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Volume 5 Number 2, August 2004

Special Issue: Jacques Derrida’s Indian Philosophical Subtext

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Derrida, A Renunciant?  The Gift of the Bhagavad Gita in The Gift of Death

by

Peter Huk

University of Tennessee Knoxville

The gift made to me by God as he holds me in his gaze and in his hand while remaining inaccessible to me, the terribly dissymmetrical gift of the mysterium tremendum only allows me to respond and only rouses me to the responsibility it gives me by making a gift of death, giving the secret of death, a new experience of death. 

                                                - Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death  

But the worlds also behold thy fearful mighty form, with many mouths and eyes, with many bellies, thighs and feet, frightening with terrible teeth: they tremble in fear, and I also tremble.  When I see thy vast form, reaching the sky, burning with many colours, with wide open mouths, with vast flaming eyes, my heart shakes in terror: my power is gone and gone is my peace, O Vishnu!  Like the fire at the end of Time which burns all in the last day, I see thy vast mouths and thy terrible teeth.  Where am I?  Where is my shelter?  Have mercy on me, God of gods, Refuge Supreme of the world! 

                                                - Bhagavad Gita

Jacques Derrida offers a critique of the rise of European responsibility in The Gift of Death (Donner la Mort, 1990), as based on ideas taken from the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka's Heretical Essays on the Philosophy of History, and weaves in ideas from thinkers such as Plato, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Levinas.  In this work Derrida addresses the central problem of the gift, the structure of which implicates responsibility, ethics, duty, secrecy, and sacrifice.  Perhaps unwillingly or unknowingly, Derrida touches on the law of dharma in his discourse on the gift and offers a logic that resembles that presented in the dialogue between the charioteer Krishna and the warrior Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita (500 BCE).  In this paper I suggest that dharma and the gift of the Bhagavad Gita prefigure Derrida's ideas on responsibility, duty, and gift in his The Gift of Death, and that the similarities and parallels may be said to signal a possibly unpaid, and perhaps unpayable, debt due to the lurking, yet unseen, tradition of the "pure gift," which – due to its "purity" – remains unrecognized according to the logic expounded in both Derrida and the Bhagavad Gita.  My approach consists of an overview of Derrida's main points accompanied by quotations, which, when juxtaposed to passages from the Bhagavad Gita, will permit the reader to read The Gift of Death not only, as the inner flap of the English translation (University of Chicago, 1995) suggests, as a study on: 

the development of the notion of responsibility in the Platonic and Christian traditions; the relations between sacrifice and mortality; the contemporary meaning of the story of Abraham and Isaac; and the relation between religious ideology and economic rationality, explicitly linking this book with Given Time 

but also as a transposition of ideas from the Eastern tradition into a Western mode. 

            The sustained focus of The Gift of Death is the gift and its predication on death.  The text begins with a preface, wherein the translator David Wills comments on The Gift of Death as "a different reflection within a series on the question of the gift," different, that is, from the reflection of the first volume, Given Time. 1. Counterfeit Money.  However, Derrida returns to Given Time in the last few pages of The Gift of Death to reintroduce the notion of counterfeit money and to qualify the gift that expects compensation and only "gives in exchange for payment" (112).  Wills, then, explains his choice of translating the French Donner la mort as "giving death" so that readers may simultaneously recall the attendant notions of "putting to death" and "committing suicide" (viii).  However, this literal connotation of "giving death" pales in significance before the metaphorical – that which underscores the sacrifice and secrecy inherent in one's contemplation of one's death.  In connection with this literal aspect of the gift of death, Wills also mentions Jan Patočka's death of a brain hemorrhage in 1977 after hours of interrogation by the police; Patočka, a Charta 77 human rights spokesman, according to Derrida "gave life" while also performing a sacrifice and gave himself death.  This notion, appearing as an example of the "giving" or "putting to" death of oneself by others, only obfuscates the religious and philosophical dimensions that underlie the term.  Once Derrida groups Patočka with the likes of Socrates and Christ, he, then, pivots to the essential question of his text: "How does one give oneself death in that other sense in terms of which se donner la mort is also to interpret death, to give oneself a representation of it, a figure, a signification or destination for it?"(10)  This becomes the primary concern that runs throughout the four chapters of his work and it serves to demarcate how the Western subject has come to represent its own death to itself. 

