RT Article
T1 Giving birth to the impossible: theology and deconstruction in Johannes Climacus’s Philosophical Fragments
JF International journal of philosophy and theology
VO 82
IS 2
SP 116
OP 135
A1 Middleton, Timothy A.
LA English
PB Taylor & Francis
YR 2021
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1768379084
AB According to Roger Poole, theological interpreters of Søren Kierkegaard’s indirect communication privilege content over form, whereas deconstructive interpreters privilege form over content. Here, I offer a reading of Johannes Climacus’s Philosophical Fragments to illustrate how, in this case, the theology/deconstruction and form/content binaries both break down. The form of Fragments is as theological as it is deconstructive: Climacus’s kaleidoscopic quotation of scripture, and his parabolic tropes both attest to this. Similarly, the content of Fragments is as deconstructive as it is theological: the deferral of names, the madness of the moment of decision, and Climacus’s use of contradiction all unsettle any naïve theology. Ultimately, I suggest, the reason that Fragments resists the form/content and theology/deconstruction binaries is because it is a text about the incarnation – a paradigmatic combination of form and content, and a paradoxical reality that bursts apart any division between theology and deconstruction.
K1 Deconstruction
K1 Derrida
K1 Philosophical Fragments
K1 Climacus
K1 Kierkegaard
DO 10.1080/21692327.2021.1923557