Summer 1999
Volume 25, Number 4

From One Question to the Other
As out of date as it might seem, the topic of first philosophy is fraught with stakes, as real as they are symbolic, and still occasions polemical and passionate discussion. This should not be surprising since establishing a first philosophy is neiter optional nor outside the orbit of philosophy considered as such. In fact, philosophy, when it does not resign itself to joining the ranks of ordinary sciences--founded (or finally without foundation, a possibility that remains within the horizon of the foundation), derived, in short, secondary--should stake a claim to primacy, or at least to a certain type of primacy, in its very definition. Philosophy will remain true to its own essence only by claimng itself to be, in essence, a first philosophy. For a second philosophy either becomes a regional science [. . . ], or simply loses its philosophical status. In fact, the two terms are equivalent--without the adjective, the substantive vanishes. One therefore cannot reproach philosophy for claiming primacy since lacking this primacy it would disappear as such. Therefore, if the prmacy of philosophy presupposes first philosophy, the difficulty should consist less in the legitimacy of this primacy than in determining its type. At once the nature of the difficulty changes: from now on it concerns defining and establishing the primacy that philosophy must exercise if it is to remain itself. We will no longer ask if first philosophy is still thinkable, but what determination of primacy can legitimately be exercised.

Jean-Luc Marion is professor of philosophy at the University of Paris X--Nanterre and in the Univesity of Chicago Divinity School and directs studies in the history of classical philosophy at the École Normale Supéreieure. His books include Sur l'ontologie grise de Descartes: Science cartésienne et savoir aristotélicien dans les Regulae (1975; rev. ed. 1981); L'Idole et la distance: Cinq études (1977); Sur la théologie blache de Descartes: Analogie, creéation des vérités éternelles, fondement (1981; rev. ed. 1991); Dieu sans l'être (1982; in English, 1991); Réduction et donation: Recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger, et la phénoménologie (1989; in English, 1999). His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry is "Metaphysics and Phenomenology: A Relief for Theology" (Summer 1994). Jeffrey L. Kosky holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the translator of Jean-Luc Marion's On Descartes' Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought (1999) and has published essays in philosophy and religious thought.