Per Caritatem

Black grief closed over my heart and wherever I looked I saw only death. […] Everything I had shared with my friend turned into hideous anguish without him. My eyes sought him everywhere, but he was missing; I hated all things because they held him not, and could no more say to me, “Look, here he comes!” as they had been wont to do in his lifetime when he had been away. I had become a great enigma to myself, and I questioned my soul, demanding why it was sorrowful and why it so disquieted me, but it had no answer.[1]

In this passage, Augustine the narrator reflects upon the all-consuming grief coloring his world following the death of his beloved friend. Here Augustine pours out his heart to God as he does throughout the book, confessing his sorrows and his struggles, posing philosophical and theological questions to God, himself, and his readers. Augustine’s soul, however, when it comes to providing the answers for which he longs, has no idea how to respond [nihil noverat respondere mihi]. That is, contrary to commonly accepted modern and postmodern interpretations of Augustine, painting him as the precursor to psychoanalysis, I argue that Augustine’s multiple confessions were not primarily about himself; rather, his narrative, which no doubt includes soul-searching, personal stories, and so forth, was first and foremost about God, the unfolding narrative of redemption, and how the self, left to itself, turned in upon itself does not give rise to greater self-revelation and liberation; rather, Augustine’s confessions announce repeatedly that the self-absorbed, incessantly introspecting self—the self whose inward turn does not have as its goal a deeper union with the Christian God—is ultimately left famished, speechless, and restless—“inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te” (“Our heart is unhinged, forever moving to and fro, until it finds in You a peaceful, resting abode”).[2]

Against the rather entrenched view that a more or less straight line can be drawn from Augustine to Cartesian inwardness and thus to the modern introspecting subject, in this post I offer a counterargument, based upon a reading of select texts from the Confessions, that Augustine’s narrative and his understanding of the self has little in common with modern autobiography, autonomous notions of the self, or staticized views of selfhood and subjectivity.[3]

Returning to the passage from book four, we have Augustine’s phenomenological description of grief, his own grief over the death of his beloved friend. “Black grief closed over my heart [quo dolore contenebratum est cor meum], and wherever I looked I saw only death.”[4] As O’Donnell points out, Augustine draws upon language from the Old Testament, specifically Lamentations 5:17,[5] where we read: “Because of this our hearts [cor nostrum] are sick, because of these things our eyes have grown dim [contenebrati]” (NRSV).  In a way similar to the New Testament authors’ appropriation of the Old Testament, Augustine weaves together Scriptural fragments and metaphors, expanding their meanings and applying them for his present purposes. In context, the Lamentations passage speaks of the suffering of God’s people as a result of their turning away from God. Their sins, as Lamentations 5:16 explains, are the cause of their heart sickness and lack of vision. In both the Old and New Testaments, descriptions of darkened eyes and obscured vision are often used metaphorically to connote negative spiritual and moral conditions. Thus, in Scripture we find images depicting a lack of sight and consequent dwelling in darkness set in contrast to living in the light—itself a metaphoric description of God. Whether penned by the Psalmist or St. John the Apostle, to dwell in the light is to live in God and to see oneself, others, and the entire created order in his light.[6]

With the Lamentations connection in mind, that Augustine chose the Scriptural image of a darkened, grieving heart [quo dolore contenebratum est cor meum] suggests a desire to communicate something more than his own pain.  In fact, as the chapter unfolds, Augustine the narrator states explicitly that his sorrow had become excessive and self-focused. In addition, he loved his friend without taking account of the latter’s finitude, and he failed to acknowledge the friendship as a gift which must some day return to its Giver. Discussing why his grief had so overwhelmed him, Augustine asks rhetorically: was it not “because I had poured out my soul into the sand by loving a man doomed to death as though he were never to die?”[7] Then in the following paragraph, Augustine highlights the proper way to love another deeply, namely, the other must be loved in God. “Blessed is he who loves you, and loves his friend in you […] He alone loses no one dear to him, to whom all are dear in the One who is never lost. And who is this but our God.”[8]

