A Stimulating debate that gets to the heart of the dispute between modernists and postmodernists. Some clarity in an often foggy dispute.

John Caputo investigates the claim of many modern philosphers that Heidegger became a mystic in the latter part of his life. Caputo performs a careful analysis of this claim by looking at the writings of Heidegger as they relate to a true German mystic, Meister Eckhart. Does Heidegger's relationship between being and Being equate to Eckhart's soul and God? Does his use of "Gelassenheit", a term of Eckhart's meaning detachment, show a common belief? Caputo's book works on many levels. It brings together two of the great "book ends" of Germany philosophy, spanning the 14th to 20th centuries. And, just as Caputo does a wonderful job of conveying Heidegger's thought, so, too, he captures the mysticism of Eckhart. It was this which actually appealed to me more, and I believe the book can be an excellent introduction into the thinking of one of the greatest mystics of all time -- Eckhart.

In this exposition of Derrida's recent writings, Caputo continues his work of making the trouble-making tools of deconstruction generally available. The clarity of his presentation is matched by his playfulness. Theme by theme, he teases out the revolutionary possibilities of Derrida's "religion," freeing words and phrases from jargon and obscurity. This book offers the gift of the relevance of Derrida for "faith." Caputo's own "Edifying Divertissments" are michieviously beautiful.

I was doing fine with this book until about 1/4 of the way through. It was at this point that the author introduced the discussion of justice, and this with somewhat surprising reverence. He cites Derrida as saying, "Justice in itself, if such a thing exists, outside or beyond the law, is not deconstructable." Now Caputo, eager to line up behind his hero Derrida, runs wild with this.

His polemic for the value of justice would be somewhat more bearable if he didn't refer to the "innocent suffering" of people. Innocent entails the existence of guilt and suffering is implied to be 'evil', so that what he is really saying is for someone to suffer injustice is unethical, otherwise we could not speak of 'innocence.' He does not go so far as to write that we can speak of what justice or injustice actually is, but makes it quite clear that such injustices do exist; the implications of 'innocent suffering' demand it, for what is to say suffering is 'good' or 'bad' that we should think anything at all of it? The whole chapter seemed to me to be an underhanded attempt to encourage a tolerance for pluarity as long as there is no 'innocent suffering' . . . an obvious attempt to label such acts as murder, rape, genocide, etc., objectively undesirable because they create innocent suffering, while trying to maintain that ethics are subjective, which strikes me as being somewhat odd and ideologically/politcally motivated.

Fortunately, the idea of innocence does not creep far into the book and later chapters restore the radicalism of ethics.

For those who live their philosophical problems this book is essential. It is true that some familiarity with Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida would be helpful in understanding the arguments and in appreciating the striking literary quality of this work. However, what Caputo deals with is fundamental and goes well beyond commentary on any single thinker. His fundamental thesis is that ethics is without any substantial ground beyond the simple and elusive happening of obligation which Caputo valorizes. Ethics becomes something that is dangerous. It is shown that the dangerousness of ethics is vital, that there is no greater danger to ethics than making ethics 'safe'. I think this book would be perfect if some of his criticism of Heidegger didn't occasionally verge on being just rhetoric. Heidegger is more of an ethical thinker than Caputo - a longtime Heidegger scholar - seems willing to recognize in the wake of the Nazism scandals. This is, though, a minor point compared with the overall value of the work. It is a stunning and deeply beautiful book that changed my life and way I think profoundly. I cannot recommend it more highly. Buy it.

This book is excellent for anyone who is involved in the study of ethics and metaphysics and wants a challenging viewpoint from a great author.Caputo makes his point and charges through the book without backing down. Challenging read, one should have a background in continental philosophy and Nietzsche, not a book for beginners.

