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God Without Being
Jean-Luc Marion is one of the world’s foremost philosophers of religion as well as one of the leading Catholic thinkers of modern times. In God Without Being, Marion challenges a fundamental premise of traditional philosophy, theology, and metaphysics: that God, before all else, must be. Taking a characteristically postmodern stance and engaging in passionate dialogue with Heidegger, he locates a “God without Being” in the realm of agape, or Christian charity and love. If God is love, Marion contends, then God loves before he actually is.
First translated into English in 1991.
First translated into English in 1991.
343 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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About the author
Jean-Luc Marion
114 books108 followersJean-Luc Marion est un philosophe et universitaire français.
Jean-Luc Marion is a French philosopher and academic.
Jean-Luc Marion is a French philosopher and academic.
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April 8, 2019
Marion is Levinas without the latter's hyperbole that borders on, as Ricoeur puts it, "paroxysm" (Oneself as Another 338). They both pledge fidelity to phenomenology in order to think beyond being (Levinas) or to cross being (Marion): "The crossing of Being: up to this point, we only glimpse God who may accomplish it" (108; the word 'God' is crossed out throughout this book). They both think via phenomenology what phenomenology is incapable of showing: ethics for Levinas and that which revelation reveals for Marion. If Levinas describes ethics beyond phenomenology by "an abuse of language" (Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (OB) 156) to accomplish "the subversion of essence into substitution" (OB 162; "essence" in OB always means "Being" or Sein); Marion describes phenomenologically the invisible that crosses the visible, or love that transcends the world of beings; and he does so with the Husserlian patience and rigor without hyperbole or abuse of language. Levinas strikes the reader with, as Derrida aptly put it in 1967 (without the benefit of reading OB, which was yet to be published in 1974), "the infinite insistence of waves on a beach: return and repetition, always, of the same wave against the same shore, in which, however, as each return recapitulates itself, it also infinitely renews and enriches itself" ("Violence and Metaphysics," Writing and Difference 312, fn. 7). In contrast, Marion is methodic with the infinite patience and attention to detail. Metaphors are abundant in Levinas; in Marion they are rare but, when used, are effective. These are two different styles of writings with the similar objectives: to describe and to analyze that which lies beyond phenomenology. Even though Marion rejects Levinas's moralistic reduction--justifiably or not--he relies heavily on Levinas's ground breaking work that pioneered the movement of transgression beyond Husserl's egology and Heidegger's ontology. Can philosophy think beyond being or otherwise than being? It turns out that a lot falls beyond philosophy such as the Other, ethics, face, revelation, God, soul, the kingdom of God, icon, good, evil, forgiveness, redemption, creation, love, etc. If Heidegger's Being and Time constitutes a fundamental ontology, it omits awful a lot: almost all items in the list just provided. Is phenomenology possible regarding those just listed? Is phenomenology capable of addressing "divine things" as well as "human things," to use Pascal's distinction? If "divine things" falls outside of philosophy, is 'not to philosophize' still to philosophize? We know Levinas's answer to that question, which was attributed to Aristotle and which Derrida poses to Levinas ("Violence and Metaphysics"): "Not to philosophize would not be 'to philosophize still,' nor to succumb to opinions"("God and Philosophy," Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings 148, 129). We can do better than philosophy, while still speaking the language of philosophy. We can speak Greek in order to think what the Greeks themselves could not think, as Levinas was known to have said to Marion once. It is true that both Levinas and Marion made the "theological turn," as Dominique Janicaud aptly put it (see Phenomenology and the Theological Turn), but, contrary to Janicaud's assessment, they both did not abandon philosophy or phenomenology. If the term "post modernism" means anything, it must refer to thinking beyond being or thinking by way of crossing being. Thus, metaphysics is finally overcome by the metaphysics of transcendence (Levinas) or by philosophic theology (Marion). One can move beyond Heidegger, who first explicitly broached the task of overcoming metaphysics, while persistently maintaining the strict separation between phenomenology and theology (see his 1927 lecture entitled the same in Pathmarks).
