What do you think?
Rate this book
The Idol and Distance: Five Studies
Marked sharply by its time and place (Paris in the 1970s), this early theological text by Jean-Luc Marion nevertheless maintains a strikingly deep resonance with his most recent, groundbreaking, and ever more widely discussed phenomenology. And while Marion will want to insist on a clear distinction between the theological and phenomenological projects, to read each in light of the other can prove illuminating for both the theological and the philosophical reader - and perhaps above all for the reader who wants to read in both directions at once, the reader concerned with those points of interplay and undecidability where theology and philosophy inform, provoke, and challenge one another in endlessly complex ways." "In both his theological and his phenomenological projects Marion's central effort to free the absolute or unconditional (be it theology's God or phenomenology's phenomenon) from the various limits and preconditions of human thought and language will imply a thoroughgoing critique of all metaphysics, and above all of the modern metaphysics centered on the active, spontaneous subject who occupies modern philosophy from Descartes through Hegel and Nietzsche.
257 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
8 people are currently reading
205 people want to read
About the author
Jean-Luc Marion
124 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 31, 2019
This book, dedicated to Denys, was originally published in 1977, five years prior to the publication of God Without Being (1982) and nineteen years prior to the publication of The Crossing of the Visible (1996). This book is prerequisite to reading GWB, as GWB heavily relies on the distinction between idol and icon that is developed here in this book. Icon and idol may be the fundamental notions in all of Marion's work. The unfortunate label Dominique Janicaud gave to Marion in 1991 as a "philosopher of the negative theology" must be dispelled immediately for the same reason that Denys' theology is improperly called the negative theology. For, as Marion says, "[there is] nothing negative about it [in Denys]" (138). Since pure negation is denial, negative theology is but an atheism, as C. Bruaire says, as quoted by Marion: "Negative theology is the negation of all theology. Its truth is atheism" (147).
The five studies referred to in the subtitle of the book consist of the studies (1) on the distinction between icon and idol, (2) on Nietzsche's declaration of "the death of God," (3) on Hölderlin's theological poems (in contrast to Heidegger's reading of them as ontological poems), (4) on Denys the Areopagite's theology of the Incarnation and the Trinity, and finally (5) on Heidegger's Ereignis as an approximation to Marion's own notion of "distance" he endeavors to maintain within the tradition of the western onto-theology in which, according to Marion, idolatry is situated. I will discuss these five topics one after the other.
In God Without Being (GWB), published in 1982, Marion revises his view on the section (2) and (3) of this book, published in 1977, and states: "I no longer play Heidegger and Nietzsche against metaphysics [as done in this book], but rather, playing against Heidegger and the primacy of the Seinsfrage [question of being], I shoot for God according to his most theological name--charity" (GWB, xxi). Thus Marion follows the lead Augustine set, which Pascal too followed. Augustine said: "one does not enter into truth except through charity" (Contra Faustum); and Pascal in Pensées employs the phrase more narrowly and says:
Marion's revision in God Without Being goes deeper with respect to Heidegger. The last remnant of Heidegger's thought about Ereignis, which is preserved as the possible shelter (or abode) for the invisible God in this book, is finally abandoned in GWB, where he assess Heidegger to be more subtle but more dangerous than Neitzsche. He writes:
Nonetheless, the notion of icon in distinction from that of idol is well developed already in this book. Icon maintains distance; idol does not. Distance is maintained, because the invisibile is made visible as invisible in the visibility of the icon, the invisible as other than the visible in transcendence: "The depth of the visible face of the Son delivers to the gaze the invisibility of the Father as such" (8). Although the icon referred to here is the painted one, Marion in large part in this book refers to the person, Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, when he speaks of the icon; and the formulas that are repeated throughout the book come from Col. 1:15 ("He is the [icon] of the invisible God") and John 14: 8-9 ("Philip said to him, 'Lord, show [deīxon] us the Father, and we will be satisfied [arkeī].' Jesus said to him, '...Whoever has seen me has seen the Father'"). What Philip wanted to see was an idol by which he could be satisfied as a sufficient and adequate presentation of God; but Jesus offers no such satisfaction. Jesus was effectively saying to Philip in the following paradox: No can can see God when seeing me; and no one can see God except by seeing me. (This is the claim that the Jews would find highly objectionable. Icon would thus pose the perhaps unbridgeable gap between the two religions.) This is precisely the effect of the icon. Icon declares itself not to be the one whom it shows. In other words, icon does not give satisfaction by providing adequate and sufficient representation of what it presents. It always presents itself as an inadequate representation of the invisible that it seeks to present. The visible presents the invisible as that which cannot be presented in the visible: "The icon manifests neither the human face nor the divine nature that no one could envisage but, as the theologians of the icon said, the relation of the one to the other in the hypostasis, the person" (8). What we see in the icon is a relation of the visible to the invisible, a relation without relation (rapport sans rapport) that is manifested in the visible. Let's dwell on this point a bit further.
