| Chapter 1: | Derrida’s Ethics of “Irresponsibilization”; or, How to Get Irresponsible, in Two Easy Lessons |
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orgiastic in Old Testament religious mystery, just as Jesus, speaking as the Son of God, as a member of the Trinity, said to his followers, “And everyone that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life” (Matt. 19.29). All Christian believers must pass the test God set for Abraham. All Christians must repeat Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac and abnegate all family alliances and responsibilities. One must choose. Either family and social responsibilities, or Jesus. Jesus was pretty clear about this. Similar admonitions are repeated in all the first three Gospel accounts. Few nominal church-going Christians, at least in my knowledge, follow Christ’s clear command.
Patočka sees authentic religion, by which he means Christianity, as fundamentally requiring a sense of the responsible self. “In the proper sense of the word”, says Derrida, speaking for Patočka and for himself at the same time,
The second turn in Derrida’s intricate account of Patočka’s intricate argument is the replacement of orgiastic prereligion with Platonism, though the orgiastic is still incorporated in Platonism, as I have shown.
The third turn is the repression of the Platonic in Christianity, though it is still retained in repressed form. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1.23: “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness”.
The fourth turn is the secular Enlightenment ethics of intersubjective, familial, civic, and political responsibility, with its accompanying notion