Here we should note that Augustine affirms the value and goodness of friendship. Loving others deeply is not in itself problematic or to be avoided.[9] Rather, Augustine is at pains to stress that only God, given his nature and character, can provide the solidity we seek, the abode for our unhinged hearts. On the one hand, that all creation, including human beings, is good, Augustine in no way denies. It must be good because its very existence comes from a God who is good.[10] On the other hand, our loves must be properly ordered, and when we love the creature in place of the Creator—that is, as the final goal or ultimate meaning of our lives—we set ourselves up for sorrow upon sorrow. Whether or not we agree with Augustine’s assessment of his grief is beside the point. Perhaps he is at times too hard on himself when it comes to his emotional life. What is to the point given our present purpose is to foreground Augustine’s primary aim in recounting and analyzing his grief over the loss of his friend.

 

Commentary on Saunders’s Essay
by Dr. Joel B. Hunter

Bret Saunders has made some intriguing suggestions into how one might appropriate the insights of contemporary phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion to determine some possible thematic emphases for reading Augustine. For what kind of project? This is my first question, for it is not clear how Mr. Saunders delineates the areas of investigation he mentions. For example, he claims that Marion seeks “to develop a Catholic postmodern theology” by drawing from more ancient springs of Neoplatonism refracted in Christianity (or vice versa) to overcome musty Neoscholastic interpretations of the Fathers. But in the same section he claims that Marion’s ressourcement has a second edge with which to fashion a philosophy of “revelation/creation” that overcomes the bifurcations of modernity and the Heideggerean “silence” of postmodernity. Now, I would be one of the last persons to insist on dogmatically delineated fields of inquiry and impenetrable borders between Athens and Jerusalem; however, for the sake of preliminary theses, I’d like to get my bearings with what subject matter is under consideration. Or perhaps the question I have is this: what does Mr. Saunders think is Marion’s central concern, philosophy or theology? I can certainly cheer attempts to articulate a theologically inflected philosophy. And it may be impossible to do otherwise than a philosophically ordered theology. But is a “theological-phenomenology of the self” a bit of philosophy or theology primarily? I realize that this is a coarse question, and no doubt a bit impolite, but I think how one conceives the subject matter under consideration and the proper modes of inquiry (should they differ) will help order the significance of the several figures and philosophies Mr. Saunders appeals to for our orientation; e.g., phenomenology (what is phenomenology?), Neoplatonism (which one?), (post)modernism, Neoscholasticism, Dionysius the Aereopagite, Descartes, Heidegger, the ressourcement theologians, and so on. (In my own view, phenomenology-or at least Husserl’s philosophy-must be the touchstone for interacting with Marion, regardless of how one regards the importance of phenomenological philosophy generally.)

In the second half of the essay, Mr. Saunders focuses on a very interesting (and ancient) question; namely, “Can I know myself?” Mr. Saunders’ suggested line of inquiry is equally interesting, for he does not retread analyses which focus on the equivocity of the word ‘know’. Indeed, one kind of knowing is ruled out implicitly-ratio-that which “comprehends,” i.e., that which might be known exhaustively, without remainder. I cannot know myself objectively. My desires and actions exceed my rational grip on things, including myself, as St. Paul knows quite well (Romans 7). A person’s self-knowledge is opaque. So psychology and anthropology derive from ontology: what kind of being am I that chooses, deliberates, acts, and desires who I am and will be, all the while finding who I am and what I do-in some measure-incomprehensible? Mr. Saunders (and Marion) read St. Augustine’s answer in such a way that necessitates theism: I am a created being; finite and derivative, gaining understanding only insofar as I “participate” in the Creator. And this suggests one important distinction between philosophical and theological investigations of subjectivity that one might profit from highlighting: for philosophy, the Delphic maxim, “Know thyself,” is de rigueur; however, for theology, this must be a derivative question, approached, if at all, in light of one’s knowledge of God.

