Transcendence and Beyond: A Postmodern Inquiry available in Paperback
Transcendence and Beyond: A Postmodern Inquiry
- ISBN-10:
- 0253219035
- ISBN-13:
- 9780253219039
- Pub. Date:
- 07/16/2007
- Publisher:
- Indiana University Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0253219035
- ISBN-13:
- 9780253219039
- Pub. Date:
- 07/16/2007
- Publisher:
- Indiana University Press
Transcendence and Beyond: A Postmodern Inquiry
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253219039 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/16/2007 |
| Series: | Philosophy of Religion |
| Pages: | 264 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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Transcendence and Beyond
A Postmodern Inquiry
By John D. Caputo, Michael J. Scanlon
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2007 Indiana University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-34874-6
CHAPTER 1
The Impossible for Man — God
Jean-Luc Marion
1. What Transcendence Does Not Transcend
Transcendence — the concept will not take us very far, nor truly "beyond." Not, at least, if we take it in the two ways admitted by philosophy.
First, according to phenomenology, transcendence is defined with respect to consciousness, precisely as what surpasses the immanence of consciousness to itself. In particular, we speak of transcendence with regard to what intentional consciousness targets, when consciousness makes itself the "consciousness of something," namely of something other than itself — "that universal ground-property of consciousness, which is to be the consciousness of something, to carry within as cogitatio its own cogitatum." What does consciousness reach by aiming for it? It reaches of course a meaning, which appears in the end as a phenomenon in its own right when consciousness is adequately filled by intuition. In this case, intentional consciousness transcends itself to grasp the phenomenon of a thing, since indeed "the thing names itself as simply transcendent." The thing transcends consciousness in that it stands outside of consciousness, even though it never stands without it. Far as transcendence of this kind may lead, consciousness never overcomes itself, on this model, except for what remains, more often than not, an object. Taken in this first way (Husserl), transcendence never goes beyond the entitative object. Transcendence therefore remains immanent to the horizon of being. And if we radicalize this first level of transcendence by directing it, not only to the entitative object, but, by reducing being in its totality, to Being itself (Heidegger), then by definition transcendence will never reach beyond Being. On the contrary, erected henceforth as the "transcendent pure and simple," Being will by right be the term of every intentional aiming and every advance of every possible transcendence.
The transcendence of Being does not disclose transcendence, but instead closes and limits it. The paradox involved does not single out phenomenology. Phenomenology, in all likelihood, may have inherited it from the very first explicit formulations of the concept of metaphysica, such as those found, for example, in Duns Scotus. Scotus affirms that the first division of being divides being into finite and infinite, thereby ruling on the distinction between God and creature. It follows immediately from this ruling that whatever complies with "enti ut indifferens ad finitum et infinitum" — which is to say ens — transcends the difference and is therefore "transcendens et est extra omne genus." Transcendentals, of course (as opposed to predication by categories), do not speak of God as belonging to a genus, which God transcends, yet all of them, starting with the chief among them, namely being (or rather entity, ens), transcend the difference between finite and infinite: "sunt talia quae conveniunt enti ut est indifferens ad finitum et infinitum." Consequently, the transcendence of transcendentals — much as these transcendentals determine God as the infinite being, and therefore determine God in his transcendence — still boils down to being and locks itself inside being: "de ratione transcendentis est non habere praedicatum supraveniens, nisi ens." In other words, not only does being as a transcendental still contain God's transcendence within its own boundaries, it is actually called upon to define it — in both senses of the term: It establishes God's transcendence, but at the price of giving it definition. One might, of course, wish to radicalize divine transcendence by increasing its density to the point of "ipsum esse" (following St. Thomas) instead of deploying it within the confines of the concept of entity (following Duns Scotus, and later Suárez). One might — and, I suppose, one should. Such a move, however, does not change the fundamental situation with regard to transcendence, since ipsum esse cannot itself be conceived, at least from our standpoint (quoadnos), except as the real composition of essence and esse. This composition defines all that is created positively and, by contrast, defines the divine exception — God, or what is in such a way that in him alone the essence coincides with the act of being — to the point that esse absorbs essence and, so to speak, dispenses God of the need to have an essence at all: "Deus igitur non habet essentiam, quae non sit suum esse." The fact that God's transcendence no longer stakes itself within a concept of entity (which always turns out to be univocal since it is the first transcendental, if not a supertranscendentalis), does not suffice to set it free, since it remains coiled within the chasm of essence and esse and therefore definitively within the horizon of being.
Thus the two chief meanings of transcendence in philosophy, different as they are, share a common feature: Neither transcends the horizon of entity, much less the horizon of being. Transcendence, in philosophy, even and especially the transcendence that we would like to assign to God as his proper mark, is defined as what does not rise beyond being — into which it runs, instead, head on, as the ultimate transcendental.
