Between law and justice: Kant, Derrida, and religious violence

Although a number of approaches to the issue of religious violence are already available for academic consumption, this study attempts to approach the problem of the violent tension between religious principles and secular socio-political realities from a new perspective. We argue that religious violence is best conceptualized as a moment of crisis in the relationship between law and justice, considered as both intimately related (in Kant's analysis of the rightful condition) and peculiarly disjointed (in Derrida's reflections on the possibility of "justice beyond law"). We provide a preliminary account of the necessary conditions for a future theory of religious violence based on our effort to recontextualize the discussion of the corresponding issues by paying close theoretical attention to the interaction between the concepts of law, justice, violence, and religion. We conclude that any theoretical reevaluation of religious violence must inevitably widen its scope to include not only such customary problems as the relationship between "faith" and "knowledge" or the relationship between "private beliefs" and "public duties," but also an account of the peculiarly religious motivational framework that often implicitly guides our conversations about any future human condition of peace and justice.