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THE SERMON ON MOUNT MORIAH: FAITH AND THE SECRET IN THE GIFT OF DEATH
Author(s) -
KOTSKO ADAM
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the heythrop journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.127
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1468-2265
pISSN - 0018-1196
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2265.2007.00356.x
Subject(s) - sermon , faith , reading (process) , philosophy , christianity , secrecy , epistemology , theology , literature , law , art , linguistics , political science
This essay is an investigation of three attempts to think faith. I find my starting place in Jacques Derrida's The Gift of Death , 1 one of the most important treatments of Christianity in Derrida's later thought, which was increasingly insistent in its engagement with religious questions up until his death in 2004. This reading of The Gift of Death will focus particularly on the question of secrecy and its relationship with faith, leading necessarily to an account of Derrida's reading of two of his primary references in this text: the second essay of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals 2 and Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling . 3 Rather than simply rendering a judgment on Derrida's reading, I will endeavor to read these texts together, extending (or expanding upon) Derrida's reading while questioning some of the positive formulations he makes in his own name – all the while remaining attentive to the gambles involved in thinking faith.