We cannot see the historical Jesus but can still "see" him in the Gospels and in the painted icons. But when we do, we see him as the Son of God or the God incarnate. What we see or, as Marion would prefer, gaze is the relation without relation (rapport sans rapport), the relation of the visible one to the other, the wholly other, to whom the visible one as such cannot have a relation. The visible as such cannot be related to the invisible as such; but in the icon the relation between the two incomparable terms is 'held together' without tension or fight/strife (as in the artwork, according to Heidegger). A painted wooden tablet as such cannot have a relation to the divine at all (according to the iconoclasts) but it is precisely in this impossibility or separation that the relation to the divine is maintained in the icon: "Visibility of the invisible, a visibility where the invisible gives itself to be seen as such, the icon reinforces the one through the other. The separation that joins them in their very irreducibility ... constitutes the ground of the icon" (8).
Two remarks need to be made here. (1) Icon joins together (as in sumballō--see below for the meanings) the two incommensurate, asymmetric tems: the visible and the invisible, man and God, the material wood and the spiritual. (2) The joining together or conjoining happens in the irreducibility of the two asymmetric terms with respect to one another. One does not fuse with or sublate the other to elevate or to subsume the other in dominance. Unlike in the idol, in the icon the two terms remain irreducible as asymmetric and incommensurate to each other. The wood or the figure on the wood remains as such in its materiality and in its form, while the divine is not lower to the level of the figure on the wood or to that of the wooden tablet, nor is the figure on the wood elevated to a status of semi-divine, as in an idol. When we venerate (not worship) the icon, we do not elevate the thing that is the icon. But, rather, as Marion labors to show in The Crossing of the Visible, the visible is "crossed" or "transgressed" to the invisible in the veneration. In other words, we form a relation to the invisible by crossing (the parameters of) the visible without diminishing or sanctifying the visible that is crossed. The visible--the materiality of or the painted figure in the icon--provokes the "transference" that St Basil speaks of, which the Second Council of Nicaea adopted in finally addressing the iconoclasm controversy, as cited by Marion: "the honor paid to the icon is transferred [diabainei, 'transit'] to the prototype [the Christ himself]" (The Crossing of the Visible 60). The honor is crossed over from the materiality of and the figure in the icon to Christ himself (the Son of God) in our veneration of the icon. Veneration, furthermore, is not an act of intentionality exercised, as Husserl said, in "the field of freedom" as much as it is, according to Marion, a response to the gaze of the Other who looks at us in the icon: "Before the icon, if I continue to look, I feel myself seen" (Id.). In our veneration we respond to the gaze of the Other who gazes at us in the counter-intentionality that crosses our intentionality. Christ or the saint (as depicted in the icon) addresses us, just as Jesus as depicted in the Gospels address us.
The "relation without relation" that we see in the icon is analogous to the "relation without relation" that we form, according to Levinas, in the face-to-face with the Other. But, immediately, the distinction between the two arises as soon as we recognize the similarities. The Other is not an icon, although she addresses me from the height. The Other (Autrui) is not, like Christ, an icon of the invisible God. (Being an orthodox Jewish philosopher, Levinas would never say such a thing.) The Other is not an incarnation of God, as Christ was--although Levinas speaks of incarnation in speaking of ethical subjectivity. Further, an icon does not command me, as the face of the Other does. In short, the face is not an icon. If icon is a given, the face is more than the given. Unlike icon, the Other disturbs me. The counter-intentionality by which the Other speaks to me in the face to face is stronger, more disturbing, than the icon in which the Other gazes at me in its respective counter-intentionality. What is given in the icon (i.e., the gift) does not ipso facto constitute my subjectivity as that which is always already chosen, vulnerable, and given to the Other in the face-to-face. The icon does not claim me immediately, as a stranger does by knocking at my door. There is the quiet distance in my relationship to the icon (i.e., in my veneration); whereas in my face to face with the Other the distance is immediately crossed to become proximity, susceptibility, vulnerability, and exposure. In other words, icon does not speak to me in the moral voice: "Do not murder me." Like a work of art, icon remains mute and silent while maintaining the distance. Icon, thus, stands somewhere between artwork and the Other (autrui) in the scale of subjective affectivity.