The first chapter of The Gift of Death, "Secrets of European Responsibility," addresses "the subject of responsibility [as having] freely subject[ed] itself to the wholly and infinite other that sees without being seen" in a religious passage of transcendence from a lower ("sacred, orgiastic, or demonic mystery") order to a higher one (3).  This subject has evolved to say "myself" and to relate "to itself as an instance of liberty, singularity, and responsibility, the relation to self as being before the other: the other in its relation to infinite alterity, one who regards without being seen but also whose infinite goodness gives in an experience that amounts to a gift of death"(3).  In a sense Derrida introduces what we may recognize from Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality as the rise of the modern subject due to its creation of metaphysical ideals.  This gift of death amounts to an awakening of the subject.  To clarify the development of the subject in reaction to the rise of metaphysical ideals, Derrida links its history to:

responsibility in the experience of absolute decisions made outside of knowledge or given norms, made therefore through the very ordeal of the undecidable; to religious faith through a form of involvement with the other that is a venture into absolute risk, beyond knowledge and certainty; to the gift and to the gift of death that puts me into relation with the transcendence of the other, with God as selfless goodness, and that gives me what it gives me through a new experience of death. (5-6) 

Responsibility, faith, and the gift bind together into one experience that is summed up by the gift itself.  This gift is no more and no less than a relation to "absolute decision," "absolute risk," and the "transcendence of the other."  It initiates a process of history, throughout which the subject safeguards itself in secrecy.  A bit further, Derrida connects responsibility and history with

the mysterium tremendum: the terrifying mystery, the dread, fear and trembling of the Christian in the experience of the sacrificial gift.  This trembling seizes one at the moment of becoming a person, and the person can become what it is only in being paralyzed [transie], in its very singularity, by the gaze of God.  Then it sees itself seen by the gaze of another, "a supreme, absolute and inaccessible being who holds us in his hand not by exterior but by interior force" (116). (6) 

Again, the gift equates to an openness to fear and to a state of trembling, in which one must surrender one's preoccupations to the absolute otherness of God.  On this path to transcendence, one must "interpret" death to oneself and give oneself in sacrifice.  One's death, according to Derrida, is equivalent to an act of sacrifice before God.  However, there is no thematics by which to understand how this sacrifice is to be achieved.  Therefore, Derrida states that

if it is true that the concept of responsibility has [. . .] always implied involvement in action, doing, a praxis, a decision that exceeds simple conscience or simple theoretical understanding, it is also true that the same concept requires a decision or responsible action to answer for itself consciously, that is, with knowledge of a thematics of what is done, of what action signifies, its causes, ends, etc. (25) 

But is it possible to have such a thematics? Derrida asks.  It can only be known in the singularity of the case and not as a general rule.  The problem is in the disjuncture between responsibility as practice and responsibility as theory; here Derrida labels it heresy, because it, as heresy, "always marks a difference or departure, keeping itself apart from what is publicly or commonly declared [. . . and] paradoxically, it also destines responsibility to the resistance or dissidence of a type of secrecy.  It keeps responsibility apart and in secret.  And responsibility insists on what is apart and secret" (26).  Thinking of responsibility in this way lends attributes to it of secrecy and, as will be shown later, of death and God as well. 

The concept of responsibility [. . .] presents itself neither as a theme nor as a thesis, it gives without being seen, without presenting itself in person by means of a "fact of being seen" that can be phenomenologically intuited.  This paradoxical concept also has the structure of a secret – what is called, in the code of certain religious practices, mystery.  The exercise of responsibility seems to leave no choice but this one, however uncomfortable it may be, of paradox, heresy, and secrecy. (27) 

At this point Derrida makes it clear that responsibility and secrecy are of the same structure and must lack a thematics.  Then, he takes an important step in developing the logic of the gift when he refers to Patočka's

oblique reference to something that is not a thing but that is probably the very site of the most decisive paradox, namely, the gift that is not a present, the gift of something that remains inaccessible, unpresentable, and as a consequence secret. [. . .] For one might say that a gift that could be recognized as such in the light of day, a gift destined for recognition, would immediately annul itself.  The gift is the secret itself, if the secret itself can be told.  Secrecy is the last word of the gift which is the last word of the secret. (30) 

Secrecy and the gift may also be the last words of renunciation, for they are marked by a logic that demands that for renunciation to fully take place, it itself must be renounced.  This concept is central to the Bhagavad Gita, as I will demonstrate below, and presents the difficulty in thinking the "purity" of giving without incurring an economy.  Derrida refers to the conflict at the center of the gift, as if it was a will to self-renunciation. 

