Deconstruction is justice. Or maybe not. In a provocative and yet witty book, Chris Boesel invites us to consider the problems with a deconstruction that doesn’t turn its critical lens upon its own progressivism. Offering Kierkegaardian Christianity as a constructive alternative, Boesel argues that we need an actual God defined by embodied relational love if we are to go beyond mere structural logics of alterity and begin to care for the widows, the orphans, and the strangers in our midst. No one is safe from this book. But we are all better because of it.
-- J. Aaron Simmons, Furman University
A compelling analysis and argument for the claims 1) that deconstruction is too formal to provide any warrant for the secular, left-wing politics of Derrida and many of his admirers, 2) that Derrida is a poor reader of Kierkegaard, and 3) that properly understood, deconstruction can help a confessional Christian theology with Kierkegaardian overtones to maintain a proper humility. The form of presentation makes the reading easy and fun.
-- Merold Westphal, Fordham University
Boesel has managed to write a book that is at once meticulous and light-hearted, both generous and uncompromising. It makes a strong case for the confessional Kierkegaard who makes so many philosophers twitchy, forcing what one might call a genuine decision about this notoriously slippery thinker. Whether the argument delights or offends you, it will challenge and impress you.
-- Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Wesleyan University
There may simply be no other book that comes so close to Kierkegaard’s voice, to the ironic interplay of his philosophical and his theological personae, to the disarming immediacy of his faith. In this relentlessly intimate reading of Derrida mis/reading Kierkegaard, deconstruction and confession tremble in their difference and in their proximity. With its brilliant nuance and good humor, Chris Boesel’s challenge—to Christian clichés, postmodern evasions, dishonest justice—requires no propositional agreement. Every sentence breaks open the next question. But the question does not foreclose the answer.
-- Catherine Keller, Drew Theological School
Here at last is a robust theological engagement with deconstructionist readings of Kierkegaard that accepts and endorses the deconstructionist critique of the God of metaphysics and yet, when this God is rendered mute, finds, as Kierkegaard does, an altogether other God who acts and speaks in the disreputable and lowly figure of Jesus. This is an astute and compellingly argued contribution to Kierkegardian and theological scholarship.
-- Murray Rae, University of Otago
