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Charles Baudelaire
The souvenir of death is also the gift of life. Past grappling with the irreducibly problematic gridlock of our aporetic malaise we tin can renew our lives.
Such is the life-giving gift of this book.
This was perhaps the most eye-opening book of my centre age. And information technology was my start-read opus from the Derrida canon.
Information technology'southward a dense, provocative written report of the unlike possible historical reactions to moral decadence.
LIFE IS A TEMPLE, WHOSE LIVING PILLARS SOMETIMES WHISPER UNINTELLIGIBLE SECRETS...Charles Baudelaire
The gift of death is also the gift of life. By grappling with the irreducibly problematic gridlock of our aporetic angst we tin renew our lives.
Such is the life-giving souvenir of this volume.
This was mayhap the about eye-opening book of my center age. And it was my first-read opus from the Derrida canon.
It's a dumbo, provocative study of the different possible historical reactions to moral decadence.
Two of those reactions - the Classical and the Christian - are in particular studied under Derrida's high-definition microscope.
No flaw escapes his gaze - only he unfortunately omits to give any hint at a RESOLUTION to the intense sense of unease which exposure to depravity elicits in ethically-minded folks.
For he had establish none.
Thankfully, my own faith journey afterward quelled all such anxiety. And a grateful sense of peace replaced my own turbulent midlife crisis.
But, you gotta know, when I discovered this volume by accident I had no IDEA of the bear on it would take on my life...
In 1991, I used to oft spend my luncheon hours at the public library on the days when my wife had packed me a chocolate-brown bag dejeuner.
Fresh from an intense and defiantly individualistic study of a Camus book on existentialism - was it Resistance, Rebellion and Expiry? - I had decided to explore more contempo French philosophy.
I accept ever been grateful to my mother for drumming the Dewey Decimal Organization into my skull during the years I worked equally a page in her library:
It fabricated quick hits at the library so much easier in those afterwards days when my costless fourth dimension would be and so short, for, as Christopher Marlowe (almost) wrote:
Lente, lente, currite dies equi!
Anyway, this unknown volume was by a great (so-) living philosopher, and it was short, so I grabbed information technology and headed to an like shooting fish in a barrel chair.
It's a nebulous metaphysical dismantling of the roadblocks that obscure our view of flesh's most perfidious peccadilloes... (but no spoilers here).
Wow! I was floored, once I managed to hack my way through the dense undergrowth of postmodernist metaphysics.
This was a keeper!
Since that time, I've ever had my Own copy fix at mitt.
As I said, Derrida leaves us hanging... because he always left HIMSELF hanging. He accepted as a priori the maxim that to write is to write in thin air, without whatever trace. 'Vanity, saith the Preacher...'
Yes, he knew vanity kills.
But he lets a few bombshells drop in this volume. And he's not too shy to call 'em as he sees 'em!
Yes, the police of lust prevails for many... yet the infinitely more powerful and totalizing dream of grace, wisdom and forbearance - at least to my aged agreement - will be our final arbiter.
And Derrida successfully dismantles the Ogre of Depravity - simply his nihilism gives his turbulent soul no rest, equally he tin can't even believe in a firm Ground for himself! For he has fabricated himself Invisible, without mooring on terra firma.
Even deconstructed, evil remains insidiously lethal - for such is the Curse of the Band's gift of invisibility! O Sur châtiment...
Just, for me, this wonderfully ingenuous homo will in Eternity be Saved past his humility. No matter how much us lesser mortals recoil in anguish from the dizzying implications of his lapidary words, in his deserts of the Void!
Caveat emptor, to untried newbies who run a risk upon this volume! Thankfully, this Dark Wasteland is, like Dante Alighieri's, only bulletproof without the inspiration of the Spirit Who gives you wings to fly over it.
You know, the I who raises us up from that pit wants united states to KNOW nosotros are henceforth safe from evil past His act. But to make that knowledge stick we must feel it in our marrow.
If you are forearmed by Religion, what this philosopher reveals volition only add forcefulness and perseverance to that secure foundation.
Gott, der Herr, ist Sonn und Schild!
