BLACK HOLES AND REVELATIONS:MICHEL HENRY AND JEAN-LUCMARION ON THE AESTHETICS OFTHE INVISIBLE
PETER JOSEPH FRITZ
Introduction1moth_1535 415..440
Phenomenology, in the hands of the French thinkers Michel Henry andJean-Luc Marion, continues a shift toward the invisible begun most notablyby Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger.2 This article concerns thisinteresting development as it relates to painting, aesthetics generally, and, inturn, theology. Henry and Marion share the project of redefining phenom-enality, the “how” (comment) of a phenomenon’s appearing, since they findEdmund Husserl’s account too constrictive.3 Where their versions of phe-nomenality differ, so do their views on aesthetics.
Henry’s equation of phenomenality with “Life” squares quite neatly withhis recasting of phenomenological method.4 Marion defines phenomenalitymore traditionally (and broadly), following Martin Heidegger’s view of it, asthe right and power of a phenomenon to “show itself from itself.”5 As foraesthetics, Henry “sees” in the invisible the en-static “perpetual oscillation”of life between suffering and joy, which the painter makes apparent throughcultivating 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 invisible”—suchpaintings Marion groups under the name idol.7 But it is precisely this “crush-ing” visibility that, paradoxically, makes the idol invisible, as the viewer
Peter Joseph FritzUniversity of Notre Dame, Department of Theology, 130 Malloy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556-4619 [email protected]
Modern Theology 25:3 July 2009ISSN 0266-7177 (Print)ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)
“suffers bedazzlement.”8 Even though artists produce them, idols quicklyshow themselves as exercising the initiative. Marion adds another wrinkleas well: the icon. With this phenomenon, the invisible gets figured as acounter-gaze that crosses my own—this Levinasian aspect of Marion’sphenomenology, among other things, distinguishes it quite clearly fromHenry’s. In ways at once convergent and sharply divergent, then, Henry andMarion carve out paths different from the aesthetics of visible form.
What gives with the invisible? Should we prefer the aesthetics of invisibilityto the aesthetics of visibility? Does a preference for the former offer usanswers to our contemporary problems, both aesthetic and theological, suchas the widely proclaimed death of painting, or the prettifying of religiousfaith? The figures Henry and Marion uphold as exemplary painters point ustoward an answer to our questions. Henry chooses Wassily Kandinsky, andMarion selects Mark Rothko. Though they evidence many differences, onecannot argue against the general similarities between Kandinsky andRothko—they are both modern (twentieth-century), “non-objective” paint-ers. The aesthetics of the invisible, in the case of Henry, predicates itself uponmodern abstraction, and Marion seems in partial agreement with him, espe-cially by assigning primary importance to a painting’s “effect.” Mariondiffers from Henry when he privileges the icon as the savior of images.9
Henry and Marion, by focusing on invisibility, open painting’s phenomenal-ity—herein lies the value of their contributions. Both transcend Husserl’sconstraining “objectness” (and Heidegger’s “beingness”), but they leave uswith potentially questionable iterations of aesthetics: of unseen feelings of joyand suffering, and of the empty pupils of the eye. The question that willoccupy us for the rest of this article is whether in doing this Henry and/orMarion avoid re-restricting phenomenality. We shall find that one fails toavoid it, while the other finds a way out—albeit 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 blackholes and revelations, when it is utilized as a resource for theology. Henry’saesthetics, theologically applied, exercises an inadequate Kantian apophasis,characterized by a sublime sacrifice of the imagination; although Marion’swork sometimes evidences a similar tendency, its prevailing momentumoffers theology a fully catholic scope. By the end of this article, at least acouple 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 aforced curtailment of the imagination so as to attain philosophically to anessence—this point relates to the work of both of our thinkers. The other, forthe most part, implicates Marion, for it involves assessing how much criticaltraction he generates by deploying Immanuel Kant’s own notion of thesublime against him.
My argument unfolds in four major parts. First, I briefly discuss the redefi-nition of phenomenality by Henry and Marion. Second, I explore Henry’s
book, Voir l’invisible sur Kandinsky (1988), so as to explicate his view of theinvisible as he lays it out in a definition of abstract painting. Third, I expoundMarion’s reflections on painting in his later philosophy, starting with TheCrossing of the Visible (1996),10 which he wrote at the request and under theinfluence of Henry, with his rehabilitation of the concept of idol and hisrenewed zeal for the icon.11 This third section will point out how both Henryand Marion assimilate the Kantian sublime into their phenomenologies.Fourth, I lay out a series of objections to the Kantian theological project aspresented in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793),12 and then Icritically appraise the theological (de)merits, from a Catholic point of view—where a breadth and depth of imagination is at a premium—of Henry andMarion as they relate to Kant and his “logic of the parergon.”13
Phenomenality: From Objectness to La Vie and Donation
Henry observes in Phénoménologie matérielle (1990), “The question of phenom-enology . . . no longer concerns phenomena, but the mode of their givenness,their phenomenality—not that which appears, but appearing.”14 Settingaside arguments about the validity of this claim, let us entertain it in order tolaunch ourselves into our discussion. We begin with Husserl’s statement ofthe “principle of all principles” in Ideas I (1913):
No conceivable theory can make us err with respect to the principle of allprinciples: that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source ofcognition, 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 asbeing, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there.15
This statement begins with a broad opening of possibilities for phenomenal-ity—every originary presentive intuition legitimizes its corresponding cogni-tion; every time a phenomenon presents an intuition to us “originarily,” wemust accept it as is. Husserl brings us a long way, it seems, from Cartesianmethodological doubt, and the strictures of Kantian critique, which bothprivilege the human subject, thus objectifying phenomena. But Husserladvances only temporarily. For all the boundaries Husserl breaks with the“principle of all principles,” he clearly acknowledges, or perhaps erects, inthe principle’s last two phrases, limits of his own on the phenomenon’sappearance. For this reason, Henry and Marion meet him with manyquestions.
As Henry and Marion direct similar concerns toward Husserl, I will useMarion’s queries to the “principle of all principles” to send us into the twophilosophers’ rethinking of phenomenality. Marion keys in on the relation-ship between intuition, intention, and manifestation, and asks, “The intuitionof an intentional object no doubt accomplishes a phenomenal manifestation;but despite that, is every manifestation of a phenomenon carried out by the
intuition of an objective intention transcendent to consciousness?” He con-tinues, trying to summarize his point: “In short, does the constitution of anintentional object by an intuition fulfilling an objectifying ecstasy exhaustevery form of appearing?”16 Marion concludes the same line of questioning bycontending, “Intuition finally contradicts phenomenality because it itselfremains submitted to the ideal of objectifying representation.”17 NeitherMarion nor Henry can accept Husserl’s restriction of phenomenality (whichhe draws from Kant’s metaphysics)18 via intuition’s determination by inten-tionality. They each attempt to discover a larger umbrella under which phe-nomena find their how of appearing.
Henry names his umbrella la Vie (Life). He speaks of Life with manydifferent terms, but perhaps most succinctly as the “auto-revelation of abso-lute subjectivity.”19 To summarize various strands of Henry’s thought aboutLife—it is the “essence of manifestation,” giving itself to itself in pure imma-nence, not as the light of theoretical knowledge, but rather as the night ofaffective experience, invisible because occurring within a living one (in asubject), not out in the open (in objects). These oracular gestures toward adefinition of phenomenality stem from an overarching worry Henry hasabout the contemporary world, the (stillborn) offspring of modern thought—hardly anyone believes in interiority, because modernity has refuted thatconcept.20 Henry avers that phenomenology holds the key to recovering theinterior life, as long as the discipline defines its project properly—namely,the way Henry envisions it, with phenomenality being taken as primitive to thephenomenon. For him, this means that phenomenology must overturn biolo-gy’s way of treating life, and describe life as it actually transpires, welling upin the “auto-affection” of the “affective flesh of pathos” (παθος´ ).21 Phenom-enality comes to mean for Henry self-phenomenalization (manifestation, oreven revelation of self, to/for self), paradigmatically in the feelings of joy andsuffering. Thus Henry claims to reverse Husserlian phenomenology—heredirects the ecstasy of intentionality (toward phenomena) into an enstasy ofauto-affection (phenomenality).