...repeat yourself 10 times! This seems to be the approach that Caputo takes in this book. This should come as a great surprise, of course, to readers of Derrida, who likely see no end to the amount you could write about this prolific and deeply influential contemporary philosopher. In support of Caputo, his writing comes with great clarity and does help the reader wade through the beginnings of the depths of Derrida; however, he neglects to address much of the scope of Derrida's work, and instead rewrites the first 30 pages 5 or 6 times. The interview, of course, helps bring clarity to Derrida's philosophical project, but for anyone who would be reading Derrida, the interview is straight-forward enough that the remainder of the book is excessive and unnecessary. Furthermore, Caputo uses this space to express not-so-subtle (and irrelevant to the text) personal grievances. Caputo writes of the "narrow and culturally irrelevant style of philosophizing in... the Ivy League departments of philosophy, resistant to its own history, to history itself, and to the socio-political matrix of philosophizing in every age." (p.39) As for his authority on this subject, Caputo has never studied nor taught at any of these departments (earning his B.A. from LaSalle University, M.A. from Villanova University, and Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College) Remarks such as these have no place in literary criticism, and Caputo does well in demonstrating his lack of professional integrity here and elsewhere in the book. If you want an easy to read introduction to Derrida, try "Positions", a collection of three interviews translated by Alan Bass. Else, just take on "Of Grammatology".

Much of this book is seems to alternate between giddy celebration of Derrida and a prickly defense of Deconstruction. The latter is probably unneeded in this book, the former makes me impatient. Caputo's "playful" style becomes quite annoying - unfortunate because the material is very interesting (I particularly liked the chapter on Community).

The first part of the book, the interview, is quite good. The questions are engaging and Derrida's responses are clear and relevant. The rest of the book is more spotty. On the whole, the book is worthwhile but it might be more profitable to go straight to Derrida's writing.

I would suggest that anyone (a "beginner") purchasing this book to understand "Deconstruction" as a philosophy in the grand meta-narrative sense will be disappointed. "Deconstruction" should be understood more precisely as a process of keeping a critical check on philosophical assumptions employed in philosophy in any historical time. It involves --as a process-- analysis of (un)warranted assumptions and conclusions in philosophy, and in that regard is extraordinarily helpful in assessing --to a certain extent-- philosophical arguments. One should be quick to add that "Deconstruction" is a tool, not a dogma or philosophical worldview per se, which the book attempts to address implicitly. I would take care not to recommend this and related works to those interested in analysis of pure philosophy, which does have value unto itself outside of socio-historical and linguistic criticism, which --to a large extent-- is the main thrust of "Deconstruction" as a "discipline." Overall, the book constitutes a good introduction to Derrida's thinking --thinking which has without doubt provided much of the furniture of the landscape of "Deconstructive" analysis. This book is a nice introduction to that landscape, not philosophical landscapes as conceived by philosophers. Though Derrida is an extraordinary philosopher, "Deconstruction" should probably not be thought of as a philosophical process. I am not sure if this book communicates this implicit distinction that is currently drawn among many respectable academicians.

Caputo has written much on Derrida's approach to religion and if your familiar with this attitude also associated with Levinas, usually dubbed as post-secularism, then you know what to expect. I enjoyed some of the insights within this book, but Zizek's On Belief from the same series surpasses this work on many accounts. Pass this one up in favor his. It's much more relevant and intellectually challenging.

Brilliant. Well written, informative, passionate. It is refreshing to see a philosopher who writes with the fervour of Kierkegaard, someone who is in the academic world not because they wish to further their own name but because they are driven by the questions that ought to keep us all up at night. This book is brilliantly paced and achieves the almost impossible task of making Derrida understandable. In the spirit of C.S. Lewis, John Caputo offers us a first-rate body of thought in a way that is well written and understandable to those outside the academic ivory tower. In the introduction to this book, Caputo makes the convincing claim that when it comes to religion there is no absolute beginning, however if you are looking for an introduction to religion from a continental philosophical viewpoint then this is a close to an absolute beginning as you are likely to get.

