Conclusion: The Return Address

This final and concluding statement addresses the role error in determining the different “regimes of truth” in the history of philosophy, proposing that much of contemporary philosophy is reacting to the same species of error identified with a previous tradition of post-Cartesianism and a Kantian subject of Critique.

The Unprecedented Return of St. Paul

This statement takes up the frequency of contemporary philosophers who have returned to the epistles of St. Paul as the basis for a philosophy of truth and history. The chapter provides a close reading of an example in the recent writings of French philosopher Alain Badiou

“What’s Love Got to do With it?”

This statement takes up John D. Caputo’s seminal work of “weak theology,” The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida (1997). In addition to calling into question a careful reading of Derrida on the subjects of faith and reason, the author also critiques the elision of both skepticism and psychoanalysis as possible epistemologies.

Sapere Aude?

Employing Foucault’s 1984 reflection on the ‘critical ethos’ of modernity, the opening return statement interrogates the relationship between the Kantian concept of enlightenment and the contemporary reactions associated with post-secular and post-colonial thought.

Living and Dying Under the Double Horizon of the Death of God

This statement returns to provide a close reading of Derrida’s seminal lecture “Faith and Reason” in order to situate the different senses of religion that could be said to be returning today.

Philosophical Fundamentalism Today

This statement returns to Heidegger’s earliest seminar on the relationship of faith and philosophy in order to contrast the contemporary philosophy in which not only can Christian philosophy be possible, but there is also a dominant return to first philosophy.

The Coming Community?

This statement returns to the writings of Jean Luc Nancy, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille and the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben on the theme of community in relation to the contemporary political conservatism around immigrants in Europe and the United States.

tacitly, the caress, in a word, the Christian body”

This statement takes up Jacques Derrida’s seminal work on the themes of the body and touching in the philosophy of Jean Luc Nancy. It explores the evolution of post-phenomenological and Christian themes and Derrida’s commentary.

Noli mi tangere!

This statement takes up Jean Luc Nancy’s Corpus (2000) and interrogates the Christian theme of the body in post-phenomenological traditions in France, also drawing upon the early Christian gospels.

Introduction: The Return Statement

Most books are written with a clear statement in mind, usually in the space of a few years, as if to emulate a thought that unfolds as a continuous and unbroken element. This book is not among them. Rather, it has been patiently assembled from a series of public lectures, articles, essays, and chapters either written or delivered over the first decade of the millennium, falling roughly between the spring of 2002 and fall of 2012, all of which address the internal logic of what I call “the return statement” in contemporary philosophy....