Fritz 2009 Henry, Marion, Aesthetics of The Invisible

Modern Theology 25:3 July 2009 ISSN 0266-7177 (Print) ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)
BLACK HOLES AND REVELATIONS: MICHEL HENRY AND JEAN-LUC MARION ON THE AESTHETICS OF THE INVISIBLE
PETER JOSEPH FRITZ
Introduction1
moth_1535
415..440
Phenomenology, in the hands of the French thinkers Michel Henry and Jean-Luc Marion, continues a shift toward the invisible begun most notably by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger.2 This article concerns this interesting development as it relates to painting, aesthetics generally, and, in turn, theology. Henry and Marion share the project of redening phenomenality, the how (comment) of a phenomenons appearing, since they nd Edmund Husserls account too constrictive.3 Where their versions of phenomenality differ, so do their views on aesthetics. Henrys equation of phenomenality with Life squares quite neatly with his recasting of phenomenological method.4 Marion denes phenomenality more traditionally (and broadly), following Martin Heideggers view of it, as the right and power of a phenomenon to show itself from itself.5 As for aesthetics, Henry sees in the invisible the en-static perpetual oscillation of life between suffering and joy, which the painter makes apparent through cultivating harmony or discord among two-dimensional pictorial elements.6 Marion regards the invisible differently, in a more complex way. For him, the painter produces absolutely new phenomena, that is, new visibles whose incandescence no longer leaves a place for anything invisiblesuch paintings Marion groups under the name idol.7 But it is precisely this crushing visibility that, paradoxically, makes the idol invisible, as the viewer
Peter Joseph Fritz University of Notre Dame, Department of Theology, 130 Malloy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 465564619 USA peterjosephfritz@gmail.com
2009 The Author Journal compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
416 Peter Joseph Fritz suffers bedazzlement.8 Even though artists produce them, idols quickly show themselves as exercising the initiative. Marion adds another wrinkle as well: the icon. With this phenomenon, the invisible gets gured as a counter-gaze that crosses my ownthis Levinasian aspect of Marions phenomenology, among other things, distinguishes it quite clearly from Henrys. In ways at once convergent and sharply divergent, then, Henry and Marion carve out paths different from the aesthetics of visible form. What gives with the invisible? Should we prefer the aesthetics of invisibility to the aesthetics of visibility? Does a preference for the former offer us answers to our contemporary problems, both aesthetic and theological, such as the widely proclaimed death of painting, or the prettifying of religious faith? The gures Henry and Marion uphold as exemplary painters point us toward an answer to our questions. Henry chooses Wassily Kandinsky, and Marion selects Mark Rothko. Though they evidence many differences, one cannot argue against the general similarities between Kandinsky and Rothkothey are both modern (twentieth-century), non-objective painters. The aesthetics of the invisible, in the case of Henry, predicates itself upon modern abstraction, and Marion seems in partial agreement with him, especially by assigning primary importance to a paintings effect. Marion differs from Henry when he privileges the icon as the savior of images.9 Henry and Marion, by focusing on invisibility, open paintings phenomenalityherein lies the value of their contributions. Both transcend Husserls constraining objectness (and Heideggers beingness), but they leave us with potentially questionable iterations of aesthetics: of unseen feelings of joy and suffering, and of the empty pupils of the eye. The question that will occupy us for the rest of this article is whether in doing this Henry and/or Marion avoid re-restricting phenomenality. We shall nd that one fails to avoid it, while the other nds a way outalbeit one with a complex itinerary. Having made the above prefatory comments, I can now state my thesis, which concerns the aesthetics of Henry and Marion, the aesthetics of black holes and revelations, when it is utilized as a resource for theology. Henrys aesthetics, theologically applied, exercises an inadequate Kantian apophasis, characterized by a sublime sacrice of the imagination; although Marions work sometimes evidences a similar tendency, its prevailing momentum offers theology a fully catholic scope. By the end of this article, at least a couple of major points of interest related to my thesis will come to the fore. One concerns the extent to which an aesthetics of the invisible necessitates a forced curtailment of the imagination so as to attain philosophically to an essencethis point relates to the work of both of our thinkers. The other, for the most part, implicates Marion, for it involves assessing how much critical traction he generates by deploying Immanuel Kants own notion of the sublime against him. My argument unfolds in four major parts. First, I briey discuss the redenition of phenomenality by Henry and Marion. Second, I explore Henrys
Black Holes and Revelations 417 book, Voir linvisible sur Kandinsky (1988), so as to explicate his view of the invisible as he lays it out in a denition of abstract painting. Third, I expound Marions reections on painting in his later philosophy, starting with The Crossing of the Visible (1996),10 which he wrote at the request and under the inuence of Henry, with his rehabilitation of the concept of idol and his renewed zeal for the icon.11 This third section will point out how both Henry and Marion assimilate the Kantian sublime into their phenomenologies. Fourth, I lay out a series of objections to the Kantian theological project as presented in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793),12 and then I critically appraise the theological (de)merits, from a Catholic point of view where a breadth and depth of imagination is at a premiumof Henry and Marion as they relate to Kant and his logic of the parergon.13 Phenomenality: From Objectness to La Vie and Donation Henry observes in Phnomnologie matrielle (1990), The question of phenomenology . . . no longer concerns phenomena, but the mode of their givenness, their phenomenalitynot that which appears, but appearing.14 Setting aside arguments about the validity of this claim, let us entertain it in order to launch ourselves into our discussion. We begin with Husserls statement of the principle of all principles in Ideas I (1913): No conceivable theory can make us err with respect to the principle of all principles: that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition, that everything originarily (so to speak, in its personal actuality) offered to us in intuition is to be accepted simply as what it is presented as being, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there.15 This statement begins with a broad opening of possibilities for phenomenalityevery originary presentive intuition legitimizes its corresponding cognition; every time a phenomenon presents an intuition to us originarily, we must accept it as is. Husserl brings us a long way, it seems, from Cartesian methodological doubt, and the strictures of Kantian critique, which both privilege the human subject, thus objectifying phenomena. But Husserl advances only temporarily. For all the boundaries Husserl breaks with the principle of all principles, he clearly acknowledges, or perhaps erects, in the principles last two phrases, limits of his own on the phenomenons appearance. For this reason, Henry and Marion meet him with many questions. As Henry and Marion direct similar concerns toward Husserl, I will use Marions queries to the principle of all principles to send us into the two philosophers rethinking of phenomenality. Marion keys in on the relationship between intuition, intention, and manifestation, and asks, The intuition of an intentional object no doubt accomplishes a phenomenal manifestation; but despite that, is every manifestation of a phenomenon carried out by the
418 Peter Joseph Fritz intuition of an objective intention transcendent to consciousness? He continues, trying to summarize his point: In short, does the constitution of an intentional object by an intuition fullling an objectifying ecstasy exhaust every form of appearing?16 Marion concludes the same line of questioning by contending, Intuition nally contradicts phenomenality because it itself remains submitted to the ideal of objectifying representation.17 Neither Marion nor Henry can accept Husserls restriction of phenomenality (which he draws from Kants metaphysics)18 via intuitions determination by intentionality. They each attempt to discover a larger umbrella under which phenomena nd their how of appearing. Henry names his umbrella la Vie (Life). He speaks of Life with many different terms, but perhaps most succinctly as the auto-revelation of absolute subjectivity.19 To summarize various strands of Henrys thought about Lifeit is the essence of manifestation, giving itself to itself in pure immanence, not as the light of theoretical knowledge, but rather as the night of affective experience, invisible because occurring within a living one (in a subject), not out in the open (in objects). These oracular gestures toward a denition of phenomenality stem from an overarching worry Henry has about the contemporary world, the (stillborn) offspring of modern thought hardly anyone believes in interiority, because modernity has refuted that concept.20 Henry avers that phenomenology holds the key to recovering the interior life, as long as the discipline denes its project properlynamely, the way Henry envisions it, with phenomenality being taken as primitive to the phenomenon. For him, this means that phenomenology must overturn biologys way of treating life, and describe life as it actually transpires, welling up in the auto-affection of the affective esh of pathos ( ).21 Phenomenality comes to mean for Henry self-phenomenalization (manifestation, or even revelation of self, to/for self), paradigmatically in the feelings of joy and suffering. Thus Henry claims to reverse Husserlian phenomenologyhe redirects the ecstasy of intentionality (toward phenomena) into an enstasy of auto-affection (phenomenality). Marion makes no such attempt to reverse Husserl, but instead he aims to pick up Husserls project where it derailed. According to Marion, the nal two clauses Husserl includes in the principle of all principles stand as examples of how Husserl, following Kant, connes phenomenality to the objectness of the object. The last parts, simply as what it is presented as being and only within the limits, concern the phenomenons horizon, and imply that the phenomenality of each one is pre-visible to a transcendental I.22 Hence the object becomes (over)determined by the subject, or subjectivity. In place of objectness and the over-activity of the subject, Marion views givenness (donation) as the mark of phenomenalityHusserl speaks of Gegebenheit, but he never posits it as the origin of the appearing of phenomena. Marion insists that a proper account of phenomenality must relate to the operation of the reduction. But Husserl articulated the principle of all
Black Holes and Revelations 419 principles in Ideas I before he raised the topic of the phenomenological reduction, so givenness remains uninterrogated.23 Two main characteristics of givenness are of interest for my argument, and relate to the reduction. It involves both 1) an inability of a phenomenon to be foreseen and 2) a persistent invisibility even in its visibility. The phenomenological reduction, when performed, leads us to the immanent noematic core of the phenomenon, from which it shows itself, prior to the intentional ecstasy of consciousness (noesis).24 Phenomenologys value lies in its capacity to recognize each phenomenon as a self with its own authority. Subjective consciousness does not grant selfhood to the phenomenon, for the phenomenon already has it by its own right and power. This selfhood also entails that in its appearing the phenomenon leaves concealed givenness itself.25 Marion distills these insights about phenomenologys elucidation of the phenomenon as self into the principle for phenomenality, So much reduction, so much givenness.26 From the general concern of phenomenality, let us now move into the more determinate topic, painting. Here we encounter a specic sort of phenomenon (a painting), its creator (the painter), and its recipient (the viewer). As we proceed, we must remember the alterations Henry and Marion made to Husserls limited account of phenomenality (whose limitations, once again, stem from Kant). For our two post-Husserlian thinkers, the paintings appearing does not consist in being an object available for full constitution by a viewing subject (Husserl and Kant), but rather in the auto-revelation of life (Henry) or the self-showing of givenness (Marion). Henry, Kandinsky, and Pathos It is no wonder that the artwork and theoretical writings of Kandinsky caught Henrys eye. The artist of the inner need (Kandinsky) meets the philosopher of the inner life (Henry). One of Kandinskys books, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911), stands among the most famous in twentiethcentury painting. It appears at a time when painting is beginning its revolt from dependence on nature,27 or at least natures exteriority. Kandinsky writes, in the spirit of Henrys philosophy before Henrys birth, The elements of the new art are to be found . . . in the inner and not the outer qualities of nature.28 He recognizes that the general public may not receive the new art kindlyTo those who are not accustomed to it the inner beauty appears as ugliness because humanity in general inclines to the outer and knows nothing of the inner29but nevertheless Kandinsky insists that the inner need of the artist, and through him, art itself, surpasses the supercial gaze of the spectator.30 Kandinsky famously emphasizes the fundamental proximity of the arts of music and painting, and he characterizes the painter as at once creating visual art and making a sort of music. The colors and forms the painter utilizes must strike a spiritual chord in the spectator
420 Peter Joseph Fritz (including the painter himself) in order for the painting to be called good.31 Thus we see the Kandinskian denition of the painter: The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.32 The artist (visually) touches the inner feeling of his viewer, for he is attuned to his own joy and suffering, and he lives for the spirit alone.33 To repeat outer/inner, soul, feeling, joy, suffering, spirit: we have here in Kandinksy the makings of Henrys aesthetics of Life. Henrys own book, Voir linvisible sur Kandinsky, takes the above cues and several more from Kandinsky, and categorizes and organizes them into what Henry dubs the great Kandinskian equation.34 In Henrys nal posing of it, the equation reads as follows: Interior = interiority of absolute subjectivity = life = invisible = pathos = abstract content = abstract form.35 The way Henry formulates the Kandinskian equation shows us that Henry sees in Kandinsky an echo of his own fundamental ontology, and Henry admits this.36 Henrys fundamental ontology contains two poles, though, so we should lay out another equation to illustrate this. A counter-equation, extrapolated from insights of Henry/Kandinsky might look like this: Exterior = exteriority of the world = life manifested in light = visible = theory = determinate content = determinate form. Kandinskys theory of art evidences a phenomenology of sorts, an account of being (or the being of pictorial elements) rendered according to its two modes of appearance: exteriority and interiority, visible and invisible.37 This quasi-ontology or phenomenology of painting proceeds in the manner of Husserls eidetic analysis.38 Just as Henry seeks the essence of manifestation, so does Kandinsky pursue the essence of painting. Kandinsky nds, with Henry in agreement, that abstract painting denes the essence of all painting.39 Abstraction, then, takes over the whole picturecontent and form and the whole picture becomes an ontological unity in the pathos of life. This ontological unity of painting bears out its signicance in the effect it has on the viewer to whom the artist directs his work. Amid a discussion of the relationship between music and abstract painting, and their unity in the unity of the different senses that perceive them, Henry references his book Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body (1965), which sets forth a phenomenology of the subjective body, which he distinguishes from the empirical body.40 He offers that book as an ex-post-facto philosophical foundation for Kandinskys theory of abstraction and of visual elements.41 Thus Henry links up Kandinskys view of art with his own account of sensation as being grounded in the pathetic subjectivity that denes identically our original Body and the being we areour Soul.42 By the intuition of the artist,43 Kandinsky reached the insight that art concerns not the outer world of