In Mr. Saunders’ reflections on capacitas in Augustine, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that principle central to Calvin’s theology: finitum non est capax infiniti (“the finite is incapable of the infinite”-a particular point of contention, for example, between Reformed and Lutheran dogmatics regarding the Eucharist). I wonder if Mr. Saunders (and Marion) think Calvin got capacitas (and Augustine) right in this formulation? For if so, then the implications for a philosophy of creation are significant for all Western Christian theologies. What is the relation between the Creator and the creation? Is there an inherent deficiency to creation (i.e., does the fact of a thing’s createdness entail defect)? Perhaps the nature of the Incarnation may become problematic. How does the divine “share in” or “participate in” the human…is such language even permissible? I think the answers to these questions require a starting point for the investigation that is christological (if the “theology-phenomenology of the self” is going to be specifically Christian). Moreover, given the Platonic sea in which Augustine and Calvin are swimming, what with the inflexible lexicon of infinite-finite, original-copy, absolute-relative, real-corporeal, and so on, one must ask to what extent such a reading of Augustine can be properly post-metaphysical, as Marion seeks to be.

The final theme Mr. Saunders takes up, and perhaps most likely to be unfamiliar to readers, is that of the saturated phenomenon. Marion deploys this technical term as summative of his describing the phenomenon of man’s own incomprehensibility to himself, but the association is cryptic. Mr. Saunders leaves the correlation allusive, which the limitation of space likely demands; however, a definition of a saturated phenomenon would help the reader at least begin to unpack what Marion might be getting at. If we’ve agreed that man’s own incomprehensibility to himself is a necessary ingredient for a genuine anthropology, then how does the formulation “man is a saturated phenomenon” further characterize and clarify the nature of this incomprehensibility? Quite apart from the question whether Marion is right about man being a saturated phenomenon, and whether Mr. Saunders is right about the analogy between the saturated phenomenon of revelation and Augustine’s analysis of memory, I think Mr. Saunders is right that this component in Marion’s phenomenology is a significant tool for a theology which seeks to be self-critical and undertake the task to begin again at the beginning (i.e., with that which has been revealed-again the necessity of christological beginnings!). Perhaps it is the imposition-character of the saturated phenomenon which one could elaborate. In Husserlian terms, the saturated phenomenon exceeds the commensurability always and already operative between that which is given to intuition and the intentionality that becomes aware of it. With that compact formulation, I must conclude these comments and thank Mr. Saunders for richly suggestive preliminary remarks and look forward to further elucidation of the themes he’s introduced for us here.

Reading Augustine with Marion: A Postmodern Ressourcement

By Bret Saunders, doctoral student, University of Dallas

For the sake of space, I must assume my readers know something about one of the most profound philosopher/theologians at the turn of this century, the French Catholic-postmodern author, Jean Luc-Marion, currently at Chicago and the Sorbonne.  The topic of the relationship between a great ancient and a great contemporary thinker would be worth studying at any time, but it is especially interesting in the case of Augustine and Marion, since this relationship is taking an interesting turn at present.   Until the last several years, Marion had rarely engaged Augustine directly except for several essays[1] and a handful of footnotes.  Following Von Balthasar, he preferred to develop his unique phenomenological theology in conversation with Augustine’s Eastern, near-contemporary, Dionysius the Aereopagite.[2] But as Marion turned from larger issues-Descartes and “onto-theo-logy,” theology after the “death of god,” the limits of phenomenology-to focus on love, the self, and the extent of self-knowledge, he interacted with Augustine directly.[3]

This “turn” means that the relation of Marion to Augustine must for now be somewhat speculatively posed.  However, I can make some general comments starting from Marion’s use of Neoplatonism.  Put broadly, it is the impetus toward negative theology, divine transcendence and creaturely participation that draws Marion toward Dionysius and Augustine.  In the spirit of Vatican II’s conservative wing, in opposition to but also in dialog with Levinas, Derrida and Altizer, Marion has attempted to develop a Catholic postmodern theology from these Christian Neoplatonic patristics and 20^th century phenomenology.  This ressourcement offers a double benefit: by reading the fathers according to the methods and concerns of phenomenology, Marion makes new connections and finds new meaning in familiar texts, texts often obscured by the surreptitiously modern readings of Neo-Scholasticism; conversely, Marion develops from these sources a phenomenology/theology of revelation and creation, a third way between modernity’s idolatrous blasphemy (Descartes and the theologians of “pure nature”) and postmodernity’s idolatrous silence (Heidegger).   I will now take a few short steps down this path . . .