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August 4, 2011Review of God Without Being: Hors-Text
Jean-Luc Marion’s text is a destruction and deconstruction of philosophical idols. His thesis is fairly simple but profound: discourse on “being,” that God before all else has to be (2). This is not yet the problem, however. As metaphysics developed, God become confused with being. Eventually, theologians and philosophers found that God was conceivable to the degree that metaphysics understood him. In short, metaphysics limited God (34). How then does one speak of God? Does suggesting that God is without being mean that God doesn’t exist? No, for Marion suggests that before God “is,” he gives. He comes to us in the Eucharist.
Marion rightly notes that philosophical talk about God is often idolatrous. Metaphysics created God after its own image. This leads into Marion’s discussion of the “idol and the icon.” (The next 150 pages are remarkably dense.) Marion starts off well but it is hard to see how he doesn’t beg the question and also what he is actually trying to say. I like his discussion on “the icon.” At surface level it is a good meditation on Christian aesthetics. But one gets the impression that Marion is not using “icon” in the sense that the Orthodox use it. Marion says the idol’s gaze is wrong because it freezes on the watcher, but the icon is actually looking at him who is looking at me. The icon’s gaze pierces reality. Okay, I agree but how is this statement not begging the question? Marion never made it clear how the icon’s gaze doesn’t deconstruct back to the idol’s gaze.
Marion later moves into a moving discussion on Christian hermeneutics. More so than most theologians, Marion is keen to the challenges that Derrida and Nietzsche pose to Christianity—and to the opportunities available. The problem is the “gap” between text and reality. One can read of the Easter “event,” but one is only reading of it. One is still removed from the event. A Christ-hermeneutics, however, bridges the gap between text and reality in the Eucharist (150). A fascinating discussion with much passion and promise, but one wishes that Marion would have spent more time on this.
Conclusion
This book started off well with references to Gilson’s work on “Being” as well as other moves in Thomism. And the thesis is sound and simple enough. But even those readers who are well-read in philosophy will wonder what Marion is trying to say. This book could have easily been 80 pages long and the reader would not be at a loss. Marion spent too little time on the clear parts and too much time on the dense parts (without making them clearer).
Jean-Luc Marion’s text is a destruction and deconstruction of philosophical idols. His thesis is fairly simple but profound: discourse on “being,” that God before all else has to be (2). This is not yet the problem, however. As metaphysics developed, God become confused with being. Eventually, theologians and philosophers found that God was conceivable to the degree that metaphysics understood him. In short, metaphysics limited God (34). How then does one speak of God? Does suggesting that God is without being mean that God doesn’t exist? No, for Marion suggests that before God “is,” he gives. He comes to us in the Eucharist.
Marion rightly notes that philosophical talk about God is often idolatrous. Metaphysics created God after its own image. This leads into Marion’s discussion of the “idol and the icon.” (The next 150 pages are remarkably dense.) Marion starts off well but it is hard to see how he doesn’t beg the question and also what he is actually trying to say. I like his discussion on “the icon.” At surface level it is a good meditation on Christian aesthetics. But one gets the impression that Marion is not using “icon” in the sense that the Orthodox use it. Marion says the idol’s gaze is wrong because it freezes on the watcher, but the icon is actually looking at him who is looking at me. The icon’s gaze pierces reality. Okay, I agree but how is this statement not begging the question? Marion never made it clear how the icon’s gaze doesn’t deconstruct back to the idol’s gaze.
Marion later moves into a moving discussion on Christian hermeneutics. More so than most theologians, Marion is keen to the challenges that Derrida and Nietzsche pose to Christianity—and to the opportunities available. The problem is the “gap” between text and reality. One can read of the Easter “event,” but one is only reading of it. One is still removed from the event. A Christ-hermeneutics, however, bridges the gap between text and reality in the Eucharist (150). A fascinating discussion with much passion and promise, but one wishes that Marion would have spent more time on this.
Conclusion
This book started off well with references to Gilson’s work on “Being” as well as other moves in Thomism. And the thesis is sound and simple enough. But even those readers who are well-read in philosophy will wonder what Marion is trying to say. This book could have easily been 80 pages long and the reader would not be at a loss. Marion spent too little time on the clear parts and too much time on the dense parts (without making them clearer).