Caputo has flare, though maybe an axe to grind. There are some brillant pages in this book, especially Caputo's discussions of Husserl, and later (the begining of chapter 5) Husserl and Derrida. He also does a fine job showing how the Heidegger of On Time and Being relates with deconstruction (though I think he might even go farther). However, most of this book seems to give us a "noiseless Aufhebung", telling us how we must have difficult lives in order to get ride of the big bad metaphyics of presence. Fair enough, there are many problems with all systems (even Derrida's "system"), yet no one deny life is hard. Kierkegaard and Derrida are not the only ones to show us this, and certainly Gadamer (a philosopher Caputo really seems to have an axe to grind with) doesn't think we have an easy time of it.

In general, Caputo does a decent job of introducing themes, but I would suggest reading Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger and Derrida (and especially Hegel) before one listens to Caputo.

The philosophical systems of Western philosophy are a 'fast way out of the difficulties of life', the author argues. Metaphysics is a betrayal of this fact, as it seeks to 'put the best face on existence', and make things look easy. Hermeneutics, via the deconstructive project, on the contrary, seeks to 'recapture the hardness of life' and therefore not seek 'the fast way out of the back door of the flux'. The author wants to carry through Heidegger's project in Being and Time and 'restore the original difficulty of 'Being'. It is a hermeneutic project that begins with Heidegger as 'radical thinking' and follows the process of its radicalization, keeping faith to the 'philosophers of the flux': Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Husserl, and Meister Eckhart.

Regardless if one is in agreement with the author, his utterances have become fashionable as of late, and not just in hideaway cafes in Europe, but in professional circles of philosophy. However alien the ideas may seem in this book, it is an undeniable fact they grew out of Western philosophy. They are not a 'logical' consequence, but a consequence of the rebellion against rational 'system building', this rebellion beginning in the nineteenth century. The system builders of Western philosophy, such as Plato, Aquinas, Kant, and Hegel, sought a comprehensive view of existence, a view that holds to the idea that reality is understandable, and meaningful, and can be expressed via a rational framework.

But ideas when entrenched encourage playful and sometimes radical antithesis. The mistake that the system builders made was that they assumed the systems they constructed were closed, comprehensive in their scope, and not needing further development. Settling into a local minimum, their ideas were jostled from without by those who caution against their sterility. Delighting in the use of philosophical wrecking balls, these new philosophers were all too willing to demolish the huge edifices built by the philosophers of old. Dancing with ecstacy after the damage was done, they then proposed a new viewpoint, one that attempts to accept the dynamism of Being, and not assume the existence of any epistemic or ontological fixed points.

Thus the author wallows in this new (anti?)structure. To paraphrase a line from the book, his ideas (organize?) themselves into ferocious animals and then descend upon (philosophy), devouring everything in their path. The author holds up the Heidegger primordial 'Verstehen' as that which allows knowledge to work itself out in the process of existence. Reality for the author is a collection of torrential currents, extreme perturbations, and circumstances that shape the situation, and which consequently 'Verstehen' provides interpretive insight.

Metaphysics, says the author, must be kept in check, so that it does not dominate the text, arrest the play, recenter the system, and stabilize the flux. This will break the code, and reintroduce the nostalgiac longing for the origin. Thus metaphysics must undergo a 'radical hermeneutics', somewhat along the lines of Jacques Derrida in holding to the 'uselessness of signs' and a rejection of 'a priori grammar'. We need our fictions, the author argues, for we cannot function 'without the wildness of play'. Imposing normality is a measure of stilling the flux. Authority must always be interrogated, and our fixation on repetition, those temporary stabilizations of the flow must not be mistaken for a grounding of normality in principle.

Reason, for the author, is a central power, held by the military, industrial, and scientific authorities of administered society. What 'should' we do then? The author's answer is an 'ethics of dissemination', which arises precisely from the foundering of metaphysics. The morality of the author is be one of a 'community of mortals', which is held together by common fears and lack of metaphysical foundation. Huddling together in the face of the chilling hermeneutics, humility and compassion are the (natural?) consequences, according to the author. After all, 'we do not know who we are', he concludes.

After reading this book, one might ask: so what next in the history of philosophy? Deconstruction has reacted with enthusiasm against metaphysics, but it has also now been codified and transformed itself into an ethic. Once dancing freestyle, it has now a precise set of choreographic principles, not to be deviated from. Once intoxicated with recklessness and shaking a stick, it has now become static doctrine, with all the 'rigidities' of the metaphysics it felt the need to rebel against.

