UNKNOWING THE KNOWN TO KNOW THE UNKNOWABLE

J. RAYMUND PATRICK S. SANCHEZ, SJ

INTRODUCTION

“Who do I love when I love my God?” 1 This question that St. Augustine of Hippo posed in his

Confessions seems to be an unwittingly simple question. However, when given more thought, it gives

birth to more questions: Who is this “God” who is loved? Who is this “I” that loves? What does it mean

to “love”? Such questions are important to one who wishes to preach about the Divine in a postmodern

world where metaphysics has been put into question, a world where one is called to minister to countless

skeptic believers who struggle in finding God in their lived experiences. The question demands serious

reflection. Moreover, the Nietzschean announcement of the “death of God” comes as a threat to many

who are so ensconced in metaphysical thinking. This is especially true to many believers whose faith is

firmly grounded on a metaphysical framework where God is deemed the source of all being. For without

this Divine Being, how then do they explain their faith? Heidegger responds to this event with the asser-

tion that the death of God also announces the end of a train of epochal moments in the history of meta -

physics. Hence, the Nietzschean proclamation is taken to mean the death of all metaphysical gods.

“What then,” Heidegger asks, “do we do at the end of metaphysics?”

Contrary to many, some philosophers consider the end of metaphysics and the death of metaphys-

ical gods as a possibility rather than a termination. Among these are Martin Heidegger and Jean-Luc

Marion. To them, the end of metaphysics is an event that announces the possibility of truly thinking

about the Infinite as infinite, freed from the shackles of metaphysical constructs. The death of “God” al-

lows the true God to show Himself to us as he really is and invites us to know him as he truly is.

1
Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of St. Augustine, translated by John K. Ryan (New York: Image Books, 1960), 233.
 2

This paper is a philosophical reflection on the Augustinian question guided by the post-metaphys-

ical philosophy of Jean-Luc Marion. Such reflection will therefore require an exposition of Marion’s

phenomenological reflections on God that goes beyond the metaphysical horizon of being into the yet un -

charted horizon of givenness. This exposition will however require a brief account of Heidegger’s cri-

tique of metaphysics and his project of overcoming metaphysics since Marion takes off from this same

starting point but pursues a different direction. In the end, the philosophical reflections of both Heidegger

and Marion will present that clearing where we can allow God to make himself known to us as God.

THE CONTEXT: HEIDEGGER’S PROJECT OF OVERCOMING METAPHYSICS

In his preface to his book Identity and Difference2, Heidegger writes, “[t]he reader is to discover

for himself in what way difference stems from the essence of identity, by listening to the harmony presid -

ing over the event of appropriation and perdurance.”3 Here, Heidegger lays out his plan of showing how

the identity of Being gives way to a difference so important to him that in the same preface, he writes,

“the constitution of metaphysics I defined by difference.”4 What is this “difference” that Heidegger talks

about?

For Heidegger, the great dilemma of metaphysics is that it has always thought Being in terms of

beings. With too much focus on Seiendes (existents or beings), Heidegger laments man’s “forgetfulness

of Being” that has come to be synonymous to metaphysics: “As metaphysics, it is by very essence ex -

cluded from the experience of Being; for it always represents beings () only with an eye to that aspect

of them that has already manifested itself as being ( ). But metaphysics never pays attention to what

has concealed itself in the very  insofar as it became unconcealed.”5 Thus to Heidegger, metaphysics

has established its discourse in the horizon of beings that gives premium to presence as re-presentation.
2
Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, 1969).
3
Ibid, 21-22.
4
Ibid, 21.
5
Martin Heidegger, as quoted in Mark A. Wrathall, ed., Religion after Metaphysics (UK: Cambridge University Press,
2003), 2.
 3

He adds that such metaphysical constructs where beings are objectified has given impetus to the rise of

the logic of scientific thinking.

