If Heidegger is playful, creating puzzles for his readers such as introducing concepts that are not clarified until hundreds of pages later or in other texts entirely, Derrida is one of the most tangential, deferring writers you will meet.  I imagine the late Derrida reincarnated as a watchdog distracted and chasing a squirrel into a forest full of squirrels, and the chaos that ensues.  Derrida challenges us in “Che cos’è la poesia?” (“What is Poetry?” 1988) to treat reading like a poem that the reader tries to commit to heart, but where every word and punctuation becomes difficult and a focal point – unlike with the generality of other texts where we try to simplify: retell, relate, reflect as we teach kids to read.   A poem is concise by vocation, even if long—marked by condensation (Verdichtung), withdrawal, and resistance to full translation or paraphrase. 

The most famous and memorable figure in this article is the hedgehog (French hérisson; Italian istrice). This animal embodies the “poematic” (Derrida prefers poématique over poétique to emphasize the event-like, singular quality of the poem): The hedgehog is thrown onto the road (a public space between city and nature, exposed to danger).  As it always has when facing danger, it rolls into a defensive ball, exposing its quills outward—vulnerable yet threatening, turned toward itself and the other at once.  It risks being crushed by passing vehicles (an accident, a chance encounter) precisely because of its attempt to protect itself.  Perhaps it should have just kept walking despite the threat of danger.  Precisely when we try to apply the usual interpretive techniques from hermeneutic theory, these are precisely those that are the hedgehog’s downfall.  We suppose, for example, a native German speaker who has been trained in Continental Philosophy hermeneutics should be a reliable interpreter of Kant or Heidegger.  Such qualifications do more to guarantee producing professorships rather than reliability. 

We want to have Heidegger and Kant speak through us, that we might speak in their name, the notion of the name being crucial for Derrida.  For example, the 9’11 terrorists acted in the name of Islam, but does this reveal Islam to us?

Discernment is required: Islam is not Islamism and we should never forget it, but the latter operates in the name of the former, and thus emerges the grave question of the name… Here we are confronted by the overwhelming questions of the name and of everything “done in the name of”:  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 46). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

It is precisely in acting in the name of God that people authorize the evilest of acts, and so we need look to act apart from God and in His name.  Moreover, who is more moral/Christian: a theist who is altruistic because they are trying to win approval from God and rewards in heaven, or an atheist who is altruistic for its own sake and desiring to help humanity?

In the definition of “reflecting faith” and of what binds the idea of pure morality indissolubly to Christian revelation, Kant recurs to the logic of a simple principle, that which we cited a moment ago verbatim: in order to conduct oneself in a moral manner, one must act as though God did not exist or no longer concerned himself with our salvation. This shows who is moral and who is therefore Christian, assuming that a Christian owes it to himself to be moral: no longer turn towards God at the moment of acting in good faith; act as though God had abandoned us. In enabling us to think (but also to suspend in theory) the existence of God, the freedom or the immortality of the soul, the union of virtue and of happiness, the concept of “postulate” of practical reason guarantees this radical dissociation and assumes ultimately rational and philosophical responsibility, the consequence here in this world, in experience, of this abandonment. Is this not another way of saying that Christianity can only answer to its moral calling and morality, to its Christian calling if it endures in this world, in phenomenal history, the death of God, well beyond the figures of the Passion?  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 50-1). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

Derrida is going to find something in Heidegger that is going to tacitly or explicitly thinking in the name of Christianity.

A strategy all the more involuted and necessary for a Heidegger who seems unable to stop either settling accounts with Christianity or distancing himself from it—with all the more violence insofar as it is already too late, perhaps, for him to deny certain proto-Christian motifs in the ontological repetition and existential analytics.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 51). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

We see hints of this in Heidegger’s correspondence.

As for the “Romani,”9 does not Heidegger proceed, from Sein und Zeit on, with an ontologico-existential repetition and rehearsal of Christian motifs that at the same time are hollowed out and reduced to their originary possibility? A pre-Roman possibility, precisely? Did he not confide to Löwith, several years earlier, in 1921, that in order to assume the spiritual heritage that constitutes the facticity of his “I am,” he ought to have said: “I am a ‘Christian theologian’”? Which does not mean “Roman.” To this we shall return.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 54). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

Considering the above violence of Islamism in the name of Islam, we are trying to think without the “ism.”

First name: the messianic, or messianicity without messianism. This would be the opening to the future or to the coming of the other as the advent of justice, but without horizon of expectation and without prophetic prefiguration. The coming of the other can only emerge as a singular event when no anticipation sees it coming, when the other and death—and radical evil—can come as a surprise at any moment.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 56). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

Plato gives the example of the third that is going to make possible the union (Parousia in the Phaedo) of sensible and intelligible, which Plato calls chora.  This is to explain the oddity of appearing, such as how the goddess can appear incarnate to Odysseus, but just as a young woman to Telemachus beside him.  I like the example of the mansion appearing as houseness incarnate (Now that’s a house!), houseness being merely present in the average house, and deficient in the dilapidated shack- to the next viewer, by contrast, the mansion may be gawdy and the shack quaint/rustic.  Likewise, Niagara Falls may appear as a wonder of the world to the tourist, background scenery to the commuter, and noise pollution to the local resident.