Marion makes no such attempt to reverse Husserl, but instead he aims topick up Husserl’s project where it derailed. According to Marion, the finaltwo clauses Husserl includes in the “principle of all principles” stand asexamples of how Husserl, following Kant, confines phenomenality to “theobjectness of the object.” The last parts, “simply as what it is presented asbeing” and “only within the limits,” concern the phenomenon’s horizon, andimply that the phenomenality of each one is “pre-visible” to a “transcenden-tal I.”22 Hence the object becomes (over)determined by the subject, or subjec-tivity. In place of objectness and the over-activity of the subject, Marion viewsgivenness (donation) as the mark of phenomenality—Husserl speaks of Gege-benheit, but he never posits it as the origin of the appearing of phenomena.Marion insists that a proper account of phenomenality must relate to theoperation of the reduction. But Husserl articulated the “principle of all
principles” in Ideas I before he raised the topic of the phenomenologicalreduction, so givenness remains “uninterrogated.”23
Two main characteristics of givenness are of interest for my argument, andrelate to the reduction. It involves both 1) an inability of a phenomenon to beforeseen and 2) a persistent invisibility even in its visibility. The phenomeno-logical reduction, when performed, leads us to the immanent “noematiccore” of the phenomenon, from which it shows itself, prior to the intentionalecstasy of consciousness (noesis).24 Phenomenology’s value lies in its capacityto recognize each phenomenon as a “self” with its own authority. Subjectiveconsciousness does not grant “selfhood” to the phenomenon, for the phe-nomenon already has it by its own right and power. This “selfhood” alsoentails that in its appearing the phenomenon “leaves concealed givennessitself.”25 Marion distills these insights about phenomenology’s elucidation ofthe phenomenon as “self” into the principle for phenomenality, “So muchreduction, so much givenness.”26
From the general concern of phenomenality, let us now move into the moredeterminate topic, painting. Here we encounter a specific sort of phenom-enon (a painting), its creator (the painter), and its recipient (the viewer). Aswe proceed, we must remember the alterations Henry and Marion made toHusserl’s limited account of phenomenality (whose limitations, once again,stem from Kant). For our two post-Husserlian thinkers, the painting’sappearing does not consist in being an object available for full constitution bya 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 Kandinskycaught Henry’s eye. The artist of the “inner need” (Kandinsky) meets thephilosopher of the inner life (Henry). One of Kandinsky’s books, Concerningthe Spiritual in Art (1911), stands among the most famous in twentieth-century painting. It appears at a time when painting is beginning its “revoltfrom dependence on nature,”27 or at least nature’s exteriority. Kandinskywrites, in the spirit of Henry’s philosophy before Henry’s birth, “The ele-ments of the new art are to be found . . . in the inner and not the outerqualities of nature.”28 He recognizes that the general public may not receivethe new art kindly—“To those who are not accustomed to it the inner beautyappears as ugliness because humanity in general inclines to the outer andknows nothing of the inner”29—but nevertheless Kandinsky insists that the“inner need” of the artist, and through him, art itself, surpasses the superficialgaze of the spectator.30 Kandinsky famously emphasizes the fundamentalproximity of the arts of music and painting, and he characterizes the painteras at once creating visual art and making a sort of music. The colors andforms the painter utilizes must strike a spiritual chord in the spectator
(including the painter himself) in order for the painting to be called “good.”31
Thus we see the Kandinskian definition of the painter: “The artist is the handwhich 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 attunedto 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 Kandinksythe makings of Henry’s aesthetics of Life.
Henry’s own book, Voir l’invisible sur Kandinsky, takes the above cues andseveral more from Kandinsky, and categorizes and organizes them into whatHenry dubs the “great Kandinskian equation.”34 In Henry’s final 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 Henrysees in Kandinsky an echo of his own fundamental ontology, and Henryadmits this.36 Henry’s fundamental ontology contains two poles, though, sowe 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.
Kandinsky’s theory of art evidences a phenomenology of sorts, an account ofbeing (or the being of pictorial elements) rendered “according to its twomodes of appearance: exteriority and interiority, visible and invisible.”37 Thisquasi-ontology or phenomenology of painting proceeds “in the manner ofHusserl’s eidetic analysis.”38 Just as Henry seeks the essence of manifestation,so does Kandinsky pursue the essence of painting. Kandinsky finds, withHenry in agreement, that “abstract painting defines the essence of all paint-ing.”39 Abstraction, then, takes over the whole picture—content and form—and the whole picture becomes an ontological unity in the pathos of life.
This ontological unity of painting bears out its significance in the effect ithas on the viewer to whom the artist directs his work. Amid a discussion ofthe relationship between music and abstract painting, and their unity in theunity of the different senses that perceive them, Henry references his bookPhilosophy and Phenomenology of the Body (1965), which sets forth a phenom-enology of the “subjective body,” which he distinguishes from the “empiricalbody.”40 He offers that book as an ex-post-facto “philosophical foundation”for Kandinsky’s theory of abstraction and of visual elements.41 Thus Henrylinks up Kandinsky’s view of art with his own account of sensation as beinggrounded in the “pathetic subjectivity that defines identically our originalBody and the being we are—our Soul.”42 By the “intuition of the artist,”43
Kandinsky reached the insight that art concerns not the outer world of
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 thatcan be experienced, all the forces of our being which, one will see, arealso 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 tothe reproduction of common facts or events, to their irremovableoutlines.44
Painting should not represent anything, nature or otherwise, but rather itshould give us life to feel within ourselves—at the deepest level, paintinggives us the reality of the cosmos, which, to paraphrase Kandinsky, is repletewith the modes of life.45 Henry thus hearkens back to Philosophy and Phenom-enology of the Body, where he suggests that “to sense” means to “test” the“universal life of the universe,”46 the inner “world” that Henry distinguishessharply from the world of exteriority (hence his later attraction to the Gospelof John: “He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but theworld did not know him.”—John 1:10).47 Painting, as a unity of abstractcontent 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 Kandinsky’s Parisiancanvases. Describing them, he makes some interesting comments about theirabstract 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 bring-ing them to visibility, and thus arousing them within the living body. Thoughnot a religious believer (Henry converted to Christianity roughly half adecade after writing Voir l’invisible), Henry makes a final provocative state-ment: “Art is the resurrection of eternal life.”50 Evidently, art effects a sort ofglorification of the viewer, a quickening of the subjective body (or flesh, or,for that matter, Soul)—but only by awakening the life that has always alreadypulsed 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. Hisview of painting thus maps (too?) straightforwardly onto his philosophicalproject as a whole.
Marion, Rothko (Idol), and the Gaze (Icon)
Jean-Luc Marion picks up on Henry’s reading of Kandinsky, assimilating its“essential parts” into his own reflections on painting.51 Marion hints that hetoo stands, so to speak, in the Kandinskian line—he champions paintings thatdo not care to imitate nature. Marion’s painter instead busies himself makingvisible what would otherwise remain unseen. Marion thickly describes hisviewpoint:
The painting—at least one that is authentic—imposes in front of everygaze an absolutely new phenomenon, increasing by force the quantity ofthe visible. The painting—the authentic one—exposes an absolutelyoriginal phenomenon, newly discovered, without precondition orgenealogy, suddenly appearing with such a violence that it explodes thelimits of the visible identified to that point. The painter, with each paint-ing, adds yet another phenomenon to the indefinite flow of the visible.He completes the world because he does not imitate nature. He deepensa 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, blocksof the visible.52
Two related accents fall here—first, that of novelty; second, that of the primacyof the inapparent. The “authentic” painter provides us with something new, aphenomenon we could not have previewed. If the artist wishes to bring forththis visibility, though, she must deal with the inapparent, l’invu (the unseen).In fact, the painter enters a rather complex relation with the inapparent—atonce both active and passive. She creates, as if ordering the primordialchaos.53 As the painter seems a figure for Marion of l’adonné, the subject whohas undergone a phenomenological reduction (for Marion, the “third” reduc-tion to givenness),54 she carries the charge of being the “gatekeeper for theascent into visibility of all that gives itself.”55 Thus she puts us face to facewith the striking property of givenness.
