The Depth of Reason: Kant, Marx, and Heidegger in the Deconstruction of Christianity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Jean-Luc Nancy’s so-called ‘deconstruction of Christianity’ is usually understood as both a philosophy of culture (in line with various other exercises in ‘post-secular’ thought) and a critique of metaphysics (in line with Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence). This article, however, argues that its primary concern is neither the Christian religion as a cultural formation, nor the exhaustion of the metaphysical enterprise. Instead, by looking at some of the philosophical sources on which Nancy’s project is built – namely, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, and Martin Heidegger –, the article suggests that its true aim is to develop a new understanding of reason, or to renew the experience of reason. Though these authors have largely been neglected by the growing discussion of Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity, the article shows how it is only by developing his occasional references to them that we can come to appreciate an important but neglected dimension of this project: namely, the fact that it is an exercise in philosophical anthropology, i.e. an inquiry into the exact nature of the reason that supposedly characterises the rational animal.