Icon(oclast)ic Discourse: Marion's Logic of the Infinite

Introduction

A Catholic postmodern phenomenologist, who gives perhaps his most infamous work the title God Without Being, inevitably invites controversy. Jean‐Luc Marion, however, is fortuitously likeable by ingeniously rendering logic to the service of doxology and disarming with subtlety where one anticipated rivalry. As part of the task of engaging this unavoidable voice on the landscape of contemporary theology, this essay will delineate the formal logic of the infinite as an axiomatic and centrally guiding theme that informs the whole of Marion's corpus. There is a natural anxiety when attempting to “reduce” anyone's work to a single interpretive take, not to mention an individual as intricate and subtle as Marion. However, this paradoxically fitting vantage is the “theme” that disavows thematization. Following a treatment of the infinite, seeking to demonstrate the way in which its unique rationality permeates a variety of important aspects of Marion's thought, this essay will pose a series of questions to suggest that the actualistic theology of Thomas Aquinas explicated through the analogia entis may more coherently and persuasively encompass the formal logic of the infinite.

The Reason of the Icon

One might consent to the investigation of that peculiar and, if thoroughly considered, intimidating notion of the infinite so long as it is done by the philosophers, those trained professionals who have worked up the mental endurance for such enterprises. Marion on the contrary not only invites us to so regard the infinite, but he has insisted that we have never truly been without it. It is there, lingering even in the sciences, whether as a formality in theoretical mathematics, or as the boundlessness of physics in its extraterrestrial and subatomic variants, or the imperialistic vantage on endless industrial possibilities.¹ It is the infinite itself that provides the sciences with their constituting characteristic, namely an openness to unending subject matter in the free progress of unassignable boundaries.² The flourishing of the sciences is based upon the rational apprehension of the infinite's unsurmountable nature, which rightly orients “comprehended” realities.³

If the infinite is not merely an entity inaccessible and contained at some remove but rather mysteriously “positive” as “incomprehensibility” than the discourse of knowing will submit the attempt to consume through labelling and render “unknowability” as a configuring notion for epistemology.⁴ Citing Descartes, as one among the likes of Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas, Marion says the infinite is not simply the ever present possibility of more, rather infinite substance contains “more reality” than finite substance and “the perception of the Infinite is to be found in some manner within me before that of the finite, namely [the perception] of God [before that] of myself.”⁵ This is no obstacle, says Marion; in fact it is “necessary” to admit as an a priori admission that the finite cannot comprehend by “containment,” and thus it is the case that one encounters the sensation of an elusive yet hospitable beyond.⁶ In so far as human knowing fails to iterate this “paradox” it will fail to “reference” appropriately.

The impasse between inaccessible transcendence and intelligible representation is mediated by the icon. With a similar resilience to the infinite, the icon is not seen, but appears (or “seems like”).⁷ The idol results from the gaze that aims at it. The icon portrays the invisible's procession “up into” the visible.⁸ As the infinite gives the finite, so too does the invisible “bestow” (décernant) the visible as its own deduction, and therefore what the icon omits is not due to the inability of the aim but the fitting absence of the God whose presence is as such, thus the invisibility of the unenvisigeable.⁹

Strictly speaking, the icon “shows” nothing, but teaches a distinctive gaze that surpasses itself by refusing to freeze on the representation, thus never settling but rebounding back upon the visible in an “infinite gaze.”¹⁰ The icon, says Marion, exceeds the metaphysical investment of divine ousia for the hypostasis of the one inscribed therein (hupostasis or persona), and this presence is circumscribed by that which characterizes the icon, namely the aim of an intention (stokhasma).¹¹ Though this resembles the precise making of an idol, which is the product of a gaze, it nevertheless remains a “nearly perfect inversion;” for what defines an icon is the gaze which belongs to it–the “face” that meets our aim, thereby correctly in‐forming the invisible in the visible.¹² Marion then provides a nuanced rendering of 2 Corinthians 3:18, “We all, with face unveiled and revealed [anakekalummenō prosōpō], serving as optical mirror to reflect [katoptrizomenoi] the glory of the Lord, we are transformed in and according to his icon [eikona], passing from glory to glory, according to the spirit of the Lord.”¹³ This is to return to an introductory statement that Saint Paul's reference to Christ as the “icon of the invisible God” [eikōn tou theou tou aoratou] (Col 1:15) needs be the generalized hypostatic norm for every icon, every “face.”¹⁴ In this way, epistemology is rent by an icon(oclast)ic discourse that sees by being beheld, articulates by speechlessness, and “knows” incomprehensibly.¹⁵