Let us emphasize the word "gift."  Between on the one hand this denial that involves renouncing the self, this abnegation of the gift, of goodness, or of the generosity of the gift that must withdraw, hide, in fact sacrifice itself in order to give, and on the other hand the repression that would transform the gift into an economy of sacrifice, is there not a secret affinity, an unavoidable risk of contamination of two possibilities as close one to the other as they are different from each other? (30-31) 

            In the second chapter, "Beyond: Giving for the Taking, Teaching and Learning to Give, Death," Derrida again emphasizes the renunciation inherent in this process of giving. 

What is given – and this would also represent a kind of death – is not some thing, but goodness itself, a giving goodness, the act of giving or the donation of the gift.  A goodness that must not only forget itself but whose source remains inaccessible to the donee.  The latter receives by means of a dissymmetry of the gift that is also a death, a death given, the gift of a death that arrives in one way but not another. (41) 

A death, because it must be silent, or silenced. 

One of the characteristics of a true gift, according to Derrida, is that it renounce itself.  It must renounce its existence, its effect, its target, its intentions, and even its process.  "On what condition does goodness exist beyond all calculation?  On the condition that goodness forget itself, that the movement be a movement of the gift that renounces itself, hence a movement of infinite love”(50-51).  The gift must fall below the radar and become unrecognizable for it to remain a true gift.  In the same way action – in the Bhagavad Gita –  is to be performed in such a way that its effect is not recognized or targeted or wished for and its agent relinquishes all rights to the fruit thereof. 

In the following chapter, “Whom to Give to (Knowing Not to Know),” Derrida moves on to the mysterium tremendum and interrogates the notion of trembling before the absolute other.  Again there is a link between his words and those of the Bhagavad Gita. 

What is it that makes us tremble in the mysterium tremendum?  It is the gift of infinite love, the dissymmetry that exists between the divine regard that sees me, and myself, who doesn’t see what is looking at me; it is the gift and endurance of death that exists in the irreplaceable, the disproportion between the infinite gift and my finitude, responsibility as culpability, sin, salvation, repentance, and sacrifice. (56) 

Derrida continues developing the notion of God as an unseen and invisible other:

If the other were to share his reasons with us by explaining them to us, if he were to speak to us all the time without any secrets, he wouldn't be the other, we would share a type of homogeneity. (57) 

The discourse then shifts to Abraham's sacrifice of his son Isaac.  Derrida states that Abraham "must keep the secret (that is his duty), but it is also a secret that he must keep as a double necessity because in the end he can only keep it: he doesn't know it, he is unaware of its ultimate rhyme and reason.  He is sworn to secrecy because he is in secret" (59).  A similar call is made in the Bhagavad Gita by the divine for the sacrifice of one's family members in the name of an absolute duty.  Abraham's dilemma presents the dilemma of a seemingly unethical act of turning against family in order to demonstrate responsibility to God, whose demands remain inexplicable.  Instead of responsibility referring to a greater community,

here on the contrary it appears, just as necessarily, that the absolute responsibility of my actions, to the extent that such a responsibility remains mine, singularly so, something no one else can perform in my place, instead implies secrecy.  But what is also implied is that, by not speaking to others, I don't account for my actions, that I answer for nothing and to no one, that I make no response to others or before others.  It is both a scandal and a paradox. (60) 

The example of Abraham instructs, Derrida states, that "the generality of ethics incites to irresponsibility.  It impels me to speak, to reply, to account for something, and thus to dissolve my singularity in the medium of the concept" (61).  This act of sacrifice, Abraham's task of offering Isaac to God, can be recognized as an incomprehensible act of a father taking his son's life to satisfy an inexplicable wish of God.  Read metaphorically, this "giving of death" amounts to an offering of one's own irreplaceable individuality; the stress is on the act of surrendering to a demand of the immediate absolute other rather than on the result to be achieved by this act.  The offering of Isaac signifies, then, the process of "giving oneself" rather than a final result effected in the slaying of the son or the satisfaction of God. 