June 9, 2008
The distinction between Idol/Icon is massively helpful in giving new light to understanding Christianity. His lay-out of sacramental theology is innovative and helpful for the Church catholic.
July 3, 2024
Foreword
Classic modern theological strategy is to correlate claims of reason and disclosures of revelation
Alternatively, one can claim that reason functions in theology by developing concepts and categories to clarify theology’s sole foundation in revelation. Marion is here, revelation-based
For Marion, reason, although crucial for developing rigorous philosophical-theological concepts for understanding the “gift,” even “excess,” of God’s self-disclosure as “agape,” is, on its own, not an icon but an “idol.”
Reason is capable of thinking Being. But reason is not capable of iconically disclosing God, except within the confines of Being,
For Marion, true theology, focused iconically on God’s excessive self-revelation as Love, needs to abandon all the metaphysics of the subject which have defined modernity. Also needs to abandon the onto-theological horizon which may confine even Aquinas to understanding God in terms of “Being”***
We need new thought-ful concepts (gift, excess, face, icon_ to understand with conceptual rigor the reality of God’s self-disclosure as Love.
True theology therefore needs God without Being. Cease being theo-logy and become again theo-logy
This is a revelation-centered, noncorrelational, postmetaphysical theology. Marion has developed a rigorous and coherent theological strategy focused on the reality of God's revelation as pure gift, indeed as excess.
Non-revelation insistent theologies are idols
We’re deeply Catholic here
1991 Preface
Milieu of nihilism and crises. A stake: the obscuring of God in the indistinct haze of the "human sciences," which at the time were elevated by "structuralism" to the rank of dominant doctrine.
was it insinuating that the God "without being" is not, or does not exist? Let me repeat now the answer I gave then: no, definitely not. God is, exists, and that is the least of things.
At issue here is not the possibility of God’s attaining Being, but, quite the opposite, the possibility of Being’s attaining to God.
Does Being define the first and the highest of the divine names? When God offers himself to be contemplated and gives himself to be prayed to, is he concerned primarily with Being?
To be or not to be-that is in- deed the first and indispensable question for everything and everyone, and for man in particular. But with respect to Being, does God have to behave like Hamlet?
Metaphysics has imposed titles of God. When Nietzzsche spoke of God’s death, then, he wasn’t far off: these names reflect purely metaphysical functions of "God" and hide that much more the mystery of God as such. Nietzsche not only proclaimed the "death of God," he brought the grounds for it to light: under the conceptual names of "God" only metaphysical "idols" emerge, imposed on a God who is still to be encountered.
the "death of God" exclusively concerns the failure of the metaphysical concepts of "God"
This isn’t anti-Thomist (anti-Catholic) bc even when Thomas thinks God as esse, he does not chain either
He does not chain God to Being because the divine esse im- measurably surpasses (and hardly maintains an analogia with) the ens commune of creatures, which are characterized by the real distinction between esse and their essence, whereas God, and He alone, absolutely merges essence with esse: God is ex- pressed as esse, but this esse is expressed only of God, not of the beings of metaphysics. In this sense, Being does not erect an idol before God, but saves his distance.
The question returned to: can the conceptual thought of God (conceptual, or rational, and not intuitive or "mystical" in the vulgar sense) be developed outside of the doctrine of Being (in the metaphysical sense, or even in the nonmetaphysical sense)? Does God give himself to be known according to the horizon of Being or according to a more radical horizon? God Without Being barely sketches an answer, but does sketch it: God gives Himself to be known insofar as He gives Himself- according to the horizon of the gift itself.
THE GIFT: constitutes at once the mode and the body of his revelation. In the end the gift gives only itself, but in this way it gives absolutely everything.
