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Between Law and Justice: Kant, Derrida, and Religious Violence

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Between Law and Justice: Kant, Derrida, and Religious Violence University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2009 Between Law and Justice: Kant, Derrida, and Religious Violence Evgeni V. Pavlov University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the Other Religion Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Pavlov, Evgeni V., "Between Law and Justice: Kant, Derrida, and Religious Violence" (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 502. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/502 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. BETWEEN LAW AND JUSTICE: KANT, DERRIDA, AND RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE __________ A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the University of Denver and the Iliff School of Theology Joint PhD Program ___________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy ___________ By Evgeni V. Pavlov November 2009 Advisor: Jere O’Neill Surber Author: Evgeni V. Pavlov Title: BETWEEN LAW AND VIOLENCE: KANT, DERRIDA, AND RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE Advisor: Jere O’Neill Surber Degree Date: November 2009 ABSTRACT Although a number of approaches to the issue of religious violence are already available for academic consumption, this study attempts to approach the problem of the violent tension between religious principles and secular socio-political realities from a new perspective. We argue that religious violence is best conceptualized as a moment of crisis in the relationship between law and justice, considered as both intimately related (in Kant’s analysis of the rightful condition) and peculiarly disjointed (in Derrida’s reflections on the possibility of “justice beyond law”). We provide a preliminary account of the necessary conditions for a future theory of religious violence based on our effort to recontextualize the discussion of the corresponding issues by paying close theoretical attention to the interaction between the concepts of law, justice, violence, and religion. We conclude that any theoretical reevaluation of religious violence must inevitably widen its scope to include not only such customary problems as the relationship between “faith” and “knowledge” or the relationship between “private beliefs” and “public duties,” but also an account of the peculiarly religious motivational framework that often implicitly guides our conversations about any future human condition of peace and justice. ii Table of Contents I. Introduction: Approaching Religious Violence……………………………. 1 II. Kant’s Dilemma: On Morality and Legality………………………………. 40 III. Force of Law and the Imperative of Justice……………………………….. 93 IV. Justice and Violence……………………………………………………….. 126 V. Kant and Derrida On Religion……………………………………………... 148 VI. Conclusion: Law, Justice and Religious Violence…………………………. 184 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………… 198 Appendix: Abbreviations………………………………………………………. 203 iii Fiat iustitia, pereat mundus. I Introduction: Situating the Problem of Religious Violence. The role of religion in modern life is an issue that has been continuously drawing attention from a variety of angles, but lately, especially after the events of 9/11, from a peculiar perspective of investigating the role of religion in sanctioning, condoning and even requiring acts of violence. This essay hopes to be an addition to a larger field of the study of the relationship between religion and violence. Our overall goal is to craft a conceptual framework for dealing with the contemporary resurgence of religiously motivated violence, or, as we will refer to this relationship between religion and violence throughout this essay, religious violence. This term has suffered the rather unfortunate fate of being used to describe such a wide variety of examples of behaviors that its continued use in this essay seems like a rather foolish endeavor. However, as we hope to argue, it is partially this overuse and this lack of conceptual sophistication that will allows us to initiate the necessary task of rethinking the very issues involved in any serious discussion of religious violence. Our general intention in this essay is to decontextualize the problem of religious violence, that is, to take a closer look at the usual framing of the problem by shifting certain ideas, assumptions, prejudices and foregone conclusions around in order to see if a better, more nuanced and more effective 1 framework might be constructed. This new framework can only be given in a preliminary promissory form, yet this essay intends to present an argument that would allow us to recontextualize the problem of religious violence in such a manner as to allow a future researcher to proceed in a number of fruitful directions. The issue of religious violence, we insist, is certainly an important one both in terms of its own peculiar problematic and in terms of its ability to shed light on a number of important contemporary problems. Raising the issue of religion today and proposing to reassess its lasting influence is no longer an odd theoretical move. This is the case, for the most part, because we have learned, despite general hopes of modern secularism, that religion is not disappearing from the public sphere and is not likely to diminish its influence in the near future. Although we have talked about the religious influences during the past couple of centuries in terms of secularization, it is clear from even a superficial look at the most recent events in the world that religion is asserting itself as never having left the public debate. The typical narrative of secularization (and the resulting secular condition) recounts the story of a gradual liberation of human reason and human spirit from the superstitious bounds of religious prejudice in the wake of the horrible sectarian wars of sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe.1 This narrative describes the eventual advance of science and undoing of religious belief as humans became more self-sufficient, 1 Cf. Roy Wallis and Steve Bruce, “Secularization: The Orthodox Model,” in Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 8- 30; Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003); Pippa Norris and Ronald Ingleheart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), esp. chapter 1-3; Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). See also Charles Taylor’s latest book – A Secular Age (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007) – that deals with a larger context of secularization and related matters. 2 rational, progressive and modern. In this common narrative, secularism and religion function as opposites. The starting point of much of the contemporary discourse on secularism is often traced back to the ideas of the Enlightenment: religious superstition is a sign of human immaturity and dependence on the authority of tradition; any sensible liberation of human spirit from the bonds of superstition, unquestioned obedience and slavery of ignorance must involve the weakening of religion and its institutions. The imagery of liberation is essential for any secularist discourse on religion. The Enlightenment, of course, as a rather complex historical movement, if such ever existed in any unified and easily identifiable way, produced a great variety of responses to religion, ranging from Voltaire’s hostility to religion to Kant’s attempts to justify “rational faith.”2 However, it is clear that this very distinction between private (religious) and public (secular) spheres, as José Casanova argues, is essential to any modern social secular order.3 Religion as a private affair of the citizens is constitutive of Western modernity in the dual sense: on one hand, it points to a freedom of conscience (internal freedom) as a precondition of all modern freedoms; on the other hand, it points to a process of institutional differentiation where religion is “progressively forced to evacuate the modern secular state and the modern capitalist economy.”4 The resurgence of the interest in religion today is undoubtedly caused by the events of 9/11 and the revelation that all of the perpetrators were, in fact, religious 2 For an overview of Enlightenment’s ideas on religion, among many other valuable sources, see Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), chapter 8: “The Rise of Modern Paganism? Religion and Enlightenment,” 109-25. Cf. Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: W.W.Norton & Company, 1995). 3 José Casanova, “Private and Public Religions,” Social Research 59:1 (Spring 1992): 17-57. 4 Casanova, “Private and Public Religions,” 18. 3 persons who conceived of their actions as following a religious prescription. After the attacks of 9/11, a great number of reactions shook the public sphere in the US. The general mood was that of puzzlement, shock and, eventually, anger and frustration. In February 2002, for example, a group of 60 or so American intellectuals signed a “Letter from America: What We Are Fighting for,” drafted by Jean Bethke Elshtain.5 The letter was a curious combination
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