The Akedah and Jacques Derrida's Ethical Religiosity

Among lots of Derrida's works, The Gift of Death would be the one of the best writings that can demonstrate his religious interests. In this book, Derrida tries to show his understanding concerning religious faith and ethic through his interpretation of the famous story of the Akedah(binding Isaac) in the Bible. Derrida's interpretation of the Akedah proceeds as he interacts and responds to two other interpreters of the story before him, Kierkegaard and Levinas. Like Kierkegaard, Derrida understands that religious faith as 'repetition' is secret and cannot be shared or be transferred. Also like Kierkegaard, Derrida thinks the conflict between the human responsibility to God and the human responsibility to family and society is inevitable. However, while Kierkegaard's interpretation of the Akedah focuses on the superiority of the responsibility to God to the responsibility toward family and society, Derrida's interpretation tries to show the aporia in religious faith and ethic. According to Derrida, the conflict and aporia in religious faith and human ethic also can be found in other human relations. On the one hand, Derrida recognizes the characteristic of religious faith, and on the other hand, he does not want to discard the ethic for the other. In order to develop ethical religiosity, Derrida wants to consider Levinasian ethic of the other, although Levinas's interpretation of the Akedah is very different from Kierkegaard's interpretation. And unlike Kierkegaard, Derrida emphasizes one's responsibility to every other. His ethical concern is found in this brief expression: "tout autre est tout autre, every other (one) is every (bit) other." Although Derrida never wants to identify himself as a religious believer, it is very probable that he has his own religiosity.