Such is the aporia of responsibility: one always risks not managing to accede to the concept of responsibility in the process of forming it.  For responsibility [. . .] demands on the one hand an accounting, a general answering-for-oneself with respect to the general and before the generality, hence the idea of substitution, and, on the other hand, uniqueness, absolute singularity, hence nonsubstitution, nonrepetition, silence, and secrecy. (61) 

Such also is the aporia of dharma.  For Abraham to be responsible to God, he must, as Arjuna, "renounce his family loyalties, which amounts to violating his oath, and refuse to present himself before men.  He no longer speaks to them" (62).  Derrida ironically privileges, with the notion of "gift of death," the affirmation of one's duty without regard for a universal code of ethics. 

…absolute duty (towards God and in the singularity of faith) implies a sort of gift or sacrifice that functions beyond both debt and duty, beyond duty as a form of debt.  This is the dimension that provides for a "gift of death" which, beyond human responsibility, beyond the universal concept of duty, is a response to absolute duty. (63) 

He labels ethics irresponsible and responsibility nonethical.  "In a word, ethics must be sacrificed in the name of duty.  It is a duty not to respect, out of duty, ethical duty" (67).  Such is also the logic of the gift and of dharma.  "The simple concepts of alterity and of singularity constitute the concept of duty as much as that of responsibility.  As a result, the concepts of responsibility, of decision, or of duty, are condemned a priori to paradox, scandal, and aporia" (68). 

In the final chapter, "Tout Autre Est Tout Autre," Derrida sums up positions taken earlier concerning the gift.  Two passages are especially relevant, and striking in similarity, to the Bhagavad Gita.  Derrida refers to the economy of the gift and the need to suppress the object of the gift if economy is to be effaced: 

The moment the gift, however generous it be, is infected with the slightest hint of calculation, the moment it takes account of knowledge [. . .] or recognition [. . .], it falls within the ambit of an economy: it exchanges, in short it gives counterfeit money, since it gives in exchange for payment.  Even if it gives "true" money, the alteration of the gift into a form of calculation immediately destroys the value of the very thing that is given; it destroys it as if from the inside. (112) 

… as soon as it is calculated (starting from the simple intention of giving as such, starting from sense, knowledge, and whatever takes recognition into account), the gift suppresses the object (of the gift).  It denies it as such.  In order to avoid this negation or destruction at all costs, one must proceed to another suppression of the object: that of keeping in the gift only the giving, the act of giving and intention to give, not the given which in the end doesn't count.  One must give without knowing, without knowledge or recognition, without thanks [. . .]: without anything, or at least without any object. (112) 

A few lines later, toward the close of The Gift of Death, Derrida states: "This knowledge at the same time founds and destroys the Christian concepts of responsibility and justice and their "object" (112).  This knowledge has to do with the idea that God knows all in secret and "will pay back infinitely more" (going against the rule of economy) and Christian faith is founded on this – just as Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita reveals the universe in his many mouths and vows to pay off Arjuna "infinitely" for upholding his dharma, righteous action, and Arjuna's kin for creating their bad karma, erroneous ways.  Derrida ends this chapter by invoking Nietzsche of On the Genealogy of Morality and speaking through him of the "cruelty and sacrifice" inherent in the Judeo-Christian tradition. 

In relation to The Gift of Death the Bhagavad Gita contains five particular movements of thought that resonate in Derrida's text.  These are: the teaching of dharma as one's absolute duty and the irreplaceability of oneself within the parameters of that duty; the "pure gift" as sacrifice and renunciation in action; the incomprehensibility and inexplicability inherent in the demands of God, the absolute other; the trembling before God, the absolute other; and sacrifice without economy. 

A.  Dharma and absolute singularity

The central focus of the Bhagavad Gita concerns the question of  dharma and the possibility of a universal ethics.  The translator Juan Mascaró justifies his choice of "truth" for the concept dharma with a reference to Rabindranath Tagore's definition of dharma as "the truth within us."  "The words of a poem have many waves of suggestion: I take the word 'Dharma' in this case to mean the Truth of the universe" (lxiii).  However, it can also refer to the "law" that governs individuals' roles in adhering to and perpetuating the unity, harmony, and balance within the universe.  In the first stanza of the Gita Mascaró translates it as "the field of Truth" and "the battlefield of life" (3). 