Delving deeper into the problem of metaphysics, Heidegger critiques that the problem of meta -

physics is its onto-theological constitution. Metaphysics has a tendency to bulldoze the being in itself be-

cause it focuses too much on universal traits of being of every thing (metaphysica generalis). The

process of abstraction therefore loses sight of the particularities of the being itself and in the process,

loses sight of the “thing in itself,” forgets the being of beings. Another problem of metaphysics is its ob -

session with Being as the ground of all beings (metaphysica generalis). Hence, Being that is often ac-

knowledged as the font and foundation of all beings is apprehended in terms of its effects—beings—and

not in its own terms. And for those who subscribe to a metaphysics where Being is considered to be God,

the Creator who is the source and ground of all creation, this God is always understood and interpreted in

terms of His creations. As we can see, the main problem of metaphysics is that it tends to objectify be-

ings and Being and in doing so, falls into what Heidegger calls “the forgetfulness of being.”

Heidegger notes that man himself is guilty of this forgetfulness of being for while he is very

much aware of his own existence in terms of the human sciences--like psychology, sociology and anthro -

pology-- he cannot give an outright and cogent response to the question “Who am I?” Could it be that

man himself is guilty of objectifying himself? Hence, Heidegger proposes that we take a step backward,

out of metaphysics into its more essential aspect: the self-concealment of Being behind beings. So impor-

tant is this back-step that Heidegger says, “only as this step gains for us greater distance does what is near

give itself as such, does nearness achieve its first radiance” 6– the ontological difference between Sein and

Seiendes.

What precisely does this ontological difference reveal? According to Heidegger, it is that “the

Being of beings means Being which is beings.” 7 In this revelation of what Heidegger calls the “ontologi-
6
Heidegger, 64.
7
Ibid.
 4

cal difference,” Being becomes present in the manner of transition to beings. That is, Being shows itself

as the unconcealing overwhelming while being as the arrival that shows itself concealed. Hence, what we

see in the ontological difference is actually an event where Being reveals itself in being as concealment

while being is concealed in the arrival of Being. As Heidegger puts it, “Being in the sense of unconceal -

ing overwhelming, and beings as such in the sense of arrival that keeps itself concealed, are present, and

thus differentiated, by virtue of the Same, the differentiation.” 8

Heidegger calls the difference between Sein and Seiendes the Same. Sameness connotes appro-

priation. And when joined with Heidegger’s Being as Es Gibt which connotes an action or an event—the

act of giving, an event of appropriation (Ereignis) comes to fore. In this event, one makes an-other his

own but the relationship between the two is not that of domination or submission. In addition, the event

of appropriation takes place in both ends of the pole--Dasein (the there-being) appropriates Being and Be-

ing appropriates Dasein. Es Gibt--Being gives of Itself by sending and extending (in time) through the

different structures that attempt to reveal its nature throughout the history of metaphysics.

Perhaps the best way to understand this event is through Heidegger’s concept of Ereignis. To

Heidegger, Ereignis is an event where both Sein and Seiendes light up (unconcealment) and illumines the

other but at the same time remains concealed. Ereignis is also an event not only of appropriation but also

of disclosure. Being discloses itself in Dasein and Dasein discloses itself to Being. Such disclosure

opens up a space or clearing where both beings and Being can reveal themselves to Dasein. Moreover,

the event is a back-and-forth movement where being is enformed by Being and in being enformed, en-

forms Being in return. That is, as being knows itself by the arrival of Being, Being itself is amplified in

the process through its arrival in being. And in this dialectic between Being and being, the world is dis-

closed.

8
Ibid, 65.
 5

No wonder the difference is of great import to Heidegger. It is in this difference–what is “be -

tween” Being and being–that the creative tension between concealment and unconcealment, between tran-

scendence and presence, between transition and arrival take place. It is the gathering of all beings in Be -

ing, the ground and source of being.

Towards the end of The Principle of Identity, Heidegger writes:

The law (of identity) appears at first in the form of a fundamental principle that presupposes identity as a char-
acteristic of Being, that is, of the ground of beings. This principle in the sense of a statement has in the mean-
time become a principle bearing the characteristics of a spring that departs from Being as the ground of beings,
and thus springs into the abyss. But this abyss is neither empty nothingness nor murky confusion, but rather:
the event of appropriation. In the event of appropriation vibrates the active nature of what speaks as language,
which at one time was called the house of Being. “Principle of identity” means now: a spring demanded by the
essence of identity because it needs that spring if the belonging together of man and Being is to attain the es-
sential light of the appropriation. (39)

Here we see that the belongingness of being to Being and of Being to being makes it essential for Being

to make that “leap” towards being without having to leave its place and lose itself in being. And this issu -

ing and arrival makes possible the careful event of appropriation where both Being and being are revealed

as concealed/unconcealed.

