“Being and Time” does not mean a book, but the task that is given. The authentic task given here is what we do not know; and insofar as we know this genuinely, namely as a given task, we always know it only in questioning.
Martin Heidegger Introduction to Metaphysics
Difference is not diversity. Diversity is given, but difference is that by which the given is given, that by which the given is given as diverse.
Gilles Deleuze Difference and Repetition
So much reduction, so much givenness.
Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given What is the relation of God and Being in Heidegger’s thinking, and what is the place of
God in Heidegger’s philosophy? Those are the questions central to and has been taken up frequently by philosphers and theologians alike. Marion quoted Heidegger’s famous take on theology, “If I were to write a theology…then the word being would not occur in it. Faith does not need the thought of being” in God without Being, (GB 61) where the relation between God and being are further complicated. However, with the new interpretation of Heidegger’s lecture On the
Essence of Truth from the last essay, and a philosophical periodization determined reagarding the
years (1930/31) the lecture was offered, this essay, in certain ways a sequel to the previous one, offers a second part of the study left unfinished, namely the ontotheological exmaination of this new reading, by which a horizon of situating Heidegger within his own delineation of the history of being may be disclosed.
We will proceeds by structurally first considering Marion’s sublation of later Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics and its subjugation of God under being, so as to have Marion’s reading of Heidegger’s ontological difference and it’s relation to theology at hand. We will then breifly review the reinterpretation of On the Essence of Truth from the previous essay, restructuring the ontological difference as a more nuanced tripartite relation, before finally devalorizing Marion’s reading of Heidegger’s later philosophy as a “double idolatry” of God.
God Without Being
Heidegger has been considered both positively and negatively by Marion. While Heidegger offers Marion a strategy of structuring and critiqueing Western metaphysics as ontotheology,(GB xxiii) namely that which equates God with various sorts of highest being (Seiende), Marion parts with Heidegger and rejects his move of subordinating God to being by placing it necessarily within the horizon, or Ereignis. Heidegger critiques metaphysics as the oblivion of the ontological difference between being (Sein) and beings (Seiende), and pointed out that it will necessarily lead to a subjectivist philosophy in which all that is been thought is thought not only as beings, but as beings in opposition to the subject (cogito, transcendental subject, absolute spirit, etc.). In Marion’s words, Heidegger critiques metaphysics as utilizing the human, all too human idols (beings) created by us, and, with it, concealed and substituted the icon (being).
The concepts of idol and icon were not only used by Marion to formulate Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics, but also Marion’s own critique of Heidegger’s ontology. While the idol is constituted by intensionsality, and projected upon as an invisible mirror of the subject, (GB 12) the icon is that which in turn allows the visible to gradually overflow into the invisible. When gazing the icon, Marion argues, it is no longer the human gaze, but a higher gaze belonging to the icon itslef, or rather the Divine, that becomes dominant. As God’s love, grace, and gift, the gaze of the icon comes from infinite distance and depth, has infinite excessiveness, and therefore overwhelmingly overflows the gaze of human attention. In a sense, God transcends all metaphysical qualifications and negates any form of idolatry, be it the Supreme Being, Causa sui or any moral principles whatsoever.
Marion argues, even after the so-called Kehre in Heideger’s later period, turning from the existential analytic of Dasein to directly interprets being as Ereignis, Heidegger continues to subordinate the Divine to being, instead of the other way around. Therefore, Marion believes Heidegger is commiting to another form of idolatry, “We therefore posit that here again, a second time, and beyond the idolatry proper to metaphysics, there functions another idolatry, proper to the thought of Being as such. This affirmation, as blunt as it may seem, derives nevertheless directly from the indisputable and essential anteriority of the ontological question over the so-called ontic question of ‘God.’” (GB 41) Marion quoted Heidegger’s lecture on turning (Die Kehre) and found it absurd, “for the God also is––if he is––a being and stands as a being within being and its coming to presence, which brings itself disclosingly to pass out of the worlding of the world [auch der Gott isf, wenn er ist, ein Seiender],” (GB 44) for here Heidegger seems to consider God as a being revealed by the horizon of being, and therefore subjected and posterior to the ontological difference.
Essence of Truth
In the prior essay we concluded an interpretation of Heidegger’s take on the allegory of the cave. We concluded that the structure of shadow–candle–sun could be read to be ismorphic to that of beings–being of beings–being as such, each components as the answer [Erfragte] to the previous elements, namely that which is interrogated [Befragte].