Saturated De‐nomination: Between Truth and Falsity

Marion's progenitors descend from the tradition of “negative (or mystical) theology;” however, not even a tradition as unpresuming as this escapes contemporary efforts of deconstruction. Marion cites Derrida as one who argues in opposition to negative theology, contending that it is fundamentally incapable of thinking God outside the “metaphysics of presence;” for in as much as the negation heralds the ineffable, it perpetually gives itself to the concealed object of intention–namely the affirmation of kataphatic predication–which makes the negation intelligible as a denial.¹⁶ For Derrida, as long as the denial of something remains the conditions of theological apophasis, it will always remain a “quasi‐affirmation” (especially concerning “existence”).¹⁷

Marion appropriates from Denys a third way between affirmation and negation, for in the Divine Names one sees with indisputable clarity that negation prevails over affirmation but only then submits to that which overcomes both: “let us not believe that the affirmations are the contrary of the negations, since [the cause] which is above every negation as well as every position . . . is still more above all privation.”¹⁸ Moreover, Marion turns to Nicholas of Cusa to establish the beginning of a third way; as one who explicitly uses the term theologia negativa, Nicholas says “According to negative theology, infinity is all we discover in God,” which for Marion indicates that the “learned ignorance” of this third way provides the illumination of incomprehensibility “as such” (eminence).¹⁹ Therefore if thesis and denial represent binary parallels to truth and falsity, then the “way” that exceeds a simple reduction to either affirmation or negation transcends the true and the false; if this is the case, negative theology makes no attempt to “say,” and by its not saying it escapes the condemnation of covert kataphatism.²⁰

More than simply reconstruct the logic of the theological tradition, Marion insists upon preparing the phenomenological “possibility,” conceiving the formal potential of “that with which the third way of mystical theology deals” and nothing more.²¹ Admitting with Husserl the duality of appearing and what appears (l'apparaître et apparaissant) in intention and intuition (noesis/noema, signification/fulfillment), Marion offers three possible variations of theological predication–one more than Husserl himself in Kantian tradition.²² The first regards the evidence of truth which radiates in kataphatic light as the representation of intention that finds partial fulfillment in the intuition; this is the establishment of the concept as the justification of an intuition. The second considers the object of intention to be inaccessible which thereby creates an impoverished intuition that can subsequently only negate in apophatic denial of the concept. There is, however, an alternative says Marion to these two avenues. The third variation refuses to conceptualize not because of an impoverished intuition, which proceeds atheistically in the lack of a pure void, but on account of the sheer excess of intuition that can never be predicted or contained by the signification.²³ This intuitive abundance “overcomes, submerges, exceeds–in short, saturates–the measure of each and every concept.”²⁴ God therefore remains incomprehensible, not imperceptible. The “infinite proliferation of names” recognizes all names as remaining only as flags for the insufficiency of the concepts they employ, and thus the concept in general.²⁵

A negation is incapable of making a theology, though only equally insufficient as positivism, therefore the name we use to refer to God cannot ever be the “right” or fitting name; and given this fact, the name we must use is the one which “de‐nominates” (Dé‐nommer) this God.²⁶ This has the twofold function of saying and undoing the saying, relinquishing the nominative task of naming while overcoming the pressure to say some‐thing about some‐thing in defiance of predication on the whole.²⁷ It is the naming we are given to in the face of the infinite, that imposing though removed horizon that demands while frustrating our naming efforts. It is the logic we ought to embrace because it is of the beyond that has always embraced us. Saturated phenomenality has provided the third way of mystic theology, all of which accords with the formal logic of the infinite, that paradoxical rendering that situates all speech appropriately.