Participation and Incomprehensibility in Marion’s (Augustinian) Philosophy of Religion

Marion’s work on Augustine to date concerns a theological-phenomenology of the self.  The early article on “the word capacitas in Augustine” is linked with the 2005 article on “the privilege of unknowing”[4] in that both describe a receptive, dependent, participating self in direct opposition to the active, (self-)determining self of modernity.[5] For Augustine, I am only myself insofar as I know myself in God, that is, receive myself from him.  Capax, capacitas is governed by a receptive semantic; it signifies the creatures ‘capacity’ to be filled by or participate (partem capere) in the Creator.[6] By contrast  Marion’s early interest in Augustine on this point stems from his far more extensive work on Descartes, who follows Suarez in altering the meaning of capax/capacitas to signify an active power of the self to know itself fully and to fully determine and know its objects.  Descartes borrowed this new acceptation from Suarez’s theology of “pure nature.”[7]

In the 2005 article, Marion probes the Confessions in support of a philosophy of religion centered around the incomprehensibility of man.  For Augustine, because man is the image of the incomprehensible God, he cannot determine himself or know himself fully but must be revealed to himself: “No one knows what he himself is made of, except his own spirit within him, yet there is still some part of him which remains hidden even from his own spirit; but you, Lord, know everything about a human being because you have made him.”[8] Marion sums up his thesis in this essay as follows: “[M]an appears to himself as a phenomenon that he cannot constitute, because he exceeds the field of every horizon and of every system of categories.  Which can be formulated as: man appears to himself as a saturated phenomenon.”[9] Here Marion shows how he reads the Neo-platonist Augustine phenomenologically, as part of a critique of modern (positivist) anthropology and the (secular) postmodern deconstruction of religion: just as the phenomenon of revelation-God or man considered as the image of God-”saturates” or “exceeds” the horizons of traditional phenomenology (whether Husserl’s “intuition” or Heidegger’s “being”), so for Augustine the “vast, infinite abyss” of memory exceeds the mind’s “narrow grasp” (Conf. 10.8.15), like the “eternal ideas” as the standards of truth and beauty and God himself exceed the created beings who participate in Him.[10]

Notes

---

[1] See “La saisie trinitaire selon l’Esprit de saint Augustin.” Résurrection 28 (1968), 66-94; “Distance et béatitude. Sur le mot capacitas chez saint Augustin.” Résurrection 29 (1968), 58-60; “De la divinisation a la domination: etude sur la semantique de capable / capax chez Descartes.“ Revue Philosophique de Louvain 73 (1975), 262-293.

[2] In The Idol and Distance, trans. Thomas Carlson (New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 2001), 139-195.

[3] A collection of essays on Augustine, Au lieu de soi-même (“In [the] Place of the Self”) will be published this Fall.  But  Marion’s “Augustinian turn” appears already in “Mihi magna quaestio factus sum: The Privilege of Unknowing” (in The Journal of Religion 85 (2005), 1-24) and  The Erotic Phenomenon [trans. Stephen Lewis (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007)].  The latter alludes to Augustine on pp. 41, 42, 54, 71, 75(?), 87, 92, 95, 108, 114, 121, 128, 132, 135, 142, 144, 146, 182(?), 194, 195.  To give just one example: Marion employs Augustine’s “use/enjoyment” distinction on 127-8 to characterize the lover’s relation to the beloved as to a “flesh” instead of to an object.

[4] See fn. 1.

[5] And also of Heidegger, for which see Marion’s “The Final Appeal of the Subject” in John D. Caputo ed., The Religious (London: Blackwell, 2001), 131-44.

[6] See Confessions 10.8.15, wherein Augustine highlights the need of divine illumination for self-knowledge: “I myself do not grasp (capio) the whole that I am.”

[7] See “What is the Ego capable of?  Divinization and Domination: Capable/Capax“, in Cartesian Questions (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1999), 67-95.

[8] Conf. 10.5.7 (trans. Maria Boulding [Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1997], 241).