These active roles do not eclipse the mode of passivity in which the painterlives as well: he “admits that, despite all his work, it is not he who put in thework on the painting but the painting itself, which, thus humbly called toappear upon the occasion of the work, opens itself to the visible on its owninitiative.”56 The painter creates, but in doing so, suffers the painting57—heresists (on the borderline of activity and passivity—in the way a crayon“resists” watercolor) the onslaught of givenness.58 To twist Marion’s formulafor phenomenality (“so much reduction, so much givenness”) to fit it topainting’s phenomenalization: so much resistance, so much visibility.
Marion finds such a phenomenological situation in Rothko’s work:“Mark Rothko resists what he has received as a violent given—too harshfor anyone else than him—in phenomenalizing it on the screen of slackcolors: ‘I have imprisoned the most absolute violence in each square cen-timeter of their [the paintings’] surfaces.’ ”59 The painting, Marion suggests,presents itself as sopping with visibility, indeed as the phenomenon char-acterized by its indisputable visibility.60 With this in mind, Marion employsthe painting as his example of the second kind of saturated phenomenon,the “radiant” one, saturated with respect to quality. Marion also dubs thisphenomenon the “idol,” which he means in a somewhat different sensethan 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
insights for the study of phenomena generally and saturated, or high-phenomenality, phenomena in particular. Due to its incomparably vibrantvisibility, the “idol” clues us in to the way invisible givenness presents itselfto sight through phenomena. Especially in the case of saturated phenomena,they impose themselves.61 The painting, an exemplary saturated phenom-enon, intrigues me, or directs an intrigue toward me; it obsesses me via ablast of luminescence.62
Rothko’s experience of painting as reining in a brutal barrage of the visiblespeaks to an interesting feature of Marion’s “saturated phenomenon,” whichcomes to light yet again in the following words: “The saturation of the visiblebecomes, to the one who knows how to look at it as it gives itself, really unbear-able.”63 We get a sense, with Marion’s invocation of the adjective “unbear-able,” that he has assimilated in his account of saturated phenomena theKantian sublime.64 The sublime coheres with the saturated phenomenonbecause it signifies formlessness, it is a “negative pleasure,” it opposes ourinterest, and “astonishment” is a possible feature accompanying it.65 Again, inthe words of an important resource for Kant, Edmund Burke, “Whatever isfitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whateveris in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in amanner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime.”66 The unbearableadvent of the painting surely, at the very least, operates in a manner analogousto terror; Marion insists on this—the painting confronts us with “terror” aswe stand “in the face of the power that it exerts in the name of the darknessfrom which it arises.”67 He restates the same point: “The painting offers to ourterrified eyes the spectacle of a wall of the unseen, which cracks under thepressure of the desire to appear. The flood of the visible overcomes it.”68
To return to Michel Henry—his influence on Marion manifests itself inwhat we have just seen: the latter’s focus on “effect” (terror and fascination).We saw above that, in the final analysis, Henry concerns himself almostexclusively with the way the painting awakens feelings of life (suffering andjoy) within the viewer, and this mix of suffering and joy can fittingly be calledsublime. Marion, likewise, proposes a reduction proper to painting, thereduction to effect. He argues, “To see the painting, to the point where it is notconfused 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 cominginto visibility of the painting. He talks of the “upsurge” of the painting,70
calling to mind the welling up of life within the “affective flesh of pathos.” Asin Henry, this sublime “upsurge” made visible in the painting, “liberates thelook from all inscription in this world, from all cosmic imprisonment,”71 or inHenry’s terms, “the truth of the world.” All of these thoughts from Henryand Marion call to mind the sublime’s representation of “limitlessness”(Unbegrenztheit).72
Marion and Henry differ, though, in that Marion aims explicitly to deploysomething like the sublime in order to gain critical traction in opposition to
Kant. After briefly telling of Kant’s “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 possiblethe less common hypothesis” (i.e. than phenomena as objects) “glimpsed byKant himself—and against him.”73 Marion’s case against Kant is ostensibly tobe made through any and all saturated phenomena, idol included, but itseems that another sort of painting, the icon, presents even stronger evidenceagainst Kant’s (thus Husserl’s) persistent conditioning of phenomena “interms of the power of knowledge, not the phenomenon’s power of appear-ing.”74 Though the idol, in effect, can deliver the gaze from slavery to theworld (of foreseen objects), there is one thing it cannot give: the face. The icondoes, and this is crucially important, for the face is perhaps the most glaringexample of a phenomenon that does not “‘agree’ with the power of knowl-edge,” as Kant would have all phenomena do.75 In keeping with this, Marionobserves that the other three types of saturated phenomena (event, idol, flesh)are “gathered” in the icon.76
Marion senses in Rothko a point of transition between the idol and theicon, which Marion recodes in terms of the façade and the face. According toRothko/Marion, the extreme visibility of the painting poses a problem:
[I]f painting exercises the phenomenological function of reducing whatgives itself to what shows itself, the potential visible to the pure seen, ifit operates this reduction in bringing back all the visible to the pure andsimple plane-ness of the surface, it must end inevitably in the façade.77
One familiar with modernist (particularly New York school) painting maycatch here intimations of Clement Greenberg’s proclamation of “flatness” asthe essence of painting, an idea that influenced Rothko. The opposition offaçade to face insinuates that this essence of painting, rather than a fecundground, resembles a rotten core. With its flatness (platitude), the “façadecancels all depth;” it presents a neutral surface, one without relation, whichthus “closes off access to the intimate.”78 We begin to hear, then, echoes of theearly Lévinas’s curt, stinging attack on art in “Reality and its Shadow”(1948).79 For Marion, Rothko “foreshadows” Lévinas’s contention that “thefaçade forbids us to paint the face.” For Rothko, the decision to paint or notto paint the face comes down to two simple options: 1) “killing the face inenframing it in the flatness of the painting and putting it to death in the idol,”or 2) “‘mutilating’ oneself as a painter and giving up producing the facedirectly in visibility.”80 Marion probably overstates the case, but we mustnevertheless attend to a stark contrast that emerges here in question form: DoI choose my own artistic enjoyment, or the life of the other? Marion refuses tooppose ethics and aesthetics; in fact he highlights their association: “Art bearsthe responsibility of what it gives to see and, even further, the responsibilityof its power to make us look.”81 The painting as idol proves dangerous—
perhaps the feeling of the sublime it gives attests to this—for it threatens todestroy the face. But (somehow) the painting as icon can give the face withoutthis danger.
I already mentioned that Marion’s interest in the icon marks his maindivergence from Henry. First of all, the latter apparently has no worries overthe danger painting poses to the face of the other—at worst the painting callsup (sublime) feelings of pain and suffering within a spectator. Second,he allows no room for an iconic moment, as he categorically prefers theimmediacy of Life experienced in auto-affection, but the concept of the iconnecessarily includes an element of mediation (or at least two gazes, hencehetero-affection). Marion, on the other hand, holds the icon in utterly highesteem. In fact, he sees in the Second Council of Nicaea’s (787) dogmaticaffirmation of the icon “perhaps the only . . . alternative to the contemporarydisaster of the image.”82 He proclaims that in the icon, “the visible and theinvisible embrace each other from a fire that no longer destroys but ratherlights up the divine face for humanity.”83 In The Crossing of the Visible, Mari-on’s description of the face flows at least in part from the dogmatic symbol ofChalcedon (451), so divine and human faces coexist in an unconfused unity.But elsewhere his reflections on the face concern not God but the otherperson—as a faithful phenomenologist he dutifully brackets God’s face. Hederives his account, as well as the critique of the artistic image to which I havealready referred, from Lévinas.
