Jean-Luc Marion

“They recognized him; and he became invisible to them”

Marion here provides a philosophical/exegetical reflection on the Emmaus episode (Luke 24:13–25) with a view to debunking (as both inane and blasphemous) a widely entertained understanding of faith as “a deficit of intuition”—something which has to be “added” to human powers “to compensate faulty intuition”. Rather, Marion argues that faith is not so much required in order to recapture a lack in intuition but more a proper response in the face of an excess of intuition in relation to “a deficiency of statements and a dearth of concepts”.

Mihi magna quaestio factus sum: The Privilege of Unknowing*

In the final analysis, why and by what right would one admit into the field of university disciplines something like a philosophy of religion? In one view, it actually deals with religion, and not philosophy; and what is more, according to the most radical but also the most widespread hypothesis, it deals with a religion that asserts itself as revealed. But this in turn means that it will define its object with complete autonomy, as the organized collection of articles of belief (credo, creed). In such a case, we might do best to turn to sacra doctrina, which is to say to scientia theologica, or if need be, outside of the exemplary case of Christianity, to appeal to any body of doctrine that would offer the stability and referential quality (whatever these may turn out to be) of a collection of things believed and held as true. Or, one could request for an alleged philosophy of religion a place within philosophy proper. But, in this case, could religion claim a status particular enough to become the object of a separate philosophy, one that would be reserved for it alone? In fact, does all that is summed up in this “religion” in question not simply reduce to one of the three objects of metaphysica specialis, without any more special particularity than its other objects (the soul and the world)? Does religion likewise not belong to the secondary philosophies, such as rational psychology, rational cosmology, physics, and so on? In this sense, every “philosophy of religion” would be reduced to one of the secondary philosophies, inscribed within metaphysica specialis, which is itself subjected to metaphysica generalis, that is, ontologia, and thus to the system of metaphysica as such.

The Other First Philosophy and the Question of Givenness

As out of date as it might seem, the topic of first philosophy is fraught with stakes, as real as they are symbolic, and still occasions polemical and passionate discussion. This should not be surprising since establishing a first philosophy is neither optional nor outside the orbit of philosophy considered as such. In fact, philosophy, when it does not resign itself to joining the ranks of ordinary sciences-founded (or finally without foundation, a possibility that remains within the horizon of the foundation), derived, in short, secondary--should stake a claim to primacy, or at least to a certain type of primacy, in its very definition. Philosophy will remain true to its own essence only by claiming itself to be, in essence, a first philosophy. For a second philosophy either becomes a regional science (the science 0outcfil in Aristotle) or simply loses its philosophical status. In fact, the two terms are equivalent-without the adjective, the substantive vanishes. One therefore cannot reproach philosophy for claiming primacy since lacking this primacy it would disappear as such. Therefore, if the primacy of philosophy presupposes first philosophy, the difficulty should consist less in the legitimacy of this primacy than in determining its type. At once the nature of the difficulty changes: from now on it concerns defining and establishing the primacy that philosophy must exer-

Resting, Moving, Loving: The Access to the Self according to Saint Augustine

The rather obvious, although often overlooked, structure of the Confessiones suggests strongly that the questions about his own self, which have upset Saint Augustine within the first nine books, find some universal answers either from conceptual analysis (in Confessiones 10) or on biblical grounds (in Confessiones 11–13). I would like to show, at least to suggest very briefly, how the doctrines of creation (including those of the “heaven of the heavens” and of the creation de nihilo) contribute to defining the place where, or more exactly from where, the confessio can be lifted up and the self become accessible to himself. But, in fact, it becomes possible to praise God as God only if God himself opens the place and gives the time for it. And where would that be except in God himself? So, the creature’s place is not found in itself, but always in God, such that the place for the confessio of God is determined by and in God, to the point that creation consists only in the opening of the place of confessio. It is hence a universal rule. What remains for us to understand is how it is specified in the case of man.

The Invisibility of the Saint

1 The saint.1 What sort of saint? No one has ever seen a saint.2 For the saint remains invisible, not by chance, but in principle and by right. For who could see a saint in person [en personne], if no one [personne] can recognize the saint as such? In fact, who could say that this person one sees and knows merits being described as holy? (This is even less the case if one does not know the saint well or not at all.) How should one justify sainthood, and on what definition of holiness should it be grounded? To call anyone3 holy, one must first know what this word holiness actually means, have direct experience of it oneself, and, finally, be able to legitimately assign the quality thus signified to someone. Put differently, one must have access to the concept of holiness, must have an experience of sanctity, and must probe the other’s heart. Can one claim to fulfill these conditions for the case of holiness in the same way as, for example, for heroism or for intelligence? In order to call someone heroic or brilliant, one must similarly know at first what each of these terms covers, have experienced them in person, and know how to judge others in either respect. No one doubts that a war hero, accustomed to battle and experienced in war, would know what he or she is talking about and be able to judge whether other people merit the title. Similarly, no one disputes that true scholars or great researchers, as self-aware, would know what science and research mean and would be able to recognize other minds of comparable intelligence. Yet it is plain to see that, unlike in the matters of heroism or intelligence, these three conditions cannot be satisfied in the case of holiness. There are