[9] “Privilege,” 23.

[10] I warmly thank Cynthia Nielsen for the opportunity to ‘participate’ in this online conversation.

As I noted in a previous post, a number of postmodern thinkers have become interested in negative theology, giving special attention to Dionysius. For example, Jean-Luc Marion has found Dionysius a valuable resource in the development of his own theology. In this post, I want to briefly mention some of the ways that Marion incorporates Dionysian thought into his own project. Both Dionysius and Marion are concerned with upholding God’s transcendence and avoiding conceptual idolatry of any sort. For Marion, there are two basic orientations to world: (1) an iconic consciousness or (2) an idolatrous consciousness. As Marion explains, “[t]he idol measures the divine to the scope of the gaze of he who then sculpts it.” Hence, an idol is produced when we attempt to conceptually circumscribe God, which is in essence to limit God to the human gaze. In our attempts to measure God by human understanding, we become trapped in a kind of self-reflexivity in which the idol becomes a mirror that reflects the human gaze back to itself. In contrast, the icon allows one’s gaze to move through the icon (visible) to that which is invisible. That is,

“[w]hat characterizes the icon painted on wood does not come from the hand of man but from the infinite depth that crosses it—or better, orients it following the intention of a gaze. The essential in the icon […] comes to it from elsewhere. […] Contemplating the icon amounts to seeing the visible in the very manner by which the invisible that imparts itself therein envisages the visible—strictly, to exchange our gaze for the gaze that iconistically envisages us.”

Following a Dionysian emphasis on the positive value of symbols, Marion likewise underscores that signs and images are not to be despised, as they can and should be used as contemplative aids in our worship of God. In fact, not only does creation itself function iconically to reveal the invisible things of God through that which is visible (Rom 1:20), but Christ Himself is said to be the Icon of God (Col 1:15). Moreover, given the kind of creatures that we are, it is fitting that we embrace signs and images which simultaneously hide and reveal that which exceeds this, so to speak, “clothing” of the formless.

Marion’s aim is of course to bring us into a more iconic consciousness, which in turn allows God to manifest himself according to his terms (not ours). If we embrace an iconic orientation, then, as Marion puts it, we must abandon any attempt to measure the divine by our own human gaze. Here Marion again seems very much in harmony with Dionysius. That is, for both Marion and Dionysius, there is no concept that adequately captures God. God, who is beyond being, is ipso facto beyond definition, and Marion is at pains to free God from our limiting (idolatrous) gaze. As Robyn Horner observes, Marion both continues within the Dionysian trajectory and also furthers the conversation with his own distinctive contributions. That is, in addition to drawing our attention to conceptual idols, Marion likewise speaks of conceptual icons as a way of thinking God in a non-idolatrous way. This path does not move “through the traditional metaphysical route that focuses on being, but through the mystical route of love.” Marion also adds to the discussion of icons, the idea of our being gazed upon and hence transformed by the other. Instead of a self-reflexive gaze necessitated by the idol, the icon breaks the circle of reflexivity and “gives the invisible to thought, not on the basis of the capacities of the metaphysical ego, but on its own terms.” Contrasting the two gazes, Marion writes that with the icon

“our gaze becomes the optical mirror of that at which it looks only by finding itself more radically looked at: we become a visible mirror of an invisible gaze that subverts us in the measure of its glory. The invisible summons us, ‘face to face, person to person’ (1 Cor. 13:12), through the painted visibility of its incarnation and the factual visibility of our flesh: no longer the visible idol as the invisible mirror of our gaze, but our face as the visible mirror of the invisible. […] It [the icon] transforms us in its glory by allowing this glory to shine on our face as its mirror—but a mirror consumed by that very glory, transfigured with invisibility, and by dint of being saturated beyond itself from that glory, becoming, strictly though imperfectly, the icon of it: visibility of the invisible as such.”

Though the icon indeed “opens distance,” it never claims nor pretends to exhaust God or to produce any kind of comprehensive knowledge of the incomprehensible.

