Margins of Religion: Between Kierkegaard and Derrida

Pursuing Jacques Derrida's reflections on the possibility of "religion without religion," John Llewelyn makes room for a sense of the religious that does not depend on the religions or traditional notions of God or gods. Beginning with Derrida's statement that it was Kierkegaard to whom he remained most faithful, Llewelyn reads Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Deleuze, Marion, as well as Kierkegaard and Derrida, in original and compelling ways. Llewelyn puts religiousness in vital touch with the struggles of the human condition, finding religious space in the margins between the secular and the religions, transcendence and immanence, faith and knowledge, affirmation and despair, lucidity and madness. This provocative and philosophically rich account shows why and where the religious matters.

"There is nothing comparable to this book within contemporary continental philosophy of religion." --David Kangas, University of California, Berkeley Indiana University Press

"[This book] contributes to a post-modern philosophical approach that takes a theological turn in phenomenology while remaining within the context of the Christian tradition." --INTNL JRNL PHILOSOPHY RELIGION, 2010, Volume 67 Indiana University Press

Seeks a sense of religion that dispenses with the traditional idea of God

John Llewelyn is former Reader in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is author of several books, including Appositions of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas (IUP, 2002) and Seeing Through God (IUP, 2004).