Derrida, Secret Witnessing and The Gift of Death

Here is a case study. In the midst of considering whether a 65 year old man, diagnosed with a 70% blockage of the left ventral heart artery, should go as scheduled for a cardiac cath and stent, and perhaps a bypass if so judged when he is opened up, when he will have no say in those decisions, and indeed is rushed into it by situations that may seem commercial in intent rather than medical--0r should he wait, deliberate, discuss, get second opinions, consider the hard work of ten years of dietary intention?

This is all piled upon him in the moment, the miracle cure vs. the rehab. Certainly no one who loves him can know for sure which is best, so their dilemma is the same as his, what to do. The secret witnessing comes about when those who only want him to live and live well consider how on one hand the nurse who works the cardiac unit and knows the outcomes and docs and specialists thinks it should be done, but the FP doc who has seen too many rushes to judgment wants to delay and consider and reconsider before the invasion. A third outcome, overheard in a public hot tub, but to a non medical person who has no point of view from experience, but secretly witnesses this conversation in the hot tub the day the operation is to occur --which makes it seem orchestrated just for this benefit as if a script had been sovereignly written and put into the mouths of strangers, to be spoken in his hearing for his benefit, as if the lines had been written before, and while they were put into their mouths by intention, the speakers themselves knew nothing of that intent or his interest, as if they were puppets.

And what did the puppets say that evening before the decision was made, loud in the hot tub because of the echoes? That Ginger had been given a stent which she later found out she did not need. Only then had she gotten a second opinion, and that the stent had been sold to her on the basis that something worse could happen, that is, by fear. The person witnessing this puppet show then has to ask whether it was all made for him, which seems astonishing, that that kind of love and concern could exist and that it would trouble itself to so inform him. It only remains for us to know that the two days in these discussions prior he had been seeking direction in secret prayer, which brings us to Derrida.

We are the sacrifice: "that same "society" [that] puts to death or allows to die of hunger and disease tens of millions of children without any moral or legal tribunal ever being considered competent to judge such a sacrifice, the sacrifice of others to avoid being sacrificed oneself" (Gift of Death, 86). This is based on the Abraham/Isaac account and Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling for those who follow a path invisible to others, "once I have within me... a witness that others cannot see and who is therefore at the same time other than me and more intimate with me than myself, once there is secrecy and secret witnessing within me, then what I call God exists, (there is) what I call God in me" (109). This SECRET WITNESSING K bases on Matthew, "thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly,"  as "the possibility I have of keeping a secret that is visible from the interior but not from the exterior". This the terrain where the giving of the gift of death permeates the New Testament sacrifice referred to in the statement, I die daily. The paradox of these statements is acknowledged but not resolved. Derrida says, "the great decisions that must be taken and must be affirmed are taken and affirmed in this relation to the undecidable itself; at the very moment at which they are no longer possible, they become possible. These are the only decisions possible — impossible ones. Thinking of Kierkegaard's Abraham, the only decision possible is the impossible decision. It is when it is not possible to know what must be done, when knowledge is not and cannot be determining, that a decision is possible as such" (Derrida, Points:Interviews, 1995 cited by Bennington, A Moment of Madness, Derrida's Kierkegaard).We are always brought up against dilemmas where we cannot know for certain the outcome.

 It might be possible to humanize this paradox if we acknowledge Kierkegaard's meditation on the impossible choice Abraham was confronted with, to kill his son, all motivated by inward seeing. Indeed Kierkegaard says Abraham said nothing to Sarah. It is all background narrative (Auerbach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysseus... ). Kierkegaard says that Abraham feigned madness in order to save Isaac's faith. Better to think his father mad than have his son doubt the Provision of El Shaddhi.

"God, as wholly other, is to be found everywhere there is something of the wholly other. And since each of us, everyone else, each other is infinitely other in its absolute singularity, inaccessible, solitary, transcendent, nonmanifest... then what can be said about Abraham's relation to God can be said about my reaction to every other (one) as every (bit) other [tout autre comme tout autre], in particular my relation to my neighbor or my loved ones who are as inaccessible to me, as secret and transcendent as Jahweh". (Derrida, 78)

Abraham's fear and trembling confronts an ultimate duty which transcends conventional morality. General and absolute responsibility must, according to Derrida's analysis, stand in opposition. The critique of general convention is furthered by the recognition that society itself chooses to help one and neglect another, to align with one and war with another, all the time itself unable to justify its choices to any other but itself. Had the ram failed to appear before Abraham, he may well have killed Isaac, an act which society would deem reprehensible and condemn accordingly. And yet, Derrida points out,

        "the smooth functioning of such a society, the monotonous complacency of its discourses on morality, politics, and the law, and the exercise of its rights, are in no way impaired by the fact that, because of the structure of the laws of the market that society has instituted and controls, because of the mechanisms of external debt and other similar inequities, that same "society" puts to death or allows to die of hunger and disease tens of millions of children without any moral or legal tribunal ever being considered competent to judge such a sacrifice, the sacrifice of others to avoid being sacrificed oneself". (86) 

Such social order, Derrida asserts, is founded upon a bottomless chaos which will inevitably reveal itself as such to those who now depend so heavily upon it. As an alternative to such economies of markets and debt, Derrida points to a truth he finds embedded in the Abraham narrative. In the moment Abraham embraced the paradox and submitted to absolute duty (and thereby transcended and transgressed general duty) God returned his son Isaac and thus revealed that the paradox itself yields a reward.
    
 To uncover what such an economy might mean, and find the key in the thrice repeated promise Derrida takes up Matthew, "thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee". After delineating the invisible, spiritual nature of the reward in opposition to its being earthly, Derrida turns to the meaning of "seeing in secret...the clarity of divine lucidity [that] penetrates everything yet keeps within itself the most secret of secrets" (108). He proposes an understanding of God as "the name of the possibility I have of keeping a secret that is visible from the interior but not from the exterior."
 
But Derrida is not in the hot tub in faith, he is spinning in a darkness upon the face of the waters. "Once I have within me... a witness that others cannot see and who is therefore at the same time other than me and more intimate with me than myself, once there is secrecy and secret witnessing within me, then what I call God exists, (there is) what I call God in me, (it happens that) I call myself God. God is in me, he is the absolute "me" or "self"... And he is made manifest... when there appears the desire and power to render absolutely invisible and to constitute within oneself a witness of that invisibility". (109) You can call yourself a god or a man. A therefore A.
http://www.quodlibet.net/gift.shtml

  God replaced with the incorporeal individual transfers the origin of responsibility from an dreadful encounter with the transcendent mysterium to an indiscernible (secret) encounter with the invisible within oneself. But the Father is not a mysterium to those who know Him, whose minds are stayed on Him, who trust in Him. But I don't have to understand his providing

 From the moment of divisibility and the undecidable the decision that would be taken on
the border of the undecidable would not be a decision. The gravest decision (how philosophers and critics overwrite) — the Wager, the Sacrifice of Isaac — the great decisions that must be taken and must be affirmed are taken and affirmed in this relation to the undecidable itself. Shall I fight in the Resistance or take care of my mother? Sartre. These are the only decisions possible — impossible ones. It is when it is not possible to know what must be done, when knowledge is not and cannot be determining that a decision is possible as such." This is better at least than watching TV. (Derrida, Points:Interviews, 1995 cited by Bennington, A Moment of Madness, Derrida's Kierkagaard,