In On Time and Being, Heidegger describes in detail his concept of the sending of Being which

characterizes Ereignis:

In the beginning of Western thinking, Being is thought, but not as the “It gives” (Es Gibt) as such. The latter
withdraws in favor of the gift that It gives. That gift is thought and conceptualized from then on exclusively as
Being with regard to beings. A giving which gives only its gift, but in the giving holds itself back and with -
draws, such a giving we call a sending (das Schicken). According to the meaning of giving which is to be
thought in this way, Being—that which it gives—is what is sent. Each of its transformations remains destined
(geschickt) in this manner.9

Here we can see the importance of the ontological difference and Ereignis in Heidegger’s project of over-

coming metaphysics. Through the event of appropriation that takes place in the space in the ontological

difference between being and Being, one is able to witness the sending of a gift of the “It” in “it gives.”

This is made possible by the withdrawal of the “It” in the sending of the gift that has been understood by
9
Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 8.
 6

metaphysics as Being as such. Thus the “It”—Being as it is--remains hidden whenever its gift of itself is

revealed in its sending. This allows Being as such to remain free from the objectivizing tendency of

metaphysics because it is never re-presented in the horizon of beings. It is made “present” in the realm of

beings by its absence. Hence, the task of thinking is to think beyond the logic of metaphysics so that it

can truly think Being as such. As Heidegger himself says: “Thinking then stands in and before that

which has sent the various forms of epochal Being. This, however, what sends as Ereignis, is itself unhis-

torical (ungeschichtlich), more precisely without destiny (geschicklos).”10 Being as such, in sending its

gift remains concealed in the horizon of being, thus “[w]ith the entry into Ereignis, its own way of con-

cealment proper to it also arrives. Ereignis (appropriation) is itself Enteignis (expropriation).”11 Hence,

to Heidegger the task of thinking is not to think in terms of being but of Ereignis that attempts to conceive

of the fact that “there is”—es gibt.

Was Heidegger successful in his attempt to overcome metaphysics? The foregoing discussion

may seem to show that Heidegger was able to protect Being as such from the clutches of metaphysics that

thinks in terms of beings and that insists on Being as ground of beings. In Es Gibt, Being as such is able

to send its gift of Being in Ereignis while at the same time without having to appear in the realm of being.

Hence, Heidegger conceives the es gibt as a donation or an act of giving. It is unfortunate that he did not

pursue the es gibt for fear of making the “It” in the “it gives” appear in the totalizing purview of being.

So enter Jean-Luc Marion who sees a way out of this. He suggests that our focus be drawn away from the

“it” that gives towards what is given.

MARION’S ALTERNATIVE PATH: GIVENNESS

Marion’s aim is to transpose the discourse on God from the sphere of being into the vista of

givenness. To do so, he takes off from Heidegger’s Es Gibt, but with a different tack. Heidegger seems

to have come to a dead end with the es gibt for fear of handing back the Seinsfrage to the hands of meta-
10
Ibid, 41.
11
Ibid, 44.
 7

physics. Marion, however, pursues the question through the es gibt but trains his phenomenological re-

flection on that which is given—the Gift. Hence, from now on, he does not address the question of Being

but the question of the gift—what is given. To do so, he starts by differentiating an idol from an icon. In

his preface to the English Edition of God without Being, one can glean Marion’s provocative question:

Can the conceptual thought of God (conceptual, or rational, and not intuitive or “mystical” in the vulgar sense)
be developed outside of the doctrine of Being (in the metaphysical sense, or even in the nonmetaphysical
sense)? Does god give himself to be known according to the horizon of Being or according to a more radical
horizon?12

Here we see that Marion wishes to explore the possibility of the conceptual thought of God in the times

after the end of philosophy. This will require that God be freed from the horizon of Being to allow us to

conceive him, not in terms of human categories or concepts but in terms of God’s revelation of Himself as

himself. The “radical horizon” that Marion explores is that of the gift itself.

