The apophatic theme of the hidden God in Shestov’s and Derrida’s discussions on the gift

Abstract

Following Nietzsche’s declaration that ‘God is dead’, Lev Shestov (1866–1938) and Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) attempted to rethink Judeo-Christian theological and philosophical traditions by trying to free the relation to God from pretences of finite concepts and limitations of knowledge. In the second half of the twentieth century, the problematic discourse of the so-called ‘paradox of the gift’ became the key question of apophatic theology. The philosophers of postmodern culture related the Christian theology of the gift to the apophatic theme of the hidden and the post-Heideggerian view of God as a Being. United in their pursuit of the ‘mystical experience’ of unknowing and ‘the possibility of the impossible’, Shestov’s and Derrida’s thoughts were concerned with the state of human relations to God in contemporary Western culture. However, Shestov’s legend about the divine gift of the Angel of Death and Derrida’s analysis of the gift in relation to the phenomenon of revelation and death had different ends in mind. Situating Shestov’s ideas within the context of postmodern encounters with the gift and the apophatic theme of God, the article is the first known attempt at a comparative reading of the two thinkers’ ideas.