Number(s) of Future(s), Number(s) of Faith(s): Call it a Day for Religion

Abstract

Encrypted in Derrida’s contribution to the Capri Seminar on Religion in 1994 are three retrievals: of his discussions of speech and of systems of inscription; of a concealment of splittings in the supposed continuities of traditions; and of a complicity between the operations of religion and those of a dissipation of the unities of science, Enlightenment, and knowledge, into proliferating autotelic tele-technologies. These retrievals take place between the lines of this discussion of faith, knowledge and religion, which arrives in two halves, each in twenty-six sections. The first half arrives in italics, as spoken on the day, and ends by invoking Voltaire on toleration and a contrast between Christianity as Institution and Christianity as the legacy of Jesus and the Apostles. The second half, appended as a written supplement, with footnotes, is signed and dated April 26, 1995. Husserl’s epoche arrives as recurrent performance, challenging the unity of Heidegger’s Ereignis; contrasting modes for the arrival of futurity are invoked in a juxtaposition of the names: Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, and Bergson, thus providing more than two sources for Derrida’s meditations on religion.

Keywords

• alphabets
• calendars
• dates
• encryption
• faiths
• futures
• names
• numbers
• sources