The painting (as idol) offers the Other to my eyes in a way that leads me tomistake the Other for the object, and leave concern for the Other to care forthe object.84 The painting (as icon) does not attain to the project of the idol, butrather, even though it depicts the human face visually, it centers itself oninvisibility, and disrupts the intentional gaze.85 Marion writes, “The visible isliberated from vision at the moment when it seizes its own invisibility. Theinvisible, from that point on, plays no longer between the aim of the gaze andthe visible, but rather, contrary to the gazing aim, in the visible, itself.”86 Theicon gives not an experience, but a counter-experience—the face that gazes atme, in-visibly yet in-the-visible, before I get the chance to look at, and thusnegate it.87 Whereas the painting (idol) can evoke the counter-experience ofthe sublime, which does violence (to me), this crossing of intentionality fails tocompare to the crossing of the visible in the painting (icon), which stopsviolence (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 Marion’s thinking
on aesthetics. This “center” lies in the middle of the human eye (whether realor painted): the pupil. This tiny black dot becomes a recurring theme inMarion’s work.89 It functions as probably his favorite symbol for the invisible.Let us switch from talking about painting to reflecting on the body of theother person, so as to stay closer to Marion’s own words. The pupils signifyfor Marion the “gaze that comes upon me” that “provides no spectacle.”
These “two voids” are the only two places “on the surface of the body of theOther” where “there is nothing to see.”90 They refute the over-activity of asubject or “transcendental I” that aims at visible “objectives” by substitutingfor these “objectives” something invisible and invisable (“untargetable”), adarkness beyond the reach of my light-sensitive eyes.91 A text from Lévinascan illustrate Marion’s drift: “The trace of a past in a face is not the absence ofa not-yet-revealed, but the anarchy of what has never been present, of aninfinite which commands in the face of the other, and which, like an excludedmiddle, could not be aimed at.”92 The “excluded middle” and that which“could not be aimed at”—does he describe the pupil, which in terms of lightdoes not appear to sight? In the context of his overall philosophical project,Lévinas deploys the “excluded middle” in an iconoclastic mode; for himethics and the Exodus ban on images (Exodus 20:4) go hand in hand. Ethicsand its close relative, iconoclasm, both center on the face, “the very collapseof phenomenality.”93 For Lévinas it seems quite clear that the “excludedmiddle,” the pupil, figures the sublime—the negative appearance of theunpresentable.
The blackness of the pupil can take on another sense, though, for colorshows itself in another mode than light: pigment, a “usable” form of visibil-ity. Thus we return to Marion’s view of painting (a specific sort of painting atthat, for the vacant, occluded eyes of a Modigliani or a Gauguin portrait donot count as iconic). In spite of his respect for Lévinas, Marion does notfollow him in the latter’s (sublime) iconoclasm. He disputes the iconoclasticslogan, “Either the invisible or the impostor.”94 The doctrine of the icon,defined by Nicaea II, rejects this analytic dichotomy, opting for a differentteaching “concerning the visibility of the image . . . concerning the usage ofthis visibility.”95 How do we “use” visibility in the painting or viewing of anicon? The black pigment placed at the center of the eyes of, say, the BlessedVirgin Mary, functions not to represent the shadows inside the eyeball, butrather to signify the invisible gaze that “transpierces” the visible “screen” ofthe icon, which envisions the “gazing spectator.”96 Marion informs today’siconoclasts:
[W]hat is at stake in the operation of the icon concerns not the perceptionof the visible or the aesthetic but the intersection of two gazes; in orderfor the viewer to be allowed to see and escape from the status of being amere voyeur, it is necessary for him to move, through the visible icon,toward the origin of another gaze, confessing and admitting to be seenby it.97
The iconic moment, so eloquently articulated here, shows the value Marionascribes to the visibility of the icon (the painting’s black pigment), whichhardly constitutes an absolute value. In the icon, visibility becomes relativ-ized—it does not “collapse,” à la Lévinas, but the correctly disposed viewercan recognize that it has “emptied itself” (cf. Phil. 2:7).98 In a way typified by
Jesus Christ, of whom the icon (dogmatically) is the “type,” the icon effacesits own visible “spectacle,” impoverishes itself so as to allow the gaze to passthrough it to its invisible “prototype.”99 When we acknowledge the icon, weexit a space of “mimetic rivalry” between the invisible and the (visible)impostor, for in the icon “the visible opens not onto another visible but ontothe other of the visible—the invisible Holy One.”100 The pupils, empty blackholes intending me with a “ray of the divine shadow,”101 open the way toinvisible givenness, not so I may approach it, but so it may arrive to me. I havegathered these various theological points to illustrate how Marion evades thesublime iconoclasm of Lévinas, which is strongly redolent of Kantianism.102
But not until my next section will we see for sure whether Marion succeedsat adequately exorcising Kant from his phenomenology—it will soon becomeclear that this is no simple issue to navigate.
Before moving on, let us end with Marion in a similar way to how we didwith Henry. Interestingly, we find Marion echoing the final comments weobserved from Henry, as he brings up the theme of resurrection: “Everypainting participates in a resurrection, every painting imitates Christ, bybringing the unseen to light.”103 Marion refers to the Christian tradition ofChrist’s descent into hell, which in Marion’s preferred theological resource(at least in his early work), Hans Urs von Balthasar, signifies the lowestmoment of Christ’s self-emptying (kenosis), which slingshots Christ into theresurrection and to the right hand of the Father. The painter undergoes akenosis as well, plunging into the “unforeseen,” and after a time there (on thethird day?), he emerges victorious with a new visible: “The gates of Hell flyopen without ceasing, from which the painter returns to the light of day as anew master of the visible,” and in this quasi-resurrection, the painter showsus a “miracle.”104 Surely Marion would caution us, though, that the new glorythis “resurrection” brings will yield an idol, unless this glory is regarded asprovisional on its own. The true glory of painting lies in the icon, where thevisible object becomes “visible transit where two gazes cross each other andare exposed to each other.”105 Art is not the resurrection of eternal life, butpossibly the idol (as saturated phenomenon), and definitely the icon, canprefigure resurrection. The one who prays, that is, lets the invisible other see methrough 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 previoussection led us to conclude that Henry’s view of painting fits perhaps tooeasily with his philosophy overall. After our close reading of Marion, I deemit warranted to suggest that though Marion’s view proves more complex inits execution, at times its solution tends toward ending up nearly as simple asHenry’s. With his fascination with Life, Henry envisions art as expressinglife; Marion, with his project of finding unforeseeable phenomena, tells ushow art foresees us! Instead of Henry’s aesthetics of invisible feeling-revelations, we have Marion’s aesthetics of exposure to “untargetable” blackholes. Thus all the foregoing exposition has unveiled, among the many
divergences between Henry and Marion, an undeniable, if occasional, con-vergence—a Kantian, apophatic search after an “aesthetic” (or sublime)essence of art. For all their disagreements with Husserl, Henry (certainly) andMarion (possibly) still remain committed, in some ways at least, to purity, the“eidetic science” of “pure phenomenology,” as in Ideas I.107 The next section’stask is to explicate how this seeking after the eidos of painting might translateinto an overly thin theology—one distasteful to a catholic imagination—andhow 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 descriptionof the act of, or the fact of (the) painting. We have discussed everything fromcolors 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. Nowwe turn to the one who saves us: God. From phenomenological aesthetics wemake a theological turn.108