To free God from the limits of Being, Marion does a phenomenology of the idol and the icon. In

doing so, he wishes to show that throughout the history of metaphysics, the epochal Gods of Metaphysics

are all idols. Moreover, Marion considers “the end of metaphysics” as an announcement of an opportu -

nity for us to think of God as an icon. First, who is this “God” that is found within the horizon of Being?

As we have already noted, Marion writes at the time of the demise of metaphysics. Thus, the metaphysi-

cal Being is now being put on trial. More particularly, the “God” that Marion focuses on is the God that

functions as Supreme Being in the onto-theo-logical constitution of metaphysics that Heidegger exposes.

This God is one who is grounded according to the Being of beings in general and who grounds and is re-

ciprocally grounded by beings in terms of Being. And as we go down the history of philosophy, we wit-

ness the failure of a string of metaphysical concepts of God, prompting Nietzsche to proclaim, “God is

dead.” Despite the seemingly unfortunate event of the departure of God, Marion treats this moment as an

opportunity for a God who is free from onto-theo-logy to emerge. For Marion, this momentous event

12
Jean-Luc Marion, God without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), xxiv.
 8

frees us from the pursuit of the Seinsfrage—the question of Being—in its relation to beings and instead

seek it out in relation to what it gives.

The preceding discussion thus highlights the importance of Marion’s phenomenology of the idol

and icon that serves as the foundational concepts for such a project. For Marion, the idol and the icon are

two modes of apprehending the divine visibility or revelation.

What is an idol? It is important to note that for Marion, the interplay of the visible and the vision

plays an important role for an idol is constructed (the visible) to be fixed on by a gaze (the vision). The

magnificence of the idol demands our attention and thus fixes our gaze on it. Our gaze “stops” on the idol

for seeing beyond the idol will not make the idol visible. Hence, our gaze makes the idol visible. Marion

adds that the idol acts like a mirror in the sense that our gaze is reflected back to us and in turn, our gaze

measures this reflection. In a word, we decide and even impose meaning on the idol through our inten -

tional act of gazing at it. Here we see why Marion claims that the “God” of metaphysics—the procession

of epochal gods throughout the history of metaphysics—are idols. In this context, we witness God being

held prisoner to the conditions and limits that our intentional consciousness imposes on Him. These meta-

physical Gods refer themselves back to our gaze and ends up being measured by our categories of under -

standing. That is, the way we conceive God is simply a reflection of the concepts we have of God that

constitutes our metaphysical God. In effect, our idolized God bulldozes the real identity and nature of the

Divine God and allows us to reduce God to more digestible and intelligible forms—causa sui, Pure Act,

Supreme Being—which forgets the otherness and incomprehensibility of the Divine.

For Marion, the “end of metaphysics” also announces the end of this idolatrous God. Such, to

Marion, is an opportunity for a more iconic God to emerge. But what, to Marion, is an icon? Unlike the

idol, the icon is not seized by our gaze but instead gazes upon us. The icons of the Russian Orthodox

Church perhaps may be what Marion has in mind when he defines an icon. In these icons, one quickly

notices the piercing look of the icons. We do not gaze at these icons; they gaze at us. And in such gaze is
 9

revealed what is hidden. The look seeks to make present what is absent; it makes visible what is invisi -

ble. In this manner, the icon points to an invisible presence by re-presenting what is invisible. Thus,

what is revealed to us cannot be categorized into our concepts of understanding because what is revealed

is not represent-able in the horizon of beings.

Another difference between the idol and the icon is its origin. The idol originates from an artist.

In a sense, the idol is an incarnation of how the artist sees the invisible. The icon, on the other hand, has

no real origin for the artist that constructs it is deemed an instrument of divine inspiration, much like what

the Bible is to Christians. Thus, in the icon, the divine becomes seen as unseen for the visibility of the di-

vine precedes and exceeds the limits and conditions of the intentionality of consciousness. Here we see a

reversal of intentionality for the Divine first beholds the beholder and is thus now the beholden for the Di -

vine is now wholly Other, free from the intention and comprehension of the beholder because it exceeds

them. Thus, the Divine no longer is the beholden but the beholder and thereby constitutes the one who

gazes. This radical reversal of intentionality for Marion allows us to “see” God from the Divine intention

rather than from man’s intention. This completes Marion’s attempt to commute the discourse on Being

from the realm of being onto the realm of donation—the intention of the Divine.

