auto-immunity or transcendencetendency to “auto-immunization,” that is, to a violation of its own
innermost essence. In this context, it is especially characteristic of
modern times that both the religious and the secular worldviews
understand their universality as exclusionist.
A phenomenological account of religion and religious thinking,
therefore, should certainly address the tendency towards “auto-immu-
nization.” This, however, is hardly a sufficient description of what is
distinctly religious. Moreover, to limit oneself to this characterization
would, as I see it, completely miss a certain potential of religion, a
potential whose actualization implies the opposite of Nietzsche’s
critique of it as the source of the nihilistic devaluation of all values.
Positively regarded, it could be argued that religion includes the pos-
sibility of the renewed awakening of meaningful life structures and,
concomitantly, the shaking of our ordinary routines.
The related philosophical question concerns our post-modern age,
conceived as that which follows the age that supposedly saw the tri-
umphant success of the scientific worldview. What does a phenome-
non like the fiercely debated “return of the religious” mean in this
context? In spite of the hopes of certain religious dogmatists, it prob-
ably does not signify the revival of some imagined past. Philosophi-
cally, such a return can only be thought of in terms of a thorough revi-
sion of the self-conception of modernity, including its tacitly assumed
dichotomy of myth and enlightenment. As Derrida notes, the return
of the religious is not the revival of something criticized and attacked,
e.g., not a continuation of the battle between faith and knowledge
under new conditions. Rather, for our time, it urges us to reassess the
relation as such.
In this sense, the return of the religious indicates the (re-)discovery
of something unthought of, a recurrence of the suppressed side of
rationality and a challenge to its self-conception. It also relates to the
question of how today’s worldview might overcome a nihilistic ap-
proach, that is, its tendency towards a universal devaluation. It is here
that the religious sphere shows its crucial importance: Despite the
Nietzschean verdict and some obvious tendencies in this direction
(i.e., despite its tendencies to “auto-immunize” itself), religion per se
can never be reduced to a rational totalizing of certain worldviews. On
the contrary when we examine its own self-conception, we see that