2. A Question Outside of Being
This ultimate transcendence, however, must be transcended if God is whom we have in mind, supposing at least that we have not buried the question beforehand in onto-theology, but are prepared to let it exercise its privilege — namely, its freedom with regard to being.
Of course, we may tailor the question of God to fit common usage and frame it on the model of questions concerning the things of the world — according to their being. We typically feel that we do justice to what we call "God" when we reduce the question of God to an inquiry into God's existence. Hence the widespread formula: "I believe in God if he exists; but if he does not exist, I reserve the right not to believe in him." Yet it should be immediately apparent that transposing this particular question to the realm of existence, innocent and rational as the move may seem, fails to hold up to analysis. The reasons are many. First, our mode of reasoning may turn out, in the privacy of our decisions, to be the inverse of what it presents itself to be, so that the true form of our argument actually is: "Since I don't believe in God anyway, I will conduct myself as though he did not exist." Or, conversely: "Since I have decided to believe in God regardless, I will conduct myself as though he existed." Adhering to one or the other position no longer results from the reasons invoked but precedes them and makes instrumental use of them: When it comes to God, the relationship between belief and existence is likely to invert itself. It follows from this that being, insofar as it claims the title of horizon or transcendental, offers no privileged access to the question of God and provides no grounds for a decision procedure. Rather it disconnects God and being absolutely. Hence a new alternative emerges, paradoxical perhaps, but perfectly rational. In this particular case, it might well be that God (to my knowledge) exists without my believing in him or, conversely, that God (to my knowledge) does not exist, without this preventing me from believing in him. There is nothing absurd about this way of framing the problem: For indeed, if God by definition surpasses the regime of common experience and the conditions it sets on what is possible in a worldly sense (and God would not, otherwise, deserve the title "God" since he would be a worldly phenomenon among others), in what way would his existence (which is to say his being inscribed among phenomena existing in the world) serve as the criterion for my belief or rejection? Moreover, identifying the question of God with my belief is by no means self-evident. To do so is characteristic of a very peculiar theoretical stance, which assumes that the question of God requires that a preliminary question first be answered regarding his existence, and therefore that a proof of his existence be supplied. The underlying assumption is nothing less than the perfect hegemony, without exception, of the horizon of being, such as metaphysics understands it, based on the principle (which does not take over before Suárez) that "absolute Deus cadit sub objectum hujus scientiae [metaphysica] ... quia haec scientia est perfectissima sapientia naturalis; ergo considerat de rebus et causis primis et universalissimis, et de primis principiis generalissimis,quae Deum ipsum comprehendunt." We need only articulate this principle to see the opposite hypothesis spring forth: Natural science can only include natural entities among its general causes and universal principles, taken according to their conditions of intelligibility to finite intellects. Far from metaphysics being able, however transcendentalis (or rather precisely because metaphysics is transcendental according to transcendental ens), to define conditions of intelligibility and possibility for "God" by means of a glaringly unquestioned univocity, God can only be instaurated as God on the basis of his pre-ontological condition and pre-transcendental freedom. As long as the "Differenz zwischen Sein und Seiendem erscheint dann [...] als die Transzendenz, d. h. als das Meta-Physische," transcendence remains metaphysical, even when it overcomes metaphysics. Transcendence that is taken according to these meanings does not open up transcendence but instead slams it shut. Before the world comes into being, and thus before being unfolds its horizon, God poses the question of God — a question that no one is free to avoid since God defines himself, prior to any proof of existence, as "the one whom everyone knows, by name." It follows that the end of metaphysics and even the repetition of Seinsfrage, far from ruling out or relativizing the question of God, bring instead and by means of contrast its irreducible character to light: Do we have access to a transcendence without condition or measure?
But then the difficulty deepens and mutates. If, on the one hand, the horizon of being does not allow us to stage what is properly at stake in the knowledge we have of God's name; if, on the other hand, nothing appears within this horizon that is not a certificate-bearing entity: Must we not conclude that there is no possible phenomenalization of God and, moreover, that this very impossibility defines God? Are we not, in the era of nihilism, led by our inner fidelity and devotion to thought to admit God in philosophy strictly as what is empirically impossible and lies outside phenomenalization as a matter of principle?
3. The Impossible Phenomenon
We must ask, first: What do possible and impossible mean here? The terms refer to experience, namely to what experience allows and excludes — therefore to what may or may not appear and let itself be seen, the phenomenon. How, in turn, is a phenomenon defined? It seems reasonable here to privilege the answers, for the most part convergent, that Kant and Husserl have given us, since these two thinkers have almost single-handedly established the only positive concept that we have of the phenomenon. A phenomenon is defined through the adequacy of an intuition (which gives and fulfills) to a concept or meaning (which is empty and to be filled and validated). Based on this premiss, a thing can appear to me in two ways: Either I determine what I have received in intuition by identifying it with some concept that I impose on it, so that it is no longer an unintelligible event of consciousness (or a case of intuition) but precisely such and such an object or describable entity; or the concept that I might have actively formed (through spontaneous understanding or through conscious intentionality) on my own initiative ends up finding empirical validation in some intuition, which comes subsequently to fill it and to qualify it as such-and-such an object or entity. It matters little which one of the two serves as the starting point for achieving adequacy, since in all cases the phenomenon only appears by internally conjugating intuition and concept.
