The Trace of God by Baring Edward; Gordon Peter E.;

Author:Baring, Edward; Gordon, Peter E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press

Unprotected Religion

Radical Theology, Radical Atheism, and the Return of Anti-Religion

JOHN D. CAPUTO

Postmodern theology has come of age.1 It now has its own countermovement, philosophers marching under the flag of materialism, realism, and anti-religion and complaining that the theologians are back at their old trick of appropriating critiques of religion in order to make religion stronger. So this is an occasion to clear the air and see just how hard and fast the borders are between religion and anti-religion, realism and anti-realism, materialism and anti-materialism, especially given that deconstruction is an exercise in anxiety about rigorous borders. Martin Hägglund’s Radical Atheism is a closely argued contribution to the recent debate that fits hand in glove with this countermovement, although Hägglund does not mention it.2 His book is a welcome refutation of any attempt to reduce Derrida to an anti-realist or anti-materialist, especially in the light of Meillassoux’s caricature of “correlationism,” which treats continental philosophers from Kant on as creationists.3 Given the historical violence religion has provoked and the reactionary meanness of the religious right in American politics today, I am no less nervous about “religion.” That makes it all the more important to sort out what I am saying and what I am not, since my own work on Derrida and religion, as Michael Naas points out clearly, is no less informed by protecting Derrida’s laïceté.4

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