As mentioned in the previous post, in Marion’s more recent work, St. Thomas escapes all three characteristics of onto-theo-logy. Regarding the first characteristic, viz., inscribing God within the domain of metaphysics, Thomas is “acquitted” because for him (unlike Scotus and Suarez) esse commune (common or created being) is the proper object of metaphysics. Hence, God only factors into the consideration of metaphysics in an indirect way, viz., as the causal principle (Creator) of common/created being. For Aquinas in contradistinction from the thinkers mentioned above, God and creatures are not conceived under a common univocal concept of being.

Regarding the second characteristic, viz., that the “God” establish a causal foundation of all the common entities (which turns out to be a reciprocal founding of sorts), Thomas is likewise “not guilty” because of the distinction he makes between esse commune and esse divinum. Esse as used in these two designations is not understood univocally (either metaphysically or predicatively), but analogically. That is, the “esse” in esse commune is received from God and is common to all created beings—beings that are esse/essence composites. In contrast, the “esse” of esse divinum has only one referent, viz., God who is the “act of being” and whose esse is identical to his essence. Thomas, then, given this distinction, upholds God’s transcendence. Though it is the case that Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy names God as the efficient cause of common being, he escapes the second characteristic of Heidegger’s critique because his understanding of causality in creation is asymmetrical. In other words, God (the “ground” of esse commune) does not stand in a reciprocal relation to his creation. Rather, the dependency is “one-way”—creation is wholly dependent upon God for its being and intelligibility, but God is in no way dependent on creation for either.

Regarding the third characteristic, Marion highlights two arguments of St. Thomas’ against the idea of God as causa sui. The first appeals to a logical contradiction that such a claim would involve. That is, given that nothing can cause itself, God cannot cause himself because God would have to exist prior to and in some way distinct from himself (p. 56). Secondly, (and Marion thinks that this argument is more significant), in order to maintain his transcendence as efficient cause (in the redefined Thomistic sense), God must “withdraw Himself from causality.” In other words, God exercises causality toward beings but he himself is not part of this causality—a causality extended only to created beings whose existence and essence are distinct and composite. Created, composite beings receive their esse from God whose esse and essence are identical. Stated in a slightly different manner (and basically the argument of the De ente), given that all created beings are esse/essence composites, there must be a first whose esse is his essence and hence whose esse is both wholly other from created esse and the principle (Creator) of created esse, lest we have an infinite regress. In this schema, causality only applies to created beings and clearly does not apply to God [pp. 56-57].

Marion ends the article by suggesting that even though Aquinas privileges being (ipsum esse) instead of the Good (as in the Dionysian tradition), there is still a way in which this may be interpreted such that Aquinas is exonerated from the onto-theo-logy charge. At this point many Thomists have concluded that Marion seems to suggest that we read Aquinas as promoting a radical apophaticism—God is esse in name only. In other words, because God’s esse is so wholly other than created being, it can be revealed or known only as unknown. As Marion explains, “this pure esse reveals itself in principle as unknowable as the God it names. God known as unknown—this implies that his esse remains knowable only as unknowable, in sharp contrast to the esse that metaphysics has essentially set in a concept to make it as knowable as possible” (p. 63). A few lines later, Marion writes, “[Thomas] does not think God in a univocal way according to the horizon of being. Or simply: the esse that Thomas Aquinas recognizes for God does not open any metaphysical horizon, does not belong to any onto-theo-logy, and remains such a distant analogy with what we once conceived through the concept of being, that God proves not to take any part in it, or to belong to it, or even—as paradoxical as it may seem—to be. Esse refers to God only insofar as God may appear as without being—not only without being as onto-theology constitutes it in metaphysics but also well out of the horizon of being, even as it is as such (Heidegger)” (p. 64). Such an interpretation would suggest that given the radical transcendence and incomprehensibility of God’s esse, Thomas’ naming of God ipsum esse should be taken as a negative name without any conceptual content; hence, Thomas’ understanding of the divine names, as well as his doctrine of analogy should be understood in a radically apophatic way. However, others[1] have argued that on Marion’s read Thomas’ doctrine of analogy, as well as the divine names, function phenomenologically and indeed reveal something truly (yet not exhaustively) about God. In other words, following Denys, the divine names are a kind of “iconic speech” that unfolds and discloses God to us in the context of the liturgy. Here (idolatrous) predication of God in the sense of defining God is ruled out and in its place a new discourse springs forth—the discourse of praise as the proper response to Him who makes Himself known as Goodness, as Love, as Gift.

