end p.489
sented by Derrida, it is in the service of the good, at once political and religious. When
first distinguishing deconstruction from negative theology, Derrida tells us the former is
“the death of the tyrant” (1982, 4). In his later writings three political motifs emerge as
especially central: justice, hospitality, and the democracy to come (e.g., 1992b, 1994).
But there is a future dimension to all of these, gathered around the word “Come” (1989).
This has two important implications. First, deconstruction is a philosophy of hope that is
not yet sight. Not only do we not see justice, hospitality, and genuine democracy as
realities, but we do not see clearly just what it would mean for them to be fully actual. In
this sense they differ from Kantian regulative ideals, to which they are otherwise akin.
Second, Derrida gives a messianic coloring to this futurity (especially in 1994).
Deconstruction is the experience of a messianic hope untied to any messianism, the
historically specific interpretations of a messianic future grounded in some bible,
including the Marxist bible. This “religion without religion” is the attempt to preserve
hope for and commitment to a better world outside the framework of established,
institutional religion. It is a revival of the Enlightenment ideal of religion within the
limits of reason alone, remembering that it appeals to a postmodern rather than a modern
conception of reason (1998; see Caputo 1997, ch. 3). For that reason it is a religion of
faith rather than knowledge because what it hopes for is not present to it either in actual
fact or in conceptual clarity.
In response to the “accusation” that deconstruction is a form of negative theology,
Derrida says (1) that its skepticism is more encompassing than that of the apophatic
traditions, and (2) that although it is in the service of political ideals that have a religious,
that is, messianic, dimension to them, it is not in the service of any mystical union with a
hyperessential divinity. Marion takes this latter claim to be the countercharge that
negative theology claims “to put us in the presence of God in the very degree to which it
denies all presenceto deconstruct God and nevertheless to reach him.” In this sense, it
“remains in submission to the privilege of presence” (1999, 22).
As we have seen, Derrida sees apophatic theology as in the service of an intuitional
immediacy which is sheer presence without absence, unconcealment without
concealment. But while Derrida, unlike Dionysius, does not aspire to this presence,
deconstruction has nothing to say against it. To be sure, Derrida says, “As soon as there
are wordsdirect intuition no longer has any chance.” But apophaticism agrees and insists
that mystical union with the hyperessential is ineffable. Moreover, Derrida is fully aware,
as we have seen, that what it aspires to is “that silent union with that which remains
inaccessible to speech.” Derrida, personally, may doubt the value of mystical experience,
but deconstruction provides no arguments against the mystic. It denies immediacy, sheer
presence, unconcealment free of all concealment within the boundaries of linguistic
meaning and propositional truth. The mystic agrees.
It would seem, then, that Derrida is not accusing apophaticism of being the metaphysics
of presence he regularly resists, a “metaphysics” that is more nearly the epistemic claim
that our concepts can be adequate to their intended objects, so that neither in terms of