Givenness and God: Questions of Jean-Luc Marion

Chapter 13: Giving More

13 Giving More Jean-Luc Marion and Richard Kearney in Dialogue This chapter is an edited transcript of a seminar held at the Mater Dei Institute, Dublin, January 2003. RICHARD KEARNEY: This is a pretty open forum, there’s nothing pre-prepared. I’m going to start by inviting Jean-Luc Marion to begin the seminar, and then we’ll open it to the floor. JEAN-LUC MARION: I take the opportunity of this seminar to answer a comment made by Richard Kearney which is very fruitful, and which is a very good example not only that we agree on most of the issues but also how far the concept of the saturated phenomenon can be applied. If we consider, as Richard did, Exodus 3:14, it’s very fascinating, because there are three main possible interpretations. The first interpretation is the kataphatic: we take ‘‘I am who I am’’ as ‘‘I am, and I am an ousia, and more than that I am Being itself,’’ and so on. Then you have the negative one (which is justified as well), the apophasis, saying, ‘‘I am who I am, and you will never know who I am’’—which is a very old and traditional interpretation, too. And there is a third one, which is beyond affirmation and negation , which is the hyperbolical, where the two previous are both surpassed and assumed, which is ‘‘I am the one who shall be. Forever.’’ Shall be what? He who can say ‘‘Here I am,’’ because ‘‘Here I am’’ is the name under which the encounter between God and man is made, 243 throughout all revelation. So ‘‘I will be the one always able to answer or to call.’’ And so, with the same words, the same intuition, to some extent, we have three possible significations, and we need at least those three. This is ‘‘mystical theology’’; this is also a saturated phenomenon ; this is also the possibility of an endless hermeneutic. This is a very good example, Exodus 3:14; the same thing may be repeated for other logia. So I think we deeply agree on that issue now. RK: On that moment of consensus, let’s open the discussion. SANTIAGO SIA (Loyola University, Marymount, Los Angeles, California ): This question, to both of you, is sparked off by two comments in Richard Kearney’s paper. One is your suggestion of conceiving God as a God who may be, and then your reference to Eckhart, that we don’t really have to abandon metaphysics. You have said that what Professor Marion is doing is phenomenology, and what you’re doing is hermeneutics. What I’d like to suggest is that what we need, the third step, is the conceptualization of that suggestion, and that is that there is really a need to provide a new metaphysical vision (not ‘‘old’’ metaphysics). The reason is that it is important to be able to address many of the questions that arise when we try to conceive God in a systematic, in a consistent, and in an adequate way. The reason behind this observation is that that philosophical development , the concept of a God who may be, has already been done by people like Whitehead and Hartshorne, and I was wondering how much dialogue there has been between phenomenologists, hermeneutics , and process philosophers. . . . JLM: Not very easy. I understand well the first two steps, but I question the legitimacy of the third one. Why do you call it metaphysics ? Metaphysics is not a neutral word. It has a history—a very complicated and very long and very questionable history. And I think that even if, indeed, we need a more systematic frame to describe the new situation in which we hope to be now, I doubt that we should use the name of ‘‘metaphysics’’ again—because ‘‘metaphysics ’’ is directly connected to the question of Being, to the question of Being according to the privilege of the ousia, and so on. So, even if you refer to process theology, and even if, in process theology, there is some use of metaphysics, perhaps it’s quite a metaphorical use: it’s quite different from the use of metaphysics by Armstrong and also the ‘‘new’’ analytical philosophers, because in that case they are right to use the word ‘‘metaphysics’’ because they are going back 244 Givenness and God to the most strict acceptance of a set of...