And Derrida really did ME a favour with this volume...
Information technology gave me a very real and substantial bone to chew on, and an essential primal to my indefatigable persecutors' behaviour, as I worked my way through my midlife crisis.
And it was one of the reasons why I, similar Jacques Derrida, came out safely on the other side.
All because of a random hit in a neglected library!
Funny, this thing called serendipity.
For dear works wonders worldly wisdom never knows.
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Now Derrida, every bit we know, only makes sens
This is a hauntingly, sublimely cute book. Information technology makes you recollect--actually. I don't mean simply in the "How about that" sense: it makes you reconsider loss, betrayal, hardship, duty, sacrifice. And that's just the easy stuff. A gift for Jacques is similar a ghost that passes unawares from the giver to the receiver. It is never experienced in the fashion in which it was expected. Miracle, approval--all these concepts fabricated sense to me after reading The Souvenir of Decease.At present Derrida, as we know, only makes sense when interpreted. But estimation in this context takes on a whole new meaning. It means thinking, like Rodin's thinker, with one'south whole body, and how you alive your life. It doesn't hateful rewording or reducing the metaphysician's ideas, let alone just parrot them back. I have tried that game as many times as everyone else has and it's fun and frustrating in equal measure. That said, it's missing the point. And so again, to miss the point is precisely to commence on the journey, which is truly one of enlightenment.
Does God exist? "God does not exist, but their is (a) God ("Il y'a dieu'). Likewise, one never dies, however death comes. It's all most break of belief, to rework Coleridge, to arrive at revelation beyond belief. Derrida does not trip the light fantastic toe around here, equally he has been known to (very well, at to the lowest degree) heretofore. In this book he goes straight to the centre. The Gift will make y'all dear the belatedly, not bad man. Here, he is not the Napoleon of epistemology withering away on Elba. On the contrary, he is the Colossus at Rhodes, bridging an isthmus.
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And now for the quotes:
- Faith is responsibility or it is nothing at all.
- Responsibility and religion go together, however paradoxical that might seem to some, and both should, in the same movement, exceed mastery and knowledge. The gift of expiry would be the marriage of responsibility and religion.
- The individualism of technological civilisation relies precisely on a misunderstanding of the unique cocky. It is individualism relating to
My holiday reading, to add together difficulty to another difficulty.And now for the quotes:
- Religion is responsibility or it is nix at all.
- Responsibility and faith go together, however paradoxical that might seem to some, and both should, in the same movement, exceed mastery and knowledge. The gift of death would be the union of responsibility and organized religion.
- The individualism of technological civilization relies precisely on a misunderstanding of the unique self. Information technology is individualism relating to a office and non to a person. In other words it might be called the individualism of a masque or persona, a grapheme and non a person.
- God doesn't give his reasons, he acts every bit he intends, he doesn't take to give his reasons or share anything with the states: neither his motivations, if he has whatever, nor his deliberations, nor his decisions. Otherwise he wouldn't exist God, we wouldn't exist dealing with the Other every bit God or with God as wholly other. If the other were to share his reasons with us past explaining them to us, if he were to speak to us all the time without whatsoever secrets, he wouldn't be the other, we would share a type of homogeneity.
- If God is completely other, the effigy or name of the wholly other, and so every other (one) is every (chip) other. Tout autre est tout autre. It implies that God, as the wholly other, is to exist constitute everywhere there is something of the wholly other.
- God is the proper name of the possibility I have of keeping a secret that is visible from the interior but non from the exterior. Once such a structure of censor exists, of being-with-oneself, of speaking, that is, of producing invisible sense, one time I accept within me, thanks to the invisible word as such, a witness that others cannot see, and who is therefore at the same fourth dimension other than me and more intimate with me than myself, once I can accept a secret human relationship with myself and not tell everything, in one case there is secrecy and secret witnessing within me, and so what I call God exists.
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1. Christianity superseded Platonism considering information technology made a "souvenir" of death. Non only did it requite its adherents a way out of death, but it besides, reciprocally, made their own deaths a gift to the Other.