If by symbol (from sumballō, to bring together, infer, join, encounter) we mean binding the visible to the invisible, then icon is a symbol. But an idol can be a symbol, too. As symbol, an idol can hold itself as the one standing for the other such as a Scottish family emblem or a national flag. But in these cases there is no separation or distance that one needs to cross. As a matter of conventions, one term is joined with the other in order to refer to the other, like a sign referring to the signified in the linguistic system. There is nothing that intrinsically binds the red, white, and blue to the USA or France or, for that matter, sever them from the latter. The association is established by mere convention and arbitrary association in which one refers to the other without resistance, separation, or distance. But a Palestinian man holding himself to be God the Father, or a painted wooden tablet presenting itself as a representation of Christ is a folly to the gentiles and a blasphemy to the Jews. The flesh of Christ and the materiality of the icon (including the painted figure in certain shapes and colors) are inherently foreign to the invisibility of God they claim to stand for. Icon resists being the divine it stands for. The asymmetry and the incommensurability is irreducible and essential to an icon. But precisely it is in this irreducible incommensurability that the materiality of the icon is crossed without having to be overcome, suppressed, dissolved, or elevated.
In the studies on icon, Marion does not speak of faith. The crossing of the visible to the invisible that happens in the icon is not a matter of gestalt switch--seeing something as this or that between the two incommensurable terms, as something other than what it appears to be. Rather, the Father is given in the Son; the invisible is given in the visible icon, not juxtaposed or imposed over the other. The givenness beyond the ordinary phenomenality is the subject matter of Marion's phenomenology--to the schegrin of the die hard, orthodox phenomenologists such as Janicaud. Marion is not a phenomenologist of faith, at least in his works on icon, but of the givenness of the invisible in the visible. The thing itself (be it the divine or the invisible) is given; and this givenness must be described as fully and as rationally as possible with the rigor that Husserl himself practiced. Besides the phenomenological rigor, Marion is also faithful to Husserl's principle of all principles: "To the things themselves!" (die Sache selbst). For Marion, the given is the thing.
As already stated, this book does not specifically discuss iconography, as in The Crossing of the Visible, but the same notion of icon applies whether referring to the Son (the proto-icon) or the icon of the Son (the painted icon that hangs on the iconostasis in the Orthodox churches). If Jesus the Son, the proto-icon, is the icon of the invisible God the Father; an icon of Christ (hanging in the church) is an icon of the Icon. However, the distinction between the proto-icon and the icon is not significant. This insignificance is significant, as I will now show.
If the Son is, as Paul says, "the icon of the invisible God [the Father]" (Col. 1:15), can we, the Christ imitators, conceive ourselves as the icons of the once visible but now absent Christ? Are we an icon of the proto-icon Christ, analogous to the painted icon of Christ? Furthermore, what does the presence of (the absent) Christ in the Eucharist signify in contrast to his "presence" in the icon? The Eucharist is not an icon, to be sure. It is not merely a symbol employed to remember Christ's crucifixion, either--as if to refresh our memory of Christ we read about in the Gospels. What good is it, anyway, to remember about Christ's words and deeds. Improving or refreshing our memory is not the issue here. "Remembering" in the Bible and in the liturgy, rather, is not an act of believers' consciousness so as to recall the past and to re-produce it in the present moment of consciousness. When we pray to God to remember certain persons, living or dead, we are actively participating in God's recapitulation, his act of redeeming the creation or correcting the wrong in the world. To remember Christ means to effectuate his redeeming act by which the world is regenerated. The Eucharist, in other words, effectuates regeneration and recapitulation of the world. The elements from the earth and life are brought to become the flesh and blood of Christ the Son so as to be in turn offered to God the Father as an offering and sacrifice for the redemption of the world. Sacrifice or substitution, as otherwise than the way of being-in-the world, is the way of redemption that the liturgy effectuates in the eschatological vigil maintained in the midst of the world and yet separate from the world.
