For A Time

Joeri Schrijvers' latest study in contemporary continental philosophy and the possibility of the religious steers immediately toward very familiar terrain: the possibility of atheism, the phenomenon of secularism and the 'return of religion' in recent continental thought. Considering a number of popular writers, such as John Caputo, Jean-Luc Nancy, Peter Sloterdijk, and Jean-Luc Marion, to name only the most prominent, Schrijvers looks not only to how their arguments are rooted in the nuanced philosophies of Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida, but he also begins to critique the narrow interests they maintain in attempting to overcome ontotheology and metaphysics once and for all (the subject too of his earlier study Ontotheological Turnings, also with SUNY Press). Such efforts, according to Schrijvers, are really a matter of philosophical hubris—that is, of presenting a totalizing narrative that really cannot be declared as such to exist as an enclosed space. By focusing on lesser known figures such as Reiner Schürmann and Ludwig Binswanger, Schrijvers deftly parses the arguments given for moving beyond Christianity in the work of several of the aforementioned authors, and mounts a position that faith without belief is 'phenomenologically impossible' as this formulation leaves our embodied existence out of the picture. In short, these critiques of metaphysics attempt to present a world without love and a love without world. There is a subtle criticism but also defense of tradition that Schrijvers mounts in this book through the turn to love and life as they 'outwit' tradition, while simultaneously grounding themselves in it. It is the task of the book as a whole to preserve metaphysics as a possibility through a philosophical account of incarnation developed alongside Binswanger's phenomenology of love. By contrasting Binswanger with Heidegger in order to elucidate a phenomenology of religious life, Schrijvers promotes a more robust, intersubjective way of being in the world that can more adequately account for the role of love in one's life—an acknowledgement too of the necessity for being-with others (and otherness itself) that describes how we, ontically, do exist in our world, and in the lived institutions and religions that comprise it. We cannot simply abandon such ways of being in the world in favor of a purely abstracted critique of every institutional order. The other before us gives us something that we cannot give ourselves and, to put things rather bluntly, this matters a good deal in terms of how we experience life and love. To abstractly develop an anarchic, gnostic or antinomian critique of all institutional, systematic, ordered and religious ways of being in our world without acknowledging our embodied ('incarnational') reality of needing such forms (such as he charges Caputo, Nancy and Sloterdijk of aiding) is to miss a major feature of what it means to be human. Though this may sound like an overly simplistic account of Schrijvers' rigorous treatment of a much more complex argumentation as it is pursued in each thinker's works, it is a major strength of the book that he is able to distil matters into such clear lines of thought. What struck me time and again while reading this book was its entirely readable quality, as if I were listening to someone who wasn't trying to hastily dispatch a difficult argument as much as it was the voice of someone who has such a strong grasp of the field as to render their commentary in crisp and lucid prose. This book is a reliable guide to a series of ongoing debates in continental thought that have seemed for some time to be at an impasse. My intuition is that this impasse has mainly resulted from somewhat partisan entrenchments (phenomenology versus deconstruction) that refuse to engage with the connections between diverse methodologies. Schrijvers' fine work navigates this impasse with precision and fairness, and thereby gives us a path forward for maintaining embodied religious practice in our world today.

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2016

Scientia, 2019

This paper argues that faith and knowledge are not mutually exclusive spheres of inquiry, but overlapping in a sense that faith is a viaduct of knowledge. Ludwig Wittgenstein's On Certainty is the major material in consideration to argue this case. Wittgenstein's religious inclination is examined in the first section to set some conditions on the possibility of interpretation laid out in this article. So this reading is in no way conclusive about the seminal material being considered. But in the second section, knowledge, belief, doubt and certainty are briefly discussed to ground the notion of religious convictions as hinge beliefs. The third section is an intentional derailment from the exposition of On Certainty in the mode of interpretation being suggested. It is about a personal academic experience wherein it is argued that, if the discussion in the second section is at least plausible, academic thinking needs not to be leaning towards the mutual exclusion of faith and knowledge. It is however premised on the necessity of faith as a hinge belief in the Wittgensteinian sense. It seems then that a religious world-picture driven by faith may not be separated from the one driven by science, which is a secular world-picture.

The 7th Derrida Today Conference, 2022

In “Faith and Knowledge” (1994), Jacques Derrida addresses the fundamental duplicity of religion. According to Derrida, religion has not one but two sources: “the sacrosanct, the safe and sound on the one side, and faith, trustworthiness or credit on the other” (Acts of Religion, 61). Derrida thus offers two different critiques: one attacks the purity of the unscathed by demonstrating the autoimmune relation between religion and science; the other rethinks the elementary act of faith by appealing to two “historical” names, the messianicity and khōra. In light of Michael Naas’ discussion of the two essential dimensions of language implicit in Derrida’s two sources of religion, I would like to read Derrida’s two critiques in terms of two modes of deconstruction, one operating on a constructive level and the other on a performative level. By reading “Faith and Knowledge” in the context of Derrida’s writings from the late 1980s to the 1990s, this essay intends to demonstrate a quasi-progressive relationship between these two modes of deconstruction: pointing out the necessary autoimmunity in the dogmas, the deconstruction on the constative level opens up the passage between the transcendent and its deviation (i.e., between religion and science, founding law and preserving law, apophatism and atheism), which allows the deconstruction on the performative level to “name” the unthinkable opening to the given/performative time and space. This quasi-progression ensures that the two “historical” names (the messianicity and khōra) unsettle the division between the two sources of religion from within Western history. However, we shall also be wary of the inertia that arises from this quasi-progression. An overemphasis on the critique of the Judeo-Christiano-Islamic tradition from within may lead to the neglect of a certain kind of discussion of receptivity, attachment, and historicity that might have been possible in the context of metaphysical or religious diversity. Before we discuss a new religious tolerance and a democracy to come that detaches from all determinate religions, perhaps we should begin by discussing a pluralistic and heterogenous approach to the question of religion, an approach enabled by deconstruction, but still not fully discussed.

Good stories, in fact, even fiction, must “ring true’’ and be true or believable to have an impact. Even a good joke must be rooted in an exaggeration of truth to be amusing. St. John Paul II writes: “For the inspired writer, as we see, the desire for knowledge is characteristic of all people. Intelligence enables everyone, believer and non-believer, to reach “the deep waters” of knowledge.’’ Philosophy, similarly, focuses on finding the truth. Credo ut intelligam in Latin means “I believe so that I may understand,’’ based on words first said by St. Augustine of Hippo. But is it more important to understand to believe or to believe to understand? St. John Paul II explores these questions in Fides Et Ratio, On the Relationship Between Faith and Reason, where he takes us along the journey in search of the truth. In our secular world, we are taught we can believe what we want to believe, that it’s perfectly acceptable to “just be happy’’ and focus on information that supports your preconceived ideology or feelings. Most will even run away from a truth that is hard to accept, a truth that exposes the knower’s weaknesses, flaws or dreams. For example, if we are told we are doing something that will threaten our lives, many prefer to tune out such a negative thought. But inevitably the panacea of happy talk isn’t enough to keep us completely satisfied because we crave reality, the real deal and truth.

Religious Studies Review, 2007