Approached negatively, and then dogmatically (Eucharist and confession of faith are emblematic. Eucharist especially is hors-texte, less an addition than a deliverance)
1. The Idol and the Icon
Icon and Idol as two distinct, competing concepts belonging to historical moments in antagonism
Eidōlon (presupposes the Greek splendor of the visible, whose polychromy gives rise to the polysemy of the divine)
Eikōn (renewed from HB by NT, concentrates on the sole figure of the Only One)
Conflict unfolds in a dimension far more essential than pagan vs Christian art polemic
Icon and idol indicate a manner of being for beings–cannot be beings against other beings bc some beings can pass from one rank to the other
The movement happens based on veneration, and only some beings can be venerated. It is a question of signa concerning the design
Signa rests on visibility
In outlining the comparative phenomenology of the idol and the icon, it is therefore a question of specifying not any particular matter of aesthetics or art history, but two modes of apprehension of the divine visibility. Of apprehension, or also, no doubt, of reception
First Visible
Idols cannot but be seen. Seeing it suffices to know it. Representation and knowledge can seize hold of it. The idol fascinates and captivates the gaze precisely bc everything in it must expose itself to the gaze. The domain of the idol is the domain of the gaze. It captivates the gaze only inasmuch as the gazeable comprises it.
How are there multiplicity of idols, then, if it is all-gaze? The gaze makes the idol, not the idol the gaze–which means that the idol with its visibility fills the intention of the gaze, which wants nothing other than to see. The gaze precedes the idol.
This first visible will offer, for each gaze and in the measure of its scope, its idol. Idol-or the gaze's landing place. What, then, does the idol indicate?
Invisible mirror
The idol stops the gaze, intervenes the gaze’s consuming of the visible. What shows up? For the first (and last) time, the gaze no longer rushes through the spectacle stage without stopping, but forms a stage in the spectacle; it is fixed in it and, far from passing beyond, remains facing what becomes for it a spectacle to re-spect. The gaze lets itself be filled.
The idol offers to, or rather imposes on, the gaze, its first visible-whatever it may be, thing, man, woman, idea, or god. But consequently, if in the idol the gaze sees its first visible, it discovers in it, more than just any spectacle, its own limit and proper place.
The idol thus acts as a mirror, not as a portrait: a mirror that reflects the gazes image, or more exactly, the image of its aim and of the scope of that aim. The idol, as invisible mirror, gives the gaze its stopping point and measures out its scope.
With the idol, the invisible mirror admits no beyond, because the gaze cannot raise the sight of its aim. The invisible mirror thus marks, negatively, the shortcoming of the aim-literally, the invisable
Dazzling Return
Thus the idol consigns the divine to the measure of a human gaze. Invisible mirror, mark of the invisable, it must be apprehended following its function and evaluated according to the scope of that function. Only then does it become legitimate to ask what the material figure given to the idol by human art rep- resents, what it resembles.
The answer is that it represents nothing, but presents a certain low-water mark of the divine.
Consigned to the material is what a gaze–that of the artist as religious man, penetrated by god–has seen of the god.
the first visible was able to dazzle his gaze, and this is what the artist tries to bring out in his material: he wants to fix in stone, strictly to solidify, an ultimate visible, worthy of the point where his gaze froze.
The idol serves as a materially fixed relay between different brilliancies produced by the same first visible; it becomes the concrete history of the god and the memory of it that men do or do not keep. For this very reason, no one, not even a modern of the age of distress, remains sheltered from an idol
Because the idol allows the divine to occur only in man's measure, man can consign the idolatrous experience to art and thus keep it accessible, if not to all and at all times, at least to the worshipers of the god, and as long as the gods have not fled.
Conceptual Idol
Idols dont need to be aesthetic–can be conceptual. Like, oh I dont know…the names of God…
Conceptual idols of metaphysics
Icon of the Invisible
The ICON does not result from a vision but provokes one. The icon is not seen, but appears, or more originally seems, looks like
The invisible remains invisible
The icons shows nothing
The icon summons the gaze to surpass itself by never freezing on a visible, since the visible only presents itself here in view of the invisible.
It does make something visible, but this is not the invisible. The gaze must reboin order to go back in it up the infinite stream of the invisible. In this sense, the icon makes visible only by giving rise to an infinite gaze. Idk.
The Face Envisages
The icon lays out the material of wood and paint in such a way that there appears in them the intention of a transpiercing gaze emanating from them.
The icon regards us-it concerns us, in that it allows the intention of the invisible to occur visibly.
IDOLS MAKE VISIBLE, ICON LETS VISIBLE HAPPEN? Lets the tide of the invisible come in, slack on immense visible shores.
