Supplement to apocalypse

Girard and Derrida

Andrew J. McKenna

pp. 45-76

in: Francisco Varela, Jean-Pierre Dupuy (eds), Understanding origins, Berlin, Springer, 1992

Abstract

We might begin with Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the eighteenth century. For that is where our problematic quest for origins begins, with the discrediting of Biblical authority, of Scriptural orthodoxy, in terms of which, origins, being divine, are by definition no problem. This in part is the point of Rousseau" s insistence, towards the beginning of his Discours sur l" origine de l" inégalité parmi les hommes, that "We must begin by discarding all the facts' (III: 132). The context of this remark clearly suggests that he is sidestepping the authority of Biblical narrative, la lecture des livres sacrés, which officially at least represents the facts for his culture. This in turn appears to be no problem for our resolutely profane, scientific culture, though part of my argument will concern a relation to the sacred informing and deforming our own quest for origins.

Cited authors

Derrida Jacques

Rousseau Jean-Jacques

Girard René