion

A triple sampling of the rich diversity of philosophical reflection on religion and on the relation of philosophy to religion within “continental” traditions. The first part explores three accounts ... More

A triple sampling of the rich diversity of philosophical reflection on religion and on the relation of philosophy to religion within “continental” traditions. The first part explores three accounts of the relation of phenomenology to religion as presented by Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Marion (in relation to Janicaud’s critique). The second part explores Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics in its onto-theological constitution with detailed attention to just what he means by this notion and with special reference to the religious and theological motivations one might have for wanting to avoid onto-theological thinking. The third part explores the renewed interest in negative theology that revolves around the conversation between Derrida and Marion.Less

Apophatic Theology and Its Vicissitudes

Marika Rose

in A Theology of Failure: žižek against Christian Innocence

This chapter explores Derrida’s work in relation to apophatic theology, examining the ways in which the Dionysian inheritance is transformed in his writings so as to repeat differently the four ... More

This chapter explores Derrida’s work in relation to apophatic theology, examining the ways in which the Dionysian inheritance is transformed in his writings so as to repeat differently the four themes of freedom, materiality, hierarchy, and universalism according to a new configuration of eros and ontology. This new configuration in turn becomes a problem for theology. These responses to the apophatic elements of Dionysius’s work are perhaps best captured by the twin poles of radical orthodoxy and deconstructionist Christianity. Although these two appear initially to be dramatically divergent responses to Derrida, I will show that both ultimately retain the same colonizing universalism of systematic theology.Less

Religious Language (C): God's Knowledge as a Divine Perfection

Daniel Davies

in Method and Metaphysics in Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed

An essential part of the law's theology, as Maimonides explains it, is that God knows all things as their creator. It is usually thought that this view opposes Maimonides' negative theology. This ... More

An essential part of the law's theology, as Maimonides explains it, is that God knows all things as their creator. It is usually thought that this view opposes Maimonides' negative theology. This chapter argues that Maimonides describes God's knowledge in the same way as uncreated perfections were described in chapter 5. It shows that Maimonides' presentation of God's knowledge can then be squared with his negative theology and that he tries to meet philosophical objections by emphasizing the absolute difference between God's knowledge and human knowledge. As with creation, the law is opposed to Aristotle's view, and neither can be demonstrated. The law can only be supported by dialectical levels of authority. An appendix to the chapter considers the thorny issue of the opposition between Maimonides' negative theology and his clear assertion that God is an intellect. It argues that this difficulty might be solved in the same fashion.Less

The Cloud of the Impossible: Embodiment and Apophasis

Catherine Keller

in Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality

Apophatic theology has little to (un)say about bodies, whereas it speaks volumes about that which it deems worthy of unsaying. It treats bodies generally not as wicked or ... More

Apophatic theology has little to (un)say about bodies, whereas it speaks volumes about that which it deems worthy of unsaying. It treats bodies generally not as wicked or repulsive, but as sites of obstruction, suffering, distraction. Since feminist theology as a collective comprises a critical mass of that body-affirming movement, and since some are also dangerously attracted to the apophatic way, the cloud of the impossible engulfs the present exploration from the start. Nicholas of Cusa oddly appears as a mediator both of method and of content. He would plunge one not into an empty chasm but into the “cloud of impossibility”. The necessity of entering the “cloud of impossibility” is no mere metaphysical inevitability, but an all too familiar experience. If we do not cling to a certainty whose oppositional purity we doubt anyway, we enter the Cusan cloud. Then we may relinquish the binary structure of the impasse itself. This chapter examines the cloud of the impossible and the relation between deconstruction and negative theology.Less

Feminist Theology and the Sensible Unsaying of Mysticism

Sigridur Gudmarsdottir

in Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality

The literary theorist Anne-Marie Priest argues that if poststructural scholars of religion have pointed out the connections between Derridean deconstruction and negative ... More

The literary theorist Anne-Marie Priest argues that if poststructural scholars of religion have pointed out the connections between Derridean deconstruction and negative theology, the affinities between feminist theories of sexual difference and negative theology have been less explored. By reading the early texts of philosopher Luce Irigaray on alterity and sexual difference, Priest claims apophatic practices at the heart of contemporary feminism of difference. She maintains that for those feminists who affirm sexual difference, woman-as-the-Other holds a place similar to that held by God for apophatic theologians. Irigaray sheds light on the “womanliness” of God, suggesting that God is both a model and an agent for the disruption of patriarchy and the creation of feminine subjectivity. For feminist theology, which is committed to the quest for the full humanity of women and to the end of their oppression within the Christian tradition, can anything sensible come out of this tradition of silence and unsaying? This chapter highlights some apophatic patterns within the field of feminist theology and considers the prospects of apophatic feminist theology.Less

The Apophasis of Divine Freedom: Saving “the Name” and the Neighbor from Human Mastery

Chris Boesel

in Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality

This chapter provides a very brief and very general characterization of a deconstructive reading of negative theology. It discusses, in addition to Jacques Derrida ... More

This chapter provides a very brief and very general characterization of a deconstructive reading of negative theology. It discusses, in addition to Jacques Derrida himself, the interpretations by John Caputo and Kevin Hart of Derrida's reading of Pseudo-Dionysius. Calling negative theology here, is, as all traditions, varied and multiform, and Derrida's deconstructive analysis and critique of one of its featured practitioners should in no way be taken as an authoritative representation of the tradition as a whole. The chapter then focuses on a certain apophatic desire of its own: a twofold desire—theologically, to “save the name” of God from human mastery, and in doing so, to ethically “save the neighbor” from the always toxic consequences of said mastery. The chapter then suggests an alternative strand of the theological tradition that may provide resources for the apophatic desire of theologically minded interpreters of deconstruction.Less