What about God? It seems immediately clear that I have neither an intuition nor a concept at my disposal in this case. I have no intuition at my disposal, at least if by intuition I mean what is susceptible to be experienced within the parameters of space and time. For by "God" I mean above all and by definition the Eternal — or at least what no more begins to endure than it finishes enduring, since it never begins at all. I mean, also as a matter of definition, what is nonspatial — what is located nowhere, occupies no extension, admits of no limit (what has its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere), escapes all measure (the immense, the incommensurable), and therefore is not divisible or susceptible of being multiplied. This twofold impossibility of entering intuition rests neither on any doctrinal preference nor on any arbitrary negativity, but results from the unavoidable requirements of the simple possibility of something like God. The most speculative theology agrees with the most unilateral atheism to postulate that, in God's case, all formal conditions of intuition must be transgressed: If intuition implies space and time, then there can never be any intuition of God because of the even more radical requirement that there must not be any intuition, if God is ever to be considered.
Atheism is not alone in denying even the slightest intuition in God's case, since Revelation also insists that "No one has seen God" (John 1:18). A distinctive mark of God is thus the impossibility of receiving an intuition of him. But there is more (or maybe less). If peradventure I suppose myself to have received an intuition exceptional enough to be assigned to something like God, I would have to have at my disposal a concept that allows me to identify this intuition or, what amounts to the same, a concept that this intuition would validate and which in return would confer on it a form and meaning. But I cannot — again by definition — legitimately assign any concept to God, since every concept, by implying delimitation and comprehension, would contradict God's sole possible definition, namely that God transcends all delimitation and therefore all definitions supplied by my finite mind. Incomprehensibility, which in every other case attests either to the weakness of my knowledge or to the insufficiency of what is to be known, ranks, here and here only, as an epistemic requirement imposed by that which must be thought — the infinite, the unconditioned, and therefore the inconceivable. "Ipsa incomprehensibilitas in ratione infiniti continetur."
While none of the concepts that I use to designate God have the power, by definition, to reach God, all of them nonetheless remain to some extent relevant, insofar as they can be turned from illegitimate affirmations into legitimate negations. Indeed if my eventual concepts designating God say nothing about God, they say something about me insofar as I am confronted by the incomprehensible: They say what it is that I am able to consider, at least at a given moment, as an acceptable representation of God; they articulate, therefore, the conception that I make for myself of the divine — a conception that imposes itself on me as the best since it defines precisely what is maximal or optimal for me. In short, the concepts that I assign to God, like so many invisible mirrors, send me back the image that I make up for myself of divine perfection, which are thus images of myself. My concepts of God turn out in the end to be idols — idols of myself.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Transcendence and Beyond by John D. Caputo, Michael J. Scanlon. Copyright © 2007 Indiana University Press. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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Table of Contents
ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Do We Need to Transcend Transcendence? John D. Caputo and Michael J. ScanlonPart 1. Keynotes of Transcendence1. The Impossible for Man—GodJean-Luc Marion2. Nihilism as Postmodern ChristianityGianni VattimoPart 2. Re-imagining Traditional Transcendence3. Re-imagining GodRichard Kearney4. Trinity and TranscendenceMichael J. Scanlon5. Transcendent Immanence and Evolutionary CreationJames P. Mackey6. G*d—The Many-Named: Without Place and Proper NameElisabeth Schüssler FiorenzaPart 3. Relocating Transcendence on the Plane of Immanence7. Rumors of Transcendence: The Movement, State, and Sex of "Beyond"Catherine Keller8. Intimations of Transcendence: Praise and CompassionSallie McFague9. Topologies of TranscendenceDavid Wood10. Temporal Transcendence: The Very Idea of à venir in DerridaJohn D. Caputo11. Transcendence and TransversalityCalvin O. SchragTranscendence and Beyond: A Concluding RoundtableModerated by John D. CaputoList of ContributorsIndexWhat People are Saying About This
"This is an important contribution to the contemporary discussion of transcendence in theologyraising questions for our continued consideration and providing thoughtful answers to those questions."
This is an important contribution to the contemporary discussion of transcendence in theology, raising questions for our continued consideration and providing thoughtful answers to those questions.
"This is an important contribution to the contemporary discussion of transcendence in theologyraising questions for our continued consideration and providing thoughtful answers to those questions."