Black Holes and Revelations 421 objects, the visible, but rather (the) inner life (of its spectators), which is Life. Henry articulates the goal of art according to Kandinsky: To give to feeling everything that can be felt, to make experienced all that can be experienced, all the forces of our being which, one will see, are also those of the cosmos, such is the ambition of abstract painting, the true calling of art, which has no reason, in effect, to be limited to the reproduction of common facts or events, to their irremovable outlines.44 Painting should not represent anything, nature or otherwise, but rather it should give us life to feel within ourselvesat the deepest level, painting gives us the reality of the cosmos, which, to paraphrase Kandinsky, is replete with the modes of life.45 Henry thus hearkens back to Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, where he suggests that to sense means to test the universal life of the universe,46 the inner world that Henry distinguishes sharply from the world of exteriority (hence his later attraction to the Gospel of John: He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him.John 1:10).47 Painting, as a unity of abstract content and even abstract form, awakens feelings in the spectator that unlock, it seems, absolute knowledge (revelation!).48 Henry ends the book with a couple of pages on Kandinskys Parisian canvases. Describing them, he makes some interesting comments about their abstract forms: In this zero-gravity milieu, where weight is made levity, forms hover stripped of their substance, bodies of light, glorious bodies bodies of life.49 Abstract painting expresses invisible modes of life by bringing them to visibility, and thus arousing them within the living body. Though not a religious believer (Henry converted to Christianity roughly half a decade after writing Voir linvisible), Henry makes a nal provocative statement: Art is the resurrection of eternal life.50 Evidently, art effects a sort of glorication of the viewer, a quickening of the subjective body (or esh, or, for that matter, Soul)but only by awakening the life that has always already pulsed within her. We get from Henry, then, an aesthetics of the invisible (even a doctrine of absolute knowledge!) in the form of the feeling of life. His view of painting thus maps (too?) straightforwardly onto his philosophical project as a whole. Marion, Rothko (Idol), and the Gaze (Icon) Jean-Luc Marion picks up on Henrys reading of Kandinsky, assimilating its essential parts into his own reections on painting.51 Marion hints that he too stands, so to speak, in the Kandinskian linehe champions paintings that do not care to imitate nature. Marions painter instead busies himself making visible what would otherwise remain unseen. Marion thickly describes his viewpoint:
422 Peter Joseph Fritz The paintingat least one that is authenticimposes in front of every gaze an absolutely new phenomenon, increasing by force the quantity of the visible. The paintingthe authentic oneexposes an absolutely original phenomenon, newly discovered, without precondition or genealogy, suddenly appearing with such a violence that it explodes the limits of the visible identied to that point. The painter, with each painting, adds yet another phenomenon to the indenite ow of the visible. He completes the world because he does not imitate nature. He deepens a seam or fault line, in the night of the inapparent, in order to extract, lovingly or more often by force, with strokes and patches of color, blocks of the visible.52 Two related accents fall hererst, that of novelty; second, that of the primacy of the inapparent. The authentic painter provides us with something new, a phenomenon we could not have previewed. If the artist wishes to bring forth this visibility, though, she must deal with the inapparent, linvu (the unseen). In fact, the painter enters a rather complex relation with the inapparentat once both active and passive. She creates, as if ordering the primordial chaos.53 As the painter seems a gure for Marion of ladonn, the subject who has undergone a phenomenological reduction (for Marion, the third reduction to givenness),54 she carries the charge of being the gatekeeper for the ascent into visibility of all that gives itself.55 Thus she puts us face to face with the striking property of givenness. These active roles do not eclipse the mode of passivity in which the painter lives as well: he admits that, despite all his work, it is not he who put in the work on the painting but the painting itself, which, thus humbly called to appear upon the occasion of the work, opens itself to the visible on its own initiative.56 The painter creates, but in doing so, suffers the painting57he resists (on the borderline of activity and passivityin the way a crayon resists watercolor) the onslaught of givenness.58 To twist Marions formula for phenomenality (so much reduction, so much givenness) to t it to paintings phenomenalization: so much resistance, so much visibility. Marion nds such a phenomenological situation in Rothkos work: Mark Rothko resists what he has received as a violent giventoo harsh for anyone else than himin phenomenalizing it on the screen of slack colors: I have imprisoned the most absolute violence in each square centimeter of their [the paintings] surfaces. 59 The painting, Marion suggests, presents itself as sopping with visibility, indeed as the phenomenon characterized by its indisputable visibility.60 With this in mind, Marion employs the painting as his example of the second kind of saturated phenomenon, the radiant one, saturated with respect to quality. Marion also dubs this phenomenon the idol, which he means in a somewhat different sense than he did in his early work. In the essay in In Excess (2001) on the idol, Marion rehabilitates this phenomenon as the one that grants us pertinent
Black Holes and Revelations 423 insights for the study of phenomena generally and saturated, or highphenomenality, phenomena in particular. Due to its incomparably vibrant visibility, the idol clues us in to the way invisible givenness presents itself to sight through phenomena. Especially in the case of saturated phenomena, they impose themselves.61 The painting, an exemplary saturated phenomenon, intrigues me, or directs an intrigue toward me; it obsesses me via a blast of luminescence.62 Rothkos experience of painting as reining in a brutal barrage of the visible speaks to an interesting feature of Marions saturated phenomenon, which comes to light yet again in the following words: The saturation of the visible becomes, to the one who knows how to look at it as it gives itself, really unbearable.63 We get a sense, with Marions invocation of the adjective unbearable, that he has assimilated in his account of saturated phenomena the Kantian sublime.64 The sublime coheres with the saturated phenomenon because it signies formlessness, it is a negative pleasure, it opposes our interest, and astonishment is a possible feature accompanying it.65 Again, in the words of an important resource for Kant, Edmund Burke, Whatever is tted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime.66 The unbearable advent of the painting surely, at the very least, operates in a manner analogous to terror; Marion insists on thisthe painting confronts us with terror as we stand in the face of the power that it exerts in the name of the darkness from which it arises.67 He restates the same point: The painting offers to our terried eyes the spectacle of a wall of the unseen, which cracks under the pressure of the desire to appear. The ood of the visible overcomes it.68 To return to Michel Henryhis inuence on Marion manifests itself in what we have just seen: the latters focus on effect (terror and fascination). We saw above that, in the nal analysis, Henry concerns himself almost exclusively with the way the painting awakens feelings of life (suffering and joy) within the viewer, and this mix of suffering and joy can ttingly be called sublime. Marion, likewise, proposes a reduction proper to painting, the reduction to effect. He argues, To see the painting, to the point where it is not confused with any other, amounts to seeing it reduced to its effect.69 Also, Marion reminds us of Henry with his choice imagery to describe the coming into visibility of the painting. He talks of the upsurge of the painting,70 calling to mind the welling up of life within the affective esh of pathos. As in Henry, this sublime upsurge made visible in the painting, liberates the look from all inscription in this world, from all cosmic imprisonment,71 or in Henrys terms, the truth of the world. All of these thoughts from Henry and Marion call to mind the sublimes representation of limitlessness (Unbegrenztheit).72 Marion and Henry differ, though, in that Marion aims explicitly to deploy something like the sublime in order to gain critical traction in opposition to
424 Peter Joseph Fritz Kant. After briey telling of Kants foretaste of . . . a saturated phenomenon in his aesthetic ideas, and more excess-ively in the sublime, Marion writes, The path to follow now opens more clearly. I must develop as far as possible the less common hypothesis (i.e. than phenomena as objects) glimpsed by Kant himselfand against him.73 Marions case against Kant is ostensibly to be made through any and all saturated phenomena, idol included, but it seems that another sort of painting, the icon, presents even stronger evidence against Kants (thus Husserls) persistent conditioning of phenomena in terms of the power of knowledge, not the phenomenons power of appearing.74 Though the idol, in effect, can deliver the gaze from slavery to the world (of foreseen objects), there is one thing it cannot give: the face. The icon does, and this is crucially important, for the face is perhaps the most glaring example of a phenomenon that does not agree with the power of knowledge, as Kant would have all phenomena do.75 In keeping with this, Marion observes that the other three types of saturated phenomena (event, idol, esh) are gathered in the icon.76 Marion senses in Rothko a point of transition between the idol and the icon, which Marion recodes in terms of the faade and the face. According to Rothko/Marion, the extreme visibility of the painting poses a problem: [I]f painting exercises the phenomenological function of reducing what gives itself to what shows itself, the potential visible to the pure seen, if it operates this reduction in bringing back all the visible to the pure and simple plane-ness of the surface, it must end inevitably in the faade.77 One familiar with modernist (particularly New York school) painting may catch here intimations of Clement Greenbergs proclamation of atness as the essence of painting, an idea that inuenced Rothko. The opposition of faade to face insinuates that this essence of painting, rather than a fecund ground, resembles a rotten core. With its atness (platitude), the faade cancels all depth; it presents a neutral surface, one without relation, which thus closes off access to the intimate.78 We begin to hear, then, echoes of the early Lvinass curt, stinging attack on art in Reality and its Shadow (1948).79 For Marion, Rothko foreshadows Lvinass contention that the faade forbids us to paint the face. For Rothko, the decision to paint or not to paint the face comes down to two simple options: 1) killing the face in enframing it in the atness of the painting and putting it to death in the idol, or 2) mutilating oneself as a painter and giving up producing the face directly in visibility.80 Marion probably overstates the case, but we must nevertheless attend to a stark contrast that emerges here in question form: Do I choose my own artistic enjoyment, or the life of the other? Marion refuses to oppose ethics and aesthetics; in fact he highlights their association: Art bears the responsibility of what it gives to see and, even further, the responsibility of its power to make us look.81 The painting as idol proves dangerous
Black Holes and Revelations 425 perhaps the feeling of the sublime it gives attests to thisfor it threatens to destroy the face. But (somehow) the painting as icon can give the face without this danger. I already mentioned that Marions interest in the icon marks his main divergence from Henry. First of all, the latter apparently has no worries over the danger painting poses to the face of the otherat worst the painting calls up (sublime) feelings of pain and suffering within a spectator. Second, he allows no room for an iconic moment, as he categorically prefers the immediacy of Life experienced in auto-affection, but the concept of the icon necessarily includes an element of mediation (or at least two gazes, hence hetero-affection). Marion, on the other hand, holds the icon in utterly high esteem. In fact, he sees in the Second Council of Nicaeas (787) dogmatic afrmation of the icon perhaps the only . . . alternative to the contemporary disaster of the image.82 He proclaims that in the icon, the visible and the invisible embrace each other from a re that no longer destroys but rather lights up the divine face for humanity.83 In The Crossing of the Visible, Marions description of the face ows at least in part from the dogmatic symbol of Chalcedon (451), so divine and human faces coexist in an unconfused unity. But elsewhere his reections on the face concern not God but the other personas a faithful phenomenologist he dutifully brackets Gods face. He derives his account, as well as the critique of the artistic image to which I have already referred, from Lvinas. The painting (as idol) offers the Other to my eyes in a way that leads me to mistake the Other for the object, and leave concern for the Other to care for the object.84 The painting (as icon) does not attain to the project of the idol, but rather, even though it depicts the human face visually, it centers itself on invisibility, and disrupts the intentional gaze.85 Marion writes, The visible is liberated from vision at the moment when it seizes its own invisibility. The invisible, from that point on, plays no longer between the aim of the gaze and the visible, but rather, contrary to the gazing aim, in the visible, itself.86 The icon gives not an experience, but a counter-experiencethe face that gazes at me, in-visibly yet in-the-visible, before I get the chance to look at, and thus negate it.87 Whereas the painting (idol) can evoke the counter-experience of the sublime, which does violence (to me), this crossing of intentionality fails to compare to the crossing of the visible in the painting (icon), which stops violence (that of my hand), and elects me to peace; the icon assigns me.88 The icon, the unforeseeable painting, from invisibility, foresees me. The phrase from invisibility brings us to the center of Marions thinking on aesthetics. This center lies in the middle of the human eye (whether real or painted): the pupil. This tiny black dot becomes a recurring theme in Marions work.89 It functions as probably his favorite symbol for the invisible. Let us switch from talking about painting to reecting on the body of the other person, so as to stay closer to Marions own words. The pupils signify for Marion the gaze that comes upon me that provides no spectacle.
