I've been trying to figure out why Jacques Derrida is important, off and on, for some time now. I don't question that he is someone who is to be taken seriously, but it's an open question whether he's worth the effort, and whether there is really any there there. I think by his own rejection of traditional ontology he would have to admit that there is not; there is only the play of differences. And one has to ask, if that's all there is, who cares?
But if that was an attitude I might have held earlier, I don't now. I see Derrida more as an effect than as a cause. The cause is the collapse of Enlightenment Modernity as a believable, workable grand narrative, and the effect is the philosophies of unusually thoughtful and sensitive minds like Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida. We owe them our gratitude to alert us of our changed situation and in the help they offer to understand what it means. I realize most people go on with their lives as if these thinkers never existed, but they deserve our respect for pushing and challenging us in the way they do. But their attempt to wash the slate clean and start over again is a quixotic task, if by doing so they think they will be able to ground their thinking and imagination in what is most deeply true.
Of course, Derrida would reject that there is any 'deeply true' to be grounded in. Indeed one of the primary tasks of philosophy for him is to deconstruct thought wherever it thinks it has found such a ground. All of our knowledge is simply a dance of different effects which, like the colors in a kaleidescope, combine and un-combine in different patterns from which we humans derive a certain provisional and very slippery meaning. But the project to freeze this dance into clear concepts makes it into something that it is not, falsifies it, cheapens it, robs it of its fluidity, and accomplishes nothing except to give us the false sense of power in our delusional quest to control the uncontrollable.
That's really the point of deconstruction, isn't it? To provide a kind of philosophical enema to remove the blockages to which human thinking is prone. The obstructions to be cleared are found everywhere, but a red flag goes up wherever these blockages take the form in binary oppositions such as male/female, light/dark speech/writing, nature/culture,
presence/absence, etc. with the first being considered superior to the
second. Deconstruction is the program to subvert the dominant element
in these pairs by different techniques, but mainly by showing the implicit contradictions at the foundation of the assertion of the superiority of the former. Deconstruction is the performance of clearing the obstruction, not so that the inferior may now take its place, but so that dance might resume.
There's a part of me that finds that project very appealing, and I like its contemplative, Buddhistic, apophatic sensibility. For it's as if for Derrida philosophy is not the effort to find truth, but rather the effort to dislodge the impediments that prevent our contemplation of it all around us, and when we do, it is simply there, it's 'thisness', the dance of effects he calls "differance", and there is nothing really meaningful that can be said about it–it just is what it is. For to want the meaning of it is to want what one cannot have, and to ask for it is to miss the point. All that can be said about it is what it is not, and that's pretty much the heart of Derrida's project–to say "Not that". For there is no there there; it's all just play, randomness. Our meanings are temporary patterns gleaned in the interplay of different effects with no more significance than the interplay of notes in a musical score.
So, interesting, but where do you go with it? I think that the apophatic theme is an important one, but it is not new, and it needn't be the whole story. Christians and Jews believe that this ground of being about which nothing meaningful can be said nevertheless has revealed himself. And so while philosophy perhaps can go no further than Derrida has gone, theology can go further because of revelation. Theology picks up where philosophy leaves off. It finds content where philosophy finds the void. Honest philosophers end up where Derrida ends up; that's why philosophy isn't enough.
So I understand why many thoughtful people cannot accept the possibility of revelation, but I wonder if their position the rigidified kind of thing that falls into the binary opposition reason/faith, and as such is in need of some deconstruction. For many who refuse the possibility of revelation are simply prisoners of a rigidified mental framework that is an arbitrary belief system with its own fabric of prejudices and assumptions. The point is this. Move with Derrida as far as he goes; it is better to be with him than to be locked up in some rationalist's jail cell, but it's still possible to make another move, to go beyond the limitations of philosophy.
I would also say that deconstruction is really the underlying dynamic of the gospels and it is articulated powerfully in Mary's Magnificat:
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour;
he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed;
the Almighty has done great things for me and holy is his name.
He has mercy on those who fear him,
from generation to generation.He has shown strength with his arm
and has scattered the proud in their conceit,
Casting down the mighty from their thrones
and lifting up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.
He has come to the aid of his servant Israel,
to remember his promise of mercy,
The promise made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and his children for ever.
(Luke 1:46-55)
The Christianity of the gospels is subversive of all rigidified power constructs–not to get that about the Gospels is to miss one their most important themes. They are all about taking the world as it is shaped by the myriad narratives of power and greed and turning them upside down, and inside out. So I'm sympathetic to the need for deconstruction, and I'm quite interested to apply it to the power dynamics as they operate in religious institutions, but I don't believe that what you release in unclogging the blockage there is the "play of difference", but rather the cosmic dance of the Holy Spirit.
I'll be pushing this argument further by considering other themes that have arisen in postmodern thought. My approach is not to see the implicit or explicit nihilism in it as as something to be condemned, but rather to accept what it gives us as an honest account of the way things are within the limits of reason, within the limits of thought closed to data made available in revelation and the time-tested testimony of the great seers, mystics, and saints. The postmodern thinkers bring into view the stark choice presented to anyone who seeks to be intellectually honest: either we live in a world that is fundamentally meaningless or in a world that is not. The only evidence for the meaning option is in the testimony referred to in previous sentence. Either their testimony is believable, or it is not. If it is, how then do you work with it? And how do you prevent it from rigidifying into a club for one group to hit another with? Deconstruction can be a very useful tool for that purpose, and so ought to be employed.
So if you can live within a nihilistic meaning framework and get along with a little help from your friends, best of luck and Godspeed. But know that your choice is ultimately an arbitrary one, a choice to leap into the abyss as arbitrary as the choice another might make to leap into the arms of God. And also know that a society framed by metaphysical meaninglessness almost certainly will regress into power- and greed-driven barbarism, which is pretty much where we're headed, if you haven't noticed.
Religion in society does not eliminate greed and powerlust, but it seeks ways to discipline it, and it inspires possibilities that counterbalance it. And so I agree with the neocons on that score; I don't, however, share their paternalistic cynicism that religious meaning frameworks are lies, even if they are noble ones.
So me, I'm interested in exploring the choice for meaning, which has far broader and more interesting possibilities. And while I don't think believers should be imposing their beliefs in the political sphere, I do believe that the work believers do in the political sphere provides the best hope of overcoming the impossibility Niebuhr points us to in the quote I use in the blog epigraph:
Without the ultra rational hopes and passions of religion no society will ever have the courage to conquer despair and attempt the impossible; for the vision of a jsut society is an impossible one, which can be approximated only by those who do not regard it as impossible.
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