Seeing, or Seeing Oneself Seen: Nicholas of Cusa’s Contribution in De visione Dei*

Without fail we recognize a great text from a great thinker by the fact that, in addition to and beyond what it intends to demonstrate (and indeed does demonstrate), it offers further resources, sometimes long unnoticed, for illuminating questions arising well after the text was written, and which come, at least so it would seem, from entirely different preoccupations. Of course the point is never to make a text say what it in fact does not say within the context of a debate for which it was not written; rather, the point is to allow it to say everything that it can contribute today to a second debate that is added to the first one and extends it in other terms. A text truly gives us food for thought when it reveals, in addition to its explicit intention, a potentially multiple pertinence that awaits the opportunity that will make manifest one of its possible significations for a question that it probably did not imagine, even if, in fact, it may have made that question possible. Such is the case with Nicholas of Cusa, whose De visione Dei sive de Icona encounters, beyond the question of the vision of God, numerous contemporary debates concerning visibility in general, and thus the dimensions of phenomenality—namely, questions concerning the icon as a type of phenomenon, the reversal of vision into a countervision, the distinction between the object or the nonobject of the seen, and the possibility of seeing the other. These will be the themes that I will attempt to follow in my reading of De visione Dei, a text that indeed illuminates them, but which also in turn receives from them a new pertinence.

The Question of the Unconditioned

The question bringing us together concerns God, or more precisely, God as such, God as God. It would be false to read this as a simple tautology, a different way of asking the question of God. Clearly, God is first at stake here from the philosophical point of view, inasmuch as philosophy can or could encompass such a question in its reach. This occurs when philosophy is unfolded as a philosophical theology, one that owes nothing (or at least claims to owe nothing) to the particular theology of a religion, thus in the end to a Revelation. No one has shown this strictly philosophical position of the question of God better than Feuerbach: “God as God (Gott als Gott), that is, as a non-finite, non-human, not materially determined, non-sensible being (Wesen) is only an object of thought” (Gott als Gott, d.h. als nicht endliches, nicht menschliches, nicht materiell bestimmtes, nicht sinnliches Wesen, ist nur Gegenstand des Denkens). Hence, the issue is to say and think God as such, or, to translate Plato’s expression more literally: “οιος τυγxαnει ο θεος ωn” ([the] god just as he happens, just as he is) (Republic II, 379a), the god as such, such as he is, in his very way of appearing. Actually, to be even more precise, this expression does not yet concern what philosophy and its later metaphysical form understand by the such as, the as. Yet this transition from one to the other shows only that it remains the chief prerogative of philosophy to exercise such an as, and in increasingly more radical fashion. Let us quickly clarify this point, which will become essential for the question of an approach to God as such. Philosophy begins and unfolds according to a radical conviction, or rather according to a decision, which is both clean and at times obscured by its own evidence: the thing appears, appears from itself (by itself), but it

Remarques sur quelques remarques

Dans le numero 98/1 (2011) des RSR, la revue avait consacre un dossier au theme « Philosopher en theologie », et, dans ce cadre, porte une particuliere attention a certaines des theses que, sur cette frontiere, le travail de l’auteur permettrait d’avancer.L’article present offre une reponse a certaines des objections alors formulees. Il voudrait par la dissiper quelques mecomprehensions, en apportant des precisions sur trois points que les auteurs du numero 98/1 (2011) discutaient : la question du transcendantal, celle de la distinction des theo-logies et enfin les questions conjointes de la passivite, de l’urgence et de l’hermeneutique.

De Descartes à Augustin : un parcours philosophique

A l’occasion de la parution de son ouvrage sur saint Augustin, le philosophe revient ici sur son itineraire et sa maniere de se situer dans les courants philosophiques contemporains. Il eclaire ainsi l’articulation operee dans son oeuvre entre histoire de la philosophie, phenomenologie et theologie.

Le Possible et la Révélation

The author raises the question whether religion — conceived of as referring to revelation, that is: a manifestation in experience of something which transcends experience — can become a phenomenon and if phenomenology can apply to the objects of religion.