"The Gift of Death" is Jacques Derrida's most sustained consideration of religion to date. While continuing to explore questions introduced in "Given Time" such as the possibility, or impossibility, of giving and the economic and anthropological nature of gifts, Derrida turns to the notion of "responsibility" and the ultimate gifts of life and death. Derrida divides the book into four parts, which deal respectively with the development of the notion of responsibility in the Platonic and Christian traditions; the relation 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." The texts under discussion include the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, as well as writings from Patocka, Heidegger, Levinas, and Kierkegaard (whom he addresses here for the first time in print.) Derrida's main concern is with the meaning of moral and ethical responsibility in Western religion and philosophy. He questions the limits of the rational and the responsible that one reaches in granting or accepting death, whether by sacrifice, murder, execution, or suicide. Beginning with a discussion of Patocka's "Heretical Essays on the History of Philosophy," Derrida develops Patocka's ideas concerning the sacred and responsibility through comparisons with the works of Heidegger, Levinas, and, finally, Kierkegaard. Derrida's treatment of Kierkegaard makes clear that the two philosophers share some of the same concerns. He then undertakes a careful reading of Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling," comparing and contrasting his own conception ofresponsibility with that of Kierkegaard, and extending and deepening his recent accounts of the gift and sacrifice. For Derrida, the very possibility of sacrifice, especially the ultimate sacrifice of one's own life for the sake of another, comes into question. This work resonates with much of Derrida's earlier writing and will be of interest to scholars in anthropology, philosophy, and, of course, literary criticism. In addition, given the emphasis on the work of Kierkegaard and on the role of religion in our thinking, it will be of particular interest to a new readership among scholars of ethics and religion.

In 1990 the Department of Graphic Arts at the Louvre made their holdings available to guest curators for a program called Parti Pris , or "Taking Sides". In this program, major cultural figures outside of the discipline of art history organized exhibitions based on the department's collection. Within its first several years, this novel collaboration produced exhibitions curated by philosopher Jacques Derrida and filmmaker Peter Greenaway. Jean Starobinski, noted literary critic and intellectual historian from the University of Geneva, was selected as the third curator in the program. In his exhibition and accompanying essay, Starobinski explores the theme of largesse in its broadest sense. Arguing that gift giving and receiving are fundamental human gestures, he examines graphic and textual representations from the offering of the apple to Eve to Salome's gift of the head of John the Baptist, from the giving of laws to the gift of death. Charity, the poetic gift, and the benefits of Fortune all play a role in Starobinski's extended meditation on the act of donation. Lavishly illustrated and dazzling in its scope and imagination, Largesse is an exemplar of the rich intellectual work that can result from crossing disciplinary boundaries and considering history as a dense network of themes and allusions.