ludger hagedornnamely its tendency to close itself off from worldly questions and,
hence, to de value them. Religion has a tendency towards dogmatism
and radical ization as is so amply illustrated in the history of religious
fundamentalisms.
In his essay on religion,^2 Jacques Derrida refers to exactly this trait
of religious thinking when he speaks of its inherent striving for “auto-
immunization.” In biology, this term is used to describe the body
turning its immune reaction on itself. Systems designed to protect the
body turn inward, attacking their own structures. “Allergic reactions,”
for example, are understood as the body attacking itself in its attempt
to preserve itself from the allergen. For Derrida, all essentialisms, in-
cluding the religious one, suffer this fate in their attempts to protect
themselves. Thus, Christianity, with its focus on charity and loving
one’s neighbor, has often violated its own teachings in its efforts to
preserve the purity of its doctrines. In religious wars, persecution of
sects deemed heretical and of others stigmatized as sinful or evil, at-
tempts at self-protection have often violated the very doctrines that
most distinguish them. For Derrida, this notion of “auto-immuniza-
tion” is altogether generalizable. Since it is more of a phenomeno-
logical description than a judgment of moral philosophy, it, in fact,
allows for a reformulation of Nietzsche’s critique without recourse to
moral rage or Nietzsche’s general dismissal of religion. It discloses the
blindness of essentialism and its auto-immunizing either-or, but does
not restrict this criticism to what Nietzsche calls the Platonic and
Christian “netherworlds.” It rather makes visible similar patterns of
thought that are present in religious worldviews, but by no means only
in religion. The same destructive tendency, a tendency towards “auto-
immunization,” also plays a crucial role outside the sphere of religion.
Derrida, for example, sees it at work in the American response to the
threat of terrorism.^3
Blind essentialism and radicalism, violence and cruelty have not
- Jacques Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the
Limits of Reason Alone,” Acts of Religion, ed. by Gil Anidjar, New York and Lon-
don: Routledge, 40–101. - Cf. Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, ed. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael
Naas, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.