Given Language

For Marion the question persists, what “phenomenal face” of God remains for the philosophers in the wake of Heidegger's condemnation of the causa sui of metaphysics and the reductive ousting of God from true phenomenological assessment in Husserl.²⁸ More specifically, how does God correspond to the “being‐given” as the relief of being without demanding only again that one considers a new construction of the “being‐giver” (étant‐donateur)?²⁹ In response to these foreseeable concerns, Marion addresses two crucial considerations that if ignored will permit “givenness” to be suspect. The first of which demands upon the status of being (ground) which must necessarily accompany any “giver” so long as the being‐given is received as such, invariably bearing the imprint of efficient causality; however, perhaps the complexity of infinite givenness so utterly transcends the expectations of efficiency that it should be thought to surpass causality entirely.³⁰ One's inability to imagine even the possibility of such a thing betrays their complete dependence upon metaphysical thinking, certainly says Marion more than unearthing the dormant metaphysics of this phenomenology. The second consideration pertains further to the identity of the giver. It is not the case, he insists, that the being‐given communicates a static location of giving; rather, the pervasive phenomenality of all things parallels God as the being‐given “par excellence.”³¹ This complete given is not limited to a specific “side” as presented to an intending gaze, it is rather without reserve and therefore without any “outline.”³² It is all the more possible then that this phenomenon go unnoticed as the pure invisible “abandon” of givenness par excellence, the gaze which seeks objects will only too easily miss the unavailable exposed without restrain and thus without delimitation.³³

This is certainly one of Marion's contributions to the question of “God,” posing a philosophical approach which in his estimation is devoid of metaphysics (or “without being”) that is as theologically traditional as it is intuitively receivable; regardless of the where the verdict may lay on such a depiction, Marion has proposed the “relief” of theology in the celebrated “bracketing” of objectification for a genuine theo‐logy of an unpresuming iconic release.³⁴

In this way, a new “function” of language is introduced, which is itself already the admission that language is reduced to function. The demand of de‐nomination instills the “strictly pragmatic function of language” that meets the “unattainable yet inescapable interlocutor beyond every name.”³⁵ The Good (aitiata) beyond being is the direction to which language acts by transporting the self through a passage to the infinite.³⁶ In other words, language is doxological, and therefore truly theological, for what it does as opposed to what it says. Prayer and praise then aim “indirectly” at the Good, setting out with all impropriety for sustained attention towards such a One.³⁷ This, Marion says, is the overcoming of the metaphysical sense of language as predicative and nominative, an overcoming borne of the given par excellence without remainder, “otherwise than being:” quoting Levinas, “the essence of discourse is prayer.”³⁸

Actualized Phenomena?

There can hardly be anyone who has to some degree contemplated the question of God that would not be in awe of Marion's acuity. What one strains to say, Marion expresses with a complexity that leaves the impression of simplicity–analyzing the mystery so as to give the mystery back to itself in fuller form. It is with a degree of trepidation that I pose a series of questions that inquire whether iconic logic of the infinite is not better suited for that suspicious brand of actualization maintained by Thomas Aquinas that retains a theological discourse of esse.

Marion seeks to overcome absolute “comprehension” for a hierarchy of rationality that sees comprehension and incomprehension working together for a logic of excess. The Infinite, says Marion is “an exceptional thought, in which this concept, and only this concept, must remain incomprehensible in order to remain rational.”³⁹ In an effort to guard the Infinite, Marion contests that it is not merely some‐thing that is incomprehensible, but is itself incomprehensibility. However, by examining what is considered comprehensible, by virtue of being finite, Marion reveals that from which he is protecting the Infinite. He says, “Comprehension suggests adequate knowledge as long as one is dealing with things of the world.”⁴⁰ The two domains, the finite and the Infinite, are utterly contrasted, while being mutually informative for one another. If we contend with the manner in which Marion regards the comprehensible nature of finite reality, it will subsequently call into question the means of protecting theology from idolatry.

