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The Gift of Death, Second Edition & Literature in Secret (Religion and Postmodernism)

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You can give someone life--or you can put someone to death. But you cannot "give" someone their own death. Death is a "gift" because it insures our irreplaceableness in God's eyes; it is ours and ours alone. No one can die in my place no more than I can die in theirs. Our willingness to acknowledge this relationship with our own deaths (which above all requires "responsibility," a term Derrida seems to prefer to "faith") in turn unites us with God and the self, with the giver and the receiver.

I'll admit I hadn't expected a deconstructionist to use terms like "absolute," "transcendant," "God," "self"--in profusion and in earnest. But perhaps Derrida has sufficiently exposed the instability, metaphoric basis and deceptive play of language to be able to employ it without qualifiers, disclaimers, and tedious textual self-referentiality. As is his custom, he represents his own work as a critique of others' works--Plato's "Phaedo," Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals," Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling," and the contemporary, politically executed Polish philosopher Jan Potocka. While he establishes his distance from Plato and Nietzsche, his re-visioning of Kierkegaard offers new angles without questioning or challenging the great Dane's existential reading of the Abraham-Isaac story. And his alignment with Potocka is so complete as to suggest more an apologia than a critique of the latter's work. Add to these texts numerous references to Heidegger and to both the Old and New Testaments as well as to stories by Poe and Hawthorne, and you'll have some idea of how richly allusive, not to mention dense, Derrida's discourse can be, even in a brief work such as this.

The primary requisite for reading "The Gift of Death" is some knowledge of its precursor, "Fear and Trembling." Like Kierkegaard, Derrida defines religion as access to the responsibility of a free self, which in turn is defined as a relationship consciously and secretly experienced by the individual subject who sees him or herself in the gaze of God. Truth is separated from Socrates' truth by its interiority, by its replacement of reason, ethics, and aesthetics with the sheer horror of the abyss. Compared to Kierkegaard, however, Derrida's account is less romantic, less inspiring, more disturbing. The leap of faith involves not a sacrifice of Isaac but of oneself, a secret and senseless meeting with one's own death. Derrida interprets the absence of woman in the Abraham and Bartleby stories as proof that the "knight of faith's" quest is not the "tragic hero's". Instead, it is beyond all knowledge, a confrontation with the abyss that marks the Absolute singularity of the self. (This latter observation is reminiscent of Marlowe's inability, or unwillingness, in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," to share the "truth" of Kurtz' final words, "The horror, the horror," with Kurtz' fiance.)

In the latter part of his critique, Derrida offers a paradoxical criticism of the technological, modern age. Far from becoming quantified or de-naturalized, we have returned to the demonic and orgiastic from which religion arose. Modern man has fallen into inauthenticity, becoming not a self or person but assuming the mask of a "role." Present-day democracy, in turn, is not about the equality of individuals but of roles. Hence the importance of discovering and accepting the gift of death that determines human uniqueness. Responsibility is the criterion; freedom is the result.

This is a work not to be read quickly or only once. Derrida moves slowly, taking two steps backward before moving one step forward, but his method insures the communication of his meanings. If it's any inducement to the reader, I would suggest that the fourth and final chapter, "Tout autre est tout autre," is anticlimactic and unhelpful. By then the attentive reader will already have located the gift.

Like much of Derrida's work, The Gift of Death does require a familiarity with the continental tradition. Without knowledge of Heidegger, Levinas and Kierkegaard, it is unlikely to make an impression, but the central figure of the text is Jan Patocka, a little-known Czech philosopher who is only now beginning to come to light. Contact with his thoughts on Europe and the care of the soul makes this slim tract come to life. I actually found it to be one of the clearest of Derrida's works, certainly no more challenging than the average in current continental philosophy. Illuminates the tension between secrecy and givenness, human freedom and responsibility, and shows the ways in which death opens the space for human existence. A valuable contribution to the phenomenology of religion, and destined to be one of Derrida's more widely read essays, even if it never surpasses the importance of his earlier works.

Written just shortly before his death, Derrida has a kind word or two about god and says that one of his many gifts is taking us out of this vale of tears of his and into his bosom - not for the Woody Allens of this world nor for Madonna, it invites contemplation on what "the life everlasting" might be: Plautus said it best: 'he whom the gods love, dies young'.