Visible Mirror of the Invisible
In the idol, the gaze of man is frozen in its mirror; in the icon, the gaze of man is lost in the invisible gaze that visibly envisages him.
in the idol, the reflex of the mirror distinguishes the visible from that which exceeds the aim, the in- visible because invisable; in the icon, the visible is deepened infinitely in order to accompany, as one may say, each point of the invisible by a point of light.
Classic modern theological strategy is to correlate claims of reason and disclosures of revelation
Alternatively, one can claim that reason functions in theology by developing concepts and categories to clarify theology’s sole foundation in revelation. Marion is here, revelation-based
For Marion, reason, although crucial for developing rigorous philosophical-theological concepts for understanding the “gift,” even “excess,” of God’s self-disclosure as “agape,” is, on its own, not an icon but an “idol.”
Reason is capable of thinking Being. But reason is not capable of iconically disclosing God, except within the confines of Being,
For Marion, true theology, focused iconically on God’s excessive self-revelation as Love, needs to abandon all the metaphysics of the subject which have defined modernity. Also needs to abandon the onto-theological horizon which may confine even Aquinas to understanding God in terms of “Being”***
We need new thought-ful concepts (gift, excess, face, icon_ to understand with conceptual rigor the reality of God’s self-disclosure as Love.
True theology therefore needs God without Being. Cease being theo-logy and become again theo-logy
This is a revelation-centered, noncorrelational, postmetaphysical theology. Marion has developed a rigorous and coherent theological strategy focused on the reality of God's revelation as pure gift, indeed as excess.
Non-revelation insistent theologies are idols
We’re deeply Catholic here
1991 Preface
Milieu of nihilism and crises. A stake: the obscuring of God in the indistinct haze of the "human sciences," which at the time were elevated by "structuralism" to the rank of dominant doctrine.
was it insinuating that the God "without being" is not, or does not exist? Let me repeat now the answer I gave then: no, definitely not. God is, exists, and that is the least of things.
At issue here is not the possibility of God’s attaining Being, but, quite the opposite, the possibility of Being’s attaining to God.
Does Being define the first and the highest of the divine names? When God offers himself to be contemplated and gives himself to be prayed to, is he concerned primarily with Being?
To be or not to be-that is in- deed the first and indispensable question for everything and everyone, and for man in particular. But with respect to Being, does God have to behave like Hamlet?
Metaphysics has imposed titles of God. When Nietzzsche spoke of God’s death, then, he wasn’t far off: these names reflect purely metaphysical functions of "God" and hide that much more the mystery of God as such. Nietzsche not only proclaimed the "death of God," he brought the grounds for it to light: under the conceptual names of "God" only metaphysical "idols" emerge, imposed on a God who is still to be encountered.
the "death of God" exclusively concerns the failure of the metaphysical concepts of "God"
This isn’t anti-Thomist (anti-Catholic) bc even when Thomas thinks God as esse, he does not chain either
He does not chain God to Being because the divine esse im- measurably surpasses (and hardly maintains an analogia with) the ens commune of creatures, which are characterized by the real distinction between esse and their essence, whereas God, and He alone, absolutely merges essence with esse: God is ex- pressed as esse, but this esse is expressed only of God, not of the beings of metaphysics. In this sense, Being does not erect an idol before God, but saves his distance.
The question returned to: can the conceptual thought of God (conceptual, or rational, and not intuitive or "mystical" in the vulgar sense) be developed outside of the doctrine of Being (in the metaphysical sense, or even in the nonmetaphysical sense)? Does God give himself to be known according to the horizon of Being or according to a more radical horizon? God Without Being barely sketches an answer, but does sketch it: God gives Himself to be known insofar as He gives Himself- according to the horizon of the gift itself.
THE GIFT: constitutes at once the mode and the body of his revelation. In the end the gift gives only itself, but in this way it gives absolutely everything.