Chora, the “ordeal of chora”12 would be, at least according to the interpretation I believed justified in attempting, the name for place, a place name, and a rather singular one at that, for that spacing which, not allowing itself to be dominated by any theological, ontological or anthropological instance, without age, without history and more “ancient” than all oppositions (for example, that of sensible/intelligible),   Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 58). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

Heidegger will be operating in a context foreign to the Christianity of his day, to speak in the name of the originals Jesus or Paul.  For example, in The Phenomenology of Religious like Heidegger tries to restore the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians which had come into dispute.  Voltaire likewise tried to see past Christianity to the real Jesus.

In this respect, the French Enlightenment, les Lumières, was no less essentially Christian than the Aufklärung. When it treats of tolerance, Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary Dictionary reserves a dual privilege for the Christian religion. On the one hand it is exemplarily tolerant; to be sure, it teaches tolerance better than any other religion, before every other religion. In short, a little in the manner of Kant, believe it or not, Voltaire seems to think that Christianity is the sole “moral” religion, since it is the first to feel itself obliged and capable of setting an example. Whence the ingenuity, and at times the inanity of those who sloganize Voltaire and rally behind his flag in the combat for critical modernity—and, far more seriously, for its future. For, on the other hand, the Voltairian lesson was addressed above all to Christians, “the most intolerant of all men.”13 When Voltaire accuses the Christian religion and the Church, he invokes the lesson of originary Christianity, “the times of the first Christians,” Jesus and the Apostles, betrayed by “the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion.” The latter is “in all its ceremonies and in all its dogmas, the opposite of the religion of Jesus.”… 13 Even if Voltaire responds to the question “What is tolerance?” by stating that “It is the prerogative of humanity,” the example of excellence here, the most elevated inspiration of this “humanity” remains Christian: “Of all the religions, Christianity is without doubt that which ought to inspire the greatest tolerance, even if until now Christians have been the most intolerant of men” (Philosophical Dictionary, article “Tolerance”).The word “tolerance” thus conceals a story: it tells above all an intra-Christian history and experience. It delivers the message that Christians address to other Christians. Christians (“the most intolerant”) are reminded, by a co-religionist and in a mode that is essentially co-religionist, of the word of Jesus and of the authentic Christianity at its origins. If one were not fearful of shocking too many people all at once, one could say that by their vehement anti-Christianity, by their opposition above all to the Roman Church, as much as by their declared preference, sometimes nostalgic, for primitive Christianity, Voltaire and Heidegger belong to the same tradition: proto-Catholic …One must in any case take into account, if possible in an a religious, or even irreligious manner, what religion at present might be, as well as what is said and done, what is happening at this very moment, in the world, in history, in its name. Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 60-1). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

Derrida also notes in other texts the Christian tint of Heidegger’s writing, which makes sense, such as in the case of him as an individual, in terms of being-toward-death that individuates us, he would be less Carpe Diem with the Epicureans and more Stoic and Memento Mori with the Stoic Paul crucifying the fleshly since Christ is raised and so we should not just be gluttons and drunks.

1. “Later, we will raise the question of whether, in order to sustain this existential analysis, the so-called ontological content does not surreptitiously reintroduce, in the mode of ontological repetition, theorems and theologemes pertaining to disciplines that are said to be founded and dependent – among others, Judeo-Christian theology, but also all the anthropologies that are rooted there (Derrida, Aporias, 55).”
2. “Well, precisely to that from which it demarcates itself, here mainly from the culture characterized by the so-called religions of the Book … Despite all the distance taken from Christian onto-theology … [n]either the language nor the process of this analysis of death is possible without the Christian experience, indeed, the Judeo-Christiano-Islamic experience of death to which it testifies (Derrida, Aporias, 79-80).”

One of the key opponents of Derrida is those whose actions are authorized in the name of religion– e.g., the 9’11 terrorists acted in the name of God.  In court, for example, we swear on a bible and say “God is my witness,” and realize

Without God, no absolute witness.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 65). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

Derrida suggests Heidegger’s Christianity permeated his writing

Sometimes one even has the impression that he speaks only of that—which speaks through his mouth.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 79). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

For example, Heidegger is going to deconstruct the Cartesian notion of truth as certainty free from doubt as Thomistic and Lutheran to try to get at a more proto-Catholic core:

“Although certainty as the ultimate arbiter of truth only entered the western tradition following the Christian theological interpretation of truth, specifically in Luther and Thomas, and there only under the specific rubric that arose for a need for the certainty of the salvation of the soul (Heidegger, Parmenides, 51-4).

