Excerpt from "Metaphysics and Phenomenology: A Relief for Theology" by Jean-Luc Marion

"The question of God certainly does not begin with metaphysics. But it seems-- or at least was able to appear-- that since metaphysics was coming to an end, being completed, and disappearing, the question of God was coming to a close. Throughout the century that is now ending, everything happened as if the question of God could do nothing other than make common cause, positively or negatively, with the destiny of metaphysics. Everything also happened as if, in order to keep the question of God open so as to permit a "rational worship" of him (Rom. 12:1), it was absolutely necessary to stick to the strictly metaphysical meaning of all philosophy.

But could one not and therefore should not one also pose, in an opposite direction, an entirely different preliminary question: Is philosophy equivalent to metaphysics? In order to remain rational, must the question concerning God necessarily and exclusively take the paths that lead to the "God of the philosophers and the scholars" because those paths issue necessarily from the decisions of metaphysics? (Blaise Pascal, "Memorial," Oeuvres completes de Pascal, ed. Jacques Chevalier (Paris, 1954), p.554) Such a reversal of the question can surprise and disturb or, on the contrary, seem to dodge the radicality of this century's philosophical situation. It seems to me nevertheless inevitable, in that only such a reversal still leaves truly open the possibility of taking into proper account at least three questions, which I will evoke here without claiming to answer them explicitly, (a) At least according to its historical destiny, did metaphysics not reach its end-- positively with Hegel and negatively with Nietzsche? (b) Did philosophy not devote itself throughout an entire century to overcoming that end by assuming nonmetaphysical forms, of which the most powerful (I am not saying the only) remains phenomenology? (c) Does Christian speculative theology, understood in its exemplary figures (and here I am obviously thinking first of Saint Thomas Aquinas) belong to metaphysics taken in the strict sense, or has it responded to the particular conceptual demands of the Revelation that prompted it?

In succession, then, we will examine the metaphysical figure of philosophy and the thought of God that it actualizes, and then the phenomenological figure of philosopophy and the possibility that it keeps in store for God..."

© 1994 by The University of Chicago. All excerpts appear in Critical Inquiry, Volume 20, Number 4 (Summer 1994). This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of US copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice is carried and that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or reduplication of this text in other terms, in any medium, requires both the consent of the authors and the University of Chicago Press.

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