The deconstruction of Christianity plus some extent also Jewish and Islamic thinking from the point of view of gift or symbolic exchange is an interesting topic. Especially the core of Derrida's analysis, how to interpret -- or to deconstruct, depending your own stance -- the story of Binding of Isaac, is insightful. One could also use it as a masterful, more or less isolated close-reading of an enigmatic story.

I also liked the general idea that morality is always based on shortcomings and that the monotheistic religions try to evade this impossibility of total ethicalness by totally merging the ultimate other (the God, the permanently unknowable) within the very core of the self.

The Gift of Death is short book and not easy to read. I read it as a critique of monotheism, of 'monomanic' ethics that are based on surrendering yourself to an absolute and thus to monotony, monomania, monology and singularity (as opposite to generality). If this indeed what Derrida is saying, it is not as original as the idea of deconstructing religion seem to promise. But, as always -- with Derrida it is not so much what he says, but HOW he says it. Unlike Heidegger, for instance, this is also FUN to read.

A good dose of poetry makes any give subversive morality more interesting. In the words of Bob Dylan, "Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters." I do both and it seems that in introducing multiple levels of simultaneous, symbolic exchange paradigms Derrida does, too.

Deconstruction is a deceptively useful philosophical device. However, this usefulness is severely limited. Deconstruction can present no positive conclusions. All it can do is show the fallibility of any attempt at such certain knowledge, primarily by exposing the inadequacy of language, a faculty so intimately connected with understanding. As a skeptic, I personally find deconstuction to be very pleasing. However, I am constantly annoyed by Derrida's insistance on frequently ignoring this aspect of his process. As a philosopher, I suppose the inclination to make some sort of positive assertion could be irresitible. I love the "play" and the analysis, but the attempt at ethical conclusions leaves me cold.

In "The Gift of Death," Derrida uses the story of Abraham and Isaac to distinguish between an absolute responsibility to "the other" from the typical ethical, "known" responsibility. I have never understood why it is that philosophers use this parable and others to decipher ethical realities. How much truth can one expect to extract from a fictional story? However, the idea that originary responsibility is always irresponsible is intriguing. Derrida proposes that Abraham's responsibility to God, the other, takes precedence over his lesser responsibilty to his son. And yet, later he makes the assertion that every other is an absolute other, making all responsibility absolute.

All of this emphasis on otherness ultimately leads to a kind of ethical paralysis, but Derrida does not acknowledge this. Throughout history, small differences have been blown up into impenetrable divisions. Racism, homophobia, sexism, ethnicity, nationality, religion, all the institutions that Deconstruction usually attacks are fully supported by these "irresponsible" ethical conclusions.

As I said before, the analysis reads like poetry and there are some very interesting ideas here. Derrida is frustrating, but worthwhile. I recommend this as well as "Writing and Difference."

This is a deeply religious work, not a philosophical one, though Derrida tries to employ philosophers to help him think through the matters he wishes to write about: Carl Schmidt, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Levinas, Patocka.

It is also an obsessive work, focused entirely on the monstrous attempt by the Old Testament Abraham to kill his biological son Isaac because of a secret bond with (a self-made) God -- and the justifications necessary to elevate this primitive and mad story to the numinous (have "celestial capital") and beyond morality or ethics.

It is a completely bogus and irrational notion that because man cannot know "infinite goodness" (whatever that is), due to the fact that he is mortal and can receive "the gift of death" (a highly ambiguous concept even within a religious context), man has "original sin" (which has been so variously defined over time as to mean everything and nothing). (Derrida never defines the term.) But this idea is (nonetheless) foundational to the case Derrida wants to build about man's relationship to God (who is "infinite goodness," according to Derrida) and vice-versa.

It's very clear that this work (which is not clear) could not have been written without the total denial of the validity of the Law of Non-Contradiction and the Law of Identity, basic axioms of Aristotelian logic. Derrida employs these axioms, however, in his text in order to deal his readers the few creative notions he can offer (mostly puns and unusual rhetorical devices: appealing nonsense) while denying their metaphysical reality. He does make you feel something with his prissy rhetoric but he certainly cannot make you think -- unless confusion is considered a positive and valued mental state.