As already stated, the distinction between the proto-icon (the person of Christ the Son) as the icon of the invisible God and the icon of the (proto) Icon (whether the Gospels recited during the liturgy, written, or the painted icon) is not significant in the notion of icon. The insignificance is significant, as I said. Consider what Jesus said to Philip, when he wanted Jesus to show God the Father so that he may be "satisfied" (John 14:8). Jesus replied: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9)). But do we only see God the Father in Jesus Christ? Consider Matthew 25:37-39, 44, where we have the story of the last judgment, in which both the righteous and the unrighteous failed not see "the Son of Man" in the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, and the accused ("... when was it that we saw [eidomen] you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison..." (Matt.25:44, 37-39). Although they both saw the poor and the accused, one group served; the other group did not. The two different reactions for the same perception. The Kantian and Levinian point of the story is that we are to see dignity in "the least of these" (25:40, 45). My point, however, is that here we have the same phenomenon of icon. The invisible in this case is "the Son of Man" whom both the righteous and unrighteous failed to see in the poor, sick, and the accused. The wretched is the icon of "the Son of Man" the King (Id., 25:31, 34), just as Christ, according to Paul, is "the icon of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15); and his crucified body on the cross the icon of God the Father who suffers along with humans in humility and sacrifice to redeem the world. It is only natural that one does not see Christ in the wretched, just as in the painted figure in the icon one does not "see" Christ (in the sense that Philip wanted to "see" God and be satisfied).
Moreover, the act of kindness rendered toward the wretched is recognized as the very act of seeing the Son of Man in the wretched. "[E]thics is an optics," said Levinas (Totality and Infinity 23). Seeing the Other as "the widow, the orphan, and the stranger" (Deut. 16:11, 14) is to give my bread torn from my mouth to the Other. To see the Other is to give, i.e., to say, "Here I am," which means: I am always already sent to the Other and for the Other, like the prophets (Isaiah 6:8, Otherwise than Being Or Beyond Essence 199), the apostles, and Mary. Just as we see God the Father in the Christ the Son, we see Christ the King in the wretched whom I come across on the scene (as my neighbor). My neighbor is an icon of Christ.
[Continued in the comment below.]
The five studies referred to in the subtitle of the book consist of the studies (1) on the distinction between icon and idol, (2) on Nietzsche's declaration of "the death of God," (3) on Hölderlin's theological poems (in contrast to Heidegger's reading of them as ontological poems), (4) on Denys the Areopagite's theology of the Incarnation and the Trinity, and finally (5) on Heidegger's Ereignis as an approximation to Marion's own notion of "distance" he endeavors to maintain within the tradition of the western onto-theology in which, according to Marion, idolatry is situated. I will discuss these five topics one after the other.
In God Without Being (GWB), published in 1982, Marion revises his view on the section (2) and (3) of this book, published in 1977, and states: "I no longer play Heidegger and Nietzsche against metaphysics [as done in this book], but rather, playing against Heidegger and the primacy of the Seinsfrage [question of being], I shoot for God according to his most theological name--charity" (GWB, xxi). Thus Marion follows the lead Augustine set, which Pascal too followed. Augustine said: "one does not enter into truth except through charity" (Contra Faustum); and Pascal in Pensées employs the phrase more narrowly and says:
And thence it comes about that in the case where we are speaking of human things, it is said to be necessary to know them before we love them, and this has become a proverb; but the saints, on the contrary, when they speak of divine things, say that we must love them before we know them, and that we enter into truth only by charity; they have made of this one of their most useful maxims" (as quoted by Heidegger in Sein Und Zeit, 139, fn. v.).For Marion, then, charity is the thing (Die Sache selbst), to which he exerts all of his phenomenological energy to describe, while still remaining (at least in this book) in the shadow of Husserl and Heidegger. But, with Levinas, we ask: Can we love God without loving our neighbor? To pose Levinas's question now would be a bit too hasty. For Marion the following biblical adage is the starting point: “... for God first loved us…” (1 John 4:19). The gift that gives itself first and foremost must be understood as the given. He finds Levinas's starting point (ethics) to be too narrow as the given.
