Abstract
The work of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy shares with the thinkers of the ‘theological turn in phenomenology’ the programmatic desire to place the ‘theological’, in the broad sense of rethinking the religious traditions in our secular time, back on the agenda of critical thought. Like those advocating a theological turn in phenomenology, Nancy’s deconstructive approach to philosophical analysis aims to develop a new sensibility for the other, for transcendence, conceptualized as the non-apparent in the realm of appearing phenomena. This is why Nancy launches a project looking for the ‘unthought’ and unexpected within the Christian traditions, called deconstruction of Christianity. However, the deconstructive approach to the non-apparent differs fundamentally from that of the thinkers of the turn (1) in its being non-apologetic and non-restorative with regard to religion, because it starts from a problematization of the—typically modern, that is romantic—desire to defend and protect what would be ‘lost’ and possibly to restore this, (2) in its focus on the complex difference-at-work (différance) between religion and secularism, a difference that can be termed entanglement and complicity between these two, (3) in its hypothesis that this entanglement is essentially one between (the meaning and experience of, the rituality around) presence and absence in modern culture, (4) in its conviction that the philosophy and history of culture must join, support, complete and maybe even turn around phenomenology when dealing with the difficult task of determining what exactly would be ‘left’ of the ‘theological’ in our time. In this article, both positions are compared and confronted further, leading to an account of Nancy’s re-readings of the Christian legacy (its theology, doctrine, art, rituals etc.), and ending in a more detailed, exemplary inquiry into the tension between distance and proximity, characteristic of the Christian God.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See Derrida 1973.
See Husserl 1984.
The first mode is supported, according to Husserl, by expressive signs, that coincide with the sense (Bedeutung) they create and hence present this sense: they create a presence by which the sign itself is absorbed. The second mode is supported by indicative signs, which ‘only’ suggest sense and hence do not create the enveloping presence of sense brought about by expressive signs. See Husserl 1984, 3–66.
Here Derrida uses the well-known neology différance, probably the key concept in the philosophy of deconstruction (which can therefore be called a central current within the ‘philosophy of difference’ that came up in France since the sixties with thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard, Nancy). Différance is a variation on the French différence indicating an active, verb-like meaning of the word. A dynamic differing of difference is expressed in the a replacing the e. Furthermore, the double meaning of the French différer is played out here, that of differing and that of deferring. Différance always defers, postpones unity and presence; it keeps the dynamic between presence and absence open and undecided. See on this also my ‘Randgänge der Theologie. Prolegomena einer “Theologie der Differenz” im Ausgang von Derrida und Barth’, in Zeitschrift für dialektische Theologie 14–1, Fall 1998, 9–31.Whenever the word ‘difference’ is used in the following, this neologic meaning is referred to.
See for an instructive exploration into new possibilities in the Husserl-reception, in which Derrida’s deconstruction of Husserl in Speech and Phenomena plays a clear role, Rudolf Bernet, ‘Husserl’s Theory of Signs Revisited’, in Sokolowski 1988, 1–24.
See e.g. Nancy 2000, 200 n53.
See again Nancy 2000, 200 n 53; here Nancy refers to the paragraphs 55–58 of Husserl’s Cartesianische Meditationen, Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff 1950.
See e.g. Yvonne Sherwood, Kevin Hart (eds.), Derrida and Religion: Other Testaments, London and New York: Routledge 2005. See also the useful volumes edited by John D. Caputo, Mark Dooley and Michael J. Scanlon, Questioning God, Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 2001; and John D. Caputo, Michael J. Scanlon (eds.), God, the Gift and Postmodernism, Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1999. These are just two examples of an immense array of publications and literature that came out in the last 10 to 15 years, in particular in the anglophonic world. Derrida’s later work is quite a central source in this literature.
