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This paper aims to show one of the ways in which philosophical questioning is linked to the religious in Derrida. This link is presented as the overt attempt to resist two different «temptations». First is the Hegelian one, in which Derrida sees an ontotheology, in which the truth of religion is resolved in absolute knowledge. The second temptation is the Heideggerian one, which seeks to trace back to a form of the original truth (Offenbarkeit), as a condition of possibility in which revelation (Offenbarung) can be inscribed. Deconstruction is meant to bring to light the urgency of thinking beyond the oscillation between a transcendental inquiry and a philosophy of the event. The paper seeks to show how this need is already present in the way Derrida appropriates Husserlian phenomenology. It is a question of thinking of the truth in Augustinian terms, in which the relationship with it is not resolved in a theoretical observation and in which the singularity is not accidental to the exhibition of its meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Derrida’s philosophy cannot be relegated to a mere expression of postmodern nihilism, especially in the Anglo-Saxon debate the adoption of the deconstructionist perspective in the biblical studies and in theological reflection is now consolidated. The aim of this article is to present the figure of the witness in Derrida, starting from the structure of the experience brought to light by the French philosopher in his first phenomenological studies. Husserl’s analyses of temporality and alter ego reveal the impossible presence to itself: consciousness is always contaminated and solicited by an instance, which can never be reduced to its concept. The meaning in fact is constituted through the way in which the singularity inscribes this instance in its historical horizon. The witness is configured as a necessary experience, because without its mediation the meaning would not appear, but also impossible, because it is presented as the way in which the self responds to the promise of fulfilment always to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]