Marion's revision in God Without Being goes deeper with respect to Heidegger. The last remnant of Heidegger's thought about Ereignis, which is preserved as the possible shelter (or abode) for the invisible God in this book, is finally abandoned in GWB, where he assess Heidegger to be more subtle but more dangerous than Neitzsche. He writes:
It does not suffice to go beyond an idol in order to withdraw oneself from idolatry. Such a reduplication of idolatry, which even Nietzsche cannot avoid, we can suspect in Heidegger in a way even more vast and hence more dangerous than in Neitzschean expectation (GWB 38-39).Or,
An interplay of ontological difference as fold [pli], but especially as withdrawal [repli] of Being/being into its invisible spectacle--idol again? (Id., 84)Marion's break with Heidegger is decisive in GWB. From then on, it is a matter of the crossing of being, not annihilating being but viewing it as vanity (Ecclesiastes 1:2-3; GWB 120), to transgress the world by viewing it as created, as given, as 'beautiful and good'--a view taken from exteriority, from outside the world (GWB 131), as illustrated by Dürer's drawing of Melancholia or by Valery's Monsieur Teste.
Nonetheless, the notion of icon in distinction from that of idol is well developed already in this book. Icon maintains distance; idol does not. Distance is maintained, because the invisibile is made visible as invisible in the visibility of the icon, the invisible as other than the visible in transcendence: "The depth of the visible face of the Son delivers to the gaze the invisibility of the Father as such" (8). Although the icon referred to here is the painted one, Marion in large part in this book refers to the person, Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, when he speaks of the icon; and the formulas that are repeated throughout the book come from Col. 1:15 ("He is the [icon] of the invisible God") and John 14: 8-9 ("Philip said to him, 'Lord, show [deīxon] us the Father, and we will be satisfied [arkeī].' Jesus said to him, '...Whoever has seen me has seen the Father'"). What Philip wanted to see was an idol by which he could be satisfied as a sufficient and adequate presentation of God; but Jesus offers no such satisfaction. Jesus was effectively saying to Philip in the following paradox: No can can see God when seeing me; and no one can see God except by seeing me. (This is the claim that the Jews would find highly objectionable. Icon would thus pose the perhaps unbridgeable gap between the two religions.) This is precisely the effect of the icon. Icon declares itself not to be the one whom it shows. In other words, icon does not give satisfaction by providing adequate and sufficient representation of what it presents. It always presents itself as an inadequate representation of the invisible that it seeks to present. The visible presents the invisible as that which cannot be presented in the visible: "The icon manifests neither the human face nor the divine nature that no one could envisage but, as the theologians of the icon said, the relation of the one to the other in the hypostasis, the person" (8). What we see in the icon is a relation of the visible to the invisible, a relation without relation (rapport sans rapport) that is manifested in the visible. Let's dwell on this point a bit further.
We cannot see the historical Jesus but can still "see" him in the Gospels and in the painted icons. But when we do, we see him as the Son of God or the God incarnate. What we see or, as Marion would prefer, gaze is the relation without relation (rapport sans rapport), the relation of the visible one to the other, the wholly other, to whom the visible one as such cannot have a relation. The visible as such cannot be related to the invisible as such; but in the icon the relation between the two incomparable terms is 'held together' without tension or fight/strife (as in the artwork, according to Heidegger). A painted wooden tablet as such cannot have a relation to the divine at all (according to the iconoclasts) but it is precisely in this impossibility or separation that the relation to the divine is maintained in the icon: "Visibility of the invisible, a visibility where the invisible gives itself to be seen as such, the icon reinforces the one through the other. The separation that joins them in their very irreducibility ... constitutes the ground of the icon" (8).
Two remarks need to be made here. (1) Icon joins together (as in sumballō--see below for the meanings) the two incommensurate, asymmetric tems: the visible and the invisible, man and God, the material wood and the spiritual. (2) The joining together or conjoining happens in the irreducibility of the two asymmetric terms with respect to one another. One does not fuse with or sublate the other to elevate or to subsume the other in dominance. Unlike in the idol, in the icon the two terms remain irreducible as asymmetric and incommensurate to each other. The wood or the figure on the wood remains as such in its materiality and in its form, while the divine is not lower to the level of the figure on the wood or to that of the wooden tablet, nor is the figure on the wood elevated to a status of semi-divine, as in an idol. When we venerate (not worship) the icon, we do not elevate the thing that is the icon. But, rather, as Marion labors to show in The Crossing of the Visible, the visible is "crossed" or "transgressed" to the invisible in the veneration. In other words, we form a relation to the invisible by crossing (the parameters of) the visible without diminishing or sanctifying the visible that is crossed. The visible--the materiality of or the painted figure in the icon--provokes the "transference" that St Basil speaks of, which the Second Council of Nicaea adopted in finally addressing the iconoclasm controversy, as cited by Marion: "the honor paid to the icon is transferred [diabainei, 'transit'] to the prototype [the Christ himself]" (The Crossing of the Visible 60). The honor is crossed over from the materiality of and the figure in the icon to Christ himself (the Son of God) in our veneration of the icon. Veneration, furthermore, is not an act of intentionality exercised, as Husserl said, in "the field of freedom" as much as it is, according to Marion, a response to the gaze of the Other who looks at us in the icon: "Before the icon, if I continue to look, I feel myself seen" (Id.). In our veneration we respond to the gaze of the Other who gazes at us in the counter-intentionality that crosses our intentionality. Christ or the saint (as depicted in the icon) addresses us, just as Jesus as depicted in the Gospels address us.
