THE IDOL AND THE ICON

Introduction
In God Without Being and The Idol and Distance, however, Marion develops his account of the idol and the icon for the precise purpose of scrutinizing the conditions for the possibility of attaining an understanding of divine revelation. In this chapter I argue that by approaching the manner in which the philosophical tradition has taken up the question of God through a phenomenological account of the idol, Marion is able to sketch a phenomenological genealogy of conceptual discourses concerning divine revelation that reveal, at their very heart, an anterior gaze whose source is the subject of an experience in and by which Gods appearance is measured. To reveal this subjective anteriority and its manifestation according to the logic of Being is the goal of Marions critical analysis. To bring this goal to light is the task of this chapter.

Themes to be discussed
1. First visible 2. Invisible mirror 3. Dazzling return 4. Conceptual Idol 5. Icon and Invisible 6.The face envisages 7.Visible mirror of the Invisible 8. The Icon in the concept

1.First visible
In Jean Luc Marions book God without being we see that Throughout the history of humanity's attempt to envisage the divine, the roles of the idol and icon are predominant. The Idol presents itself to man's gaze and purports to be a representation of the divine and thus proposes to offer knowledge pertaining to its otherwise invisible referent. It is the willingness of the gaze to attribute such qualities to the idol rather than any quality of the object itself which accounts for the object's status as idol. For this reason the idolic gaze proceeds no further once the idol is encountered and further pursuit of the divine beyond the idol is stifled. Any discussion of whether the invisible remains invisible or becomes visible belongs to the domain of the idol whose function it is to divide the invisible into that part which is reduced to the visible and another part which is invisible due to the gaze's fixation on the idol. This portion of the invisible is thus invisable.

 The icon, however, does not result from a vision of the divine, but instead provokes one. Rather than resulting from the gaze aimed at it, the icon summons sight by allowing the invisible to saturate the visible, but without any attempt or claim of reducing the invisible to the visible icon. The icon attempts to render visible the invisible as such, and thus, strictly speaking, shows nothing. It teaches the gaze to proceed beyond the visible into an infinity whereby something new of the invisible is encountered. Thus the iconic gaze never rests or settles on the icon, but instead rebounds upon the visible into a gaze of the infinite.

 2. INVISIBLE MIRROR
The idol is a mirror of the gaze, Marion has just told us, and not a portrait. Marions discussion of the anterior gaze that is constitutive of the idol depends on this distinction: if idol signifies only the fabrication of the human imagination, its logic will not point to the unique manifestation of divinityactually and authentically the divinityaccording to the anterior coordinates established by Dasein(in Heideggar). Or, to put it otherwise, the problem here is not with deception but with reception. Here we see that the strength of the gaze that constitutes them. This is because the idol always measures the scope of the gaze this is what Marion calls the mirror function of the idoleven though it does not allow that scope to become known because it saturates the gaze and blinds it to itselfthis is what Marion calls the spectacle function.

For Marion, the gaze does not see itself but, rather, the measure of the God that corresponds to its highest aim.

 Marion continues: In a word, the divine is figured in the idol only indirectly, reflected according to the experience of it that is fixed by the human authoritythe divine, actually experienced, is figured, however, only in the measure of the human authority that puts itself, as much as it can, to the test. In the idol, the divine function of Dasein is thus betrayed and calibrated.

 Just as we saw the anterior, constituting power of the gaze in relation to an object becomeidol, so, once again, the theme of anteriority is sounded. The idol discloses an experience of God but only insofar as that experience (of God) emerges from the (anterior) conditions for the possibility of human experience itself: before God arrives, and in order that God may arrive, human experience organizes the space or the site of the arrival.

It is here that Marion employs the metaphor of the templum in connection with the notion of measure that featured prominently in both quotations concerning the conceptual idol. In my discussion of Marions alternative account of a divine anteriority in this idea of the site will be developed more explicitly. In conclusion, what we are dealing with in the case of an idolatrous appearance of the divine is always human experience (of the divine) and never the divine (itself and as such). Finally, as the site of this experience, the idol hides as much as it shows. For the invisible mirror not only [indicates] to the gaze how far its most distant aim extends, but even what its aim could not have in view.

3.Dazzling returns
Having captured the divine according to the measure of what it can see, the gaze and the intention behind it pushes on no further but, rather, settles. Marion continues: If the idolatrous gaze exercises no criticism of its idol, this is because it no longer has the means to do so: its aim culminates in a position that the idol immediately occupies, and where every aim is exhausted. It is not that the idolater knows that there is a beyond and chooses not to bother with it. On the contrary, the idol blocks from view that very possibility by presenting itself as the sole revelation of the divine.

 The idol marks, therefore, but secretly, a break between that which is visible and that which is invisible. Invisibility here, however, no longer refers to the non visible spacing and organizing that rendered the visible actually visible, as we saw in the case of perspective. Niether does it refer to the invisible intention of an Other disclosed, for Marion, in the icon. In reference to the idol, the invisible becomes invisable: that which cannot be aimed at, that which is blocked from sight by the brilliance of the visibility of the idol.