Notes
[1] See e.g., Morrow, Derek J. “Aquinas, Marion, Analogy, and Esse: A Phenomenology of the Divine Names?” International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 46, no. 1 (March 2006): 25-42.

Since I am scheduled to present on this topic for one of my classes at UD, I thought that I would revisit Marion’s take on St. Thomas as reflected in his article, “Thomas Aquinas and Onto-theo-logy.”[1]

***

In this article, Marion retracts a good deal of his former criticism of St. Thomas as found in God Without Being. Specifically, he withdraws his former claims that Aquinas’ naming God ipsum esse¬ makes an idol out of being, and that Aquinas is guilty of onto-theo-logy. So what is meant by onto-theo-logy? According to Heidegger onto-theo-logy characterizes the Western metaphysical tradition and is expressed as an attempt by philosophy to use conceptual systems in order to control and master Being (as well as God). Marion is sympathetic to Heidegger’s critique, yet he sees Heidegger making an idol out of Being. For the purposes of this article, Marion highlights three foundations at work in onto-theo-logy.

First, there is the Gründung, i.e., “the conceptual foundation of entity as such by being.” Whatever serves as the conceptual foundation—be it “God” or whatever—must be inscribed within the domain of metaphysics. That is, it itself must become thinkable as an entity (or according to a [univocal] concept of entity). To illustrate his point, Marion turns to one of the ways (there are other ways as well) in which Descartes exemplifies this Gründung. In Descartes, being is defined on the basis of thought. Consequently, being grounds entities conceptually, “to be is to think or to be thought” (esse est cogitari aut cogitare). All entities, including the “first” or “highest” rely on this foundation through being (p. 41), and all entities including the “highest” or “first” are thought according to a (univocal) concept of being. In sum, the first characteristic of onto-theo-logy amounts to inscribing God (as subject or object) within the domain of metaphysics and making God subject to a univocal concept of being.

Second, we have the Begründung. That is, “the foundation of entities by the supreme entity according to efficient causality.” Here we have a reciprocal grounding between the “first entity” and all other entities. That is, there is a reciprocal grounding between whatever serves as the “first entity” (e.g., Pure Act) and all other beings, and this grounding reciprocally perfects/establishes both the first entity and all other entities. E.g., according to Aristotle, beings “are” to the extent that they are in act. The “Unmoved mover” of Aristotle’s system is of course “Pure Act.” Here we find a kind of mutual “grounding” principle. That is, the Unmoved mover is not only the final cause toward which all beings move, but is established in a preeminent way by the (same) principle by which beings “are,” viz., by the principle of actuality (“to be is to be in act”). This principle founds the Unmoved mover as highest being, that is, as Pure Act, just as it establishes all other beings in so far as they are. Or returning to Marion’s Cartesian example, the ego as preeminent being thinks itself as res cogitans and therefore grounds its own existence. Likewise, it also “grounds in reason” the other entities “which are, only insofar as they are thought by it” (pp. 42-43). In sum, the “God” (or highest being) functions as the (efficient) causal foundation for all entities. This founding relationship is reciprocal, i.e., the “God” grounds beings and beings ground/establish God.

Third, there is the self-grounding of the ground or the causa sui. That is, “the foundation of the conceptual foundation by the efficient foundation” (p. 42). The preeminent being is defined by its function as causa sui. Here you have a supreme being that “grounds by grounding itself through itself” (p. 42). In other words, the conceptual foundation is grounded in the (efficient) causal foundation, which in the case of our Cartesian example is the ego or res cogitans. In sum, the “God” founds itself, just as it founds all other beings.

In the next post, we shall see how (according to Marion) Thomas escapes all three characteristics of onto-theo-logy.

Notes
[1] As found in in Mystics: Presence and Aporia eds Michael Kessler and Christian Sheppard, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 2003), pp. 38-74.