426 Peter Joseph Fritz These two voids are the only two places on the surface of the body of the Other where there is nothing to see.90 They refute the over-activity of a subject or transcendental I that aims at visible objectives by substituting for these objectives something invisible and invisable (untargetable), a darkness beyond the reach of my light-sensitive eyes.91 A text from Lvinas can illustrate Marions drift: The trace of a past in a face is not the absence of a not-yet-revealed, but the anarchy of what has never been present, of an innite which commands in the face of the other, and which, like an excluded middle, could not be aimed at.92 The excluded middle and that which could not be aimed atdoes he describe the pupil, which in terms of light does not appear to sight? In the context of his overall philosophical project, Lvinas deploys the excluded middle in an iconoclastic mode; for him ethics and the Exodus ban on images (Exodus 20:4) go hand in hand. Ethics and its close relative, iconoclasm, both center on the face, the very collapse of phenomenality.93 For Lvinas it seems quite clear that the excluded middle, the pupil, gures the sublimethe negative appearance of the unpresentable. The blackness of the pupil can take on another sense, though, for color shows itself in another mode than light: pigment, a usable form of visibility. Thus we return to Marions view of painting (a specic sort of painting at that, for the vacant, occluded eyes of a Modigliani or a Gauguin portrait do not count as iconic). In spite of his respect for Lvinas, Marion does not follow him in the latters (sublime) iconoclasm. He disputes the iconoclastic slogan, Either the invisible or the impostor.94 The doctrine of the icon, dened by Nicaea II, rejects this analytic dichotomy, opting for a different teaching concerning the visibility of the image . . . concerning the usage of this visibility.95 How do we use visibility in the painting or viewing of an icon? The black pigment placed at the center of the eyes of, say, the Blessed Virgin Mary, functions not to represent the shadows inside the eyeball, but rather to signify the invisible gaze that transpierces the visible screen of the icon, which envisions the gazing spectator.96 Marion informs todays iconoclasts: [W]hat is at stake in the operation of the icon concerns not the perception of the visible or the aesthetic but the intersection of two gazes; in order for the viewer to be allowed to see and escape from the status of being a mere voyeur, it is necessary for him to move, through the visible icon, toward the origin of another gaze, confessing and admitting to be seen by it.97 The iconic moment, so eloquently articulated here, shows the value Marion ascribes to the visibility of the icon (the paintings black pigment), which hardly constitutes an absolute value. In the icon, visibility becomes relativizedit does not collapse, la Lvinas, but the correctly disposed viewer can recognize that it has emptied itself (cf. Phil. 2:7).98 In a way typied by
Black Holes and Revelations 427 Jesus Christ, of whom the icon (dogmatically) is the type, the icon effaces its own visible spectacle, impoverishes itself so as to allow the gaze to pass through it to its invisible prototype.99 When we acknowledge the icon, we exit a space of mimetic rivalry between the invisible and the (visible) impostor, for in the icon the visible opens not onto another visible but onto the other of the visiblethe invisible Holy One.100 The pupils, empty black holes intending me with a ray of the divine shadow,101 open the way to invisible givenness, not so I may approach it, but so it may arrive to me. I have gathered these various theological points to illustrate how Marion evades the sublime iconoclasm of Lvinas, which is strongly redolent of Kantianism.102 But not until my next section will we see for sure whether Marion succeeds at adequately exorcising Kant from his phenomenologyit will soon become clear that this is no simple issue to navigate. Before moving on, let us end with Marion in a similar way to how we did with Henry. Interestingly, we nd Marion echoing the nal comments we observed from Henry, as he brings up the theme of resurrection: Every painting participates in a resurrection, every painting imitates Christ, by bringing the unseen to light.103 Marion refers to the Christian tradition of Christs descent into hell, which in Marions preferred theological resource (at least in his early work), Hans Urs von Balthasar, signies the lowest moment of Christs self-emptying (kenosis), which slingshots Christ into the resurrection and to the right hand of the Father. The painter undergoes a kenosis as well, plunging into the unforeseen, and after a time there (on the third day?), he emerges victorious with a new visible: The gates of Hell y open without ceasing, from which the painter returns to the light of day as a new master of the visible, and in this quasi-resurrection, the painter shows us a miracle.104 Surely Marion would caution us, though, that the new glory this resurrection brings will yield an idol, unless this glory is regarded as provisional on its own. The true glory of painting lies in the icon, where the visible object becomes visible transit where two gazes cross each other and are exposed to each other.105 Art is not the resurrection of eternal life, but possibly the idol (as saturated phenomenon), and denitely the icon, can pregure resurrection. The one who prays, that is, lets the invisible other see me through the visible, is transformed . . . from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18).106 Now let us pause for a summary and a(n) (re)orientation. The previous section led us to conclude that Henrys view of painting ts perhaps too easily with his philosophy overall. After our close reading of Marion, I deem it warranted to suggest that though Marions view proves more complex in its execution, at times its solution tends toward ending up nearly as simple as Henrys. With his fascination with Life, Henry envisions art as expressing life; Marion, with his project of nding unforeseeable phenomena, tells us how art foresees us! Instead of Henrys aesthetics of invisible feelingrevelations, we have Marions aesthetics of exposure to untargetable black holes. Thus all the foregoing exposition has unveiled, among the many
428 Peter Joseph Fritz divergences between Henry and Marion, an undeniable, if occasional, convergencea Kantian, apophatic search after an aesthetic (or sublime) essence of art. For all their disagreements with Husserl, Henry (certainly) and Marion (possibly) still remain committed, in some ways at least, to purity, the eidetic science of pure phenomenology, as in Ideas I.107 The next sections task is to explicate how this seeking after the eidos of painting might translate into an overly thin theologyone distasteful to a catholic imaginationand how Marion ultimately discovers a path beyond it. Assessment: Theology and Kantian Apophasis The idea of the invisible has brought us a long way from a simple description of the act of, or the fact of (the) painting. We have discussed everything from colors and forms to life, the body, ethics, and glory. We have mentioned how, through painting, the invisible violates us, stays our hand, and elects us. Now we turn to the one who saves us: God. From phenomenological aesthetics we make a theological turn.108 The stretching of phenomenality we have witnessed in Henry and Marionbeyond objectnessshould render phenomenology wide open for an engagement with God, or more precisely, Gods revelation.109 To a certain extent it has, much to the chagrin of phenomenologists like Dominique Janicaud. The latters critiques, which alternate between spot-on accuracy and polemical overstatement, can lend a helping hand here. One of Janicauds main criticisms of Henry and Marion states, in effect, that their searches for a better denition of phenomenality terminate in the discovery of new metaphysical foundations.110 In other words, especially in the case of Henry, they strip away what one might call the husk of the phenomenon to get to the kernel of phenomenality, whether Life or givenness. We see this method at work when each discusses painting: Henry unlocks colors to nd the feelings, modes of Life behind them; Marion directs his gaze at the painted image and nds atness (pure visibility) as distinguishing it. Both believe (or at least write as if) they have identied the essence of painting. Marion does not stop there, thoughhe relates the painting (as idol) to the icon, whose essence he likewise seeks, and nds in the black holes through which the invisible peers back at him. In the face to face, the cross of gazes, Marion locates the essence (even the salvation) of all images, which includes all paintings (even idols). For over two centuries, Christian theology has experienced a veritable gold rush of scholarship where theological prospectors mine Scripture and Christian traditions looking for the precious nugget of das Wesen des Christentums, the essence of Christianity. And it seems that we have Kant to thank for this outpouring of interest in Christianitys core. His move in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone to reduce (in the phenomenological sense of lead back, and in the common sense of diminish) the various doctrines and practices of Christianity to the universal concepts of practical reason ignited
Black Holes and Revelations 429 a still-burning theological blaze. With somewhat horrifying, but undeniably alluring deftness, Kants Religion engages in a project of separation and delimitation, the drawing of borders and concentric circles.111 Kant has an eidos in mindthe pure religion of reason, or one (true) religionwhich, according to him, is isolable, even if at present it has ties with various ecclesiastical faiths, those soiled with the empirical dross of history.112 Religion, Kant explains, pace the common man, is not equivalent to ecclesiastical faiths based on historical revelation, but rather religion is hidden within and has to do with moral dispositions.113 Hidden (invisible?) within the moral dispositionfor this reason religions subject matter, its Materiewhich at least one English translator renders as essenceis obedience . . . to all duties as [Gods] commands.114 The historical element of a faith, say, Christianity, contributes nothing to making human persons better (morally), as the essence of religion demands, and thus this historical element is something which is in itself quite indifferent, and we can do with it what we like.115 Kant likes to separate it out, and to look forward to the day when it will pass awaywhen at last the pure religion of reason will rule over all.116 Jacques Derrida makes a connection in The Truth in Painting (1978) between Kantian aesthetics and the modus operandi of the Religion, a link apropos of and instructive for this articles topic. Both of Kants projects consist in marking out integral parts to the total representation of an object and at the same time judging what belongs to it only in an extrinsic way.117 Characteristically, Derrida notes that a border situation emerges as Kant proceeds. In between both of these, the clearly intrinsic and clearly extrinsic, Kant arranges parerga, both in the Critique of Judgment (using examples of frames on pictures, drapery on statues, and colonnades of palaces), and in the Religion (works of grace, miracles, mysteries, means of grace).118 Like another famous Greek philosophical term, pharmakon, parergon performs a double function.119 First, a parergon is an outside which is called to the inside of the inside in order to constitute it as an inside.120 For instance, in the case of religion, when reason needs . . . supplementary work in order to satisfy its moral need, a parergon such as belief in the assistance of grace comes in to provide it. Or in aesthetics, a frame can enhance a paintings beauty.121 In these ways, the parergon can be said to make a positive contribution. Second, parerga exercise a negative function, what Derrida calls the pathology of the parergon.122 In religion, Kant tells us, the idea of the works of grace can issue in fanaticism, and attending the other parerga of religion are other equally threatening pitfalls.123 In painting, the parergon risks a lapse into adornment, where it would harm the beauty of the work, cause it detriment. Derrida recognizes the source of the pathology amid these symptoms: The deterioration of the parergon, the perversion, the adornment, is the attraction of the sensory matter.124 Kants concern with religious
430 Peter Joseph Fritz parerga, which arise within historical or ecclesiastical faiths, is their tendency to lead faithful people to busy themselves with piety, while forgetting what is truly essentialvirtue.125 It seems, then, with this mixture of two functions, that parerga showcase in an exemplary way the indifference Kant ascribes to the historical element of Christianity. Furthermore, it must be said that Kants ascription of terms such as aberrations to the parerga evidences Kants inclination toward a negative view of parerga, toward thinking that their pathological function arises with more frequency than the positive one. For this reason Kant hopes intently for their eventual becoming obsoletewhen reason will not need such ambivalent help, and the essence of religion will appear with indisputable clarity. Derrida makes much of the different etymological valences of parergon, par-ergon. In a similar way, we could quickly break down the word parergon as Kant deploys it in the Religion, based on the parergons double function. The parergon in its positive sense coexists peacefully with, even enhances, what is essentialhence the idea of grace ts alongside (par) religion (ergon). The parergon in its negative sense, though, detracts from, obscures, even endangers the integral centerhence fanaticism based in the idea of grace (pathologically understood) ends up being quite beside (par) the point (ergon). Though Kant is somewhat of a patient gradualist when it comes to a hope in the clear advent of pure religion, the text of the Religion, and certainly its history of effects in Christian theology, verges on forcing the issuethat is, making the trappings of historical faith seem beside the point. My exposition of Henry and Marion brought us to the topic of the Kantian sublime, and my discussion of Kants zeal for pure religion returns us to the sublime. It makes sense, I believe, to read the methodology of Kants Religion as a performance of the sublime. But what about the sublime gets enacted? Let us observe some salient features of the Kantian sublime, from the Critique of Judgment 29, the nal section in the Analytic of the Sublime. In the sublime, Reason exercises its dominion over sensibility. The imagination (which we might interpret as a source of parerga) is regarded as an instrument of Reason to this end. The imagination deprives itself of its freedom, while it is purposively determined according to a different law from that of its empirical employment. In a word, the imagination is sacriced to something greater; it is subjected to a cause. Earlier Kant writes that on the occasion of sublime feeling the mind is incited to abandon sensibility and to busy itself with Ideas that involve higher purposiveness, namely, the moral law.126 Should one recode these statements, going from aesthetics to theology, it seems that one would have Kants Religion. I made passing reference above to Kants image of concentric circles, where revelation is a broad circle that includes two elements, 1) the wider sphere of historical revelation and 2) the narrower one of the pure religion of reason. Kant proposes in the Religion to examine [the rst] in a fragmentary manner . . . as an historical system, in the light of moral concepts; and then to