4.Conceptual idols
Concepts readily act as idols and icons according to the intention and gaze with which they are beheld. Marion deems any philosophical thought expressing a concept of what it then names "God" as functioning precisely as an idol. Just as the idol purports to visually capture a small portion of the divine while limiting the gaze to itself, so also theological names for "God" purport to reveal God yet only at the expense of limiting the horizon of the gazer's ability to grasp God.

 The concept consigns to a sign what at first the mind grasps with it (concipere, capere); but such a grasp is measured not so much by the amplitude of the divine as by the scope of a capacitas, which can fix the divine in a specific concept only at the moment when a conception of the divine fills it, hence appeases, stops, and freezes it. When a philosophical thought expresses a concept of what it then names God, this concept functions exactly as an idol. It gives itself to be seen, but thus all the better conceals itself as the mirror where thought, invisibly, has its forward point fixed, so that the invisable finds itself, with an aim suspended by the fixed concept, disqualified and abandoned; thought freezes, and the idolatrous concept of God appears, where, more than God, thought judges itself.

5.ICON AND INVISIBLE

In effect, in perspective my gaze invisibly traverses the visible, in such a way that, without undergoing any addition to the real, it becomes that much more visible: For it is my gaze, opened up by perspective, that separates these colored surfaces to be seen and made out as walls, that raises this other clear surface to see there and make out a ceiling, that finally levels out this darker surface in order to recognize the unfolding of a ground where I can put my feet. . . . The gaze of perspective separates the visible by the equal power of the invisible, in a way that renders it for us vast, inhabitable, organized. Perspectives gaze bores through the visible in order to establish there the invisible distance that renders it aimed at [visable] and first, simply, visible. . . . Our gaze reaches a worldexercises its being-in-the-worldbecause perspective, in the sense of the invisible organizing the visible, has in itself the ability to see through the visible, therefore in terms of the invisible.

6.THE FACE ENVISAGES

One even must venture to state that only the icon shows us a face (in other words , that every face is given as an icon ). For a face appears only inasmuch as the perfect and polished opacity of a mirror does not close it; that a face closes up implies nothing but its radiant enclosure in a radiant mirror : precisely , nothing closes a face by a mask more than a radiant smile . The icon alone offers an open face , because it opens in itself the visible onto the invisible , by offering in spectacle to be transgressed-not to be seen, but venerated. The reference from a perceived visible to the invisible person summons one to travel through the invisible mirror, and to enter so to speak , into the eyes of the icon-if the eyes have that strange property of transforming the visible and the invisible into each other.

 To the invisible mirror where the gaze freezes succeeds the opening of a face where the human gaze is engulfed , invite to see the invisible

7. Visible mirror of the invisible

Contemplating the icon amounts to seeing the visible in the very manner by which the invisible imparts itself therein envisages the visible strictly , to exchanging our gaze for the gaze that iconistically envisages us. It teaches the gaze, thus does not cease to correct it in order that it go back from visible to visible as far as the end of infinity, to find in infinity something new. The icon summons the gaze to surpass itself by never freezing on a visible, since the visible only presents itself here in view of the invisible. . . . In this sense, the icon makes visible only by giving rise to an infinite gaze.

8.The icon in the concept

What happens, then, when the idol appears? Marion continues, in God Without Being: For the first (and last) time, the gaze no longer rushes through the spectacle stage without stopping, but forms a stage in the spectacle; it is fixed in it and, far from passing beyond, remains facing what becomes for it a spectacle to respect. In relation to the idol, the gaze is fascinated and therefore halted in the mere appearance of the thing. What is seen is not an objectthis uniquely chiseled chunk of stone, this cut and painted piece of woodbut, rather, the appearance of the divine itself in the appearing of the thing. In the idol, one does not see the thing but, rather, its appearing. Instead of outflanking the visible, of not seeing it and rendering it invisible, the gaze discovers itself as outflanked, contained, held back by the visible.

CONCLUSION
For Marion, the icon holds out the promise of another path to thinking the question of God. However, to discover an anterior gaze in the figure of the icon, a very specific Christian category pertaining to a mode of artistic representation in the Orthodox churches, Marion must make clear the logic of appearance that it assumes. In other words, like the idol, the icon is not only representative of a particular religious object but, rather, indicates a mode of appearance that functions according to a particular logic. I have now shown how Marions phenomenological treatment of the idol launches him into a treatment of the idolatrous logic operative in metaphysical and post-metaphysical thought. At the end of this trajectory he discovers Heideggers account of Being.

 With this discovery not only does the logic of idolatry come into view most clearly (both by what Heidegger discloses but also by what he continues to hide) but it does so in terms of what phenomenology calls a horizon. I take up his treatment of the icons relation to distance, a logic that operates not according to the collapsed and reciprocating difference of the idol but according to the horizon of the gift.

Thank you