The “stretching” of phenomenality we have witnessed in Henry andMarion—beyond objectness—should render phenomenology wide open foran engagement with God, or more precisely, God’s revelation.109 To a certainextent it has, much to the chagrin of phenomenologists like DominiqueJanicaud. The latter’s critiques, which alternate between spot-on accuracy andpolemical overstatement, can lend a helping hand here. One of Janicaud’smain criticisms of Henry and Marion states, in effect, that their searches for abetter definition of phenomenality terminate in the discovery of new meta-physical foundations.110 In other words, especially in the case of Henry, theystrip away what one might call the husk of the phenomenon to get to the kernelof phenomenality, whether Life or givenness. We see this method at workwhen each discusses painting: Henry unlocks colors to find the feelings,modes of Life behind them; Marion directs his gaze at the painted image andfinds flatness (pure visibility) as distinguishing it. Both believe (or at leastwrite as if) they have identified the essence of painting. Marion does not stopthere, though—he relates the painting (as idol) to the icon, whose essence helikewise seeks, and finds in the black holes through which the invisible peersback 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 goldrush of scholarship where theological prospectors mine Scripture and Chris-tian 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 thisoutpouring of interest in Christianity’s core. His move in Religion within theLimits of Reason Alone to reduce (in the phenomenological sense of “leadback”, and in the common sense of “diminish”) the various doctrines andpractices of Christianity to the universal concepts of practical reason ignited
a still-burning theological blaze. With somewhat horrifying, but undeniablyalluring deftness, Kant’s Religion engages in a project of separation anddelimitation, the drawing of borders and “concentric circles.”111 Kant has aneidos in mind—“the pure religion of reason,” or “one (true) religion”—which,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 “eccle-siastical faiths” based on “historical revelation,” but rather “religion is hiddenwithin and has to do with moral dispositions.”113 Hidden (invisible?) withinthe moral disposition—for this reason religion’s subject matter, its “Mate-rie”—which at least one English translator renders as “essence”—is “obedi-ence . . . to all duties as [God’s] commands.”114 The “historical element” of afaith, say, Christianity, “contributes nothing” to making human persons“better” (morally), as the essence of religion demands, and thus this histori-cal element “is something which is in itself quite indifferent, and we can dowith it what we like.”115 Kant likes to separate it out, and to look forward tothe day when it will pass away—when “at last the pure religion of reason willrule over all.”116
Jacques Derrida makes a connection in The Truth in Painting (1978) betweenKantian aesthetics and the modus operandi of the Religion, a link apropos ofand instructive for this article’s topic. Both of Kant’s projects consist inmarking out integral parts “to the total representation of an object” and at thesame time judging what “belongs to it only in an extrinsic way.”117 Charac-teristically, Derrida notes that a border situation emerges as Kant proceeds. Inbetween both of these, the clearly intrinsic and clearly extrinsic, Kantarranges parerga, both in the Critique of Judgment (using examples of frameson pictures, drapery on statues, and colonnades of palaces), and in the Reli-gion (works of grace, miracles, mysteries, means of grace).118 Like anotherfamous Greek philosophical term, pharmakon, parergon performs a “doublefunction.”119
First, a parergon is “an outside which is called to the inside of the inside inorder to constitute it as an inside.”120 For instance, in the case of religion,when reason “needs . . . supplementary work” in order to “satisfy its moralneed,” a parergon such as belief in the assistance of grace comes in to provideit. Or in aesthetics, a frame can enhance a painting’s 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 “worksof grace” can issue in “fanaticism,” and attending the other parerga of religionare other equally “threatening” pitfalls.123 In painting, the parergon risks alapse “into adornment,” where it would “harm” the beauty of the work, causeit “detriment.” Derrida recognizes the source of the pathology amid thesesymptoms: “The deterioration of the parergon, the perversion, the adornment,is the attraction of the sensory matter.”124 Kant’s concern with religious
parerga, which arise within “historical” or “ecclesiastical faiths,” is their ten-dency to lead faithful people to busy themselves with “piety,” while forget-ting what is truly essential—“virtue.”125 It seems, then, with this mixture oftwo functions, that parerga showcase in an exemplary way the “indifference”Kant ascribes to the “historical element” of Christianity. Furthermore, it mustbe said that Kant’s ascription of terms such as “aberrations” to the parergaevidences Kant’s inclination toward a negative view of parerga, toward think-ing that their “pathological” function arises with more frequency than thepositive one. For this reason Kant hopes intently for their eventual becomingobsolete—when reason will not need such ambivalent help, and the essenceof 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 parergonas Kant deploys it in the Religion, based on the parergon’s double function.The parergon in its positive sense coexists peacefully with, even enhances,what is essential—hence the idea of grace fits alongside (par) religion (ergon).The parergon in its negative sense, though, detracts from, obscures, evenendangers the integral center—hence 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 ahope in the clear advent of pure religion, the text of the Religion, and certainlyits history of effects in Christian theology, verges on forcing the issue—that is,making the trappings of historical faith seem beside the point.
My exposition of Henry and Marion brought us to the topic of the Kantiansublime, and my discussion of Kant’s zeal for pure religion returns us to thesublime. It makes sense, I believe, to read the methodology of Kant’s Religionas a performance of the sublime. But what about the sublime gets enacted?
Let us observe some salient features of the Kantian sublime, from theCritique of Judgment §29, the final section in the “Analytic of the Sublime.” Inthe sublime, Reason exercises its “dominion over sensibility.” The imagina-tion (which we might interpret as a source of parerga) is “regarded as aninstrument of Reason” to this end. The imagination deprives “itself of itsfreedom, while it is purposively determined according to a different law fromthat of its empirical employment.” In a word, the imagination is sacrificed tosomething greater; it is “subjected to a cause.” Earlier Kant writes that on theoccasion of sublime feeling the mind “is incited to abandon sensibility and tobusy itself with Ideas that involve higher purposiveness,” namely, the morallaw.126 Should one recode these statements, going from aesthetics to theology,it seems that one would have Kant’s Religion.
I made passing reference above to Kant’s image of concentric circles, whererevelation is a broad circle that includes two elements, 1) the “wider sphere”of historical revelation and 2) the “narrower one” of the pure religion ofreason. Kant proposes in the Religion to “examine [the first] in a fragmentarymanner . . . as an historical system, in the light of moral concepts; and then to
see whether it does not lead back to the very same pure rational system ofreligion.” Kant feigns tentativeness—“If 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 (thereligion of reason) be allowed to float on top,” is telling.127 Sensibility—history in this case—is sacrificed to the dominion of Reason. John Betz gets atmy 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 Kantnature exists solely for the mediation of rational ideas . . . that truth is merelythe homecoming of reason, the enthralling discovery of one’s rational destinyby way of a detour through nature and self-alienation.”128 Faiths are vehiclesfor reason’s ride home, vehicles easily discarded when the sublime feelingthat moral concepts give announces reason’s imminent arrival at home’sthreshold. Given the rationalist cast of the thought of his time, maybe (prob-ably) Kant was trying to make room for Christianity when others refused todo so, perhaps he was trying to raise it to a higher plane—but a sublimesacrifice was the price of admission. For Kant and his followers (e.g., Adolfvon Harnack), the thinner theology becomes with respect to its worldly husk,the more easily recognizable is its moral (essential) kernel. Christianity’shistorical profile is beside (par) the point (ergon).
All of the foregoing has been directed toward an explication of a phrase Iused in the introduction—as a central element of my thesis no less—butwhich I waited (until now) to fully define. When I write “Kantian apophasis,”then, I mean a theological mindset comprised of elements from the negativeside of the logic of the parergon and the sacrifice of the imagination thatoccurs in the sublime—all in the interest of shoring up a philosophicalessence. My thesis states that the aesthetics of black holes and revelationsdeveloped by Henry and Marion translates, directly and definitely in the caseof Henry, and indirectly and possibly in the case of Marion (this is ourremaining question), into such a theological apophasis in their phenomeno-logical descriptions of painting. We have finally reached the payoff of thearticle.
