Derrida on Religion and more

Perhaps you want more on Derrida, in that case I also found an interesting seminar given by Derrida on religion. Please click to listen: Part I and Part II (right click to save).

Summary: This extended interview with Jacques Derrida was conducted by John D. Caputo, Kevin Hart, and Yvonne Sherwood as the plenary session of the 2002 joint annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). The interview gives Derrida the opportunity to speak on a range of subjects from his secret life of prayer, to the Judeo-Christian heritage of deconstruction, to sacrifice, belief, faith, secularization, atheism, finitude, and beyond. But what pervades throughout is a certain feeling of anxiety, reserve, and humility, which to those already familiar with Derrida's work, should be of no surprise. However-given the audience at the annual meeting of the AAR/SBL, many of whom had long heard of Derrida but had never read him or seen him in person, given the reality of how Derrida's reception in the field of religious studies had come full circle from the original reading and employing of Derrida as the post-Enlightenment successor to the hermeneutics of suspicion to the more recent sentiment that positions Derrida as a quasi-Enlightenment pietist driven by an affirmative religious passion, and given the fact that it was only a short time afterward that Derrida would be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which meant that this would be one of his last major public appearances before his dteah in 2004-it is interesting to note Derrida's continued hesitation combined, as always, with a sense of urgency.

To download the ebook: "Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida by John D. Caputo" please click here (torrent) or buy it here.

Summary: Responding to questions put to him at a Roundtable held at Villanova University in 1994, Jacques Derrida leads the reader through an illuminating discussion of the central themes of deconstruction. Speaking in English and extemporaneously, Derrida takes up with clarity and eloquence such topics as the task of philosophy, the Greeks, justice, responsibility, the gift, community, the distinction between the messianic and the concrete messianisms, and his interpretation of James Joyce. Derrida convincingly refutes the charges of relativism and nihilism that are often leveled at deconstruction by its critics, and sets forth the profoundly affirmative ethico-political thrust of this work. The Roundtable is annotated by John D. Caputo, the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, who has supplied cross-references to Derrida’s writings, where the reader may find further discussion on these topics. Professor Caputo has also supplied a commentary which elaborates the principal issues raised in the Roundtable.