supposed god is thereto avoid the dialectical trap of Being and Non-being by withdrawing
from realism to nominalism, to a “pure” discussion of the Name. The
question, however, remains as an interrogation of God.
With his nominalistic approach, Derrida continuously gets involved
in an interference with the question of Being, i.e., the fundamental
questions of ontology. Following his own programme of différance and
dissemination, Derrida often adopts an ambiguous position to the
question of Being, where his own presuppositions are crossed out by
the negation of any position at all. But even other differences such as
that between interior and exterior and that of subjectivity and alterity
are at stake in his discourse on the Name. These differences are then
destabilized by a différance that “includes ontotheology, inscribing it
and exceeding it without return.”^25
The question about the Being or Non-being of God is thereby kept
in suspenso, and this suspension is likewise the dissension.^26 Suppose that
God is not there, and humanity and every human being would in the
strictest sense be abandoned by God. The question of absolute Other-
ness then becomes a question of how “I” define my relationship to the
Other, i.e., to what extent I am willing and able to name and define this
otherness, and then respond to it; either to the “split in the I” or to
the possibility of “secrecy.” But would not such naming and defining
be necessary even if God were there?
Suppose conversely that God is there, and the alterity of God calling
for response will break up subjectivity from within, opening up an
abyss in the given and a horizon for unexpected possibility. But would
not that abyss open up and the unexpected occur even if God were not
there? Anyway, if we keep both alternatives open and read the text
with this dissension in mind, we would in fact presuppose subjectivity
in Kierkegaard’s sense.
Before we consider the passage a third time, I will therefore take a
detour to a text on forgiveness, which Derrida approaches in the
extended version of his essay on hospitality. The question of forgiveness
concerns the limit between Self and Other. In Matt. 6 we read, directly
succeeding the prayer: “For if you forgive men when they sin against
- Quoted from the essay “Différance” in Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, 6.
- Cf. Derrida, Writing and Difference, 38–39.