If we transpose Henry’s aesthetics into a theological register, we couldeasily recognize the coherence of his views with a Kantian apophasis. In hismoral recasting of the Incarnation, Kant contends that even if the “Son ofGod” appeared on earth in person, he would not be the “object of savingfaith,” but instead “the archetype, lying in our reason, that we [would]attribute to him.”129 Once again, visible manifestation or historical instantia-tion does not matter, as long as an invisible idea operates within me. It doesnot need to be awakened by any exterior phenomenon; should one appear, itsonly value would reside in its assistance in my recognizing the ever-presentarchetype faster than I would have unaided.130 Does not the artwork in Henryfunction like the historical “Teacher of the Gospel” (Kant’s circumlocutionfor Jesus) might for Christians? That is, it seems that Life is already within
everyone, and perhaps the painting (the visible, historical object) can awakenmodes of Life, but it doesn’t seem that one really needs the painting toexperience Life. Henry might as well do away with the painting too. Theo-logically, this would translate into shearing away the outward expressions ofChristianity—even Christ!—in favor of a private mysticism as the sole modeof access to divine beauty. This would be a result of the imagination’s self-deprivation of its own freedom to imagine worldly things so as to reveal itsown essence, l’essence de la manifestation, the auto-revelation of auto-affection,interiority without an outside. Is this what Henry gives us?
Henry’s I Am the Truth (1996) confirms the suspicion. We could blame theGospel of John, maybe, for leaving the door wide open for an Henrianreading of Christianity—“I 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 Chris-tian concept of Truth has made truth appear to find its essence in Life.”132 Thecore of Christianity unveils the real—“the unique reality.”133 This essence, thereader will not be surprised to learn, is invisible: “It is precisely because lifeis invisible that reality is invisible—not just a particular domain of it, aparticular form of life, but any possible life, any conceivable reality.”134 Onceagain, as in his view of abstract painting, Henry’s rendering of phenomenal-ity, Life, strips the (sensible, visible, historical) details off the phenomenon,any phenomenon—the visible is beside the point. In addition, within Henry’sphrase “suffer oneself,”135 which sums up the auto-revelation of life at theheart of Christianity, lurks the dominated sensibility of the Kantian sublime.Thus Henry’s 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? Onthe surface, with all his positive talk of icons, liturgy, and eucharist, it wouldseem without question that he does not. Furthermore, as we saw above,Marion expressly states that his overall project of a phenomenology of given-ness is directed against Kant. Also as we have already observed, Marion usesthe specific notion of the Kantian sublime as an antidote to Kant. We knowfrom the discussion of Marion’s relationship to Lévinas that the former resiststhe latter’s deployment of the sublime in an iconoclastic direction, which Ilikened to Kantianism. It seems, then, that Marion finds an area for at least abit of critical traction against a theological Kantian defeat of the imagination byreason, since Kant’s (and Lévinas’s) iconoclasm at the very least touches ontheology.
But I find it difficult to conclude otherwise than that at times Kant stillmaintains a grip (even if a light, occasional one) on Marion. In his weakermoments, 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 thelatter, one does not necessarily need the idol, the icon, the liturgy, the
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 thevisibility of the icon, this time with the two functions of the parergon in mind.First, from the negative side—if the icon is properly, in its essence (?), thecrossing of gazes, and this happens through the black holes of the pupils, isthe rest of the painting a mass of parerga, negatively understood? Could notthe rich fabrics of the Blessed Virgin’s gown, the loveliness of her face, or theendearing posture of the Christ child distract from the crossing of the visibleby the invisible? If so, would not pure phenomenology, an eidetic science,fully reduced to givenness, bypass these parerga to reach the empty blackholes, not because of an ethical objection (like Lévinas), but in order to attainto the invisible eidos? The visibility of the icon, and all the other visible(historical) elements of Christianity would fall away, thus revealing prayer,figured as exposure to the gaze of the Other (God), as the essence of Chris-tianity. Like Henry, though by a more circuitous path, the Marion of thenegative side of the parergon reaches a mystical apprehension, a hidden life(of prayer), reminiscent of Colossians 3:2: “Think of what is above, not ofwhat is on earth.” The imagination, the recipient of the visibility of the icon,is sacrificed to a higher cause. The depictions of Mary and Jesus, exceptmaybe the pupils of their eyes, are beside the point. This is a fair interpretationin light of the Kantian inertia of some of Marion’s thought surroundinggivenness.
But, as I have repeatedly indicated throughout, and in the latter part of mythesis, this is not the whole story. Admittedly, the above fails to take intoaccount the breadth of Marion’s engagement with his sources, especially thetheological ones, and the quite creative way in which he inverts the Kantiansublime. 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. Wemight still treat the visual details of the icon as parerga, but this time as onesthat enhance our experience of the iconic gaze. The Crossing of the Visible, withits explicit invocation of the dogmatic defense of icons at the Council ofNicaea, shows that Marion envisions himself as a kindred spirit with anumber of iconodule saints, from Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379) to Theodorethe Studite (759–826). Another, John Damascene (675–749), comes to mind asone of the staunchest defenders of icons as being representative of thecomplex fabric of the Christian tradition, which has its basis in yet anothercomplex phenomenon, the Incarnation. For John, “It is no exaggeration to say[that] . . . unless there are images of Christ, the incarnation might as well nothave taken place.”136 The sacramental imagination of the Damascene andothers like him lends a strong backing to Marion’s phenomenology, a sense ofthe interlacing of the visible and the invisible where the distinction betweenergon and parergon becomes blurred and the layering of the earthly traditionreflects the sublimity of the Kingdom of God (“In my Father’s house there aremany dwelling places”: John 14:2). Bringing up Marion’s familiarity with
such theological sources, in the context of the positive function of the par-ergon, should place his reading of Husserl’s principle of all principles in anew perspective. Christianity gives and shows itself in countless “originarypresentive intuitions,” and the challenge of phenomenology is to allow eachone of them to be given as a self, without placing prior restrictions on them.Such a phenomenological method would rule out the hasty designation ofeach phenomenon as integral or extrinsic, essential or parergonal. Instead, itwould require painstaking attention to how the phenomena of Christianitywork alongside each other to build up a beautiful tradition.
This all relates to Marion’s turning of the Kantian sublime back on Kant.We have now seen that Kant regards the sublime as the subject’s feeling of itsperhaps limitless power. The sublime lifts the rational subject toward theidea(l)s of a higher realm, leaving behind the sensible. Marion, on the otherhand, has no interest in bolstering the rational subject. In fact, he inquires intothe makeup of a post-subject, which he calls l’adonné.137 For Kant, we lookinside the subject for the ground of the sublime. For Marion, we look to thephenomenon, to which l’adonné relinquishes the status of selfhood. L’adonnédoes not suffer himself, as with Kant (and Henry), but rather it suffers a self,another self, that of the phenomenon. The phenomenon crashes sublimely onl’adonné, with a “brutal shock.”138 Perhaps, then, we can speak of a sacrifice ofthe imagination in Marion, but not one of Kantian apophasis, where the“higher cause” is that of reason—really, immanence. Instead the sacrifice is inthe interest of phenomena, visible, invisible, and invisible in their visibility.In this way, Marion’s inversion of the sublime teaches that we need notsacrifice a catholic imagination—he has opened a space for its universalscope.
Conclusion
These past few paragraphs should indicate that I have hardly intended thepreceding as a rejection of the philosophical achievements of Henry andMarion, nor of the possibility of a fruitful theological application of theirthoughts. My critiques come out of an appreciation for Henry and Marion,but this does not exclude, in fact it includes, an acknowledgement of theunderside of their trajectory of thought, which is no less dangerous for beingunintended—or inapparent. Clearly my reservations about Henry’s thoughtare more serious, and my admiration for Marion’s more solid. I shall con-clude with a related suggestion.