Black Holes and Revelations 431 see whether it does not lead back to the very same pure rational system of religion. Kant feigns tentativenessIf this experiment is successful . . . but his comparison of historical faiths and pure religion with water and oil, which must needs separate from one another, and the purely moral (the religion of reason) be allowed to oat on top, is telling.127 Sensibility history in this caseis sacriced to the dominion of Reason. John Betz gets at my point while giving his own account of the Kantian sublime as it relates (negatively) to theology: It would . . . be no exaggeration to say that for Kant nature exists solely for the mediation of rational ideas . . . that truth is merely the homecoming of reason, the enthralling discovery of ones rational destiny by way of a detour through nature and self-alienation.128 Faiths are vehicles for reasons ride home, vehicles easily discarded when the sublime feeling that moral concepts give announces reasons imminent arrival at homes threshold. Given the rationalist cast of the thought of his time, maybe (probably) Kant was trying to make room for Christianity when others refused to do so, perhaps he was trying to raise it to a higher planebut a sublime sacrice was the price of admission. For Kant and his followers (e.g., Adolf von Harnack), the thinner theology becomes with respect to its worldly husk, the more easily recognizable is its moral (essential) kernel. Christianitys historical prole is beside (par) the point (ergon). All of the foregoing has been directed toward an explication of a phrase I used in the introductionas a central element of my thesis no lessbut which I waited (until now) to fully dene. When I write Kantian apophasis, then, I mean a theological mindset comprised of elements from the negative side of the logic of the parergon and the sacrice of the imagination that occurs in the sublimeall in the interest of shoring up a philosophical essence. My thesis states that the aesthetics of black holes and revelations developed by Henry and Marion translates, directly and denitely in the case of Henry, and indirectly and possibly in the case of Marion (this is our remaining question), into such a theological apophasis in their phenomenological descriptions of painting. We have nally reached the payoff of the article. If we transpose Henrys aesthetics into a theological register, we could easily recognize the coherence of his views with a Kantian apophasis. In his moral recasting of the Incarnation, Kant contends that even if the Son of God appeared on earth in person, he would not be the object of saving faith, but instead the archetype, lying in our reason, that we [would] attribute to him.129 Once again, visible manifestation or historical instantiation does not matter, as long as an invisible idea operates within me. It does not need to be awakened by any exterior phenomenon; should one appear, its only value would reside in its assistance in my recognizing the ever-present archetype faster than I would have unaided.130 Does not the artwork in Henry function like the historical Teacher of the Gospel (Kants circumlocution for Jesus) might for Christians? That is, it seems that Life is already within
432 Peter Joseph Fritz everyone, and perhaps the painting (the visible, historical object) can awaken modes of Life, but it doesnt seem that one really needs the painting to experience Life. Henry might as well do away with the painting too. Theologically, this would translate into shearing away the outward expressions of Christianityeven Christ!in favor of a private mysticism as the sole mode of access to divine beauty. This would be a result of the imaginations selfdeprivation of its own freedom to imagine worldly things so as to reveal its own essence, lessence de la manifestation, the auto-revelation of auto-affection, interiority without an outside. Is this what Henry gives us? Henrys I Am the Truth (1996) conrms the suspicion. We could blame the Gospel of John, maybe, for leaving the door wide open for an Henrian reading of ChristianityI am the Way, the Truth, and the Life (!) (John 14:6). From the beginning of I Am the Truth, Henry seeks the essential core, or the kernel of Christianity.131 And what is this essential core? Henry contends, after considering several relevant biblical texts, The elaboration of the Christian concept of Truth has made truth appear to nd its essence in Life.132 The core of Christianity unveils the realthe unique reality.133 This essence, the reader will not be surprised to learn, is invisible: It is precisely because life is invisible that reality is invisiblenot just a particular domain of it, a particular form of life, but any possible life, any conceivable reality.134 Once again, as in his view of abstract painting, Henrys rendering of phenomenality, Life, strips the (sensible, visible, historical) details off the phenomenon, any phenomenonthe visible is beside the point. In addition, within Henrys phrase suffer oneself,135 which sums up the auto-revelation of life at the heart of Christianity, lurks the dominated sensibility of the Kantian sublime. Thus Henrys aesthetics of the invisible, now brought into (or at least near) theology, corroborates my critique. Does Marion escape a similar fall into Kantian theological apophasis? On the surface, with all his positive talk of icons, liturgy, and eucharist, it would seem without question that he does not. Furthermore, as we saw above, Marion expressly states that his overall project of a phenomenology of givenness is directed against Kant. Also as we have already observed, Marion uses the specic notion of the Kantian sublime as an antidote to Kant. We know from the discussion of Marions relationship to Lvinas that the former resists the latters deployment of the sublime in an iconoclastic direction, which I likened to Kantianism. It seems, then, that Marion nds an area for at least a bit of critical traction against a theological Kantian defeat of the imagination by reason, since Kants (and Lvinass) iconoclasm at the very least touches on theology. But I nd it difcult to conclude otherwise than that at times Kant still maintains a grip (even if a light, occasional one) on Marion. In his weaker moments, Marion engages in a similar hunt for the Wesen that Henry does, and thus leaves himself open to the charge that for the former as with the latter, one does not necessarily need the idol, the icon, the liturgy, the
Black Holes and Revelations 433 eucharist, or whatever other phenomenon to tap into originary givenness. The complexity of the problem comes to light if we re-consider the use of the visibility of the icon, this time with the two functions of the parergon in mind. First, from the negative sideif the icon is properly, in its essence (?), the crossing of gazes, and this happens through the black holes of the pupils, is the rest of the painting a mass of parerga, negatively understood? Could not the rich fabrics of the Blessed Virgins gown, the loveliness of her face, or the endearing posture of the Christ child distract from the crossing of the visible by the invisible? If so, would not pure phenomenology, an eidetic science, fully reduced to givenness, bypass these parerga to reach the empty black holes, not because of an ethical objection (like Lvinas), but in order to attain to the invisible eidos? The visibility of the icon, and all the other visible (historical) elements of Christianity would fall away, thus revealing prayer, gured as exposure to the gaze of the Other (God), as the essence of Christianity. Like Henry, though by a more circuitous path, the Marion of the negative side of the parergon reaches a mystical apprehension, a hidden life (of prayer), reminiscent of Colossians 3:2: Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. The imagination, the recipient of the visibility of the icon, is sacriced to a higher cause. The depictions of Mary and Jesus, except maybe the pupils of their eyes, are beside the point. This is a fair interpretation in light of the Kantian inertia of some of Marions thought surrounding givenness. But, as I have repeatedly indicated throughout, and in the latter part of my thesis, this is not the whole story. Admittedly, the above fails to take into account the breadth of Marions engagement with his sources, especially the theological ones, and the quite creative way in which he inverts the Kantian sublime. The second, positive function of the parergon now will guide us. Let us return to the example of an icon of Mary and the Christ child. We might still treat the visual details of the icon as parerga, but this time as ones that enhance our experience of the iconic gaze. The Crossing of the Visible, with its explicit invocation of the dogmatic defense of icons at the Council of Nicaea, shows that Marion envisions himself as a kindred spirit with a number of iconodule saints, from Basil of Caesarea (c. 330379) to Theodore the Studite (759826). Another, John Damascene (675749), comes to mind as one of the staunchest defenders of icons as being representative of the complex fabric of the Christian tradition, which has its basis in yet another complex phenomenon, the Incarnation. For John, It is no exaggeration to say [that] . . . unless there are images of Christ, the incarnation might as well not have taken place.136 The sacramental imagination of the Damascene and others like him lends a strong backing to Marions phenomenology, a sense of the interlacing of the visible and the invisible where the distinction between ergon and parergon becomes blurred and the layering of the earthly tradition reects the sublimity of the Kingdom of God (In my Fathers house there are many dwelling places: John 14:2). Bringing up Marions familiarity with
434 Peter Joseph Fritz such theological sources, in the context of the positive function of the parergon, should place his reading of Husserls principle of all principles in a new perspective. Christianity gives and shows itself in countless originary presentive intuitions, and the challenge of phenomenology is to allow each one of them to be given as a self, without placing prior restrictions on them. Such a phenomenological method would rule out the hasty designation of each phenomenon as integral or extrinsic, essential or parergonal. Instead, it would require painstaking attention to how the phenomena of Christianity work alongside each other to build up a beautiful tradition. This all relates to Marions turning of the Kantian sublime back on Kant. We have now seen that Kant regards the sublime as the subjects feeling of its perhaps limitless power. The sublime lifts the rational subject toward the idea(l)s of a higher realm, leaving behind the sensible. Marion, on the other hand, has no interest in bolstering the rational subject. In fact, he inquires into the makeup of a post-subject, which he calls ladonn.137 For Kant, we look inside the subject for the ground of the sublime. For Marion, we look to the phenomenon, to which ladonn relinquishes the status of selfhood. Ladonn does not suffer himself, as with Kant (and Henry), but rather it suffers a self, another self, that of the phenomenon. The phenomenon crashes sublimely on ladonn, with a brutal shock.138 Perhaps, then, we can speak of a sacrice of the imagination in Marion, but not one of Kantian apophasis, where the higher cause is that of reasonreally, immanence. Instead the sacrice is in the interest of phenomena, visible, invisible, and invisible in their visibility. In this way, Marions inversion of the sublime teaches that we need not sacrice a catholic imaginationhe has opened a space for its universal scope. Conclusion These past few paragraphs should indicate that I have hardly intended the preceding as a rejection of the philosophical achievements of Henry and Marion, nor of the possibility of a fruitful theological application of their thoughts. My critiques come out of an appreciation for Henry and Marion, but this does not exclude, in fact it includes, an acknowledgement of the underside of their trajectory of thought, which is no less dangerous for being unintendedor inapparent. Clearly my reservations about Henrys thought are more serious, and my admiration for Marions more solid. I shall conclude with a related suggestion. If we are careful, we can utilize Marions philosophy, following the positive, not the negative, function of the parergon, to let Christian beauty appear (from itself) in its many gleaming (and dull) facetsfrom the loftiest dogmas to the most common devotions. We can see them alongside (par) each other and inquire as to how they contribute to the work (ergon) of serving God and neighbor. God has saved (and saves) us in many and various ways, most
Black Holes and Revelations 435 excellently in the Son, the radiance of Gods glory (see Heb. 1:13). Marions philosophy, if vigilantly employed so as to keep within what I called its prevailing momentum, can help us to open up theology to the plenitude of Gods saving works (erga), both visible and invisibleMarion hopes for nothing less.139 This would bring us closer to a Christian theology steeped in a catholic (in my case, Catholic) imagination than any sublime, (post)modern apophatic appeal to the invisible, with its black holes and revelations.
NOTES 1 My thanks to Kevin Hart, Lawrence Cunningham, and Cyril ORegan for their comments on drafts of this essay and for their encouragement to submit it for publication. 2 Jean-Luc Marion suggests that phenomenology has always depended on some relationship to the invisible, so perhaps this shift is rather a recollection of what phenomenology does anyway: From Husserl disengaging categorial intuition to Derrida establishing diffrance, from Maurice Merleau-Ponty manifesting the esh of the world to Michel Henry assigning auto-affection, which phenomenology is not attached to the invisible, in order to bring it into full light? Jean-Luc Marion, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena, trans. Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), p. 111. The last work of Merleau-Pontys life, cut short by his death, is probably the classic text for the subject of my article. Hence I will mention, though I have neither time nor space to explicitly engage it, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, Followed by Working Notes, ed. Claude Lefort, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968). Also, Heidegger, perhaps summarizing many advances in his thought toward invisibility, famously suggested the need for a phenomenology of the inapparent, thus giving impetus to Marion and others like him. See Martin Heidegger, Four Seminars, trans. Andrew Mitchell and Franois Raffoul (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), p. 80. 3 I take this denition of phenomenality as the how of appearing from Henry, who uses it throughout his writings. 4 See especially Michel Henry, La mthode phnomnologique in Phnomnologie matrielle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990). 5 See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 7: The Phenomenological Method of Investigation, pp. 4962. 6 Michel Henry, Voir linvisible sur Kandinsky (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2005), p. 144. Translations of material from this book are mine. 7 Marion, In Excess, pp. 69, 68. 8 Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 203. A good illustration of this relationship between the visible and the invisible comes from Heideggers thoughts on God. For instance, Heidegger writes, Gods manifestnessnot only he himselfis mysterious. Martin Heidegger, . . . Poetically Man Dwells . . ., in Poetry, Language, and Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2001), pp. 209227, here p. 220. 9 The issue of the icon will complicate the relationship between Henry and Marion as I move toward my constructive remarks in the section labeled Assessment: Theology and Kantian Apophasis. 10 Jean-Luc Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, trans. James K. A. Smith (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). 11 I carefully chose my description of Marions later philosophical treatment of the idol, using the word rehabilitation. This term suggests Marions early concerns with the idol in his theological work, such as God without Being, but also a later shift in perspective, as in Being Given, where Marion esteems the idol as an exemplary case of saturation. But lest I mislead readers of God without Being who have not yet read Marions later work, Marion still emphasizes the limitations and even the danger of the idol. I return briey to this point later in this article.
436 Peter Joseph Fritz