When we ask the guiding question [Leitfrage] of metaphysics, namely ‘what it is that constitutes beings,’ here the Befragte is the beings, and the Erfragte is the being of those beings–– that which grounds the existence of the beings. Then when we move the ladder up, asking the
Grundfrage of ‘why is there something instead of nothing,’ the Befragte is the being of beings, and
the Erfragte is being as such, that which makes the being of beings intelligible, or, put it another way, the answer to the question of why we can make intelligible at all the fact that being of beings grounds beings. Then—this is the crucial point––Heidegger moves on to ask the Vorfrage which must be answered before answering the Grundfrage, namely ‘how does it stand with Being?’ [Wie steht es um das Sein?] Put it in another way, it is asking why we even ask the question of ‘why is there something instead of nothing’ at all. Here, the Befragte is being as such (which is clearing or the thrown-disclosedness of Dasein) and the Erfragte is, finally, what Heidegger means by the answer to forgotten question of being, which is supposedly Ereignis.
This simply means we are asking three consecutive questions, each transcending the former.
When we ask about the shadow(beings), the answer is that the candle(being of beings) makes the shadow, and when we ask about why the candle makes the shadow, the answer is that because light(sun)(being as such) exists and serves as the transcendental possibility of seeing, and then we ask why light(sun) exists or is a transcendental possibility of us at all, it is the supposedly the ap- propri-ation of ex-sistence to its proper state. Yet the sun is too bright that you can never look at it and figure out what is going on, which signifies an impossibility of moving up the ladder again, and our consecutive questioning stops here.
Contra Marion
With this, let us return to the criticism Marion has given upon Heidegger. Marion, again, thinks Heidegger subsumed God under being, or thinks of God only in terms of ontological difference. Nevertheless, it is unclear after this reinterpretation of the cave allegory, what elements exactly correspond to the ontological difference, which is what we need to first examine.
Being as such, which is the essence of all being of beings, serves a similar position as God, in that it is given as a givenness, the givenness of being of beings, just like how God gives itself as horizon but also into our horizon. The distinction between being as such and being of beings is precisely the ontological difference. We have already seen in the candle and the sun in the cave allegory, in which candle can only grounds shadow by its property of light, and sun––the ultimate light––symbolizes the lightness of all light, the essence of light as unconcealment. And it substantiates itself in particular lights such as the candle. Heidegger gives similar account in Introduction to Metaphysics, …But we cannot conclude from this that being consists only in the word and its meaning. The meaning of the word does not, as a meaning, constitute the essence of being. This would mean that the being of beings, for instance the being of the building we mentioned, consisted in the meaning of a word. It would obviously be absurd to think so. Instead, in the word “being,” in its meaning and passing through this meaning, we mean being itself––but it is simply not a thing, if by thing we understand any sort of being. (IM 96) Here is a more direct presentation of the ontological difference, not between being and beings, but between being of beings and being as such. Being of beings means that which makes particular things intelligible, but being as such denotes the very intelligibility as such. And the relation between being of beings and being as such is that the former is the given, while the latter is its very givenness as such; or, the latter is the essence of the former, and the former is an instantiation of the latter. “In the ‘is,’ being opens up to us in a manifold way.” (IM 98) We have mentioned that Marion attacks Heidegger by pointing a quote from the lecture on Kehre, which is worth quoting here again, “God also is––if he is––a being and stands as a being within Being and its coming to presence, which brings itself disclosingly to pass out of the worlding of the world [auch der Gott isf, wenn er ist, ein Seiender].” (GB 44) There is a certain ambiguity in this passage as what does it precisely mean to be thinking of God within the ontological difference. If it means situating God as particular being of beings, and exhibit only ontic structure, Heidegger clearly deserves Marion’s criticism, even his own criticism, for, by subjecting God in the realm of the ontic, He is clearly doing ontotheology.
However, I am afraid that is what Heidegger means when he said this in the lecture. When he said “if he(God) is,” Heidegger is not using subjunctive as an expression of his uncertainty, it seems more probable that by ‘if’ he means ‘whenever’ which serves as a conditional. This interpretation could be seen to correspond to the logic of instantiation of being as such as particular being of beings. That is to say, God only is whenever it ontically is, that is, is a being (of beings), but God as such, in itself, does not have to be. With this, Heidegger is refrained from Marion’s critique of subsuming God under ontological difference, for he is merely subsuming God’s particular modes of expression not God itself.
In conclusion, this essay takes up Marion’s criticism of Heidegger’s consideration on God within the horizon of ontological difference. We considered Marion’s deployment of Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics as ontotheology by rephrasing it in terms of idol and icon, and in turn phrasing Marion’s critique of later Heidegger also in terms of idol and icon, namely the double idolatry commited by Heidegger of positing the anteriority of the question of ontology to that of theology, of Being as such to that of the ‘ontic’ question of God. We then breifly reviewed the previous essay’s distinction made between being as such and being of beings, which, instead of simply being and beings, serves as the ontological difference proper to examination. Lastly, when we reinterpreted Marion’s critique of Heidegger in terms of this ontological difference, we were able to interpret Heidegger as considering God not as inside this difference but as instantiated within it only incidentally, so as to prevent God itself been subsumed under an prior consideration of ontology, which in turn prevented Marion’s original critique.