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Divinity and Alterity
- Fordham University Press
- Chapter
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Divinity and Alterity F E L I X Ó M U R C H A D H A Divinity and alterity have haunted phenomenology since its beginnings . At phenomenology’s margins Rudolf Otto described God as the ‘‘wholly other.’’1 This otherness of God and the divinity of otherness came into sharp relief in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology , where God’s transcendence is bracketed as much as the alterity of the other in the reduction of intentional consciousness.2 This is a move replicated in Heidegger’s ‘‘reduction,’’ to use the vocabulary of Marion which is employed in this volume by Kearney and Manoussakis , where the question of God depends on the analytic of Dasein.3 Arguably in both Husserl and the early Heidegger the otherness of appearance is reduced to the sameness of the subject of that appearance , and as a consequence the phenomenality of that which breaks through and disrupts that sameness cannot appear. If this is the case, then both these reductions fail in their aims: namely, to bring the phenomenality of appearance itself to appearance. The alterity of appearances understood as those of the divine brought the question of god or gods to the fore of phenomenological research. The route taken by Heidegger was that of a return to a putatively Greek, preChristian , experience of the divine in the sacredness of things. This route, however, has been subject to sustained criticism starting from Marcel in a line of phenomenologists who draw from Judeo-Christian accounts of the divine. Phenomenology has given a new twist to the question of Athens or Jerusalem. Richard Kearney’s recent work 155 responds to both of these issues—two sides of the one issue in fact— and does so by a reinvigoration of a hermeneutical approach that seeks to respond to the question of alterity/divinity in a manner that is open to different and conflicting accounts of the divine. His latest attempt to formulate his position is in terms of a fourth reduction, a guiding principle of which is, as Manoussakis puts it, ‘‘the chiastic union of the phenomenality of the phenomenon with the phenomenon itself.’’4 It shares with the preceding reductions the motif of a return to what is always already there. For Kearney what is already there is the eschaton, that is, the reserve of possibility in the simplest of things. Although he does not use the Husserlian term ‘‘bracketing ,’’ I take it that what is bracketed is the everyday indifference to things. As already with Husserl, this amounts to a change in attitude (as Manoussakis puts it).5 This fourth reduction seeks a middle road between a Husserlian phenomenology of the same and a Levinasian phenomenology of the Other. It seeks this through an appeal to a hermeneutic of the eschaton , one which is guided by the practical interest in discernment. In this way the fourth reduction draws on themes already to be found in Kearney’s Strangers, Gods, and Monsters. In this article I will deal with the latter work before returning again at the conclusion to the question of the fourth reduction. ‘‘This volume,’’ Kearney says of Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, ‘‘is an attempt to reinvestigate practices of defining ourselves in terms of otherness.’’6 The pivotal element here is ourselves: Kearney’s goal is to understand ourselves in relation to otherness. More specifically, his concern is how in practice we can and how we should deal with otherness both in ourselves and in the others who confront us. The relation between these is of course a complex one: the otherness in ourselves can often be projected onto others, in the most extreme case as scapegoating. He talks in this context of Girard’s famous thesis of the scapegoat. He is broadly supportive of Girard’s analysis, but finds his privileging of Christianity in this respect problematic. Kearney’s task is to understand how we can deal with the alien within and outside of ourselves without practicing scapegoating. Central to this is the practice of discernment, of understanding the alien; more specifically, of discerning between positive and negative aliens. Such a practice of discernment lies at the heart of Kearney’s critical hermeneutics. Hand in hand with this goes a strategy of finding the middle road. He wishes to avoid either a subordination of the same to the other or of the other to the same (SGM, 77). Instead, 156 Felix Ó Murchadha [44.220.245.254] Project MUSE (2024...