12 13 14 15 Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960). This phrase and several others (to follow in my nal part) come from Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987), here p. 73. Henry, Phnomnologie matrielle, p. 6. Translations are mine. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), 24, p. 44, emphasis Husserls. Marion, Being Given, p. 13, emphasis added. Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 189. Henry, Phnomnologie matrielle, p. 8. Michel Henry, Does the Concept of Soul Mean Anything?, Philosophy Today, 13/2 (Summer 1969), pp. 94114, here p. 104. Michel Henry, I am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, trans. Susan Emanuel (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003) pp. 105, 56. Interestingly enough, Henrys website, maintained by his widow, Anne Henry, perhaps contains the clearest, most concise denition of what Henry means by pathos. Anne Henry writes, Pathos signiant in M.H. la passivit premire de la vie, son preuve de soi, son auto-affection invisible. Anne Henry, Analyse des oeuvres et index, http://www.michelhenry.com/ phenomenologiemat.htm, accessed 6 July 2007. Marion, Being Given, pp. 186, 188. Marion, In Excess, p. 17. Ibid., p. 19. See Husserl, Ideas I, Part Three, Chapter Three, Noesis and Noema, pp. 211235, for Husserls breakthrough description of the correlation of the intentive mental process (noesis) with that which it is conscious of (noema). Marion, Being Given, pp. 6870. Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), p. 203. On the development of this maxim for phenomenality, see Michel Henry, Quatre principes de la phnomnologie, in Phnomnologie de la vie, vol. 1: De la phnomnologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003), pp. 77104. Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, trans. M. T. H. Sadler (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1977), p. 46. Ibid., p. 49. Ibid., p. 16. Kandinsky maintains that the artist has to bear the cross of arthe is free in art but not in life, for without his spiritual striving, art will stagnate. Ibid., pp. 4, 54. Ibid., p. 53. Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., pp. 56. Henry, Voir linvisible, p. 18. Ibid., p. 51. See Ibid., p. 64. Ibid., p. 64. Ibid., p. 73. Ibid., p. 104. Henry, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, trans. Girard Etzkorn (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975). In the preface of this book, Henry indicates that the book began as a chapter in his magnum opus, The Essence of Manifestation, and took on a life of its own (p. ix). Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Bodys main question, in the spirit of the ontology of immanence that Henry developed in The Essence of Manifestation, is how one might engage in an analysis of the body, a transcendent being, . . . an inhabitant of this world of ours wherein subjectivity does not reside, within a discussion of the ego as absolute immanence (p. 1). We see here the major characteristic of Henrys thought: asserting the priority of the enstatic to the ecstatic, immanent to transcendent. See Michel
16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Black Holes and Revelations 437

Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, trans. Girard Etzkorn (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973). Henry, Voir linvisible, p. 193, see p. 248n35. Ibid., p. 193. Ibid., p. 194. Ibid., pp. 9899. See Ibid., p. 237. Though we must point out that for Kandinsky, and Henry following him, colors represent feelings. Henry, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, p. 107. See Henry, I Am the Truth, p. 23: [T]he Truth of Christianity differs in essence from the truth of the world. Absolute knowledge, which coincides with lpreuve de la Vie, stands as a major theme throughout Henrys writings. Thus, even at a supercial level one can make sense of the charge of Gnosticism many critics have leveled against Henrys work, especially his nal, Christian works. Henry, Voir linvisible, p. 244. Ibid., p. 244. Without passing judgment on Henrys subjective motives, sometimes when reading his texts it is difcult to tell whether the conversion does not go in the opposite direction, namely, in his late works, Christianity becomes a Henryism of sorts. See Marion, Being Given, p. 337n92: I am obviously referring to the studies of Michel Henry in Voir linvisible . . . whose interpretation, in its essential parts, I here make my own. Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 25. Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 27. Marion cites Genesis 1:2. In the section from which I quote, Marion uses traditionally Christian motifs. Perhaps the most interesting is the early Christian identication of Christ as the new OrpheusChrist descends to the underworld to lead out its inhabitants. See Marion, In Excess, pp. 4649. Marion, Being Given, p. 307. Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 44. The same is true for the spectator, though in a slightly different way. The spectator feels the effect of the paintings visual upsurge, its appear-ing. He can thus say about the color of the painting, [I]t makes me undergo a passion, Marion, Being Given, p. 51. Marion alludes here to Kandinsky, hence Henry. See Marion, In Excess, p. 51. Ibid., p. 52. Marion, Being Given, p. 40. Cf. Marion, In Excess, p. 69. Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 30. These are Emmanuel Lvinass terms for the relation to the Other throughout Otherwise than Being. Below I discuss the way Marion derives his way of speaking about the icon from Lvinas, but it is worth noting that the traces of the Other (the face) show up in another saturated phenomenon. See Emmanuel Lvinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1998). Marion, In Excess, p. 67, emphasis added. The issue of knowing how to look or having eyes to see is an important one in Marions thought, and bears much consideration, though I will not do so in this essay. On this topic and the various sub-topics within it, such as subjectivity, the reduction, activity, passivity, reception, and the will, see Thomas A. Carlson, Blindness and the Decision to See: On Revelation and Reception in Jean-Luc Marion, in Kevin Hart (ed), Counter-Experiences: Reading Jean-Luc Marion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), pp. 153179. Kevin Hart suggested this connection to me, and upon further review of Being Given I found Marions specic naming of the Kantian sublime as a predecessor to the saturated phenomenon. Marion, Being Given, 219220. See Kant, The Critique of Judgment, trans. J. H. Bernard (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000), 2329, The Analytic of the Sublime, pp. 101150. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 23, p. 102; 29, pp. 134, 136. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, Harvard Classics v. 24 (New York: P. F. Collier & Son Corporation, 1965) Part I,
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48
49 50 51 52 53
54 55 56 57
58 59 60 61 62
63
64
65 66

