Faith in/as the Unconditional: Kant, Husserl, and Derrida on Practical Reason

Abstract

This article tracks Derrida's readings of Kant and Husserl as they explore the relation between, on the one hand, faith and knowledge, and on the other, theory and practice (theoretical and practical reason). Kant had to limit the scope of theoretical knowledge in order to make room for a practical faith in the rational ideas of the unconditioned (God, freedom, and immortality), generated through the unconditionality of the moral law. Husserl deployed the figure of ‘the Idea in the Kantian sense’ at those crucial moments in the exposition of his transcendental phenomenology where the unconditioned comes into play, a problematic strategy that Derrida judges to have revealed the limits of the phenomenological project. While Husserl's call for an unconditional theoretical and practical renewal of faith in reason appears to offer him an out, Husserlian faith is ultimately dependent on an untenable circularity, to which the Kantian variety also succumbs. Only Derrida's unconditional gift of faith can save the honour of reason from its mortal crisis, but in a manner that is itself not wholly a matter of reason.