The everyday warrants further investigation. The angst of phenomenological “describing” belongs both to the Infinite and the finite. That an “object” is material is no opportunity for obscuring the fact that the coincidence of that thing's givenness for two individuals simultaneously makes possible any speech about that object. “Things” are elusive, any collaborative or pedagogical enterprise reveals this. One experiences the failure of concepts in the finite world immediately when two people cannot see eye‐to‐eye as it were. Being challenged on fundamental concepts always demonstrates how much we take for granted, and how much we depend on the mysterious givenness of all things. Thus, in some ways, objects bear the characteristics of the infinite, as Marion says knowledge of the ineffable depends upon a mutual sensation: the un‐representable in “the atonal tonality of bedazzlement.”⁴¹ If finite reality is likewise suspended in its own incomprehension, and retains within that tension intelligible “features,” then it could constitute an instance of mystical predication that could go back upon the infinite–justifying in small measure the legitimacy of doing so while consenting to the ever present limitation of language in the face of what exceeds. This is to insist that comprehension was never a requirement for language which has always dealt with the excessive.

If the inherent inability and failure of language to predicate absolutely is proper to both the Infinite and the finite, then there is at the outset a “likeness” between the two in discourse. The epistemological approach of mystical theology, predicated upon the given par excellence without being, seems to be analogous to the way one perceives finite things. If this is the case, actualized being does not stand opposed to excess, saturation, and transcendence. Aquinas’ analogy of being may, therefore, offer a compelling resolution. First, the recognition that finite beings exist as an image of the Infinite opens the possibility that divine being could grant all the mystical aspects of Marion's thought. Second, the absolute, equivocal difference between Marion's Infinite and finite does not persuasively account for the real analogical similarity and difference between the two. The desire to retain esse theologically is not an attempt to configure God into an idol, but teach the whole of reality its supernatural “nature” and regard being itself as iconic.

By appropriating Thomas according to the Aristotelian‐Neoplatonic synthesis, one is given different “speculative” avenues; as case study, I will consider the nature of divine simplicity.⁴² For Thomas, properly “incomprehensible” concepts such as simplicity are not delineated by virtue of their absolute exhaustive immediacy to the mind; in fact, concepts like simplicity have an inherent grammar that accords the unknowability of their vastness. What “simplicity” does as a theological confession is negatively regard how God stands in relation to creaturely being. This is not to deny that God exists in and of Godself, as the fullness of essence and existence in necessary actuality, rather it is to render “positive” speech to that which is uncomprehended: thus we cannot speak of simplicity out of the natural orientation of a particular faculty.

Thomas offers various conditions in which multiplicity and complexity have their existence; and by negating such preconditions for complexity as alien to the essence of God, he demonstrates a negative way to divine simplicity. In the Summa Theologiae 1a.3.7, Thomas gives the following examples: God does not have any quantitative parts (whether that of a body as form over matter, existence over essence, subject over accident); God is not the posterior summation of parts, but is the first being; in addition, unifying principles have a cause of unity–God has no cause; in every composite there is movement from potency to actuality–but with God there is only actuality as he “is” the convergence of his essence and his existence; and finally, God is pure form and thus does not succumb to the distinction between unity and parts (e.g. “man” is not predicated of man's parts as in his foot). This logical movement from complexity to simplicity follows a robust tradition of theological contemplation as God continually appears as the ground and condition of perspectival and dispersed finite intonations; for example, the intervals of time are not encompassed by an infinity of concrete successions but by the incomprehensible condition of such finite vantage–thus contained by eternity. Space, also, is not met by the God who is materially in each place, but by the mystery of the God who is ineffably transcendent. Causes are made possible by the One who is eternally actualized. Thus whatever differentiation, distinction, or distance may be understood within God, it will always be refracted in and through simplicity–“the primary distinguishing feature of divinity”–lest one permit notions such as “procession” or anthropological metaphors found throughout scripture to dissuade the logic of God's aseity.⁴³ In this way, God's “simple” nature and triune life mutually interpret one another, each requiring the other to be truly intelligible.⁴⁴ All that God is, he is at once.

