American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

Volume 79, Issue 2, Spring 2005

Hauntological Hermeneutics and the Interpretation of Christian Faith
On Being Dead Equal Before God

Using Kierkegaard’s Works of Love, I advocate a theory of interpretation as a conversation with the dead, of the same sort Kierkegaard was practicing in the last discourse of his book. I do not mean reading the works of dead white European males, but looking at things from the perspective of the grave where, as Kierkegaard says, we are all equal before God. I will maintain that the creative conflict of interpretations arises from the ambiguity of this conversation, from the difficulty we have in making out just what the dead are saying, which I will relate to what Derrida calls the absolute “secret.” Whence the Derridean idea that only as “hauntology” is hermeneutics possible. I insert the interpretation of religious faith within this hauntological hermeneutical framework.