The "relation without relation" that we see in the icon is analogous to the "relation without relation" that we form, according to Levinas, in the face-to-face with the Other. But, immediately, the distinction between the two arises as soon as we recognize the similarities. The Other is not an icon, although she addresses me from the height. The Other (Autrui) is not, like Christ, an icon of the invisible God. (Being an orthodox Jewish philosopher, Levinas would never say such a thing.) The Other is not an incarnation of God, as Christ was--although Levinas speaks of incarnation in speaking of ethical subjectivity. Further, an icon does not command me, as the face of the Other does. In short, the face is not an icon. If icon is a given, the face is more than the given. Unlike icon, the Other disturbs me. The counter-intentionality by which the Other speaks to me in the face to face is stronger, more disturbing, than the icon in which the Other gazes at me in its respective counter-intentionality. What is given in the icon (i.e., the gift) does not ipso facto constitute my subjectivity as that which is always already chosen, vulnerable, and given to the Other in the face-to-face. The icon does not claim me immediately, as a stranger does by knocking at my door. There is the quiet distance in my relationship to the icon (i.e., in my veneration); whereas in my face to face with the Other the distance is immediately crossed to become proximity, susceptibility, vulnerability, and exposure. In other words, icon does not speak to me in the moral voice: "Do not murder me." Like a work of art, icon remains mute and silent while maintaining the distance. Icon, thus, stands somewhere between artwork and the Other (autrui) in the scale of subjective affectivity.
If by symbol (from sumballō, to bring together, infer, join, encounter) we mean binding the visible to the invisible, then icon is a symbol. But an idol can be a symbol, too. As symbol, an idol can hold itself as the one standing for the other such as a Scottish family emblem or a national flag. But in these cases there is no separation or distance that one needs to cross. As a matter of conventions, one term is joined with the other in order to refer to the other, like a sign referring to the signified in the linguistic system. There is nothing that intrinsically binds the red, white, and blue to the USA or France or, for that matter, sever them from the latter. The association is established by mere convention and arbitrary association in which one refers to the other without resistance, separation, or distance. But a Palestinian man holding himself to be God the Father, or a painted wooden tablet presenting itself as a representation of Christ is a folly to the gentiles and a blasphemy to the Jews. The flesh of Christ and the materiality of the icon (including the painted figure in certain shapes and colors) are inherently foreign to the invisibility of God they claim to stand for. Icon resists being the divine it stands for. The asymmetry and the incommensurability is irreducible and essential to an icon. But precisely it is in this irreducible incommensurability that the materiality of the icon is crossed without having to be overcome, suppressed, dissolved, or elevated.
In the studies on icon, Marion does not speak of faith. The crossing of the visible to the invisible that happens in the icon is not a matter of gestalt switch--seeing something as this or that between the two incommensurable terms, as something other than what it appears to be. Rather, the Father is given in the Son; the invisible is given in the visible icon, not juxtaposed or imposed over the other. The givenness beyond the ordinary phenomenality is the subject matter of Marion's phenomenology--to the schegrin of the die hard, orthodox phenomenologists such as Janicaud. Marion is not a phenomenologist of faith, at least in his works on icon, but of the givenness of the invisible in the visible. The thing itself (be it the divine or the invisible) is given; and this givenness must be described as fully and as rationally as possible with the rigor that Husserl himself practiced. Besides the phenomenological rigor, Marion is also faithful to Husserl's principle of all principles: "To the things themselves!" (die Sache selbst). For Marion, the given is the thing.
As already stated, this book does not specifically discuss iconography, as in The Crossing of the Visible, but the same notion of icon applies whether referring to the Son (the proto-icon) or the icon of the Son (the painted icon that hangs on the iconostasis in the Orthodox churches). If Jesus the Son, the proto-icon, is the icon of the invisible God the Father; an icon of Christ (hanging in the church) is an icon of the Icon. However, the distinction between the proto-icon and the icon is not significant. This insignificance is significant, as I will now show.