Moreover, Thomas’ negative inductions are not merely the anthropological ascribing to “God” all the things conveniently noble and sacred to humanity (as victim of Feuerbach's evaluation); rather, it is the formal logic that accompanies and exposits the fundamentally given reality of God throughout the narrative of Christian revelation. It is the confessional intelligence that proportions causation, intention, and finality in and through God without ever containing him by the idolatrous limits which creation erroneously places back upon him. It is the measured response to the God who answers to–and swears by–no other, who gives life because he “is” Life, and who teaches us how not‐knowing is knowing and know is not‐knowing (in other words, the one who purposes us upon the infinitely excessive bliss of knowing and loving this God).⁴⁵

It would be tempting to treat simplicity as a matter of prolegomena, a necessary and preliminary abstraction, that while required offers little in the way of relevance for life–or even the rest of theological articulation. However, it is precisely because of its (ontological) relevance that it is the “abstraction” that one must have if they are to attend to God in proper proportion. In Q3, “Of the Simplicity of God,” Thomas gives the argument that God's essence is his existence, which further explicates the logic of simplicity.

As it pertains to finite creatures, complex and composite creatures to be sure, the very reality of their existence is added to their nature accidentally. That is to say, the sufficient definition of a certain creaturely genus is fully intelligible without the addition of the act of “to be.” In this way, “existence” has a degree of potency within a given genus in a way that it may or may not be realized; whether existence is properly predicated of a certain essence is entirely conditioned upon that essence having a definite being in matter–this existence, here and now as it were. It is the unrelenting particularity of an act‐ual existent. What is important to note is that the singular act of being is not proper to, or necessary for, the form of (any) creaturely essence/nature. This whiteness (particular existent/matter) is not a part of the definite essence or nature of “man,” for instance; rather, the act of being and the essence of that which is in being are sustained by an ontological tension.⁴⁶ At the most fundamental level, this is the all‐pervasive condition of composition which Thomas attributes to all finite being; therefore, it is also the place where God's unique act of “to be” contrasts with the complexity of added subsistence.

Thomas’ application of divine simplicity in and through the discussion of essence‐existence offers a polished treatment of previous themes found in medieval philosophers such as Ibn‐Sina and Maimonides, and this thoroughly Christian treatment would provide simplicity with the necessary formula required in order to exercise consistent and weighted influence over the whole of theological contemplation. For Thomas, the weak and rationally veiled character of metaphysics may indeed treat being, or brute categorical existence, with a degree of conceptual accuracy. Being can be regarded by the intellect as colour is to sight, and thus it is conceivable that “Being” should be employed with a vacuous inattention to what might in fact be the “content” of that Being which is Being as such. This is to ask about the “form” of that brutal and secular void that philosophy (in the autonomous sense) attaches to things. In so far as existence remains categorical, factual, and empty as the mere affirmation of essences’ tangible presence on the surface of an abyss, secularity and perspectival relativity will always ontologically contextualize–with the utmost certain and falsely humble Kantian borders–any subsequent questions of purpose, meaning, goodness.

Thomas is unequivocally uninformed of any such positivism. God is not a form that is added to existence–which is a logical inference measured by considered attention to Christian scripture and tradition, repudiating the multivalent manifestations of idolatry; to so regard God's relation to existence in the way form is to matter in finite beings would raise an infinitely greater, and vastly overwhelming, array of speculative questions of this “existence” which grants God his stay. If God is the God always and already implied in the deepest and most ultimate questions, than no such horizon may be allowed to situate what is of unbounded transcendence: the God who created even the heavens, who casts away death and hell, and commands an angelic choir. Therefore, Thomas admits the primal and necessary convergence of esse with essentia. God, unlike created beings, requires existence for the intelligibly of his essence; stating the same thing conversely, existence is or has a shape and form that is the essence of the God revealed in Jesus Christ.⁴⁷

This replete convergence of essence and existence in God propels the logic of simplicity forward with what is required for unabating consideration of Theos in all logos. It is the basal ratio that unleashes robust and reverent attention towards the purely beatific while demanding a perpetual “remembrance” of this teleological formality in all inquiries. The explicit science of sacra doctrina is only distinct in emphasis as it more acutely regards the essential contours of that “existence” which is partially appropriated in “natural” discourse.

