A Critical Examination of the Deconstructive Thinking of Jacques Derrida in the Philosophy of Religion Based on the Views of Allameh Tabataba’i

The present article is a critical examination of the deconstructive thinking of Derrida in the domain of the philosophy of religion based on the opinions of Allameh Tabataba’i. Derrida’s theology – with its deconstructive approach to the philosophy of religion – never wants to achieve truth in its exploration of the issues of the philosophy of religion such as the existence of God. The reason is that Derrida does not believe in the existence of a truth that is disclosed to the human through the demonstrative method. In his opinion, an emphasis on the mysteriousness can guarantee the endurance of the religious matter. Although Allameh, too, acknowledges the limitedness of the human mind in the domain of the divine philosophy, he does not give up on the use of the unified and systematic thinking as well as the intellectual arguments to discover the truth of the religious matter. Epistemic pluralism, instability of meaning, and the gradation of self-evidence are some of the problems of Derrida’s thought. Allameh believes that truth has a unified structure that can be discovered by the human through his constant intellectual practice. He never accepts Derrida’s relativist view to reality, and believes that the path of knowledge in the philosophy of religion goes through the absoluteness and universality of reality.