Approached negatively, and then dogmatically (Eucharist and confession of faith are emblematic. Eucharist especially is hors-texte, less an addition than a deliverance)
1. The Idol and the Icon
Icon and Idol as two distinct, competing concepts belonging to historical moments in antagonism
Eidōlon (presupposes the Greek splendor of the visible, whose polychromy gives rise to the polysemy of the divine)
Eikōn (renewed from HB by NT, concentrates on the sole figure of the Only One)
Conflict unfolds in a dimension far more essential than pagan vs Christian art polemic
Icon and idol indicate a manner of being for beings–cannot be beings against other beings bc some beings can pass from one rank to the other
The movement happens based on veneration, and only some beings can be venerated. It is a question of signa concerning the design
Signa rests on visibility
In outlining the comparative phenomenology of the idol and the icon, it is therefore a question of specifying not any particular matter of aesthetics or art history, but two modes of apprehension of the divine visibility. Of apprehension, or also, no doubt, of reception
First Visible
Idols cannot but be seen. Seeing it suffices to know it. Representation and knowledge can seize hold of it. The idol fascinates and captivates the gaze precisely bc everything in it must expose itself to the gaze. The domain of the idol is the domain of the gaze. It captivates the gaze only inasmuch as the gazeable comprises it.
How are there multiplicity of idols, then, if it is all-gaze? The gaze makes the idol, not the idol the gaze–which means that the idol with its visibility fills the intention of the gaze, which wants nothing other than to see. The gaze precedes the idol.
This first visible will offer, for each gaze and in the measure of its scope, its idol. Idol-or the gaze's landing place. What, then, does the idol indicate?
Invisible mirror
The idol stops the gaze, intervenes the gaze’s consuming of the visible. What shows up? For the first (and last) time, the gaze no longer rushes through the spectacle stage without stopping, but forms a stage in the spectacle; it is fixed in it and, far from passing beyond, remains facing what becomes for it a spectacle to re-spect. The gaze lets itself be filled.
The idol offers to, or rather imposes on, the gaze, its first visible-whatever it may be, thing, man, woman, idea, or god. But consequently, if in the idol the gaze sees its first visible, it discovers in it, more than just any spectacle, its own limit and proper place.
The idol thus acts as a mirror, not as a portrait: a mirror that reflects the gazes image, or more exactly, the image of its aim and of the scope of that aim. The idol, as invisible mirror, gives the gaze its stopping point and measures out its scope.
With the idol, the invisible mirror admits no beyond, because the gaze cannot raise the sight of its aim. The invisible mirror thus marks, negatively, the shortcoming of the aim-literally, the invisable
Dazzling Return
Thus the idol consigns the divine to the measure of a human gaze. Invisible mirror, mark of the invisable, it must be apprehended following its function and evaluated according to the scope of that function. Only then does it become legitimate to ask what the material figure given to the idol by human art rep- resents, what it resembles.
The answer is that it represents nothing, but presents a certain low-water mark of the divine.
Consigned to the material is what a gaze–that of the artist as religious man, penetrated by god–has seen of the god.
the first visible was able to dazzle his gaze, and this is what the artist tries to bring out in his material: he wants to fix in stone, strictly to solidify, an ultimate visible, worthy of the point where his gaze froze.
The idol serves as a materially fixed relay between different brilliancies produced by the same first visible; it becomes the concrete history of the god and the memory of it that men do or do not keep. For this very reason, no one, not even a modern of the age of distress, remains sheltered from an idol
Because the idol allows the divine to occur only in man's measure, man can consign the idolatrous experience to art and thus keep it accessible, if not to all and at all times, at least to the worshipers of the god, and as long as the gods have not fled.
Conceptual Idol
Idols dont need to be aesthetic–can be conceptual. Like, oh I dont know…the names of God…
Conceptual idols of metaphysics
Icon of the Invisible
The ICON does not result from a vision but provokes one. The icon is not seen, but appears, or more originally seems, looks like
The invisible remains invisible
The icons shows nothing
The icon summons the gaze to surpass itself by never freezing on a visible, since the visible only presents itself here in view of the invisible.
It does make something visible, but this is not the invisible. The gaze must reboin order to go back in it up the infinite stream of the invisible. In this sense, the icon makes visible only by giving rise to an infinite gaze. Idk.
The Face Envisages
The icon lays out the material of wood and paint in such a way that there appears in them the intention of a transpiercing gaze emanating from them.
The icon regards us-it concerns us, in that it allows the intention of the invisible to occur visibly.