By contrasting the relation between esse and essentia essentially in God and contingently in created beings, Thomas provides the concept of analogy to describe the proportionate interval between finite and Infinite being.⁴⁸As a repudiation of univocal and equivocal attribution, “analogy” weighs continuity and discontinuity according to the logic of simplicity explicated by the sublime convergence of essence‐existence. The analogy that follows God's essence‐existence is not an epistemological extrapolation that discerns merely sufficient analogies for the God that is otherwise intuited though “intentionally” elusive: thus consenting to the general requirements of analogy as that which is in some manner apophatic and kataphatic yet never univocal or equivocal.⁴⁹ To so regard analogy as primarily a matter of linguistic construction is to “forget” simplicity which inspires knowledge teleologically. Saying finite being is analogous to divine Being is not a detached attempt at the most convenient metaphor, rather it is to confess the ontological priority of the named One who “is” esse essentially. It is the expressed continuity of a single (simple) Being that is consequently involved if one is to predicate Existence to any finite being; conversely, it is also the expressed discontinuity between this one who is Being and those who borrow, or participate, in the existence which is proper to another. This is an analogia entis that undercuts “modest” linguistic appraisals which inevitably whittle theology to guesses by removing the ontological priority that makes local instantiations confluent.⁵⁰

The primacy of functional intentionality which means pragmatically through an unpretentious navigation of incomprehensible realities is not, as Marion admits, ultimately protected by any phraseology including even “excess” or “givenness par excellence.” And if it is the case that we are already acclimated in small degree to a kind of communal admission of mysterious realities in the incomprehensibility of even the “everyday,” then it is philosophically conceivable that intentionality could equally well in‐form the iconic pragmatics of a discourse on esse, having the “evacuated” metaphysics of Thomas be as spiritually didactic as it is conceptually acute.⁵¹

By allowing the contours of the infinite to control our appropriation of analogous realities–in other words, by not naming God with Being but naming Being with God–we open the space required to prioritize the ineffable as ineffable.⁵² One might see in the drastic call for God without Being a final and novel solution to the confusion of infinite and finite realities; but the radicality of the convergence of esse and essentia, before detailing it any further, permits a relentless categorical distinction that may be thought to be more radical, as the claiming of esse which is intonated through participation more profoundly distinguishes than the blatant contrast of “being” and “without being.” In the end, it is the infinite that suffers, flickering as the face of opposition with the substantiality of the finite world practically appearing more “real” or “actual.” Considering the vista which Marion suggests makes proper scientific method possible as a progression into genuinely uncertainly regions of the infinite, one can see the pushing back against or into the Infinite. They are opposed, as the territory of the Infinite becomes more comprehensible. By denying any “excess” beyond excessiveness in the form of esse, there remains the troubling notion that the Infinite given within the proper domain of being‐given bears only the marks of a façade, lacking the dynamism of integrity and actuality that repels these kind of (metaphysical?) comparisons with the finite. If there is a world on the other side of the phenomenological bracket, including wives, father, mothers, taxes, etc. is it possible esse too lies beyond the reduction, as opposed to appearing in the guise of possibility as such.⁵³

Conclusion

In a time in which one can begin a discussion of God with the presumption that it is not only nearly impossible but undesirable, Marion's voice provides a refreshing take on the givenness of what has been hitherto radically criticized. The face of the Infinite, as that which meets us in every aspect of our knowing while providing the comprehensive statement on incomprehensibility as such, has shown forth an iconic mode of referencing that takes transcendence at “face value.” It has been suggested here that what Marion proposes by way of the formal logic of the Infinite compliments the analogia entis more coherently than the being‐less God of phenomenological reduction alone.