2. Expiry, or the apprehension of expiry, leads to a notion of irreplaceability (only I can die my death), and thus responsi
I read this while researching a newspaper and found, to my delight, that the tardily Prince of Opacity can be surprisingly lucid when he wishes. Every bit I understood it, his master arguments are:1. Christianity superseded Platonism because information technology made a "gift" of death. Non simply did it requite its adherents a way out of death, just it too, reciprocally, made their own deaths a gift to the Other.
2. Death, or the apprehension of decease, leads to a notion of irreplaceability (only I can die my death), and thus responsibility: how will I die my decease? This apprehension, leading to irreplaceability and responsibility, creates the self. Death furnishes unrepeatability of cocky (hence the gift thought again).
3. Cede means both loving something and rejecting something (rejecting that which nosotros won't sacrifice for). Every selection of an Other ways a rejection of the "others."
four. But! Every other is every (scrap) Other. Every other that I pass up is as Other as the one I accept.
I'm still working out the consequences of this last betoken, where Derrida deconstructs Other and other. The terminal chapter was difficult, and I had to read it swiftly. At present that it'due south summertime, though, I'thou putting it aside, saving it for the fall. People on the charabanc were giving me strange looks when they saw the championship. When gray skies and rain come again I'll exist able to get away with information technology.
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Like some of Derrida'southward work on sovereignty (in Given Time ), the logic of the gift offers not a meditation on Foucauldian conditions of possibility but on the necessity and impossibility of death in Christian and modern ideals. Claiming the ecstatic as the sublimation and incorporation of heathen ideals, he asserts this is a history of sexuality, forcing a conversation with Foucault in which the souvenir of death threatens and extends toward the gift of life offered by the biopolitical.
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In the second half, Derrida introduces Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and close readings of the Erstwhile and New testaments. This was much more than my speed. A beautiful expansion of Kierkegaard'south concerns in Fear & Trembling. I think I'd be more satisfied with a reading
As always with Derrida, he is about comprehensible when i has a good familiarity with the subject thing he is budgeted. The first half of this text concerns Patočka and Heidegger, neither of which I've read. And so I was having problem at that place.In the second half, Derrida introduces Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and close readings of the Onetime and New testaments. This was much more my speed. A beautiful expansion of Kierkegaard's concerns in Fear & Trembling. I think I'd be more satisfied with a reading of this once I've come to know Heidegger amend.
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The most interesting part of the book, for me, was the final affiliate, "Tout Aute Est Tout Autre," (
This is one of the more difficult books by Derrida that I've read. It's focus is very diffuse, covering such topics as souvenir-giving, decease and sacrifice, and there are many points where I could not follow forth with Derrida'southward railroad train of idea. While I may merely not be vivid enough to get everything that the author is trying to convey, the book certainly felt disjointed and filled with non-sequiturs.The most interesting part of the volume, for me, was the final affiliate, "Tout Aute Est Tout Autre," (Every other [i] is every [bit] other). It is hither that Derrida discusses the story of Abraham and meditates on the nature of sacrifice. Sacrifice, according to Derrida, is an act of giving without calculation of render. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, humans sacrifice to a God that is wholly hidden and "other." Thus in offer sacrifices to this God, there is no possibility of anticipating rewards. Humans are incapable of knowing what God wants or intends, and so cede, in this tradition, must be made blindly and without hope of benefit. Derrida suggests that the time has come to absorb the idea of God into our ain consciousness, doing abroad with a God outside of ourselves. In this way, we could offer sacrifices to ourselves.
The volume is made upward of iv essays that meander and wander all over the place. I recall Derrida would accept benefited from a good editor.
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In this essay, Jacques Derrida synthesizes the idea of the responsibility to the other that comes through their cede (Søren Kierkegaa
Book offers us both a fun and insightful journey to deconstruct responsibility and sacrifice through the term of the and so-called gift of decease. The get-go chapter, inspired by Jan Patočka, is a fleck incomprehensible due to the heavy phenomenological jargon that Patočka's thought requires, but otherwise, it is a good old Derrida with word-plays and ironic accents.In this essay, Jacques Derrida synthesizes the idea of the responsibility to the other that comes through their sacrifice (Søren Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling) and of mysticism and secrecy present Christianity (Jan Patočka: Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History). While also drawing from some works of Heidegger, Levinas, and Mauss, Derrida describes an economic system of death which coincides and codevelops with and abreast economies of secret and sacrifice.