The suggestion of a ‘phenomenology of the non-apparent’ was introduced by Heidegger in 1973, in the Zähringen seminars. It was adopted more or less by Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Louis Chrétien, and in a different way by Emmanuel Levinas—the latter’s critical discussion with phenomenology and his claim that phenomenology would exclude the non-apparent as its ‘other’ date from well before 1973, see his Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press 2003 (orig. 1961). See on the ‘history’ of this phenomenology of the non-apparent Dominique Janicaud in Janicaud et al. 2000, 28–34.
See also above, the previous section, for the full quotation.
Or to put this in slogan-form: We need not fight for absence: if necessary at all, absence will fight for itself...
Parts of the following analyses in this section are a reworked version of my ‘Heilig heidendom. Over de complexe relatie tussen humanisme en christendom’, in Duyndam et al. 2005, 143–160.
‘La religion de la sortie de la religion.’ See Gauchet 1985, esp. 133–232.
Compare the concrete gods of rain and fertility, in sum of nature, criticized and fought in the stories of Tenach (the Jewish bible) in favour of the nameless, abstract, intangible Jehova, who does not tolerate other gods next to Him—although these stories also describe the immense attraction the gods of nature have on the people of Israel.
See for Löwith’s position e.g. Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen. Die theologischen Voraussetzungen der Geschichtsphilosophie, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1953; Permanence and Change: Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Cape Town SA: Haum 1969; Christentum und Geschichte, Düsseldorf: Pädogischer Verlag Schwann 1955. For Blumenberg’s position see above all his The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, Cambridge Mass.: MIT 1983 (orig. 1966).
See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. I, New York: Pantheon Books 1978 (orig. 1976), and more specifically his groundbreaking article on the work of Georges Bataille, ‘Préface à la transgression’, in Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits (D. Defert, F. Ewald, eds.), vol. I, 233–250, esp. 233–235.
See Sloterdijk 1998, ch. 8 and 1999, Introduction and ch. 5. In my view, a critical account of Sloterdijk’s proclamation of a certain decline of Christianity towards the end of the Middle Ages would certainly be necessary, despite the admirable and innovative analyses of the christliche Erbe (Christian legacy) he offers. See on this my ‘Zwischen Immunität und Infinität. Der Ort in Peter Sloterdijks Sphärologie, im Hinblick auf seine Durchdenkung der christlichen Erbe’, in Koenraad Hemelsoet, Sjoerd van Tuinen (eds.), Peter Sloterdijk zum 60ten Geburtstag, München: Fink Verlag, forthcoming Spring 2009.
Nancy 2002, 76: ‘...was das Christentum möglich gemacht hat (und mit ihm das, was die gesamten abendländischen Zivilisation strukturiert hat), was aber gleichzeitig nicht das Christentum selber wäre und sich nicht mit ihm vermischt hätte—etwas, was das noch im Kommen begriffene Ungedachte des Christentums selbst wäre.’ My transl., also later quotations.
Outside Christianity in the sense Nancy formulates it (see note 20): ‘that what has not mingled with it’—and I would add: what can never mingle with it according to a logic of presence.
One should speak here of a continuous ‘opening of possibility’, of an active and dynamic ‘making possible’, in other words, of a beginning or starting point that ‘begins time and again’, rather than of a stable and pre-existent ‘condition’. Considered this way, the ‘condition’ is part of the movement (Kommen) instead of preceding it; it is an unconditional condition.
The French terms used by Nancy in Dis-Enclosure are épuisement and esp. exhaustion.
See also note 20.
The double meaning of this term should be kept alive: retreat as withdrawal, and as dealing with (treating) something/someone again (re-), in other words: re-addressing. It indicates a turning away as well as a turning towards. The French word retrait contains the same contradictory meanings; however, in the German Auszug/Entzug the second meaning is lost. A similar structure of thought is visible in other concepts and pairs of concept dealt with above: presence-absence, inside-outside, passing by, passing on. It is a differential and not a dychotomic or dualist structure, since what interests Nancy in every case is what ‘happens’ between the opposites, disrupting or undermining their being opposed to one another altogether.