IDOLS MAKE VISIBLE, ICON LETS VISIBLE HAPPEN? Lets the tide of the invisible come in, slack on immense visible shores.
Visible Mirror of the Invisible
In the idol, the gaze of man is frozen in its mirror; in the icon, the gaze of man is lost in the invisible gaze that visibly envisages him.
in the idol, the reflex of the mirror distinguishes the visible from that which exceeds the aim, the in- visible because invisable; in the icon, the visible is deepened infinitely in order to accompany, as one may say, each point of the invisible by a point of light.
September 27, 2025
I first encountered Marion’s philosophy of the idol in my 2020 postmodern philosophy class (PHIL 285J) in the section on Jean Baudrillard’s Simulation and Simulacra. I absolutely adored Jean’s book, in fact it became foundational to my worldview from then on (along with Jean-Francois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition). Honestly taking that class amid my early deconstruction was perfect timing. I asked for this book for Christmas because of that class and it sat on my shelves for 5 years.
As I read this book, I had the same experience as when I read Derrida — feeling like I was standing in front of a chasm of knowledge that i simultaneously knew was super important but couldn’t understand. I slowly worked through this book, and I have just come away thinking I need to read it again, but also that I actually have to read Heidegger to do that.
The stuff on idols vs images and Eucharist as hermeneutics I could follow. That’s maybe 15% of the book. One day I will return. Also I have no idea why David Bentley Hart has beef with this guy and postmodern theology.
As I read this book, I had the same experience as when I read Derrida — feeling like I was standing in front of a chasm of knowledge that i simultaneously knew was super important but couldn’t understand. I slowly worked through this book, and I have just come away thinking I need to read it again, but also that I actually have to read Heidegger to do that.
The stuff on idols vs images and Eucharist as hermeneutics I could follow. That’s maybe 15% of the book. One day I will return. Also I have no idea why David Bentley Hart has beef with this guy and postmodern theology.
September 17, 2007
Though he has since retracted some aspects of his critique of St. Thomas, this remains an essential work in the realm of anti-Kantian phenomenology, and includes some intriguing (NT) exegetical work. The section on the "idolic/iconic gaze" and "saturated phenomena" has indelibly effected my thinking on a variety of issues. Also seminal for the post-metaphysical theologians is the section on "conceptual atheism": a genealogy of atheism that finds its genesis in the idea of god.
August 26, 2012
Por la vía fenomenológica, se le encuentra a Dios justo ahí, en la distancia y despojado de todo lo que se creía que era. De la iconoclastia conceptual a la idolatria religiosa y la muerte de Dios.
April 11, 2023
3.5.. It is written in a phenomenology-heavy prose that seems to strike pretty much everyone outside that community as unnecessary and pretentious. That being said, there are some very, very beautiful insights that I will not soon forget, and I enjoyed large swaths of the book.
I shouldn't be to hard on the prose-style because it is probably part-and-parcel with the uniqueness of the insights.
The title "God Without Being" is more provocative than it seems, it's about whether the traditional definition of God's essence in natural theology as 'Being' is best for our understanding of Him, and whether it sets up a conceptual idol which we should abandon and replace with 'Agape'. He's an orthodox believer, and it has beautiful things to say about the Eucharist as the hermeneutic site of meeting the Word.
I shouldn't be to hard on the prose-style because it is probably part-and-parcel with the uniqueness of the insights.
The title "God Without Being" is more provocative than it seems, it's about whether the traditional definition of God's essence in natural theology as 'Being' is best for our understanding of Him, and whether it sets up a conceptual idol which we should abandon and replace with 'Agape'. He's an orthodox believer, and it has beautiful things to say about the Eucharist as the hermeneutic site of meeting the Word.
July 28, 2018
This work is truly magnificent and surely a gift to the Church. The preparatory discussion of icons and idols in the first few chapters alone is staggering for its clarity and ingenuity, and I hope will continue to be applied by philosophers and theologians. Another hidden gem was Marion's interpretation of the prodigal son in relation to ousia. Aside from all these unexpected riches, the main thesis, that God is love before He is, was shrewdly and devotionally articulated. It is rare a book of such dense philosophy should bring me to my knees in worship, but this book certainly did so. I plan to reread this book throughout my life. Difficult, but well worth it!