In his article entitled “The End of the End of Metaphysics,” Marion asserts that thinking outside

the realm of beings and instead in the horizon of givenness entails that this donation ought not to be

thought of starting from being but from the donation itself because the act of giving precedes being. He

further broaches the idea that over and above the Heideggerian lament of “the forgetfulness of being,” we

also ought to remember the “forgetfulness of love” in the history of philosophy. As Marion himself says:

It remains possible—and thus an immense arena for the history of philosophy as a discipline is opened—to stig -
matize the constant and implacable reduction that metaphysicians have imposed upon the thinking of love:
Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Malebranche, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche have all, each in his manner, censured
love in order to reduce it to the subordinate role of a stimulus, an obstacle, or and effect of the concept. 13

13
Ibid, 18.
 10

This exclusion of love in favor of concept Marion says is due to philosophy’s close identification with

metaphysics. In a way, philosophy thinks more of the sophia—wisdom—rather than the philein—love.

And perhaps to emphasize the antiquity and highlight the urgency of the problem, Marion echoes Pascal’s

observation of the premium metaphysics has given to concepts rather than love:

In speaking of human things one says that it is necessary to know them before loving them, which has passed
into a proverb, the saints on the contrary say, in speaking of divine things, that it is necessary to love them in or -
der to know them, and that one does not enter into truth except by charity, which they have made one of their
most useful maxims.14

With the foregoing discussion on Marion’s phenomenology of the idol and the icon, we can see

that he was successful in taking out the Seinsfrage (where Being for Marion is God) from the horizon of

being onto the horizon of donation. The question is thus revised as the question of what is given. This

time, Marion is not mainly concerned with thinking being that has been forgotten but in thinking God

who to him is love because metaphysics too is guilty of the forgetfulness of love:

[W]hat does it mean to speak with a view of giving? What does the gift do, and how do we respond to it in re -
ceiving it? To give, to receive, to love in order to know—philosophy has its task, in the end of metaphysics, not
only to think being, until now unthought, but also to love wisdom enough in order to arrive at receiving (and
thereafter to arrive at thinking and weighing) all gifts from it. The question of charity again becomes the task of
thought.15

Thus, Marion is able to reformulate the Heideggerian task of philosophy of thinking the ontologi -

cal difference to reveal the being that has been un-known to thinking the Gift that is given in the es gibt to

reveal the gift of love that has been dis-membered from us as well. It is through and in such revelation of

the gift through an iconic gaze at the act of donation that one can contemplate its Giver. So what is the

Gift of Love that Marion speaks of?

14
Ibid, 19.
15
Ibid, 19-20.
 11

THE GIFT OF THE ICON: THE INTENTIONALITY OF LOVE

The only concept that Marion finds that best captures the name and intention of the Divine is

“God is Love.”16 In his book God without Being17, he cites two decisive traits of love to support this asser-

tion. First, Love gives of itself unconditionally. Love loves whether or not the receiving end accepts or

rejects it. Love does not love because it can dwell in an abode prepared by its recipient. And so it is with

God. God loves free of any conditions, despite rejection or rebuff, and even despite the uncertainty of

man’s response. “Thus, even the inevitable impotence of man to correspond to the destiny that love gra-

tuitously imposes upon him is not enough to disqualify its initiative or its accomplishment.” 18

Second, Love gives of itself totally, absolutely. Love empties itself of itself in the act of giving.

It does not present itself as an object to be admired—an idol. However, in giving of itself totally, it with -

draws itself so that the receiver contemplates not Love itself but the Giver of Love. As Marion himself

says:

[L]ove gives itself only in abandoning itself, ceaselessly transgressing the limits of its own gift, so as to be
transplanted outside of itself. The consequence is that this transference of love outside of itself, without end or
limit, at once prohibits fixation on a response, a representation, an idol.19

These two traits of Love are perhaps best incarnated in the person of Christ:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, through he was in the form of God, did not regard
equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in
human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of
death—even death on a cross.20

Here we see Christ as the Father’s unconditional gift of love to humanity. The Father continues

to love and to love totally despite man’s rejection of His gift of His only Son. The Son loves absolutely

16
1 John 4,8.
17
Jean-Luc Marion, God without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
18
Ibid, 47-48.
19
Ibid, 48.
20
Philippians 2, 5-8.
 12

and totally to even empty himself of His divine nature to be one among men. And in this self-emptying,

Christ does not call attention to Himself but to the Father who has sent Him. The kenotic love of the Tri -

une God perhaps is the quintessential incarnation of Love.