section vii, p. 35, emphasis added. See Kant, Critique of Judgment, 29, pp. 147148 for quotes from Burkes Part IV. Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 31. Ibid., p. 40. Marions language at this juncture shares afnities with the discourse of Jean-Franois Lyotard, perhaps the major proponent of the Kantian and the Burkean sublime in French postmodernity. For example, Lyotard writes, Imagination at the limits of what it can present does violence to itself in order to present that it can no longer present. Jean-Franois Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 55. For Marion, the painting (idol) stands at the limits of presentation, and the same applies to all saturated phenomenathus potentially all phenomena. Marion, Being Given, p. 51. Ibid., pp. 49, 52. Marion, In Excess, p. 61. Marion, Being Given, p. 220. Yet another French postmodern thinker demands recognition hereJean-Luc Nancy. In the essay, The Sublime Offering, Nancy deploys the term Unbegrenztheit (or unlimitation) as he describes the feeling of freedom that human persons experience when confronted with art. For Nancy, the sublime offering art extends to us is a sort of negative presentation of our human destinyto touch (and remake) our very limits. See Jean-Luc Nancy, The Sublime Offering, in Of the Sublime: Presence in Question, Essays by Jean-Franois Courtine, et al., trans. Jeffrey S. Librett (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 2554. Marion, Being Given, p. 197, pp. 198199. Ibid., p. 181. Ibid., p. 212. Ibid., p. 233. Marion, In Excess, p. 76. Ibid., pp. 7677. See Emmanuel Lvinas, Reality and its Shadow, in Collected Philosophical Papers, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1998), pp. 113. Later in life, Lvinas softened his take on art a bit, but even as late as Otherwise than Being he cited Reality and its Shadow without retracting that essays position. For the softened position, see the interview in Emmanuel Lvinas, De loblitration: entretien avec Franoise Armengaud propos de luvre de Sosno (Paris: ditions de la Diffrence, 1998). Marion, In Excess, p. 78. Ibid., p. 61. Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 87. Ibid., p. 87. I exaggerate my terminology a bit to explicate the connection between Lvinas and Marion. The reference is Lvinass haunting turn of phrase in Reality and its Shadow: Art then lets go of the prey for the shadow (Reality and its Shadow, p. 12). Soon after, Lvinas asserts his main point: art fosters irresponsibility. He continues, There is something wicked and egoist and cowardly in artistic enjoyment. There are times when one can be ashamed of it, as of feasting during a plague (p. 12). Marion assumes this critique of art as his own, though he limits it in that he appreciates the idol as an example of the saturated phenomenon, if a potentially dangerous one. For him the icon stands as the privileged image that evades Lvinass critical strikes. More on this below. Surely Marion uses icon to mean a broader category than paintings of saints on wood, but I feel justied in assuming that this more comprehensive designation still includes such paintings. Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 19. Marion shares with Lvinas the conviction (assumption) that my gaze inevitably does violence to that which it beholds, especially when I direct it toward the other person. We must ask, of course, whether this is necessarily true. Election is another Levinasian theme, as well as a Christian one. In Lvinas, election seems touched by the sublime; he speaks of it as traumatic . . . an election in persecution. Lvinas, Otherwise than Being, p. 56.
67 68
69 70 71 72
73 74 75 76 77 78 79
80 81 82 83 84
85 86 87 88
Black Holes and Revelations 439