Krishna instructs Arjuna that only one's own dharma, or supraethical call to conduct, exists.  In response to Arjuna's refusal to engage in battle with kinsmen who have usurped control of the kingdom – whereupon Arjuna cites family ethics and righteousness as his reasons not to engage in battle – Krishna, as Arjuna's charioteer proceeds to teach Arjuna about dharma, responsibility, and surrender to action.  While Arjuna anguishes over killing his kin and former teachers on the battlefield, Krishna clarifies to Arjuna that the situation warrants his action and proceeds to comment on the transience of the human body and the immortality of the spirit. 

Then, expounding his message, Krishna offers a structure for performing actions: "Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward.  Work not for a reward; but never cease to do thy work" (2.47).  And: "Work done for a reward is much lower than work done in the Yoga of wisdom.  Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason.  How poor those who work for a reward!" (2.49)  He instructs Arjuna to calm his senses and to withdraw attention from the objects of his senses: "Pleasures of sense, but not desires, disappear from the austere soul.  Even desires disappear when the soul has seen the Supreme" (2:59). 

Responsibility, as the call to respond to another, is the very issue at stake in the Bhagavad Gita: the discovery of responsibility and the overturning of familiar codes so that one is in tune with one's responsibility and dharma.  In the Bhagavad Gita death and responsibility converge in the idea of dharma; only one can do one's dharma, as only one can do one's own dying.  Similarly, in Derrida: "Because I cannot take death away from the other who can no more take it from me in return, it remains for everyone to take his own death, that is to say the one thing in the world that no one else can either give or take; therein resides freedom and responsibility" (44).  Additionally, in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna states that it is better to do one's dharma poorly than to do another's perfectly.  Dharma cannot be taken from another; one must rely on one's own.  The sense of irreplaceability and singularity that Derrida addresses in The Gift of Death is evident here.  In fact, Krishna emphasizes singularity when, at the end of the treatise on performing action and following one's inner nature, he commands: "And do thy duty, even if it be humble, rather than another's, even if it be great.  To die in one's duty is life: to live in another's is death" (3:35).  Derrida would rewrite this as: One's duty is in each one's irreplaceability one's own duty and no immediate other's.  One must respond to the call of dharma within oneself.  In this concept lies also Derrida's insistence on the inherent irresponsibility of ethics in general and the unethicality of one's individual absolute responsibility.  This message is stressed again in the following passage:

Greater is thine own work, even if this be humble, than the work of another, even if this be great.  When a man does the work God gives him, no sin can touch this man. 

            And a man should not abandon his work, even if he cannot achieve it in full perfection; because in all work there may be imperfection, even as in all fire there is smoke. 

When a man has his reason in freedom from bondage, and his soul is in harmony, beyond desires, then renunciation leads him to a region supreme which is beyond earthly action. (18.47-49)

Irreplaceability is stressed and it is clear that the message of the Bhagavad Gita is that work is marked by responsibility, faith, and gift. 

B.  Purity of gift

Inextricably linked to the logic of the gift is purity of work, or action:

What is work?  What is beyond work?  Even some seers see this not aright.  I will teach thee the truth of pure work, and this truth shall make thee free [. . .]

            The man who in his work finds silence, and who sees that silence is work, this man in truth sees the Light and in all his works finds peace. 

            He whose undertakings are free from anxious desire and fanciful thought, whose work is made pure in the fire of wisdom: he is called wise by those who see. 

            In whatever work he does such a man in truth has peace: he expects nothing, he relies on nothing, and ever has fullness of joy [. . .] 

            He has attained liberation: he is free from all bonds, his mind has found peace in wisdom, and his work is a holy sacrifice.  The work of such a man is pure. (4:16-23) 

Furthermore, there is to be no economy; rewards and objects must be renounced. 

The Yogi works for the purification of the soul: he throws off selfish attachment, and thus it is only his body or his senses or his mind or his reason that works. 

            This man of harmony surrenders the reward of his work and thus attains final peace: the man of disharmony, urged by desire, is attached to his reward and remains in bondage. (5.11-14)

Again, Krishna repeats several times:

He who works not for an earthly reward, but does the work to be done, he is a Sanyasi, he is a Yogi [. . .]. 