Lest we misconstrue this as a dogmatic imposition, let us walk through the phenomenology that

Marion does on love. Such phenomenology will provide the rational basis of this conception of Love.

What does Marion’s phenomenology of Love reveal?

When one claims to love an other, does he really love an other? Marion begins his phenomenol -

ogy with the intentionality of consciousness. In the act of love, it is important to follow the movement of

intentionality of consciousness as this serves as the cornerstone of the difference between Marion’s idol

and icon. Marion begins by noting that every intentionality presupposes both the intentional conscious-

ness—the I that perceives—and the intended object. As Husserl himself emphasizes, both ends of the in-

tentional pole are co-temporaneous in the sense that the object is not realized because there is a con-

sciousness that perceives it nor does it mean that consciousness is because it lays hold of an object. Ac -

cording to Husserl, consciousness is always “consciousness of something.” Thus, the intentionality of the

I objectifies for its consciousness is always conscious of some thing. This being the case, the I that loves,

loves an other not as an other but as a thing that falls within its constructs of love. That is to say, when I

love someone, I love her because what I perceive in her or what I see of her matches my idea of love—

beauty, power, intimacy, or affection perhaps. Such love Marion notes to be self-idolatrous for it is not

the other that the I truly love in itself but how the other fits into my lived experiences of consciousness.

Therefore, “[l]ove appears as an optical illusion of the my consciousness, which experiences only itself

alone.”21 Given such analysis, how then do we escape from this self-idolatry so that the I can truly love?

The key to the exit door lays in the fact of the invisibility of the conscious I to the object of its in-

tention. The I is able to totalize its object through its intentionality because the intentionality of its con-

21
Jean-Luc Marion, “The Intentionality of Love” in Prolegomena to Charity, trans. Stephen E. Lewis and Jeffrey L.
Kosky (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 75.
 13

sciousness makes the intended object visible. However, at the same time, the I remains invisible to the

object of this intention. At this juncture, Marion then shifts his attention to the opposite end of the inten -

tional pole—the intended object of consciousness.

For the intended object to be an other, it is important that the following condition be met:

[T]he other, which my love claims to love, will always have to transcend my consciousness by overstepping it,
like the horizon whose line recedes in proportion as one draws near to it. The intentional object is not an object,
erected after the fact into the object of an intention; on the contrary, it is an intention that gives rise to an objec -
tive, without ever doing so adequately and without remaining an object.22

Thus, for the other not to dissolve into objectivity that implies its invisibility, Marion proposes a reversal

of perspectives where the other is deemed to be another I that intends the I. Hence, in this reversal of per-

spectives we witness the following:

[T]he other is characterized in that she too intends objectives, she too constitutes objects, she too precedes a
world. I carry out the function of a transcendental I only insofar as I intend objectives, which can thus become
visible objects, and inversely, can neither intend me nor see me. If someone other than me—precisely, the other
—accedes to the function of I, he must by hypothesis exert an intention that renders visible the objectified ob-
jectives and therefore render himself invisible. The intention, which incites the visible, cannot itself be seen. 23

Thus, if the I were to truly love, it must face up to the other by gazing at her face, more particu-

larly her eyes, the eyes that are considered the windows to the soul. And in looking at the Face of the

other in the eye, the other is made invisible in the sense that the I gets a peek at what is ungraspable in the

other, what is in the other that cannot be reduced to the lived experiences of consciousness of the I. In the

eyes of the other, the I then sees the gaze of the other that is more original than its gaze. This gaze refuses

to be objectified by the intentionality of consciousness of the I for it now escapes visibility; thus it is able

to disqualify the intentionality of consciousness of the I. In this reversal of roles, the other is now an I

that makes visible not that I but its gaze, that which of the I that fails to behold her. What then is made

visible of the beholding I that ends up beholden by the other that is now truly other?