89 Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, pp. 21, 5657, 83; Being Given, pp. 232233; In Excess, pp. 115116. See Jean- Luc Marion, The Intentionality of Love, in Prolegomena to Charity, trans. Stephen Lewis (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), pp. 71101, especially pp. 8082. Marion subtitles this essay, In Homage to Emmanuel Lvinas. Marion, Being Given, pp. 232233. Marion, The Intentionality of Love, p. 81. Lvinas, Otherwise than Being, p. 97. Ibid., p. 88. For Lvinas phenomenality designates showing. Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 67. Ibid., p. 59. Again, I understand that Marion intends icon to mean more than a pictorial genre, as he plainly states. Ibid., p. 59. Ibid., p. 60. Ibid., p. 62. Ibid., pp. 6264. Ibid., pp. 86, 78. Dionysius the Areopagite, The Mystical Theology in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (Mahwah, NY: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 135141, here p. 135 (1000A). See, for instance, Kants discussion of the Exodus ban on images within his nal section on the sublime: Kant, Critique of Judgment, 29, pp. 143144. Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 27. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., p. 60. Ibid., pp. 75, 65. Husserl, Ideas I, p. xx. Dominique Janicauds famous chastisement of thinkers like Henry and Marion for the theological overtones of their work bears mentioning. I nd his critiques captivating, but wonder if he is too rigorist in his opposition to the new phenomenology. See Dominique Janicaud, The Theological Turn of French Phenomenology, trans. Bernard G. Prusak, in Phenomenology and the Theological Turn: The French Debate (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000) and Dominique Janicaud, Phenomenology Wide Open: After the French Debate, trans. Charles Cabral (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005). I borrow this notion of stretched phenomenology from Kevin Hart. See his Phenomenality and Christianity, Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 12/1 (April 2007), pp. 3753, especially p. 41. Janicaud, Theological Turn, pp. 74, 65. See Kant, Religion, pp. 1113 and Derrida, Truth in Painting, pp. 5557. Kant, Religion, pp. 11, 98, 94. Ibid., p. 99. Ibid., p. 96. Ibid., p. 102. Ibid., p. 112. Derrida, Truth in Painting, pp. 55, 57. Ibid., pp. 53, 55. See Kant, Religion, p. 47. Derrida, Truth in Painting, p. 349. Ibid., p. 63. Ibid., p. 56, 64. Ibid., p. 64. Kant, Religion, p. 48. Derrida, Truth in Painting, p. 56. Derrida Truth in Painting, p. 64. Kant, Religion, p. 189. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 29, p. 136; 23, p. 103. Kant, Religion, pp. 1112. John R. Betz, Beyond the Sublime: The Aesthetics of the Analogy of Being (Part One), Modern Theology 21/3 (July 2005), pp. 367411, here p. 384. Kant, Religion, p. 110. Kant adopts this idea from Gotthold Lessing. See Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, The Education of the Human Race in Philosophical and Theological Writings, trans. H. B. Nisbet
90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108
109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 217240. Lessing writes, Education gives the individual nothing which he could not also acquire by himself; it merely gives him what he could acquire by himself, but more quickly and more easily. Thus revelation likewise gives the human race nothing which human reason, left to itself, could not also arrive at; it merely gave it, and gives it, the most important of these things sooner (4, p. 218). 131 Henry, I Am the Truth, pp. 2, 189. 132 Ibid., p. 33, emphasis added. 133 Ibid., p. 242. 134 Ibid., p. 238. 135 Ibid., p. 199. 136 Kenneth Parry, Depicting the Word: Byzantine Iconophile Thought of the Eighth and Ninth Centuries (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), p. 70. 137 See Marion, Being Given, Book V, pp. 248319 for a full description of ladonn, and In Excess, p. 4453 for a summary. 138 Marion, In Excess, pp. 49, 51. 139 Marion ended a seminar discussion at the University of Notre Dame (22 Feb 2007) by quoting Luke: There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed on the housetops (Luke 12:23).

Fritz 2009 Henry, Marion, Aesthetics of The Invisible

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Descrição original:

Título original

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Fritz 2009 Henry, Marion, Aesthetics of The Invisible

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Modern Theology 25:3 July 2009 ISSN 0266-7177 (Print) ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)

436 Peter Joseph Fritz

2009 The Author Journal compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Black Holes and Revelations 437

2009 The Author Journal compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

438 Peter Joseph Fritz

2009 The Author Journal compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Black Holes and Revelations 439

90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108

2009 The Author Journal compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

440 Peter Joseph Fritz

2009 The Author Journal compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Você também pode gostar