Derrida notes religion is going to be the double movement of sanctity of life and sacrifice of life.

What would then be required is, in the same movement, to account for a double postulation: on the one hand, the absolute respect of life, the “Thou shalt not kill” (at least thy neighbour, if not the living in general), the “fundamentalist” prohibition of abortion, of artificial insemination, of performative intervention in the genetic potential, even to the ends of gene therapy, etc.; and on the other (without even speaking of wars of religion, of their terrorism and their killings) the no less universal sacrificial vocation. It was not so long ago that this still involved, here and there, human sacrifice, even in the “great monotheisms.” It always involves sacrifice of the living, more than ever in large-scale breeding and slaughtering, in the fishing or hunting industries, in animal experimentation. Be it said in passing that certain ecologists and certain vegetarians—at least to the extent that they believe themselves to have remained pure of (unscathed by) all carnivorousness, even symbolic32—would be the only “religious” persons of the time to respect one of these two pure sources of religion and indeed to bear responsibility for what could well be the future of a religion.  What are the mechanics of this double postulation (respect of life and sacrificiality)?  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 86). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

This doubling appears in many forms, such as the modern explosion of the influence of technology and its know-how, combined with an utter lack of any technical understanding of these instruments.

Never in the history of humanity, it would seem, has the disproportion between scientific incompetence and manipulatory competence been as serious. It is not even measurable any longer with respect to machines that are used everyday, with a mastery that is taken for granted and whose proximity is ever closer, more interior, more domestic.  To be sure, in the recent past every soldier did not know how his firearm functioned although he knew very well how to use it. Yesterday, all the drivers of automobiles or travellers in a train did not always know very well how “it works.” But their relative incompetence stands in no common (quantitative) measure nor in any (qualitative) analogy with that which today characterizes the relationship of the major part of humanity to the machines by which they live or with which they strive to live in daily familiarity. Who is capable of explaining scientifically to children how telephones function today (by undersea cables or by satellite), and the same is true of television, fax, computer, electronic mail, CD-ROMS, magnetic cards, jet planes, the distribution of nuclear energy, scanners, echography, etc.? Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 92). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

Just as religion is the dual sanctity of life / sacrifice of life, and technology is know how / lack of knowledge, Heidegger is going to be Christian/Atheist

It is impossible here to devote to it the necessary elaborations or to multiply, which would be easy, references to all those who, before and after all the Enlightenments in the world, believed in the independence of critical reason, of knowledge, technics, philosophy and thought with respect to religion and even to all faith. Why then privilege the example of Heidegger? Because of its extreme character and of what it tells us, in these times, about a certain “extremity.” Without doubt, as we recalled it above, Heidegger wrote in a letter to Löwith in 1921: “I am a ‘Christian theologian.’”37 This declaration would merit extended interpretation and certainly does not amount to a simple declaration of faith. But it neither contradicts, annuls nor excludes this other certainty: Heidegger not only declared, very early and on several occasions, that philosophy was in its very principle “atheistic,” that the idea of philosophy is “madness” for faith (which at the least supposes the converse), and the idea of a Christian philosophy as absurd as a “squared circle.” He not only excluded the very possibility of a philosophy of religion. He not only proposed a radical separation between philosophy and theology, the positive study of faith, if not between thought and theiology,38 the discourse on the divinity of the divine. He not only attempted a “destruction” of all forms of the ontotheological, etc. He also wrote, in 1953: “Belief [or faith] has no place in thought (Der Glaube hat im Denken keinen Platz).”39 The context of this firm declaration is, to be sure, rather particular. The word Glaube seems to concern first of all a form of belief: credulity or the blind acceptance of authority. Heidegger was concerned with translating a Spruch (a saying, a sentence, decree, decision, poem, in any case a saying that cannot be reduced to its statement, whether theoretical, scientific or even philosophical, and that is tied in a singular and performative way to language). In a passage that concerns presence (Anwesen, Präsenz) and presence in the representation of representing (in der Repräsentation des Vorstellens), Heidegger writes: “We can not scientifically prove (beweisen) the translation nor ought we simply by virtue of any authority put our trust in it [accredit it, believe it] (glauben). The reach of proof [inferred as “scientific”] is too short. Belief has no place in thinking (Der Glaube hat im Denken keinen Platz).” Heidegger thus dismisses, back to back, scientific proof (which might suggest that to the same extent he accredits non-scientific testimony) and belief, here credulous and orthodox confidence that, closing its eyes, acquiesces and dogmatically sanctions authority (Autorität). Certainly, and who would contradict this? But Heidegger still extends with force and radicality the assertion that belief in general has no place in the experience or the act of thinking in general. And there we would have difficulty following him. First along his own path. Even if one succeeds in averting, in as rigorous a manner as possible, the risk of confusing modalities, levels, contexts, it still seems difficult to dissociate faith in general (Glaube) from what Heidegger himself, under the name of Zusage (“accord, acquiescing, trust or confidence”), designates as that which is most irreducible, indeed most originary in thought, prior even to that questioning said by him to constitute the piety (Frömmigkeit) of thinking. It is well known that without calling this last affirmation into question, he subsequently explained that it is the Zusage that constitutes the most proper movement of thinking, and that without it (although Heidegger does not state it in this form) the question itself would not emerge.40 This recall to a sort of faith, this recall to the trust of the Zusage, “before” all questioning, thus “before” all knowledge, all philosophy, etc., finds a particularly striking formulation relatively late (1957)… Perhaps we will try to show elsewhere (it would require more time and space) that it accords with everything which, beginning with the existential analytics of the thought of being and of the truth of being, reaffirms continuously what we will call (in Latin, alas, and in a manner too Roman for Heidegger) a certain testimonial sacredness or, we would even go so far as to say, a sworn word <foi jurée>. This reaffirmation continues throughout Heidegger’s entire work. It resides in the decisive and largely underestimated motif of attestation (Bezeugung) in Sein und Zeit as well as in all the other motifs that are inseparable from and dependent upon it, which is to say, all the existentials and, specifically, that of conscience (Gewissen), originary responsibility or guilt (Schuldigsein) and Entschlossenheit (resolute determination). We cannot address here the immense question of the ontological repetition, in all these concepts, of a so markedly Christian tradition.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (pp. 95-96). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