I think the only people for whom this book can be useful or worthwhile reading are those already convinced of the value of its contents even before opening the book, that is Believers of one sort or another, including so-called agnostics. Or maybe intellectual flaneurs with nothing better to do. On the positive side, this work struck me as a complete theft of the ideas from Rudolph Otto's 1923 excellent work, "The Idea of the Holy." You should read that if you want a clear exposition of mysterium tremendem and mysticism. Derrida can only provide a muddy copy.

Last point: In an interview Derrida gave while he was dying, Derrida said he thought Kierkegaard had too much Christianized the story of Abrahnam and Isaac, and so he wrote this particular work to correct that tendency. Well, he failed -- miserably. Not even a Reformed or Progressive Jew would agree with Derrida's views of "no substitution" in the matter of death, and I could infer no other idea than that Derrida was an ardent, mystical Christian in the manner of Rudolph Otto or St. Ignatius when reading this text.

Derrida, as usual, is able to tease apart the conventional ways of thinking--in this case about the (im)possibility of ethics--and force us to think in a completely different way. I might disagree with his analysis of the ramifications of the ethical gesture explicated in Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling," but i can't say old Jack didn't make me think.

I write not long after the passing of Jacques Derrida. He was a man of questions and flights of powerfully intellectual fancy. He changed how the world looks at literature.

I will not clang the bells and start up the chorus of "ding-dong Derrida's dead" that might be expected from a Christian reader of the man's work (if anyone expected Derrida to have such readers--we are inexcusably few).

Instead, I will say that in Derrida, and in this set of essays, his look into Kierkegaard in particular, I have found a kindred seeker after truth, if not a kindred professor of it.

Jacques is now with the undeconstructable--both the source, fulfillment, and, in most cases, the negation of all his observations and questions. He is with the pure ineffable which choses to speak to and through the failable.

The very mention of such belies most of Derrida's work.

The certainty that springs from his work's invalidation gives me peace that the seeker has at last found, that Jacques Derrida is now fully and forever constructed.

His work is over, but his true life--as with all the lives of those who seek and ask--has resumed an ancient, intended course.

Rest in freedom and fulfillment, Mr Derrida.

I started to give a review in "deconstructionist" fashion - blather on about architecture surpassing old notions of "in" and "our", of reason giving way to the Neitzhien Uberwill, of absurd interpretations of text, relative yet "ultimate" truth and the unholy trinity of angst, subconscienceness and desire.

I was afraid, though, that it would be taken seriously by students (quote unquote) of post-modern "thought".

The danger of deconstructionism is undeniable. When literature and music are culturally interpreted, ethics are situational, when one speaks of slavery as freedom or humanity as inhumanity, we are lost in a sea of intellectual flotsam. The personal connections to fascism - Heidegger, Paul de Man, Blanchot, Bataille - can be overlooked. The intellectual similarities can't: The supremacy of will (Nietzsche) over reason and logic ("homogenising"), an obsession with emotion and political discourse, the celebration of the group over the individual (identity politics) and the idea that truth is what the critic, dictator or prophet says it is. Deconstructionism is, needless to say, popular among folks favoring modern "intellectual" movements with fuzzy tenets.

Here, he speaks to us eliptically (of course) as he partakes in the familiar one step forward - two steps backward approach. But if one follows Deconstructionism, why can't HIS writings be interpreted as an S&M fantasy or a desire to be a Greek Orthodox priest in drag? How do we know what he really means since he suggests that we often write exactly opposite of what we mean?. He writes of God, death, solitude, life and sacrifice BUT in a new voice of existentialism and doubt. He employs vague, self-defined and self-referential terms which effectively shield him from serious study.

Derrida, for all his rampant explicating, gets hot under the collar when his own words undergo the deconstruction challenge. Few have questioned his writings since (1) many are impossible to understand and (2) they may or may not mean what they say. What began as a new approach to literature has evolved into the language of intellectual totalitarianism. No one denies his extensive knowledge of Western literature; what galls are the bewieldering interpretations and his ironic attempt at building a new ethos based on syllogism. As another reviewer stated, take it slow, read several times, search for meaning even when there is none.