July 4, 2024
Roman theology is neither loving nor pastoral... which is to say it fails as theology. This book is pure philosophy and has little to say about the living Word who is Jesus. RCs are slowly working their way out of the dark ages... still. Marion has brought them closer by pointing to revelation, but is still lost in human-centered reason. Not to mention the fact that his phenomenology is largely an idiosyncratic exercise in personal reflection rather than a meditation on the meaning of shared religious experience. Nothing worth reading here.
December 24, 2024
This work aligns well with Benedictine spirituality as well as the apophatic theology more characteristic of Orthodoxy, where the full essence of God is deemed unknowable. It raises questions about the limitations of perceptible knowledge and the mesage of relationality.
Long story short: "Before God gives, God is." Marion's theology emphasizes the "gift" of God before the "is" of God.
Long story short: "Before God gives, God is." Marion's theology emphasizes the "gift" of God before the "is" of God.
July 24, 2021
Trying to speak what escaped speech, but nonetheless returning too frequently to past philosophers to become even more provocative.
February 15, 2024
Difficult and complex, one to come back to but very insightful.
January 6, 2015
Should God exist? Should God have a form, an icon, or an idol? Marion explores the possibility of a God who would not be, who would not have a being. He sees God in agape, Christian charity, or love and obviates the need for imagining or positing the existence or being of God. He thinks that the ‘unthinkable forces us to substitute the idolatrous quotation marks around “God” with the very God that no mark of knowledge can demarcate, and, in order to say it’ (46) he crosses the ‘o’ in God and continues this notation in the rest of the book. The second edition and a translation of the original French, this book is a volume in the series Religion and Postmodernism brought out by the University of Chicago Press. In a daring postmodern spirit, the author tries to do away with a personality of God because he is concerned that ‘we manage so poorly to keep silent before that which we cannot express in a statement’ (59) Attempts to express the inexpressible creates a false image of God, who exists even before actually being. It is a pity that the author rests his arguments based only on Christian scriptures and does not refer to scriptures from other religions, such as those of the East. Had he done so, he would have come across interesting insights on God without being in those texts. With elaborate notes and references to major thinkers on religion and theology, this book is a profound study on the perception of God with an identity.
October 31, 2025
Penso che questo libro abbia totalmente svoltato il mio modo di intendere la devozione e la metafisica. Un'opera che è quasi un percorso iniziatico oltre ad essere uno studio puntualissimo che critica ed esplora i confini sconfinati della fenomenologia per tradurli nell'esperienza religiosa, e in realtà andrebbe forse scritto nelle esperienze religiose, affinché qualunque sia la "figura" centrale ci si fidi un po' meno degli idoli.
Più che un testo di teologia, direi che è un grande esempio di mistica contemporanea: probabilmente Jean-Luc Marion avrebbe conversato volentieri con Dionigi l'Areopagita, magari non si sarebbero detti una parola e avrebbero concordato su tutto. O quasi.
Più che un testo di teologia, direi che è un grande esempio di mistica contemporanea: probabilmente Jean-Luc Marion avrebbe conversato volentieri con Dionigi l'Areopagita, magari non si sarebbero detti una parola e avrebbero concordato su tutto. O quasi.
September 1, 2015
If there is going to be one book that I will go back to in my formation as a student of philosophy and theology, God Without Being would be it. It provides us more or less a phenomenological description of the experience of Revelation, and explains it in great detail which is easier to follow than, say, guys like Schleiermacher.
May 16, 2012
Insightful. Provides a deep background for considering issues of liturgy, church life and politics. I'm looking forward to the everyman's edition. If JP2's Theology of the Body can become The Thrill of the Chaste, perhaps this might become, "To Be Or Not To Be: It's Not Even a Question."
March 2, 2008
One of the best books I've ever read: no question.
October 2, 2011
Solid spiritual analysis of mankind's remarkably flawed perception of metaphysical realities
June 9, 2014
New ways to approch the God question phenomenologically. Difficult but exciting to read.
May 7, 2015
er....
September 22, 2015
La mente spinta all'estremità.
September 10, 2016
Brilliant in places. Obscure in others. The book gives rise to a lot of thought.
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