See Nancy 2008, in particular ‘Atheism and Monotheism’, 14–28, and ‘A Deconstruction of Monotheism’, 29–41.
Exodus 20: 1–4. Transl. The Open Bible, Nashville/Camden/New York: Th. Nelson 1977.
See Charles Taylor, ‘Ein Ort für die Transzendenz?’, in Information Philosophie June 2003–2, 7–16, 8: here Taylor states that the forces behind what Max Weber once called the disenchantment (Entzauberung) of the world (that is, a world that has put God at great distance) ‘have always been the Jewish and then the Christian tradition.’ In his Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press 1989, Taylor offers a large scale elaboration of this idea.
See on the recent interest in and rephrasings of negative mysticism in (post)modern times Ilse N. Bulhof, Laurens ten Kate (eds.), Flight of the Gods: Philosophical Perspectives on Negative Theology, New York: Fordham University Press 2000. Some protagonists of the theological turn in phenomenology, like Marion, have also showed substantial interest in these traditions, see e.g. Jean-Luc Marion, God without Being: Hors-Texte, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1991 (orig. 1981).
Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/1885, fr. 125, second paragraph. My transl.
Cf. Richard Kearney, The God Who May Be: The Hermeneutics of Religion, Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 2002.
These terms are Derrida’s, see e.g. his Writing and Difference, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1978 (orig. 1967).
The Greek kenos means ‘empty’.
References
Alexandrova, A., Devisch, I., ten Kate, L., & van Rooden, A. (Eds) (2009). Retreating religion: Deconstructing christianity with Jean-Luc Nancy, forthcoming.
Derrida, J. (1973). Speech and phenomena. Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press Orig. 1967.
Duyndam, J., Poorthuis, M., & de Wit, T. (Eds) (2005). Humanisme en religie. Controverses, bruggen en perspectieven. Delft: Eburon.
Gauchet, M. (1997). The disenchantment of the world: A political history of religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press Orig. 1985.
Husserl, E. (1984). Logische Untersuchungen. In U. Panzer (Ed.). Den Haag: Nÿhoff.
Hutchens, B. (2005). Jean-Luc Nancy and the future of philosophy. Chesham: Acumen.
James, I. (2006). The fragmentary demand. An introduction to the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Janicaud, D. (2000). The theological turn of French phenomenology. In Idem, et al. (Ed.), Phenomenology and the ‘Theological Turn’: The french debate (pp. 16–103). New York: Fordham University Press.
Marion, J.-L. (2008). Metaphysics and phenomenology: A relief for theology. In H. de Vries (Ed.), Religion: Beyond a concept (pp. 283–296). New York: Fordham University Press.
Nancy, J.-L. (1991). ‘Of divine places’. In The inoperative community (pp. 110–150). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Nancy, J.-L. (1997). The sense of the world. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Nancy, J.-L. (2000). Being singular plural. Stanford: Stranford University Press Orig.1996.
Nancy, J.-L. (2002). ‘Entzug der Göttlichkeit. Zur Dekonstruktion und Selbstüberschreitung des Christentums’. In Lettre International (pp. 76–80). Winter.
Nancy, J.-L. (2008). Dis-Enclosure: The deconstruction of christianity. New York: Fordham University Press.
Sheppard, D., Sparks, S., Thomas, C. (Eds) (1997). On Jean-Luc Nancy: The sense of philosophy. London and New York: Routledge.
Sloterdijk, P. (1998). Sphären I: Blasen. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.
Sloterdijk, P. (1999). Sphären II: Globen. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.
Sokolowski, R. (Ed) (1988). Husserl and the phenomenological tradition. Essays in phenomenology. Washington: The Catholic University of America Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
On Jean-Luc Nancy’s Deconstruction of Christianity, Compared and Confronted with the ‘Theological Turn in Phenomenology’
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
ten Kate, L. Intimate Distance: Rethinking the Unthought God in Christianity. SOPHIA 47, 327–343 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-008-0069-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-008-0069-0