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Jacques Derrida On Atheism and Belief
Here, at the 2002 Toronto ‘Other Testaments’ conference, Derrida responds in audio format to a question about his supposed atheism… ‘paradoxically,’ he states, the ‘true believer experiences atheism’ because the object of prayer – God – is ‘beyond’ the usual metaphysical notions of ‘being’ (e.g., presence, essence, ouisa) – thus, to believe in that which by definition is ‘beyond being’ implies believing *as* an atheist… claiming that one is solely a ‘believer’ or an ‘atheist,’ is deemed ‘ridiculous’ – binary oppositions of this sort engage in a near constant reversibility… within this ‘atheism’ of the ‘believer,’ true faith appears (a postmodern rendering of Kierkegaard)
Jacques Derrida On Prayer
Derrida offered extended audio comments regarding his unique, somewhat Kierkegaardian notion of prayer (as recounted in his 1991 work ‘Circumfession’) at the 2002 Toronto conference, ‘Other Testaments’… Prayer, Derrida contends, is an ‘absolutely secret’ act though it also involves ‘common ritual (and) coded gestures’ … it is fundamentally ‘childish’ and God is regarded as both a ‘harsh, just’ father and a ‘forgiving’ mother… prayer must also embody a sceptical ‘suspension of belief and certainty’ as epitomized by Kierkegaard and, in another way, by Nietzsche; the realization that the object of prayer is indeterminable is another key notion in this unusual position
