Auto-Immunity or Transcendence:
A Phenomenological Re-consideration of
Religion with Derrida and Patočka
1ludger hagedornDieu en nous sanctionne notre finitude.
Jan PatočkaI. Auto-Immunity and Transcendence
As Nietzsche showed, nihilism is not simply the overt turning away
from all meaningful life structures. Rather, nihilism is already and pre-
eminently present in the pretensions of universalist and essentialist
worldviews. It resides in the spirit that wants to come to an end, that
wants to overcome problems “once and for all,” whatever the “solut-
ion” that might be envisaged. In short, it resides in the attempt to
escape the tensions inherent in and constitutive of human life.
This Nietzschean diagnosis of the origins and the rise of nihilism is
a crucial point of reference for philosophical ventures attempting to
avoid the abyss of either dogmatic essentialism or hopeless relativism.
But what does this approach add to the question of religion and its
place in the modern world? For Nietzsche, “religion” signifies the
Judeo-Christian heritage of European thinking together with cor-
responding tendencies (“metaphysics”) that can be found in Western
philosophy since Plato. He understands it as the main source of the
“devaluation of all values” and the consequent rise of nihilism. In my
view, this Nietzschean verdict does describe a certain aspect of religion,
- Important parts of the article are the result of a close collaboration with Michael
Staudigl, Vienna, whom I would like to thank for the collaborative effort and his
immense contributions to the argument. James Mensch was a great help and sup-
port to both of us in formulating these ideas.