Ontotheological Turnings?: The Decentering of the Modern Subject in Recent French Phenomenology

Introduction

xiv Abbreviations ED Étant Donné: Essai d’une phenomenologie de la donation (Paris: PUF, 1998) IE In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), trans. R. Horner and V. Berraud DS De surcroît: Essai sur les phénomènes saturés (Paris: PUF, 2001) GWB God without Being: Hors-Texte (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), trans. T. A. Carlson DsE Dieu sans l’être (Paris: PUF, 2002) RG Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998), trans. T. A. Carlson RD Réduction et donation: Recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie (Paris: PUF, 1989) EP The Erotic Phenomenon (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007), trans. S. E. Lewis DMP On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-Theology in Cartesian Thought (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1999), trans. J. L. Kosky ID The Idol and Distance: Five Studies (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), trans. T. A. Carlson IeD L’idole et la distance: Cinq études (Paris: Grasset, 1991) CV The Crossing of the Visible (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), trans. J. K. A. Smith CdV La croisée du visible (Paris: Ed. De la Différence, 1991) VR The Visible and the Revealed (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), trans. C. Gschwandtner VeR Le visible et le révélé (Paris: CERF, 2005) Lacoste EA Experience and the Absolute: Disputed Questions on the Humanity of Man (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), trans. M. Raftery-Skehan xv Abbreviations EeA Expérience et absolu: Questions disputées sur l’humanité de l’homme (Paris: PUF, 1994) NT Note sur le temps: Essai sur les raisons de la mémoire et de l’espérance (Paris: PUF, 1990) MO Le monde et l’absence de l’œuvre et autres études (Paris: PUF, 2000) PP Présence et Parousie (Genève: Ad Solem, 2006) Carmel “De la phénoménologie de l’Esprit à la montée du Carmel,” Revue Thomiste 89 (1989), pp. 5–39, 569–98 BHP “Batîr, habiter, prier,” in Revue Thomiste 87 (1987), pp. 357–90, 547–78 All references will be to the English editions, although translations have occasionally been modified. Unless otherwise noted, all italics are mine. For the works in French of these authors of which no translation is available, I have provided my own. Introduction This book is launched from one simple thesis that it then, somewhat tirelessly, explores: that which Marion, Lacoste, and Levinas present as a ‘decentering of the subject’ is, for reasons that I hope will become obvious, in fact, no such decentering, for their accounts of the decentering of the subject seems simply to reverse the subject-object dichotomy. If the subject may not see any object, then the best thing to do is to look for one or the other instance that takes on the contours of a subject—the candidates are ‘God,’ ‘givenness,’ and ‘the Other’—that turns us, the human being, into an object. We will see, then, that for Lacoste the I “becomes the object of God’s intention,” that for Marion the I “becomes the object and objective of givenness,” and that the I, for Levinas, stands “without secrets”—somewhat like an object indeed—before this or that other. Some readers might be surprised by the decidedly nonchronological way of presenting the authors in this work. Such a chronology would have been easy: Levinas influenced Marion, Marion influenced Lacoste, and so on. There would have been, if you like, a story-line. But, in fact, this nonchronological way of presenting Lacoste, Marion, and Levinas suits the purposes of this book very well: the problem toward which it tries to point might be present in these thinkers precisely because it is, in a certain way, ‘ahistorical’ in the sense that it concerns everyone at all times and all places. For, if ontotheology will turn out to be inevitable, the eternal recurrence of the subject, and of the subject-object distinction, comes as no surprise. In effect, what I will advance, with Levinas and Heidegger, is that ontotheology, and thus the subject-object distinction, is part and parcel of our ontological make-up, and therefore its recurrence cannot be avoided. The understanding of ontotheology and metaphysics here is fueled by a reading of Heidegger, and of course by Marion’s, Lacoste’s...