If the Son is, as Paul says, "the icon of the invisible God [the Father]" (Col. 1:15), can we, the Christ imitators, conceive ourselves as the icons of the once visible but now absent Christ? Are we an icon of the proto-icon Christ, analogous to the painted icon of Christ? Furthermore, what does the presence of (the absent) Christ in the Eucharist signify in contrast to his "presence" in the icon? The Eucharist is not an icon, to be sure. It is not merely a symbol employed to remember Christ's crucifixion, either--as if to refresh our memory of Christ we read about in the Gospels. What good is it, anyway, to remember about Christ's words and deeds. Improving or refreshing our memory is not the issue here. "Remembering" in the Bible and in the liturgy, rather, is not an act of believers' consciousness so as to recall the past and to re-produce it in the present moment of consciousness. When we pray to God to remember certain persons, living or dead, we are actively participating in God's recapitulation, his act of redeeming the creation or correcting the wrong in the world. To remember Christ means to effectuate his redeeming act by which the world is regenerated. The Eucharist, in other words, effectuates regeneration and recapitulation of the world. The elements from the earth and life are brought to become the flesh and blood of Christ the Son so as to be in turn offered to God the Father as an offering and sacrifice for the redemption of the world. Sacrifice or substitution, as otherwise than the way of being-in-the world, is the way of redemption that the liturgy effectuates in the eschatological vigil maintained in the midst of the world and yet separate from the world.
As already stated, the distinction between the proto-icon (the person of Christ the Son) as the icon of the invisible God and the icon of the (proto) Icon (whether the Gospels recited during the liturgy, written, or the painted icon) is not significant in the notion of icon. The insignificance is significant, as I said. Consider what Jesus said to Philip, when he wanted Jesus to show God the Father so that he may be "satisfied" (John 14:8). Jesus replied: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9)). But do we only see God the Father in Jesus Christ? Consider Matthew 25:37-39, 44, where we have the story of the last judgment, in which both the righteous and the unrighteous failed not see "the Son of Man" in the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, and the accused ("... when was it that we saw [eidomen] you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison..." (Matt.25:44, 37-39). Although they both saw the poor and the accused, one group served; the other group did not. The two different reactions for the same perception. The Kantian and Levinian point of the story is that we are to see dignity in "the least of these" (25:40, 45). My point, however, is that here we have the same phenomenon of icon. The invisible in this case is "the Son of Man" whom both the righteous and unrighteous failed to see in the poor, sick, and the accused. The wretched is the icon of "the Son of Man" the King (Id., 25:31, 34), just as Christ, according to Paul, is "the icon of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15); and his crucified body on the cross the icon of God the Father who suffers along with humans in humility and sacrifice to redeem the world. It is only natural that one does not see Christ in the wretched, just as in the painted figure in the icon one does not "see" Christ (in the sense that Philip wanted to "see" God and be satisfied).
Moreover, the act of kindness rendered toward the wretched is recognized as the very act of seeing the Son of Man in the wretched. "[E]thics is an optics," said Levinas (Totality and Infinity 23). Seeing the Other as "the widow, the orphan, and the stranger" (Deut. 16:11, 14) is to give my bread torn from my mouth to the Other. To see the Other is to give, i.e., to say, "Here I am," which means: I am always already sent to the Other and for the Other, like the prophets (Isaiah 6:8, Otherwise than Being Or Beyond Essence 199), the apostles, and Mary. Just as we see God the Father in the Christ the Son, we see Christ the King in the wretched whom I come across on the scene (as my neighbor). My neighbor is an icon of Christ.
[Continued in the comment below.]
April 18, 2024
La mort annoncée (par Nietzsche) n'est autre que le déclin d'une certaine forme de la représentation de Dieu. Marion est la solution à l'aporie notée par Heidegger concernant la métaphysique onto-théo-logique.
August 13, 2007
I was all like, "What?"
August 26, 2012
Simplemente majestuoso trabajo. Uno de mis pensadores favoritos. Hay mucho por decir sobre este trabajo, pero aun mas por leer.
June 16, 2025
Once again, Marion is most convincing when doing theology as a phenomenology-inclined Christian, rather than doing phenomenology with vague theological gestures.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews