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Does violence inevitably shadow our ethico-political engagements and decisions, including our understandings of identity, whether collective or individual? Questions that touch upon ethics and politics can greatly benefit from being rephrased in terms borrowed from the arsenal of religious and theological figures, because the association of such figures with a certain violence keeps moralism, whether in the form of fideism or humanism, at bay. Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida's careful posing of such questions and rearticulations pioneers new modalities for systematic engagement with religion and philosophy alike.
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Religion and Violence
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Religion and Violence Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida
Hent de Vries
The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore and London
© The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The Johns Hopkins University Press North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland - www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vries, Hent de. Religion and violence : philosophical perspectives from Kant to Derrida / Hent de Vries. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. --- (alk. paper) — --- (pbk. : alk. paper) . Violence—Religious aspects. . Philosophy and religion. I. Title. . .'—dc - A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Publication was made possible in part by the support of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).
For Paola
One cannot weep over Abraham. One approaches him with a horror religiosus, as Israel approached Mount Sinai. , Fear and Trembling (trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong)
Il y a de l’horreur dans le respect religieux. And, in fact, there is a horror in religious respect. , Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (trans. Joseph Ward Swain)
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xxi Introduction: Horror Religiosus
State, Academy, Censorship: The Question of Religious Tolerance The Institution of Philosophy, / Modernity and the Question of Religious Tolerance: Rereading Kant’s Conflict of the Faculties, / The Triple Sign: Signum rememorativum, demonstrativum, prognostikon, / The Voice from Nowhere: Philosophy and the Paradoxical Topography of the University, / Paganism, Religion Proper, and the Politics of Theology: Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, / Multiculturalism Reconsidered, / Concentricity and Monocentrism, / Ineradicable Evil, / The Academic Contract: Old and New,
Violence and Testimony: Kierkegaardian Meditations Rereading Fear and Trembling, / The Modality of Persecuted Truth, / The ‘‘Possibility of the Offense’’: Kierkegaard on Martyrdom, / Tautology and Heterology: Tout autre est tout autre, / À dieu, adieu, a-dieu, / Doubling ‘‘God’’ and God’s Double, / Beyond Sacrifice,
x
Contents
Anti-Babel: The Theologico-Political at Cross Purposes Positive Theology, / Political Theology Revisited, / Of Miracles: Kant’s Political Theology, / ‘‘Les extrèmes se touchent,’’ / Rereading Walter Benjamin, / The Originary Affirmation of Mysticism, / ‘‘In the Beginning—No Beginning’’: The Originary Catastrophe and the Gift of Language, / ‘‘In the Beginning There Will Have Been Force’’: The Mystical Postulate, Justice, and the Law, / À Dieu: The Divine Signature,
Hospitable Thought: Before and beyond Cosmopolitanism Turning Around Religio