            Because the Sanyasi of renunciation is also the Yogi of holy work; and no man can be a Yogi who surrenders not his earthly will. (6.1-4) 

A sacrifice is pure when it is an offering of adoration in harmony with the holy law, with no expectation of a reward, and with the heart saying 'it is my duty.' (17.11) 

This threefold harmony [body, words, mind] is called pure when it is practiced with supreme faith with no desire for a reward and with oneness of soul. (17.17) 

A gift is pure when it is given from the heart to the right person at the right time and at the right place, and when we expect nothing in return. 

            But when it is given expecting something in return, or for the sake of a future reward, or when it is given unwillingly, the gift is of Rajas, impure. 

            And a gift given to the wrong person, at the wrong time and the wrong place, or a gift which comes not from the heart, and is given with proud contempt, is a gift of darkness.

[. . .] sacrifice, gift, or self-harmony done without faith are nothing, both in this world and in the world to come. (17.20-28) 

In contrast, when Krishna speaks of attachment, impure giving, he speaks of an economy and of calculation.  Within the layout of the senses is an economy of debt to be paid so that the costs are exacerbated (and interest compounded) for one who forgets the irreplaceable self and confuses oneself with material objects, which may be considered the superficial goal of the senses and emotions.  Krishna lays out a formulaic definition of attachment to the fruit of one's senses:

When a man dwells on the pleasures of sense, attachment for them arises in him.  From attraction arises desire, the lust of possession, and this leads to passion, to anger. 

From passion comes confusion of mind, then loss of remembrance, the forgetting of duty.  From this loss comes the ruin of reason, and the ruin of reason leads man to destruction. 

But the soul that moves in the world of the senses and yet keeps the senses in harmony, free from the attraction and aversion, finds rest in quietness. (2.62-64) 

The logic of the gift is contained here: there is to be no focus on object or rewards, but only on the process of work, the giving of self, the highest of which would be the "giving of death," the awareness of the irreplaceability and intransience of one's inner nature.  The reason for this is that:

He who sees that all work, everywhere, is only the work of nature; and that the Spirit watches this work – he sees the truth. (13.29) 

and 

he who renounces the reward of his work is in truth a man of renunciation. 

When work is done for a reward, the work brings pleasure, or pain, or both, in its time; but when a man does work in Eternity, then Eternity is his reward. (18.11-12) 

And for that timeless eternity the "gift of death" is required. 

C.  The incomprehensible demand of the absolute other 

Simon Brodbeck states in his introduction to Juan Mascaró's translation of the Bhagavad Gita:

We are bound by existing linguistic conventions of description and explanation.  Arjuna's verbal expression demonstrates this.  He describes the war in conventional terms: it is obligatory, since warriors must preserve their honour, avenge treachery, and oppose tyrants; but it is also forbidden, since relatives and teachers may not be killed.  So his participation in the war is simply inexplicable, and this is why he cannot countenance it.  Krishna's point is that conventional explanations of Arjuna's fighting need play no part at all in Arjuna's actually fighting.  Why should what happens be explicable?  The very fact of it happening is explanation enough.  Since there are conventions which urge that the battle must be fought, as well as equally strong ones which urge the opposite, these conventions themselves have been shown to be of no use.  They demonstrably fail to represent reality, and so the conventional distinctions between correct and incorrect behaviour, and between true and false descriptions, will have to dissolve.  This is why Krishna gives no direct answer to Arjuna's dilemma.  He does not supply any ethical arguments to explain that, in this case, the reasons to fight outweigh the reasons not to.  He bypasses conventional explanations.  The actual reasons for Arjuna's fighting cannot be known.  They do not exist in any language. (xviii-xix) 

Concerning the structure of the individual ego and the demand for sacrifice, Brodbeck states: 

the Bhagavad Gita's point of view, the story told by an acting individual about its actions, even the story told to itself alone, is irrelevant to those actions themselves: it does not govern them.  The text suggests that actions be undertaken without intention ('fanciful thought', 4.19; 'earthly will', 6.2 and 4), that is, without any story being told to link an 'I' to a set of imaginary consequences.  Such stories denote the operation of desire and aversion, the mental ingredients of attachment.  The yogi is said to act without imagining the action's success or failure (however these might be construed), offering all actions, even mental ones, in an attitude of sacrifice or consecration.  Now, this constraint on the yogi's mentality towards actions performed, effectively places that mentality beyond the reach of our conventionally comprehensible descriptions, which are teleologically oriented by the conventional 'I'. (xx-xxi) 

For Derrida the gift of death is this actual process of giving a sense of one's irreplaceable self to oneself in experience: simultaneously becoming the witness of this repository of experience, the 'I', and a detached performer of actions.  How else can one be responsible, responsive to another, without detaching from oneself to connect with the immediate other?  And, still remain mired in the irreplaceability of one's individuality? 

