Body and deconstruction of Christianity: Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Derrida

Abstract

This article aims to be a confrontation with Nancy’s “deconstruction of Christianity”. For Nancy to deconstruct Christianity means to point to the places where Christianity itself overflows its status as religion and as metaphysics. Nancy shows how the three Christian mysteries (Trinity, Incarnation, Resurrection) are not merely explainable metaphysically and how they thus open the thought of the new relation between body-mind. These theses have been criticized by Jacques Derrida reading of Nancy’s work in Le Toucher. Jean-Luc Nancy. Derrida turns his attention to a certain strand of the tradition which he calls “haptological” (from the Greek haptein, to touch). This tradition is implicated in the metaphysical gesture insofar as it thinks touch in terms of identity, homogeneity, immediacy and self-presence, even when it emphasizes a certain interruption or distance. According to Derrida, this is Nancy’s complicity with some form of metaphysical thinking. The conclusion of this article aims to expose the multidimensional discussion between philosophers