Jacques Derrida’s thoughts on religion wielded a persistent influence on the so-called “phenomenology of religion.” Derrida’s hyper-referential text Faith and Knowledge functions as a pivotal study, where many different thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Bergson and Heidegger enter into dialogue. At the same time, there is one name that is conspicuously absent in Derrida’s essay: that of Jan Patocˇka. In this article, I seek to show that Patocˇka’s thoughts on religion, especially in the Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History turn out to be of central importance to Derrida’s “phenomenology of religion.” Keywords: Derrida; Patocˇka; phenomenology of religion; auto-immunity

Religion is not the sacred [. . .]; rather, it is where the sacred qua demonic is being explicitly overcome.1