These economies allow for the emergence of responsibility. Responsibility to God as an absolute other means responsibleness to other people, as for Derrida "every other (i) is every (scrap) other" (tout autre est tout autre). Derrida'southward God is one'due south cocky possibility of keeping a hole-and-corner that is visible from the interior simply non from the exterior. Such secrets, witnessed by unseen (Christian) God, distinguish one individual singularity from all the others while making it responsible to all of them (individually).
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'The Gift of Expiry' is Derrida's most extended discourse on ethics and religion in which he compares his ideas with thos
Derrida is a notoriously elusive field of study. To endeavour and exercise justice to such complex and obscurantist writing in a few brusque sentences such as this review will let, is incommunicable. All I tin can do is offer a few thoughts of my own on the fundamentals of his piece of work. I do non, nor have I e'er met anyone, who has fully understood all his ideas; responses are inevitably a matter of surmise.'The Gift of Death' is Derrida's most extended discourse on ethics and faith in which he compares his ideas with those of Heidegger, Levinas and Kierkegaard with particular emphasis on Jan Patocka. Whenever I think nigh Derrida's ideas I always return to basics: the things that motivated him, the notions that shaped his life. I remember it is important in the understanding of Derrida to remember that he was born into an assimilated Jewish family in Algiers, growing up as member of a marginalised, dispossessed culture. It is the word 'marginalised' here which I recollect is key to Derrida's positioning. His view was that for every key belief, whether upstanding or religious, at that place is a marginalised 'other'. People oftentimes complain that footling or no manifestation of philosophical thought e'er permeates through to everyday life – this cannot be said of Derrida, whether you like him or loathe him. Today many of his ideas virtually deprivation, marginalisation and prejudice occupy u.s.a. today. Whether it be the treatment of women, repression of religious beliefs or the persecution of race and minorities, many of these take their roots in Derrida's philosophy. So, for instance, whatsoever culture which has Christianity as its central tenet, will, accordingly and oftentimes unwittingly, marginalise Buddhists, Muslims, Jews et al. Thus, the discussion religion can be 'deconstructed' to hateful the marginalisation of the other – i.e. non only does it mean conventionalities but besides that which we practise not believe. By extension the marginalised could then be seen to be primal itself, when seen from an unfamiliar perspective.
Derrida'due south ideas are in some respect a development of Cartesian Dualism, i.eastward. between the physical or the material and the metaphysical or immaterial aspects of human activity. Derrida's concern is how we rationalise the 'gift' of life and expiry and the way that the spiritual could lead the states to absolve our physical actions. 1 obvious example being the confessional and the absolution it brings to the soul. 1 question I recall Derrida is posing is the danger that religion may atomic number 82 united states into 'demonic rapture' as he puts it, to the exclusion of the ideals of the everyday material world. So, we render to that theme again, the marginalisation of binary opposites. It seems to me that this poses the greatest question facing the states today: how do we residual binary opposites to produce a stable earth? Is it even possible? This is the primal conclusion I depict from this most provocative of Derrida's texts.
I'g non sure whether whatever of the foregoing will enlighten everyone but they are my rather random thoughts distilled over one-half a lifetime of reading (on and off!) this 'enfant terrible' of modern philosophy. One thing I will e'er give thanks Derrida for, and this goes for all the other great thinkers, is to instil into oneself the discipline never to take any thought at first paw without kickoff taking the time to weigh its possibilities and, crucially, the effect that idea has on others. Rather than the souvenir of decease, possibly the gift of thought should be the object of our eternal gratitude, and Derrida's greatest legacy.