Opening

in The Indiscrete Image: Infinitude and Creation of the Human

In Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God (1999), the author elucidated an analogy between the logic of Being-toward-God in traditions of mystical theology, where the relation of soul to God ... More

In Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God (1999), the author elucidated an analogy between the logic of Being-toward-God in traditions of mystical theology, where the relation of soul to God concerns a naming of the unnameable or a thinking of the unthinkable, and the logic of Being-toward-death in Heideggerian and post-Heideggerian thinking about the human as finite, mortal existence, where the individual's relation to death signals the paradoxical possibility of an impossibility. In both directions, according to a so-called “apophatic analogy,” the subject of thought and language finds itself always already constituted in relation to a term that conditions all thought and language while ever eluding their full or final capture in the presence of any experience. Figured in terms of their “indiscretion,” then, the structure and movement of a negative theology—according to which the endlessly named, conceived, and imagined God remains ultimately ineffable, inconceivable, and unimaginable—could never be securely distinguished from, nor identified with, the structure and movement of a negative anthropology, according to which our finite, mortal existence remains ever a mystery to us. This book aims to take up and advance this understanding of the human as incomprehensible to itself by showing such incomprehensibility, or the lack of definition it implies, to be a condition of the creative, and indeed technological, capacity that the human inescapably inhabits but never actually exhausts. It regards the creative possibility of mortal human existence more in terms of the infinitude or indetermination of such existence—and of such possibility. In that direction, the work posits and develops an intimate linkage between the indetermination of the human, its relative lack of definition or discretion, and the inexhaustible capacity of the human to create and recreate both itself and its world through processes of birth that may themselves go to the heart of the nature we inhabit.Less

Introduction

Aydogan Kars

in Unsaying God: Negative Theology in Medieval Islam

This chapter introduces the framework and the content of the book and discusses the basic conceptual problems revolving around “negative theology.” It argues that we should not only move from ... More

This chapter introduces the framework and the content of the book and discusses the basic conceptual problems revolving around “negative theology.” It argues that we should not only move from “negative theology” to “negative theologies” in order to approach Islamic intellectual landscapes, but we should also qualify the particular question of theology we are examining. Discussions of negative theology as such tend to confuse divine attributes and the divine essence and reduce apophaticism into a hunt for negative particles and statements. The chapter narrows down the scope of the book to the negative theologies of the divine essence. It also presents justifications for its boundaries and its linguistic preferences, and it defines some technical terms that appear throughout the book. It provides a conceptual introduction to negative theology and a compass to the subsequent chapters of the book.Less

Faith As the Overcoming of Ontological Xenophobia

Merold Westphal

in Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith

This chapter looks at Derrida's attempt to distinguish deconstruction from negative theology. In this context, it argues that Derrida opens the door without entering it, for ... More

This chapter looks at Derrida's attempt to distinguish deconstruction from negative theology. In this context, it argues that Derrida opens the door without entering it, for an Augustinian understanding of divine alterity in terms of the combined motifs of creation and fall, as developed by Augustine, as well as Aquinas and Bonaventure. In Heidegger's view one could not more eloquently express the danger that the metaphysical tradition represents. It follows that Nietzsche is a Neoplatonist in the grips of ontological xenophobia, while Heidegger is, if not an instance of the Augustinian faith that overcomes this fear of meeting a stranger, at least someone who deliberately holds open the space for such a possibility. The chapter presents this Neoplatonist/Augustinian typology as alternative and corrective to the Augustinian/Thomistic distinction presented by Tillich in his famous essay “The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion”.Less

Introduction

Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller

in Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality

The ancient tradition of apophasis, or negative theology, concerns itself with the infinity called “God”. It says and unsays talk about that God. It falls speechless before a ... More

The ancient tradition of apophasis, or negative theology, concerns itself with the infinity called “God”. It says and unsays talk about that God. It falls speechless before a mystery that inspires more speech in the next moment. Surely the paradox entailed in this traditional apophatic gesture is mind-bending enough—speaking as unspeaking, knowing as unknowing, darkness as light—to keep us occupied for all these pages? The apophatic mystics—Jewish, Christian, Muslim—do surely speak. They speak and unspeak volumes. With uninhibited kataphasis (the presumed affirmative opposite of apophasis), at once confessional and speculative, liturgical and philosophical, they speak about God. The relation of the classic apophatic traditions to the body, and therefore to this split obligation between divine infinity and embodied finitude, may not be as straightforward as it appears at first blush. The problem posed by the apophatic gesture is also one of too great a distance, too radical a separation, between divine and creaturely reality; too absolute a sense of divine transcendence in relation to the finite realm of creaturely embodiment.Less

Kant and the Negative Theology

Don Cupitt

in Is Nothing Sacred?: The Non-Realist Philosophy of Religion: Selected Essays

This chapter describes Donald MacKinnon's inference that Kant's religious thought was a negative theology because its doctrine emphasizes God's superiority and that he must be removed beyond the ... More

This chapter describes Donald MacKinnon's inference that Kant's religious thought was a negative theology because its doctrine emphasizes God's superiority and that he must be removed beyond the reach of descriptive language. Kant fully accepted the idea that the old doctrine had collapsed and for him it was God's existence rather than his nature that was unknowable and God's nature that was not mysterious. It seems that Kant was deliberately setting out to contradict the element of authoritarian appeal to mystery in the old negative theology. Thus, Kant continued the themes of the old negative theology, and he even changed it considerably in order to make it intellectually and morally more acceptable. Though, Donald MacKinnon takes a very different view, still he insists on sticking to a more descriptive and realist interpretation of the major themes of traditional Christian theology because he thinks one should stay and endure the strange inflexible intellectual difficulties that such a position involves.Less