Of a Farcical Deus ex Machina in Heidegger and Derrida

Abstract

This essay argues that onto-theo-logy as articulated by Heidegger and Derrida is a farcical, machinating trick of a deus ex machina. For Heidegger, thinking in its entirety is onto-theo-logical and only articulates a rehabilitating event whereby ontological difference is both forgotten and remembered as the unthought. By discursively thinking for itself beyond itself, onto-theo-logy becomes hetero-tauto-nomical and executes a disjunctive justice that gives no serious ground for the double bind of heteronomy and tautonomy, which merely pretends to provide the relational order for identity and difference and, thus, remains an artificial hoax. For Derrida, in a similar fashion, hetero-tauto-nomy is inscribed in the onto-theo-logical re-appropriation of the gift of undeconstructible justice, the disjunctive condition for deconstruction. The rendering of the absolute singularity of a juridical other is the event of deconstruction, and, as an event, it becomes the order of denial that essentially denies any a priori juridical decision which could come as lawful precedence. But the event remains lawful and gets disseminated hetero-tauto-nomically as law, so deconstruction’s ‘neither-nor’ aporia is still rendered lawfully, divinely, or mystically. Nonetheless, the mystique that delivers deconstruction is duplicitous and a farce beyond the disjunction between deconstruction and its necessary undeconstructibility. Therefore, both Heidegger and Derrida summon a deus ex machina which intervenes and delivers an elaborate hoax that deceives them.

Metaphysics has no choice [Der Metaphysik bleibt keine Wahl].(Martin Heidegger, ‘Einleitung zu: “Was ist Metaphysik?”,’ in Wegmarken, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2004), 379).

Clov: Why this farce, day after day?

Hamm: Routine. One never knows. [Pause.](Samuel Beckett, Endgame (London: Faber and Faber, 2009), 21.)