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For example, might we come across Sartre'due south existentialism every bit a religion, since it introduces responsibility? I think we safely might, especially since Derrida cited extensively Heidegger's comments regarding the "being-towards-expiry" which might allow one to have ownership of their own life (whatever that means) indicating an introduction of responsibility--as Derrida shows, i who takes ownership of his/her biological facticity of expiry can realize his/her un-replaceability, thereby instilling the individual with a responsibleness to not allow his/her life to waste matter away. Does Derrida see this equally inadequate? Does this explain why he focuses extensively on systems with a God (in this case, the Abrahamic religions in general just Christianity mostly)?
A terminal note: many of the 20th century "Continental" thinkers tended to shy away from enlightenment values (also as Platonic)--with a heavy emphasis on reason above a more holistic feel. Thus, Derrida seems to celebrate Christianity'southward split with Platonism--with its emphasis on the "orgiastic" and mystical--e.thou. Abraham fabricated the greatest sacrifice when he murdered (by standards of intention) his ain dearest son without questioning God's orders, also, Jesus's supreme cede of his ain self for the sin's of the world. Might this mystery atomic number 82 to a curbing of earth wars and thereby to meaningless deaths? Derrida (and Kierkegaard) recognize the fact that, by societal standards, Abraham represents a murderer--perhaps insane, but he seems to do away with this due to the incommensurability of Abraham's responsibility in his unequal relationship with the infinite other as well equally due to the fact that we all rest in Abraham's shoes in a larger sense. However, I do wish Derrida would have discussed atrocities committed as a issue of religious people'south perceived responsibility in relation to God--I think, namely, of the Spanish Inquisition, the crusades, ISIS attacks, etc.
Derrida brilliantly broaches a multitude of fascinating discussions in this minor volume--definitely a work to revisit.
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Anyway Gift of Expiry is Derrida at his laziest; belatedly 80s-early 90s is definitely his worst phase, I call back. The entire book (a rambling essay, actually) is a series
The GR reviews for this book are hilarious ... I'g not quite sure how Derrida became the become-to author for pretentious people trying to feel profound (why not Husserl? or Bergson?), similar to how people similar to pretend to be knowledgeable almost quantum mechanics, but not electromagnetism or particle physics (not sexy enough, I judge?).Anyway Gift of Death is Derrida at his laziest; late 80s-early 90s is definitely his worst stage, I think. The entire book (a rambling essay, actually) is a series of uninteresting reflections on Jan Patočka'south unfounded and unilluminating distinction betwixt the demonic/mystical and the responsible/religious. Derrida decides to but go alee and take this as normative (?! lol) so riff on a bunch of random themes he had bouncing around in his head at this time, mainly referencing Kierkegaard and Levinas. In brusque, a keen deal of wordplay and very lilliputian of substance. Early on Derrida is effing amazing (show me the fluff in his book on Husserl'south Origin of Geometry -- at that place is literally none) simply he was in full egotist rock-star fashion by 1990 and there's very little of value here.
Post-2000 Derrida gets interesting again, and Acts of Organized religion, a later work, covers the same loose themes as Gift of Death, just is actually worth reading.
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'Whereas the tragic hero is great, admired, and legendary from generation to generation, Abraham in remaining true-blue to his singular love for every other, is never considered a hero. He doesn't brand u.s. shed tears and doesn't inspire admiration: rather stupefied horror, a terror that is also undercover. For it is a terror that brings u.s. close to the absolute secret that we share without sharing information technology, a secret between someone else, Abraham every bit the other,
Derrida says this about Abraham, per Kierkegaard:'Whereas the tragic hero is great, admired, and legendary from generation to generation, Abraham in remaining faithful to his singular love for every other, is never considered a hero. He doesn't make u.s.a. shed tears and doesn't inspire admiration: rather stupefied horror, a terror that is also secret. For it is a terror that brings us shut to the absolute hush-hush that we share without sharing it, a secret between someone else, Abraham every bit the other, and another, God as the other, as wholly others. Abraham himself is in secret, cut off from both man and from God. Merely this is maybe what we share with him. But what does it mean to share a hugger-mugger? Information technology isn't a matter of knowing what the other knows, for Abraham doesn't know anything. Information technology isn't a thing of sharing his faith, for the latter must remain an initiative of accented singularity. And, moreover, nosotros don't think or speak of Abraham from the signal of view of a organized religion that is sure of itself, any more than did Kierkegaard.'