If we are careful, we can utilize Marion’s philosophy, following the posi-tive, not the negative, function of the parergon, to let Christian beauty appear(from itself) in its many gleaming (and dull) facets—from the loftiest dogmasto the most common devotions. We can see them alongside (par) each otherand inquire as to how they contribute to the work (ergon) of serving God andneighbor. God has saved (and saves) us in many and various ways, most
excellently in the Son, the radiance of God’s glory (see Heb. 1:1–3). Marion’sphilosophy, if vigilantly employed so as to keep within what I called itsprevailing momentum, can help us to open up theology to the plenitude ofGod’s saving works (erga), both visible and invisible—Marion hopes fornothing less.139 This would bring us closer to a Christian theology steeped ina catholic (in my case, Catholic) imagination than any sublime, (post)modernapophatic appeal to the invisible, with its black holes and revelations.
NOTES
1 My thanks to Kevin Hart, Lawrence Cunningham, and Cyril O’Regan for their commentson 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 relationshipto the invisible, so perhaps this shift is rather a recollection of what phenomenology doesanyway: “From Husserl disengaging categorial intuition to Derrida establishing différance,from Maurice Merleau-Ponty manifesting the flesh of the world to Michel Henry assigningauto-affection, which phenomenology is not attached to the invisible, in order to bring itinto full light?” Jean-Luc Marion, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena, trans. RobynHorner and Vincent Berraud (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), p. 111. The lastwork of Merleau-Ponty’s life, cut short by his death, is probably the classic text for thesubject of my article. Hence I will mention, though I have neither time nor space toexplicitly engage it, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, Followed by WorkingNotes, ed. Claude Lefort, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UniversityPress, 1968). Also, Heidegger, perhaps summarizing many advances in his thought towardinvisibility, famously suggested the need for a “phenomenology of the inapparent,” thusgiving impetus to Marion and others like him. See Martin Heidegger, Four Seminars, trans.Andrew Mitchell and François Raffoul (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003),p. 80.
3 I take this definition of phenomenality as the “how” of appearing from Henry, who uses itthroughout his writings.
4 See especially Michel Henry, “La méthode phénoménologique” in Phénoménologie matérielle(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. 49–62.
6 Michel Henry, Voir l’invisible 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 relation-ship between the visible and the invisible comes from Heidegger’s thoughts on God. Forinstance, Heidegger writes, “God’s manifestness—not only he himself—is mysterious.”Martin Heidegger, “. . . Poetically Man Dwells . . .”, in Poetry, Language, and Thought, trans.Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2001), pp. 209–227, herep. 220.
9 The issue of the icon will complicate the relationship between Henry and Marion as I movetoward my constructive remarks in the section labeled “Assessment: Theology andKantian 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 Marion’s later philosophical treatment of the idol, usingthe word “rehabilitation.” This term suggests Marion’s early concerns with the idol in histheological work, such as God without Being, but also a later shift in perspective, as in BeingGiven, where Marion esteems the idol as an exemplary case of “saturation.” But lest Imislead readers of God without Being who have not yet read Marion’s later work, Marionstill emphasizes the limitations and even the danger of the idol. I return briefly to this pointlater in this article.
12 Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore M. Greene andHoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960).
13 This phrase and several others (to follow in my final part) come from Jacques Derrida, TheTruth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago, IL: University ofChicago Press, 1987), here p. 73.
14 Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 6. Translations are mine.15 Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Phi-
losophy: First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (Dor-drecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), §24, p. 44, emphasisHusserl’s.
16 Marion, Being Given, p. 13, emphasis added.17 Ibid., p. 13.18 Ibid., p. 189.19 Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 8.20 Michel Henry, “Does the Concept of ‘Soul’ Mean Anything?”, Philosophy Today, 13/2
(Summer 1969), pp. 94–114, here p. 104.21 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, Henry’swebsite, maintained by his widow, Anne Henry, perhaps contains the clearest, mostconcise definition of what Henry means by pathos. Anne Henry writes, “Pathos signifiantin M.H. la passivité première de la vie, son épreuve de soi, son auto-affection invisible.”Anne Henry, “Analyse des oeuvres et index”, http://www.michelhenry.com/phenomenologiemat.htm, accessed 6 July 2007.
22 Marion, Being Given, pp. 186, 188.23 Marion, In Excess, p. 17.24 Ibid., p. 19. See Husserl, Ideas I, Part Three, Chapter Three, “Noesis and Noema,” pp.
211–235, for Husserl’s breakthrough description of the correlation of the “intentive mentalprocess” (noesis) with that which it is “conscious of” (noema).
25 Marion, Being Given, pp. 68–70.26 Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenom-
enology, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), p.203. On the development of this maxim for phenomenality, see Michel Henry, “Quatreprincipes de la phénoménologie”, in Phénoménologie de la vie, vol. 1: De la phénoménologie(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003), pp. 77–104.
27 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, trans. M. T. H. Sadler (New York: DoverPublications, Inc., 1977), p. 46.
28 Ibid., p. 49.29 Ibid., p. 16.30 Kandinsky maintains that the artist has to bear the cross of art—“he is free in art but not
in life,” for without his spiritual striving, art will stagnate. Ibid., pp. 4, 54.31 Ibid., p. 53.32 Ibid., p. 25.33 Ibid., pp. 5–6.34 Henry, Voir l’invisible, p. 18.35 Ibid., p. 51.36 See Ibid., p. 64.37 Ibid., p. 64.38 Ibid., p. 73.39 Ibid., p. 104.40 Henry, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, trans. Girard Etzkorn (The Hague: Mar-
tinus Nijhoff, 1975). In the preface of this book, Henry indicates that the book began asa chapter in his magnum opus, The Essence of Manifestation, and took on a life of its own(p. ix). Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body’s main question, in the spirit of theontology of immanence that Henry developed in The Essence of Manifestation, is how onemight engage in an analysis of the body, “a transcendent being, . . . an inhabitant of thisworld 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 Henry’s thought:asserting the priority of the enstatic to the ecstatic, immanent to transcendent. See Michel
Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, trans. Girard Etzkorn (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,1973).
41 Henry, Voir l’invisible, p. 193, see p. 248n35.42 Ibid., p. 193.43 Ibid., p. 194.44 Ibid., pp. 98–99.45 See Ibid., p. 237. Though we must point out that for Kandinsky, and Henry following him,
colors represent feelings.46 Henry, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, p. 107.47 See Henry, I Am the Truth, p. 23: “[T]he Truth of Christianity differs in essence from the
truth of the world.”48 Absolute knowledge, which coincides with l’épreuve de la Vie, stands as a major theme
throughout Henry’s writings. Thus, even at a superficial level one can make sense of thecharge of Gnosticism many critics have leveled against Henry’s work, especially his final,Christian works.
49 Henry, Voir l’invisible, p. 244.50 Ibid., p. 244. Without passing judgment on Henry’s subjective motives, sometimes when
reading his texts it is difficult to tell whether the conversion does not go in the oppositedirection, namely, in his late works, Christianity becomes a “Henryism” of sorts.
51 See Marion, Being Given, p. 337n92: “I am obviously referring to the studies of MichelHenry in Voir l’invisible . . . whose interpretation, in its essential parts, I here make myown.”
52 Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 25.53 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 earlyChristian identification of Christ as the new Orpheus—Christ descends to the underworldto lead out its inhabitants.
54 See Marion, In Excess, pp. 46–49.55 Marion, Being Given, p. 307.56 Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 44.57 The same is true for the spectator, though in a slightly different way. The spectator feels the
effect of the painting’s visual upsurge, its appear-ing. He can thus say about the color of thepainting, “[I]t makes me undergo a passion,” Marion, Being Given, p. 51. Marion alludeshere to Kandinsky, hence Henry.
58 See Marion, In Excess, p. 51.59 Ibid., p. 52.60 Marion, Being Given, p. 40. Cf. Marion, In Excess, p. 69.61 Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 30.62 These are Emmanuel Lévinas’s 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 Lévinas, but it is worth noting that the traces of the Other (the face) show up inanother saturated phenomenon. See Emmanuel Lévinas, Otherwise than Being, or BeyondEssence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1998).
