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Theology without idolatry or violence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 January 2015
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Since the 1960s, metaphysics has flourished in Anglo-American philosophy. Far from wanting to avoid metaphysics, philosophers have embraced it in droves. There have been critics, to be sure; but the criticisms have received answers and the enterprise has carried on.
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References
1 Hector, Kevin, Theology without Metaphysics: God, Language and the Spirit of Recognition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 There are various technical senses of ‘world’ in Heidegger, but I do not mean to invoke any of those here. (Cf. Heidegger, Martin, Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999], part 2Google Scholar.) As to why metaphysics involves putting the being of beings on a par with Being and assuming that the latter can be explained in terms of the former, the reason is that metaphysics is concerned both with the ‘being of beings’, but also with their ground – the highest being, Being, which Heidegger identifies with the ‘god of philosophy’. (Heidegger, , Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002], pp. 70–2Google Scholar.) But insofar as metaphysics seeks to ‘represent beings as such’, it does so ‘with an eye to their most universal traits’ and ‘only with an eye to that aspect of them that has already manifested itself in being’. (Heidegger, , ‘Introduction to “What is Metaphysics”?’, in McNeill, William [ed.], Pathmarks [Cambridge: CUP, 1998], pp. 287, 88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.) Here then we may identify a guiding assumption: to investigate something in metaphysical mode is to do so under the supposition that its very essence can be understood in terms of universal characteristics that have been made manifest in beings – i.e. mundane things. But the ultimate ground, Being, is not a mundane thing; and so the supposition that it can be understood via concepts and categories crafted for understanding beings is suspect. Thus one finds Heidegger speaking of overcoming metaphysics, a goal that is accomplished just when one manages to ‘think the truth of Being’. (‘Introduction’, p. 279. Cf. also Marion, Jean-Luc, ‘Metaphysics and Phenomenology: A Relief for Theology’, trans. Thomas A. Carlson, Critical Inquiry 20 [1994], pp. 572–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.)
3 On the relation between Being and God, see e.g. Heidegger, Identity and Difference, pp. 70–2; Heidegger, ‘Introduction’; and Marion, ‘Metaphysics and Phenomenology’. For both, Being understood metaphysically – the god of philosophy, or of ontotheology – is but an idol. But it is an idol often enough confused with God.
4 But see n. 7 below.
5 Kosky, Jeffrey L., Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), p. 9Google Scholar. Levinas, Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2005), pp. 43, 45–6Google Scholar.
6 Jones, Tamsin, A Genealogy of Marion's Philosophy of Religion: Apparent Darkness (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), p. 9Google Scholar.
7 For purposes here, I conflate metaphysics and ontology. The distinction matters to Levinas (Totality and Infinity, pp. 42ff.); but what I am calling objectionable metaphysics is appropriately assimilated to what Levinas calls ontology (and to what I think even he would describe as objectionable metaphysics).
8 Burggraeve, Roger, ‘Violence and the Vulnerable Face of the Other: The Vision of Emmanuel Levinas on Moral Evil and Our Responsibility’, Journal of Social Philosophy 30 (1999), p. 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Caputo, John D., ‘How to Avoid Speaking of God: The Violence of Natural Theology’, in Long, Eugene Thomas (ed.), Prospects for Natural Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1992), p. 132Google Scholar.
10 This general picture is built into the epistemic theory of vagueness, according to which the vagueness of a term or concept (like bald) is simply a result of our ignorance of the sharp boundaries on the property to which it refers. For a thorough and classic defence of epistemicism, see Williamson, Timothy, Vagueness (New York: Routledge, 1996)Google Scholar.
11 Note that the point here does not depend on interpreting ‘going on in the same way’ as equivalent to ‘going on in the same identical way’. Hector has informed me (personal conversation) that he intends ‘same’ in this context to be understood more with the sense of ‘similar’ than with the sense of ‘identical’. Nevertheless, even granting this, it seems that the non-theological concept of wisdom is identical to the theological concept of wisdom only if the normative trajectory of the one is identical to that of the other.
12 Note that semantic drift together with the bifurcation of Christendom into different theological communities means that we might not even be using the same theological concepts as other Christians.
13 On the privileging of our perspective, cf. Heidegger, Ontology, pp. 63–4.
14 It is perhaps worth noting that Heidegger, at any rate, seems to reject this brand of anti-realism. Ontology, p. 63.
15 I am grateful to Kevin Hector for helpful conversations about his book and about some of the objections presented in this article. Special thanks also to Matthew Halteman, Tamsin Jones, and Andrea White for their comments on portions of an earlier draft, for patiently talking with me about Heidegger, Levinas and Marion, and for directing me to several very helpful texts.