22
Ibid, 79.
23
Ibid, 81.
 14

The counter-gaze of the other reveals to the I the me that is the object of the intentionality of con-

sciousness of the other. And the me that is reflected back to the I reveals something of this I:

The me designates the I uncovered, stripped bare, decentered. I becomes me by uncovering myself as the sim-
ple me of an other; me indicates not what the gaze of the other aims at and shows (which is sad by a you), but
what the already evanescent I experiences of the gaze of an other trained upon it, or better, what the I experi-
ences of himself as evanescent beneath the gaze of an other.24

Through the counter-gaze of the other, the I quickly fades and the me discovers the injunction within it—

the injunction that says: “I must devote myself to . . . it is incumbent upon me to . . . this or that, he or she

obligates me to . . . .”25 The injunction is actually a call to ethical responsibility, an appeal not to make

what ought to remain invisible (so that I can truly love her) visible. It is unalterable that the me ought to

respect the alterity of the other. I ought not to totalize the other because I have discovered through the me

what it means to be objectified. Thus, the intentionality of love is completed.

What then does this phenomenology of love reveal? For Marion, to love then means the follow-

ing:

To love would thus be defined as seeing the definitively invisible aim of my gaze nonetheless exposed by the
aim of another invisible gaze; the two gazes, invisible forever, expose themselves each to the other in the cross -
ing of their reciprocal aims. Loving no longer consists trivially in seeing or in being seen, nor in desiring or in-
citing desire, but in experiencing the crossing of the gazes within, first, the crossing of aims.26

Marion’s phenomenology of love amplifies the Pascaline thesis that one does not know in order

to love; instead, one loves in order to know. Love does not consist in apprehending what is loved for

such reduces what ought to be other than the self into a mere object of love and thus ends up as self-love.

To love authentically, one abandons the self to create a space for the other to let herself be known as she

really is. This can only be achieved through the experience of the crossing of one’s gaze and the other’s

counter-gaze. The sphere of the given that is love thus allows the other not to be limited by the finitude

of one’s metaphysical thinking; instead, it allows the other to let herself be known as infinite.

24
Ibid, 84-85.
25
Ibid, 85.
26
Ibid, 87 (italics added).
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With such a perspective, perhaps we can re-visit the Heideggerian ontological difference and the

Ereignis that takes place within the difference. The Ereignis—the event of appropriation, of conceal-

ment/unconcealment—is granted its meta-metaphysical characteristic as an event of crossing of aims. In

this crossing of gazes, being is enformed by Being and at the same time, Being is amplified by being. It

is in the event of donation of the self—unconditional and total—that both being “knows” Being as alei-

thia—concealed and unconcealed. Hence, it is allowing the donation of love to take place that one knows

and enforms the other.

Of love, Marion concludes:

“Only charity . . . opens the space where the gaze of the other can shine forth. The other appears only if I gratu-
itously give him the space in which to appear; and I have at my disposal no other space than my own; I must,
the, “take what is mine” (John 16:15), take from myself, in order to open the space where the other may appear.
It is up to me to set the stage for the other, not as an object that I hold under contract and whose play I thus di-
rect, but as the uncontrollable, the unforeseeable, and the foreign strange who will affect me, provoke me, and
—possibly—love me. Love of the other repeats creation through the same withdrawal wherein God opens, to
what is not, the right to be, and even the right to refuse Him. Charity empties its world of itself in order to make
place there for what is unlike it, what does not thank it, what—possibly—does not love it.27

Having completed our journey beyond the realm of beings towards the sphere of love, we now re-

turn to the question that has given birth to this philosophical investigation: “What do I love when I love

my God?”

THINKING IN THE HORIZON OF THE GIFT

The realm of beings is finite and thus limits our thinking and knowledge of things. Metaphysical

thinking objectifies because it reduces and measures things according to the constructs of the perceiving I.