63 Marion, In Excess, p. 67, emphasis added. The issue of “knowing how to look” or “havingeyes to see” is an important one in Marion’s thought, and bears much consideration,though I will not do so in this essay. On this topic and the various sub-topics within it, suchas 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-LucMarion”, in Kevin Hart (ed), Counter-Experiences: Reading Jean-Luc Marion (Notre Dame,IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), pp. 153–179.
64 Kevin Hart suggested this connection to me, and upon further review of Being Given Ifound Marion’s specific naming of the Kantian sublime as a predecessor to the saturatedphenomenon. Marion, Being Given, 219–220. See Kant, The Critique of Judgment, trans. J. H.Bernard (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000), §§23–29, “The Analytic of the Sublime,”pp. 101–150.
65 Kant, Critique of Judgment, §23, p. 102; §29, pp. 134, 136.66 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,
section vii, p. 35, emphasis added. See Kant, Critique of Judgment, §29, pp. 147–148 forquotes from Burke’s Part IV.
67 Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 31.68 Ibid., p. 40. Marion’s language at this juncture shares affinities with the discourse of
Jean-François Lyotard, perhaps the major proponent of the Kantian and the Burkeansublime in French postmodernity. For example, Lyotard writes, “Imagination at the limitsof what it can present does violence to itself in order to present that it can no longerpresent.” Jean-François Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, trans. ElizabethRottenberg (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 phenom-ena—thus potentially all phenomena.
69 Marion, Being Given, p. 51.70 Ibid., pp. 49, 52.71 Marion, In Excess, p. 61.72 Marion, Being Given, p. 220. Yet another French postmodern thinker demands recognition
here—Jean-Luc Nancy. In the essay, “The Sublime Offering,” Nancy deploys the termUnbegrenztheit (or unlimitation) as he describes the feeling of freedom that human personsexperience when confronted with art. For Nancy, the sublime offering art extends to us isa sort of negative presentation of our human destiny—to touch (and remake) our verylimits. See Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Sublime Offering”, in Of the Sublime: Presence in Question,Essays by Jean-François Courtine, et al., trans. Jeffrey S. Librett (Albany, NY: State Univer-sity of New York Press, 1993), pp. 25–54.
73 Marion, Being Given, p. 197, pp. 198–199.74 Ibid., p. 181.75 Ibid., p. 212.76 Ibid., p. 233.77 Marion, In Excess, p. 76.78 Ibid., pp. 76–77.79 See Emmanuel Lévinas, “Reality and its Shadow”, in Collected Philosophical Papers, trans.
Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1998), pp. 1–13. Later in life,Lévinas softened his take on art a bit, but even as late as Otherwise than Being he cited“Reality and its Shadow” without retracting that essay’s position. For the “softened”position, see the interview in Emmanuel Lévinas, De l’oblitération: entretien avec FrançoiseArmengaud à propos de l’œuvre de Sosno (Paris: Éditions de la Différence, 1998).
80 Marion, In Excess, p. 78.81 Ibid., p. 61.82 Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 87.83 Ibid., p. 87.84 I exaggerate my terminology a bit to explicate the connection between Lévinas and
Marion. The reference is Lévinas’s 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). Soonafter, Lévinas asserts his main point: art fosters irresponsibility. He continues, “There issomething wicked and egoist and cowardly in artistic enjoyment. There are times whenone can be ashamed of it, as of feasting during a plague” (p. 12). Marion assumes thiscritique of art as his own, though he limits it in that he appreciates the idol as anexample of the saturated phenomenon, if a potentially dangerous one. For him theicon stands as the privileged image that evades Lévinas’s critical strikes. More on thisbelow.
85 Surely Marion uses “icon” to mean a broader category than paintings of saints on wood,but I feel justified in assuming that this more comprehensive designation still includes suchpaintings.
86 Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 19.87 Marion shares with Lévinas the conviction (assumption) that “my” gaze inevitably does
violence to that which it beholds, especially when “I” direct it toward the other person. Wemust ask, of course, whether this is necessarily true.
88 Election is another Levinasian theme, as well as a Christian one. In Lévinas, election seemstouched by the sublime; he speaks of it as “traumatic . . . an election in persecution.”Lévinas, Otherwise than Being, p. 56.
89 Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, pp. 21, 56–57, 83; Being Given, pp. 232–233; In Excess, pp.115–116. See Jean- Luc Marion, “The Intentionality of Love”, in Prolegomena to Charity,trans. Stephen Lewis (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), pp. 71–101, especiallypp. 80–82. Marion subtitles this essay, “In Homage to Emmanuel Lévinas.”
90 Marion, Being Given, pp. 232–233.91 Marion, “The Intentionality of Love,” p. 81.92 Lévinas, Otherwise than Being, p. 97.93 Ibid., p. 88. For Lévinas phenomenality designates showing.94 Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 67.95 Ibid., p. 59. Again, I understand that Marion intends “icon” to mean more than a “pictorial
genre,” as he plainly states.96 Ibid., p. 59.97 Ibid., p. 60.98 Ibid., p. 62.99 Ibid., pp. 62–64.
100 Ibid., pp. 86, 78.101 Dionysius the Areopagite, The Mystical Theology in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works,
trans. Colm Luibheid (Mahwah, NY: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 135–141, here p. 135 (1000A).102 See, for instance, Kant’s discussion of the Exodus ban on images within his final section on
the sublime: Kant, Critique of Judgment, §29, pp. 143–144.103 Marion, The Crossing of the Visible, p. 27.104 Ibid., p. 29.105 Ibid., p. 60.106 Ibid., pp. 75, 65.107 Husserl, Ideas I, p. xx.108 Dominique Janicaud’s famous chastisement of thinkers like Henry and Marion for the
theological overtones of their work bears mentioning. I find his critiques captivating, butwonder if he is too rigorist in his opposition to the “new phenomenology.” See DominiqueJanicaud, The Theological Turn of French Phenomenology, trans. Bernard G. Prusak, in Phe-nomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate (New York: Fordham UniversityPress, 2000) and Dominique Janicaud, Phenomenology “Wide Open”: After the French Debate,trans. Charles Cabral (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005).
109 I borrow this notion of “stretched” phenomenology from Kevin Hart. See his “Phenom-enality and Christianity”, Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 12/1 (April 2007), pp.37–53, especially p. 41.
110 Janicaud, Theological Turn, pp. 74, 65.111 See Kant, Religion, pp. 11–13 and Derrida, Truth in Painting, pp. 55–57.112 Kant, Religion, pp. 11, 98, 94.113 Ibid., p. 99.114 Ibid., p. 96.115 Ibid., p. 102.116 Ibid., p. 112.117 Derrida, Truth in Painting, pp. 55, 57.118 Ibid., pp. 53, 55. See Kant, Religion, p. 47.119 Derrida, Truth in Painting, p. 349.120 Ibid., p. 63.121 Ibid., p. 56, 64.122 Ibid., p. 64.123 Kant, Religion, p. 48. Derrida, Truth in Painting, p. 56.124 Derrida Truth in Painting, p. 64.125 Kant, Religion, p. 189.126 Kant, Critique of Judgment, §29, p. 136; §23, p. 103.127 Kant, Religion, pp. 11–12.128 John R. Betz, “Beyond the Sublime: The Aesthetics of the Analogy of Being” (Part One),
Modern Theology 21/3 (July 2005), pp. 367–411, here p. 384.129 Kant, Religion, p. 110.130 Kant adopts this idea from Gotthold Lessing. See Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, “The Edu-
cation of the Human Race” in Philosophical and Theological Writings, trans. H. B. Nisbet
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 217–240. Lessing writes, “Educationgives the individual nothing which he could not also acquire by himself; it merely giveshim what he could acquire by himself, but more quickly and more easily. Thus revelationlikewise gives the human race nothing which human reason, left to itself, could not alsoarrive 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. 248–319 for a full description of l’adonné, and In Excess,
p. 44–53 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 notbe known. Therefore whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, andwhat you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed on the housetops” (Luke12:2–3).
