The Gift of Death

by Jacques Derrida

Book Overview

In The Gift of Death , Jacques Derrida's most sustained consideration of religion to date, he continues to explore questions introduced in Given Time about the limits of the rational and responsible... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226143066
• ISBN13: 9780226143064
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 124 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Donner la Mort

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.

Responsibility?

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."

RESUMPTION

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.

This book seems like Jacques being Jacques.

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.