Philosophy has not ended, nor should it. But what form will it take next in this, the most dynamic of all centuries? The technological flux of the 21st century is so far unequaled. Perhaps we can take a hint from both metaphysics and the radical hermeneutics of the author: we can drench ourselves with the overwhelming torrential flood of change, knowing full well that, using our signs, our symbols, our logic, it is we ourselves that create these changes.

Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics reinserts us into the flux of daily difficulty, beginning with Kierkegaard's distinction between recollection and repetition and ending with "an openness to a mystery." Good reading for religion scholars and phenomenologists/hermeneuts.

Caputo tries to persuade us that Heidegger misses the point when accuses St. Thomas (along with the rest of the Scholastic tradition) of onto-theo-logy. The true is that Caputo has an agenda (to which he sometimes sacrifices his scholarship) to exonerate Aquinas from any metaphysical accusations (hence the subtitle "overcoming metaphysics"), but whoever knows his Thomas would agree that that is not quite the case. He even goes as far as to claim that one can find in Thomas an ontological difference centuries before Heidegger! His comments on the Neoplatonic tradition betray his incompetence when it comes to major neo-Platonic thinkers (such as Proclus or Dionysius) and their texts. Overall, it leaves a lot to be desired...

Caputo's book is the first tolerable exposition of Heidegger that I have come across. That may in part be due to the fact that I am a Thomist, but a good part of it stems from Heidegger's obscurity and verbosity. It must be credited to Caputo that he has grasped Heidegger well enough to introduce his thought to someone with no previous knowledge of his philosophy. He also has an adequate understanding of Aquinas and the centrality of the act-of-being (esse) in the latter's philosophy. The historical information about Heidegger's early development and relation to scholasticism was enlightening and adequately sets the stage for the confrontation that Caputo wishes to stage.

The author has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that if Heidegger's critique is accepted, that Aquinas' philosophy does not answer to it. The oblivion of Being in Heidegger's sense is definitely not the oblivion of the act-of-being (esse) in Etienne Gilson's sense. Where the book is very weak, however is in refuting the counterclaim of Lotz that it is Heidegger who has fallen short of Aquinas and not vice-versa. Up to this point, Caputo faces the issues squarely, but here he turns away. Either he seems not to understand the counter-charge, which is difficult to believe after his fine exposition of thomistic metaphysics, or he simply has his heart set on the postmodern path. He cannot seem to muster much more than to fall back on stock terms, such as "radicality" of Heidegger's critique. Yes, radical it is, but true?

Caputo's final effort to discern a Heideggerian mysticism underneath Aquinas' metaphysics really is almost not worth commenting upon. To suggest that Aquinas' mystical experiences involved this kind of gnostic and historicist spirituality is absurd, bordering on the scandalous.

Finally, while the book is generally well balanced in tone, the author sometimes takes up a rather defensive and patronizing posture towards Aquinas when Heidegger's critique is on the rocks.

All in all, I got something out of this book, at least the first half. But it has the weaknesses I mentioned.

Caputo masterfully explains the fundamental perspectives of both Aquinas and Heidegger. As a follower of Aquinas, I found his exposition of Aquinas accurate and thorough. Before reading his book, I knew nothing about Heidegger, but I feel that now I have some sort of handle on his thought. Caputo is extraordinarily fair to both philosophers, granting both of them as much latitude as he deems viable. Only in one place does he take serious issue with Heidegger, when he wonders whether Heidegger's notion of being as "emergence into unconcealment" (or the event of appropriation and sending) finitizes or immanentizes God. This by itself, however, is a telling admission of the ultimate deficiency of Heidegger's notion of "Being". I would definitely recommend this book for a comparative study of both men. On the other hand, Sacchi's "Apocalypse of Being" offers a more polemical critique of Heidegger than Caputo's book, and may be more satisfying to someone (like myself) having a Thomistic view on reality.