This straightjacketing of beings has made the I impervious to the things themselves. Metaphysics has cre-

ated an impenetrable limit to what can be know of things thus disallowing things to make themselves

known as they really are. The journey to the purview of love, of what is given, opens up our thinking be-

27
Jean-Luc Marion, “What Love Knows,” in Prolegomena to Charity, trans. Stephen E. Lewis and Jeffrey L. Kosky
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 167
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yond the limits of metaphysics, beyond the finite towards the infinite. The “end of metaphysics” there -

fore is not an event announcing the demise of metaphysics but rather a place that marks off the limits of

metaphysics. And Marion takes us beyond this limit with the help of Heidegger’s demarcation of the ex-

tent of metaphysics. Now, thinking extends from knowing what there is to know to knowing even the un-

knowable precisely as unknowable. And knowledge takes place only when we allow the donation of love

to cease (in the sense of grasping and termination) the I that tends to limit itself. Thinking therefore is

pushed beyond the finite into the Infinite where not only God but also even the I is known as infinite, as

an insatiable mystery. With this “frame of mind,” the question “What do I love when I love my God?”

takes on a different flavor.

Augustine himself answers this question as follows:

What is it then that I love when I love you? Not bodily beauty, and not temporal glory, not the clear shining
light, lovely as it is to our eyes, not the sweet melodies of many-moded songs, not the soft smell of flowers and
ointments and perfumes, not manna and honey, not limbs made for the body’s embrace, not these do I love
when I love my God.

Yet I do love a certain light, a certain voice, a certain odor, a certain food, a certain embrace when I love my
God: a light, a voice, an odor, a food, an embrace for the man within me, where his light, which no embrace can
contain, floods into my soul; where he utters words that time does not speed away; where he sends forth an
aroma that no wind can scatter; where he provides food that no eating can lessen; where he so clings that satiety
does not sunder us. This is what I love when I love my God.28

Augustine hints at a God who is incomprehensible to him. He is made comprehensible through the pres -

ence of His gifts but at the same time, this presence hints of a presence that is absent. Such presence he

experiences as and extravagant and meticulous outpouring of an Infinite Love, a love that blows his mind.

It is in this explosion of his finite mind that a space is created for the Infinite to let itself be known as He

truly is. Knowledge of the Divine, however, does not take place as an apprehension or a comprehension,

but a knowledge of an Infinite Mystery that is known and unknown at the same time. It is in the ex-

change of gazes between the beholder and the beholden (where man and God are both beholder and be -

holden) that God makes himself known to man.

28
Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of St. Augustine, Book 10, Chapter 6, translated by John K. Ryan, (Garden City,
New York: Image Books, 1960), 233--4.
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The Augustinian response reminds us that we cannot arrive at a final answer to this question. A

definite response requires us to limit ourselves to the finiteness of metaphysical thinking and in the

process reduce the I, God, and love to the constructs of the mind and thus disallow them from making

themselves known as they truly are. If we are to magnify the essence of our response, Marion invites us

to “de-finite-ize” our thinking by transposing our thinking into the realm of donation. It is only through

an understanding of Ereignis and es gibt in the context of Love, the realm of the Infinite that lies beyond

the finite, that the I as such, God as such, and love as such—the things in themselves—are given the

space to slowly unravel their mystery. True, they will always remain a mystery for demystifying them

means objectifying them as beings therefore transposing us back to the limited realm of metaphysics.

What we ought to do at the end of metaphysics, therefore, is to un-know what has been known so

that we can open up our thinking to knowing the unknowable. Only then, perhaps, will the meaning of

our prayers, such as the following, unravel before us:

Holy One, Mystery, Caring God...

Now I know that you are always greater than anything I can think or imagine,
and for this I am most grateful.
I am glad that I can not locate you, define you, describe you.
I used to worry about self-identity, about who I was. 
Now I am glad not to know, 
and I can thank you for the mystery of my being....
I do not know how much longer I shall live,
nor what shall become of me.
I do not know if the way I am trying to live now really is your will.
You have shown me something of the depths of self-deception
that are in me, and I may still be deceiving myself.
But what I do know is that you are the God of every situation,
God in our darkness drawing us to light,
God in our sinfulness offering us healing,
God in our self-deception leading us into truth, 
God who is for us, even when we are against ourselves.
So I know that even if I am unwittingly deceiving myself,
if I follow what truth there is in me, then you will draw me further into your truth,
and that there is no situation, no state, no place I can reach 
where you will not still be closer to me than I am to myself.29

29 ?
An adaptation by the California Province of the Society of Jesus of a prayer written by Gerard W. Hughes, God Where
Are You? (UK: Darton, Longman, and Todd Ltd., 1997), p. 269f and posted in http://www.jesuits.ca/orientations/Midlife.htm.
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