D. Trembling before the absolute other

Connected to Abraham's trembling before God is Arjuna's address to Krishna in the form of God:

But the worlds also behold thy fearful mighty form, with many mouths and eyes, with many bellies, thighs and feet, frightening with terrible teeth: they tremble in fear, and I also tremble. 

When I see thy vast form, reaching the sky, burning with many colours, with wide open mouths, with vast flaming eyes, my heart shakes in terror: my power is gone and gone is my peace, O Vishnu! 

Like the fire at the end of Time which burns all in the last day, I see thy vast mouths and thy terrible teeth.  Where am I?  Where is my shelter?  Have mercy on me, God of gods, Refuge Supreme of the world! (11.23-25) 

The flames of thy mouths devour all the worlds.  Thy glory fills the whole universe.  But how terrible thy splendours burn! 

            Reveal thyself to me!  Who art thou in this form of terror?  I adore thee, O god supreme: be gracious to me.  I yearn to know thee, who art from the beginning: for I understand not thy mysterious works. (11.30-31) 

In the next section Krishna clarifies the meaning behind the irreplaceable singularity that Derrida speaks of and the meaning of one's "giving death to oneself" and the "giving of death to others": 

I am all-powerful Time which destroys all things, and I have come here to slay these men.  Even if thou dost not fight, all the warriors facing thee shall die. 

Arise therefore!  Win thy glory, conquer thine enemies, and enjoy thy kingdom.  Through the fate of their Karma I have doomed them to die: be thou merely the means of my work. (11.32-33) 

Krishna fails to give a reason or to outline a code of ethics; he merely points to the process and equates Arjuna to an instrument of "giving death."  Here karma and dharma are mentioned, but not defined.  Although they apply to all individuals universally, they are highly individualized with respect to the "subjects" of these "laws."  Karma is equivalent to the law of cause and effect and dharma is equivalent to a universal support that underpins the world and suggests a law of unity whereby individuals creatively meet the calls of individual duty. 

Alike in content to the reference to the mysterium tremendum is the following verse: "In a vision I have seen what no man has seen before: I rejoice in exultation, and yet my heart trembles with fear.  Have mercy upon me, Lord of gods, Refuge of the whole universe: show me again thine own human form" (11.45).  Here Arjuna cannot mean that he is the only one to "see" this divine form of Krishna.  What he does mean is that he in his irreplaceable singularity has the absolute vision of Krishna that diminishes him to the state of seeing "what no man has seen before."  His is that Derridean responsibility that cannot respond to, or comprehend, calls from any other but recognizes from within its subjectivity that it alone exists and only for itself and that all experiences are only for itself and that it is first and last in perceiving thus.  "I yearn to see thee again with thy crown and scepter and circle.  Show thyself to me again in thine own four-armed form, thou of arms infinite, Infinite Form" (11.46).  Derrida echoes this passage in the statement: “We fear and tremble before the inaccessible secret of a God who decides for us although we remain responsible, that is, free to decide, to work, to assume our life and our death”(56). 

E. Sacrifice without economy

In connection to sacrifice Krishna offers the following explanation:

Thus spoke the Lord of Creation when he made both man and sacrifice: 'By sacrifice thou shalt multiply and obtain all thy desires.

            'By sacrifice shalt thou honour the gods and the gods will then love thee.  And thus in harmony with them shalt thou attain the supreme good. 

            'For pleased with thy sacrifice, the gods will grant to thee the joy of all thy desires.  Only a thief would enjoy their gifts and not offer them in sacrifice.' 

            Holy men who take as food the remains of sacrifice become free from all their sins; but the unholy who have feasts for themselves eat food that is in truth sin. 

            Food is the life of all beings, and all food comes from rain above.  Sacrifice brings the rain from heaven, and sacrifice is sacred action. 