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"[Abraham] keeps repose in order to avert the moral temptation which, under the pretext of calling him to responsibility, to cocky-justification, would brand him lose his ultimate responsibility along with his singularity, make him lose his unju
"If decision-making is relegated to a knowledge that it is content to follow or to develop, then it is no more a responsible decision, [comma sic] it is the technical deployment of a cerebral apparatus, the simple mechanistic deployment of a theorum" (24)."[Abraham] keeps quiet in order to avoid the moral temptation which, under the pretext of calling him to responsibility, to cocky-justification, would brand him lose his ultimate responsibility along with his singularity, brand him lose his unjustifiable, cloak-and-dagger, and accented responsibility before God" (61).
For the last few years I've relied on Derrida's maxim "responsibility is excessive or it is not responsible" and on his antipathy for the so-called "good censor" (e.g., 85) without knowing the larger context of his critique of traditional responsibility. I've found it here. Derrida begins with commentary on January Patočka's business relationship of the rise of subjectivity and responsiblity in the Ideal plough from chthonic thaumaturgy and the subsequent plow, which moves from Ideal self-fashioning practices towards the Good into the Christian orientation towards the God absolutely beyond any subjective efforts. Christianity thus takes us beyond all calculation (50). Such turns, from the pre-Platonic, to the (neo)Platonic, to the Christian, are of course repressions, redeployments, rather than abandonments (e.g., xx). The subterranean is, of course, the gap, the uncognizable, the impossible, the place of the "authentic undercover" (37), towards which any good deconstructive analysis always slides. Derrida follows with a gloss on Kierkegaard's well-known handling of Abraham every bit a 'knight of faith' to argue that the absolutes of duty and responsibility phone call "for a betrayal of everything that manifests itself within the gild of universal generality" (66), phone call for acts that cannot be comprehended in "what the community tin already hear or empathize only also well" (74). In his determination, using Matthew 6:19-21, he turns to further analysis of the gift (e.g., "a gift destined for recognition would immediately annul itself" (29; besides 112), of the cede of economy (95), and the self-secret aporia at the eye of ethics. The 'gift of death' refers, inasmuch as I empathise it currently, to decease as the unsubstitutable experience of the self, that which no one just the self can undergo, that which cannot be shared; in this, death and responsibleness are analogous.
I wonder, notwithstanding, if the illustration holds upwardly, given the identify of fourth dimension in marking the thoughtwork of death in Heidegger (to whom Patočka seems deeply indebted), or, if it holds up, given the relation in making responsibility and the self possible in Lévinas. In other words, I wonder if responsibility as privacy, even through the paradox of responsibility, works also equally it seems to exercise on first glance. Undoubtedly I'll need to reread this, but 1 answer might be in Derrida'due south slogan tout autre est tout autre, of the sacrifices fabricated--of animals, for example (69, 71; analogously, 86)--whatsoever time we are called into relation with one other (68-71).
For a sillier treatment of this volume, see here
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Derrida's small book about these two topics is straightforward and haunting, yes. But it fails to convince me. Information technology seems like a compendium of revamped ideas nearly love, decease, acrimony, betrayal, religion and acceptation.
Derrida may exist fascinating literature-based speaking, but his ideas were a little one-time for his fourth dimension, and this lack of freshness,
Derrida was a deconstructionist. Nosotros all know his affirmations are nothing without estimation and insight, just, how practice we interpret death and organized religion?Derrida's minor book about these 2 topics is straightforward and haunting, aye. Just it fails to convince me. It seems similar a compendium of revamped ideas about love, death, anger, betrayal, faith and acceptation.
Derrida may be fascinating literature-based speaking, only his ideas were a little old for his time, and this lack of freshness, this sensation of "I've read this earlier somewhere else" failed to amuse me.
Anyways, this is a book every inquisitive philosophical aficionado like me should read.
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