Dante and Derrida

Francis Ambrosio's remarkable study of Dante/Derrida follows Derrida in order to read Dante better and follows Dante in order to recognize Derrida as our contemporary Virgil (13). Dante and Derrida criss-cross each other, converging at the end in the Forgiveness, which is before but from the “Gift of Death.” Ambrosio's book contributes much brilliance to what is fast becoming the stylish turn among Catholic philosophers numbered among those whom some name all too simply the “right-wing” Derrideans (see Geoffrey Bennington's discussion, Interrupting Derrida, 2000, pp. 225, 226). I have objections to the modish turn Ambrosio takes, and these I shall indicate later, but that he knows his Dante well, and his (chosen texts from) Derrida well, is quite beyond dispute. I have learned much from this outstanding book, and highly recommend it for its many insights. Ambrosio speaks “Derridean,” a language not everyone reading this review may understand, so I suggest the uninitiated reader begin with his exposition (215 ff.) of Derrida's study of Jan Patočka, since this study constitutes Ambrosio's “markers” throughout. In The Gift of Death (orig. 1992, trans. 1995), Derrida traces Patočka's “genealogy of responsibility” in the West. Patočka posits that European religion is marked by two historical transformations of “orgiastic mystery” (magical religion). The first transformation is Platonism, which disguises orgiastic mystery as a “consumption” of the subjugated body. The second transformation is Christianity, which holds Platonism in check by the conversion of the Platonic Good into “Goodness.” Christian Goodness is the (Divine) personal gaze that beholds without being beheld, holding the Christian soul within the love that forgets itself in favor of its Gift (union with God). The orgiastic impulse toward fusion returns as the “disguised memory of its repressed principle of transformation,” namely, sacrifice.

Art · Exposition (narrative) · Face (sociological concept) · Forgiveness · Literature · Order (exchange) · Platonism · Theology · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Philosophy