            Sacred action is described in the Vedas and these come from the Eternal, and therefore is the Eternal everpresent in a sacrifice. (3.10-15) 

At the end of the dialogue Arjuna responds to Krishna: "By thy grace I remember my Light, and now gone is my delusion.  My doubts are no more, my faith is firm; and now I can say 'Thy will be done'" (18.73).  Arjuna is free to return to the battlefield to slay his kin in the name of God.  After all he has learned that one is only entitled to the work, to the process, and not to the reward, as Krishna has put it, and Derrida after him.  The focus is on work as process.  It is the "becoming" that Nietzsche glorifies in On the Genealogy of Morality and not the "having become." 

            Finally, I offer a quote from the Bhagavad Gita on renunciation followed by a quote from Derrida, in both of which the logic of the gift is stressed again: 

The renunciation of selfish works is called renunciation; but the surrender of the reward of all work is called surrender. 

            Some say that there should be renunciation of action – since action disturbs contemplation; but others say that works of sacrifice, gift and self-harmony should not be renounced. 

            Hear my truth about the surrender of works, Arjuna.  Surrender, O best of men, is of three kinds. 

            Works of sacrifice, gift, and self-harmony should not be abandoned, but should indeed be performed; for these are works of purification. 

            But even these works, Arjuna, should be done in the freedom of a pure offering, and without expectation of a reward.  This is my final word. (18.2-6) 

Is it not Derrida's final word (on renunciation) as well?  Let us recall Derrida on irreplaceability, responsibility, death, and the gift: 

Above all it is a goodness whose inaccessibility acts as a command to the donee.  It subjects its receivers, giving itself to them as goodness itself but also as the law.  In order to understand in what way this gift of the law means not only the emergence of a new figure of responsibility but also of another kind of death, one has to take into account the uniqueness and irreplaceable singularity of the self as the means by which – and it is here that it comes close to death – experience excludes every possible substitution.  Now to have the experience of responsibility on the basis of the law that is given, that is, to have the experience of one's absolute singularity and apprehend one's own death, amounts to the same thing.  Death is very much that which nobody else can undergo or confront in my place.  My irreplaceability is therefore conferred, delivered, "given," one can say, by death.  It is the same gift, the same source, one could say the same goodness and the same law.  It is from the site of death as the place of my irreplaceability, that is, of my singularity, that I feel called to responsibility.  In this sense only a mortal can be responsible. (41) 

To what degree does Derrida owe a debt, or sense of guilt, to thinking of the gift that comes before him?  We may take Derrida's following words, which apply to the guilt and debt inherent in borrowing, as a possible justification:

What gives me my singularity, namely, death and finitude, is what makes me unequal to the infinite goodness of the gift that is also the first appeal to responsibility.  Guilt is inherent in responsibility because responsibility is always unequal to itself: one is never responsible enough.  One is never responsible enough because one is finite but also because responsibility requires two contradictory movements.  It requires one to respond as oneself and as irreplaceable singularity, to answer for what one does, says, gives; but it also requires that, being good and through goodness, one forget or efface the origin of what one gives. (51) 

Does forgetfulness or effacement somehow render this doublet of debt/guilt paid down?  Or, might we say in this case, with Derrida, that one "recognizes neither debt nor duty to his fellows because he is in a relationship to God – a relationship without relation because God is absolutely transcendent, hidden, and secret, not giving any reason he can share in exchange for this doubly given death, not sharing in this dissymmetrical alliance" (72-73).  To be responsible to one's immediate other requires irresponsibility to all others. 

If one can read Derrida and the Bhagavad Gita against and with each other, if one can be said to inform the other, or if both texts can be said to mutually inform each other before a reader, can a debt be said to exist that needs to be paid off?  And whose debt?  Perhaps, where one pays off the debt of the other?  Does a debt need to be acknowledged, even if not recognized, at first or otherwise?  The name of the payee rendered in print?  If I decide that the "gift" of the Bhagavad Gita, its "giving" to Derrida, is in providing a context to me as reader, do I declare a debt I owe to the Bhagavad Gita for reading it into Derrida or am I underwriting, or signing a lien to be held by either The Bhagavad Gita or Derrida?  Am I equally indebted to Derrida and The Bhagavad Gita?  And paying off for either with these words?  

Works Cited

The Bhagavad Gita.  Trans. Juan Mascaró.  Intro. Simon Brodbeck.  London: Penguin Books, 2003. 

Derrida, Jacques.  The Gift of Death.  Trans. David Wills.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.