And so, part of Derrida’s project is to show the argument against faith/belief in Heidegger, while at the same time showing Heidegger’s purpose and conceptual system remain Christian. The sense is that Heidegger adopted Christian concepts, analogous to how Descartes adopted the notion of Truth as certainty, free from doubt from Luther on the salvation of the soul.

The reader of Sein und Zeit and the signatory who takes him as witness are already situated in this element of faith from the moment that Heidegger says “we” to justify the choice of the “exemplary” being that is Dasein, the questioning being that must be interrogated as an exemplary witness. And what renders possible, for this “we,” the positing and elaboration of the question of being, the unfolding and determining of its “formal structure” (das Gefragte, das Erfragte, das Befragte), prior to all questioning—is it not what Heidegger then calls a Faktum, that is, the vague and ordinary pre-comprehension of the meaning of being, and first of all of the words “is” or “be” in language or in a language (§ 2)? This Faktum is not an empirical fact. Each time Heidegger employs this word, we are necessarily led back to a zone where acquiescence is de rigueur. Whether this is formulated or not, it remains a requirement prior to and in view of every possible question, and hence prior to all philosophy, all theology, all science, all critique, all reason, etc. This zone is that of a faith incessantly reaffirmed throughout an open chain of concepts, beginning with those that we have already cited (Bezeugung, Zusage, etc.), but it also communicates with everything in Heidegger’s way of thinking that marks the reserved holdingback of restraint (Verhaltenheit) or the sojourn (Aufenthalt) in modesty (Scheu) in the vicinity of the unscathed, the sacred, the safe and sound (das Heilige), the passage or the coming of the last god that man is doubtless not yet ready to receive.41 That the movement proper to this faith does not constitute a religion is all too evident. Is it, however, untouched <indemne> by all religiosity? Perhaps. But by all “belief,” by that “belief” that would have “no place in thinking”? This seems less certain. Since the major question remains, in our eyes, albeit in a form that is still quite new: “What does it mean to believe?” we will ask (elsewhere) how and why Heidegger can at the same time affirm one of the possibilities of the “religious,” of which we have just schematically recalled the signs (Faktum, Bezeugung, Zusage, Verhaltenheit, Heilige, etc.) and reject so energetically “belief” or “faith” (Glaube).42 Our hypothesis again refers back to the two sources or two strata of religion which we distinguished above: the experience of sacredness and the experience of belief. More receptive to the first (in its Graeco-Hölderlinian or even archeo-Christian tradition), Heidegger was probably more resistant to the second, which he constantly reduced to figures he never ceased to put into question, not to say “destroy” or denounce: dogmatic or credulous belief in authority, to be sure, but also belief according to the religions of the Book and ontotheology, and above all, that which in the belief in the other could appear to him (wrongly, we would say) to appeal neces-sarily to the egological subjectivity of an alter ego. We are speaking here of the belief that is demanded, required, of the faithful belief in what, having come from the utterly other <de l’autre tout autre>, there where its originary presentation in person would forever be impossible (witnessing or given word in the most elementary and irreducible sense, promise of truth up to and including perjury), would constitute the condition of Mitsein, of the relation to or address of the other in general.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (pp. 96-98). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.