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The God Who May Be and the God Who Was
- Fordham University Press
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The God Who May Be and the God Who Was C R A I G N I C H O L S In the context of the reductive paradigm inspired by Husserl’s phenomenological method, Richard Kearney proposes a return (reducere) to the face-to-face encounter with existence through, after, and indeed even in the preceding reductive stages that have highlighted a return to essence (Husserl), being (Heidegger), and the pure gift (Marion et al.). This ‘‘fourth reduction’’ advocates a new vision of transcendence (qua eschaton) in ordinary experience—but not simply a generic form of transcendence that cares not which finite forms it assumes. Rather, it makes an ethical claim through the face (prosopon) of the other revealed in every encounter with finite being(s). Further, while necessitating a plurality of interpretations, guaranteeing hermeneutics as the alpha and omega of every attempt at knowledge, the ana-theism or ana-religion of Kearney’s wager affirms the incarnate reality of lived history wherein the interpreter is no longer able to suspend judgment concerning the truth, or meaningfulness, of phenomena . A complex pluralism results, one in which, as Kearney contends , ‘‘Jesus and the Buddha [can] converse without seeking to convert each other,’’ since an open space of compassionate dialogue is opened and ‘‘let be’’ to presence between competing traditions. However, the alternate historical contexts of such competing paradigms of transcendent compassion do in fact force the interpreter to choose between different, perhaps even irreconcilable, finite paths, since the finite forms of traditional experience must be reaffirmed 111 and reappropriated—for that is precisely where we are brought by the fourth reduction. Hence, we must ask whether all the epiphanies of the eschaton in quotidian experience have the same transcendent source (i.e., an absolute identity). But we must pose this question in the context of historical tradition, for it is this very tradition that has opened the possibility of asking the question at all. More to the point, we must understand Kearney’s prosopic fourth reduction, which potentially reveals an onto-eschatological God-beyond-God, to be made possible by the strange phenomena of the ‘‘closing’’ of the Western metaphysical tradition (Hegel) and the consequential ‘‘death’’ of the Judeo-Christian God as a result of this metaphysical closure (Nietzsche ). In this context I here explore what might be called the incarnate historicity of the phenomena of the ‘‘life,’’ ‘‘death,’’ and potential ‘‘rebirth’’ of the ‘‘Same’’ God of the Western ontotheological tradition . For the multivalent advent concepts, or in metaphysical parlance , parousia concepts, of the Western tradition are the very conditio sine qua non of a present return (reducere) to the God-who-may-be through the God-who-was. In his recent book The God Who May Be, Richard Kearney proffers a historical response to the Nietzschean madman’s proclamation concerning the ‘‘death’’ of the ‘‘last God.’’1 In so doing, Kearney situates himself within the deconstructive and reconstructive problematic of key postmodern thinkers, among whom Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida figure most prominently. Particularly sensitive to Levinas’s censure of ontology’s history of subordinating otherness, plurality, difference , and so on to sameness, unity, identity, or other names for Oneness , Kearney develops an innovative, eschatologically focused discourse defining the irreducible, ethically distant ‘‘persona’’ of human existence (i.e., that which lies beyond all being and knowing as the final arbiter of the good, in contrast to the sameness which unifies and identifies all ‘‘persons’’ with one another). What seems most compelling in Kearney’s discourse, and a significant contribution to postmodern discourse, is the potentially fruitful manner in which Kearney brings the cosmological nothing, lying beyond the totality of being, into the practical sphere of individual moral existence. Kearney reminds us that the no-place, or nothing, which in my own terms provides the ‘‘con-text’’ of being,2 is instantiated in each individual, each person, as an ethical frame, or guideline, and provides more (although, it should be noted, not less) than the conceptual parameters for understanding the fateful rise and fall of cultures and 112 Craig Nichols [3.239.59.193] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 06:30 GMT) societies.3 The appearance of persona through the face of the other, or the mandate from beyond being to be in certain ways as one projects oneself into the future, is, for Kearney, a transfiguring event experienced through the present encounter with other persons as well as through the encounter with otherness...