Naming the Unnameable God: Levinas, Derrida, and Marion

In this essay I present the postmodern phenomenological approach of Levinas, Derrida, and Marion to the problem of naming the unnameable God. For Levinas, God is never experienced directly but only as a third person whose infinity is testified to in the infinity of responsibility to the hungry. For Derrida, God remains the unnameable “wholly other” accessible only as the indeterminate term of pure reference in prayer. For Marion, God remains the object of “de-nomination” through praise. In all three, the problem of naming the unnameable God is necessarily linked to how we relate to fellow human beings, to the hungry in Levinas, justice in Derrida, and charity in Marion. I also reflect on the merits and adequacy of phenomenology as such for speaking of divine transcendence.     

Freedom,Normativity and Finitude: Between Heidegger and Levinas

The present article aims to illuminate a notion of finite freedom in both Heidegger and Levinas. Levinas criticizes the Heideggerian ontology for holding an egoistic, unconstrained notion of freedom. The article first responds to such a criticism by showing that the Heideggerian notion of freedom as self-binding involves normativity. It then argues that both Heidegger and Levinas propose a notion of finite freedom as the unity of autonomy and heteronomy. Finally, the article also sheds light on what different approaches to the source of normativity separate the two philosophers’ understandings of freedom.

     

Alterity and the call of conscience: Heidegger,Levinas, and Ricoeur

Since the publication and reception of Levinas’s critique of Heidegger, it has become standard practice among some authors to argue that Heidegger’s thinking of being, both early and late, is an insistent meditation on the alterity of the self in the call of conscience and the alterity of being in relation to beings, and that this thought is consequently already ‘ethical’. This line of argument has been recently pursued by Dastur, Raffoul, and Ricoeur. None of them contests that there is a difference between the alterity of the self and the alterity of the other. But they argue that the experience of the first is the condition of possibility of gaining access to the second. There are several reasons why I have failed to be convinced by this argument. In this paper, I spell out those reasons and argue that Ricoeur’s attempt to carve out a path between Heidegger and Levinas remains unsuccessful.     

列维纳斯面对康德、黑格尔、海德格尔——当代哲学关于"存在论"的争论

Levinas subverts the traditional “ontology-epistemology,” and creates a “realm of difference,” the realm of “value,” “ethic,” and “religion,” maintaining that ethics is real metaphysics. According to him, it is not that “being” contains the “other” but the other way round. In this way, the issues of ethics are promoted greatly in the realm of philosophy. Nonetheless, he does not intend to deny “ontology” completely, but reversed the relationship between “ontology (theory of truth)” and “ethics (axiology),” placing the former under the “constraint” of the latter. Different from general empirical science, philosophy focuses more on issues irrelevant to ordinary empirical objects; it does have “objects,” though. More often than not, the issues of philosophy cannot be conceptualized into “propositions”; nevertheless, it absolutely has its “theme.” As a discipline, philosophy continuously takes “being” as its “theme” and “object” of thinking. The point is that this “being” should not be understood as an “object” completely. Rather, it is still a “theme-subject.” In addition to an “object,” “being” also manifests itself in an “attribute” and a kind of “meaning” as well. In a word, it is the temporal, historical, and free “being” rather than “various beings” that is the “theme-subject” of philosophy. Translated by Zhang Lin from Wen Shi Zhe 文史哲 (Journal of Literature, History and Philosophy), 2007, (1): 61–70     

Heidegger and the question of animality 1

Abstract

It is widely recognized that Heidegger's analysis of Dasein outlines a novel dissolution of the epistemological problems of modern philosophy. However it has not been fully appreciated that this analysis presupposes a conception of human beings which radically separates them from all natural, animal life. Focusing on Heidegger's analysis of Mitsein it is argued that this separation prevents Heidegger from achieving a conception of human existence which avoids the distortions of the humanist tradition against which it recoils. Against Heidegger, it is argued that a philosophically satisfactory conception of human existence must be more smoothly naturalistic.     

Traces of Reduction: Marion and Heidegger on the Phenomenon of Religion

In his work, Being Given, Jean‐Luc Marion calls for a phenomenological investigation of the givenness (donation) of the phenomenon. As a phenomenologist of religion, Marion aims to give a philosophical account of the possibility of revelation, something which by definition is unconditionally given. In Being Given, he contends that his phenomenological reduction to unconditional givenness (in the figure of the saturated phenomenon) can account for religious phenomena in a way that respects the subject matter, all the while remaining philosophically neutral. In this paper I argue that Marion's aim to maintain strict philosophical neutrality interferes with his attempt to respect the subject matter of his own investigation, i.e., the givenness of revelation, since revelation is recognizably given, even as possibility, only in the non‐neutral context of an interpretive tradition. I establish the latter claim with recourse to Heidegger's early hermeneutic sketches of ‘primordial Christian religiosity.’ In turn, I call for a phenomenological Destruktion of Marion's work in order to release its potential as a non‐neutral investigation of a distinctively Catholic religiosity.     

The neighbor and the infinite: Marion and Levinas on the encounter between self,human other,and God

In this article I examine Jean-Luc Marion's two-fold criticism of Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy of other and self, namely that Levinas remains unable to overcome ontological difference in Totality and Infinity and does so successfully only with the notion of the appeal in Otherwise than Being and that his account of alterity is ambiguous in failing to distinguish clearly between human and divine other. I outline Levinas’ response to this criticism and then critically examine Marion's own account of subjectivity that attempts to go beyond Levinas in its emphasis on a pure or anonymous appeal. I criticize this move as rather problematic and turn instead back to Levinas for a more convincing account of the relations between self, human other, and God. In this context, I also show that Levinas in fact draws quite careful distinctions between human and divine others.     

Liberating religion from theology: Marion and Heidegger on the possibility of a phenomenology of religion

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

The time of the feminine: for a politics of maternal corporeality. Tina Chanter,Time, Death,and the Feminine: Levinas with Heidegger

Continental Philosophy Review -     

Levinas,recognition and judaism

I seek to draw out the unique character of Levinas’ theory of recognition by highlighting its transitional character in a double sense. It is transitional, firstly, in that it stands between two models of recognition: the earlier agonistic model of Kojeve and the later model of Honneth which takes as its point of departure a primordial relation of mutual affirmation between individuals. It is transitional secondly in the sense that, while Levinas initially employs the concept of recognition, he is later explicit in his rejection of it. The interest of Levinas’ transitional model of recognition for the philosophy of religion is that Levinas negotiates both transitions by calling on archetypes borrowed from the Jewish tradition. An exploration of this model thus provides us with a fresh vantage point from which to address anew the question of the articulation of social philosophy and the philosophy of religion in his work.     

Heidegger on Existentiality,Constancy, and the Self

In Being and Time, Heidegger develops an account of the self in terms of his existential ontology. He contrasts his view to Cartesian and Kantian accounts, and seems to reject features that we take to be fundamental for a self, such as diachronic unity and being the subject of one's experiences. His positive account is obscured by the difficult vocabulary of authenticity and temporality. This paper traces Heidegger's argument, outlines his existential conception of the self, and shows how it fits the basic criteria for a self.