TOWARD A MESSIANIC POSTMODERNISM: DECONSTRUCTION AND RELIGION Deconstruction is a philosophy that emphasizes the productive role of difference, as opposed to the “modern” or Enlightenment predilection for universality and consensus. There are (at least) two different varieties of this philosophy of difference, depending on which of its two nineteenth-century predecessors, Nietzsche or Kierkegaard, one favors, …