John Caputo, who is the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University and an internationally known scholar of Heidegger and Derrida, will speak on "God and Deconstruction" at 8 p.m. on Thursday (Nov. 30) in Slayter Auditorium. Professor Caputo will appear at Denison as the Harold H. Titus-Maylon H. Hepp Lecturer in Philosophy, an endowed lectureship honoring two past Denison professors who jointly contributed 63 years of prominent service to the philosophy department.

In his talk, Caputo seeks to extricate Derrida's work from the charges of nihilism and despair and takes a radically different approach to Derrida's work. Caputo also will give a philosophy colloquium at 3:30 p.m. on Friday (Dec. 1) in the faculty lounge at Slayter Hall. He will speak on "For the Love of Things Themselves: Derrida's Hyper-Realism." Both the convocation and the colloquium are free and open to the public.

Professor Caputo earned a bachelor's degree from LaSalle University, a master's degree from Villanova University, and a doctorate from Bryn Mawr College. He has served on the Villanova faculty since 1976 and has held the endowed David Cook Professorship there since 1992.

Caputo has organized two conferences (in 1997 and 1999) on "Religion and Postmodernism" with featured lectures by Jacques Derrida. He also is the author of numerous journal articles on topics such as ethics and postmodern theology.

He has recently published "More Radical Hermeneutics: On Not Knowing Who We Are," which continues his project of building a working relationship between hermeneutics and deconstruction. (Hermeneutics is defined as the art or science of interpretation, especially of the Scriptures; deconstruction is a theory of textual analysis positing that a text has no stable reference and questioning assumptions about the ability of language to represent reality.) He is the author of numerous other books, including "God, The Gift and Postmodernism," and "Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida," which was winner of a Choice Magazine "Outstanding Academic Book Award." He also serves as editor for the Fordham University Press book series "Perspectives in Continental Philosophy."

Caputo has served as executive co-director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, is a past president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, was a member of the Executive Committee of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, and a member of its national board. He has held research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1992-3) and from the American Council of Learned Societies (1983-4).

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