The Idol and Distance: Five Studies (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy) [Paperback]

Jean-Luc Marion (Author), Thomas A Carlson (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0823220788 | ISBN-13: 978-0823220786 | Publication Date: February 1, 2001 | Edition: 2

Marked sharply by its time and place (Paris in the 1970s), this early theological text by Jean-Luc Marion nevertheless maintains a strikingly deep resonance with his most recent, groundbreaking, and ever more widely discussed phenomenology. And while Marion will want to insist on a clear distinction between the theological and phenomenological projects, to read each in light of the other can prove illuminating for both the theological and the philosophical reader - and perhaps above all for the reader who wants to read in both directions at once, the reader concerned with those points of interplay and undecidability where theology and philosophy inform, provoke, and challenge one another in endlessly complex ways. In both his theological and his phenomenological projects Marion's central effort to free the absolute or unconditional (be it theology's God or phenomenology's phenomenon) from the various limits and preconditions of human thought and language will imply a thoroughgoing critique of all metaphysics, and above all of the modern metaphysics centered on the active, spontaneous subject who occupies modern philosophy from Descartes through Hegel and Nietzsche.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

JEAN-LUC MARION teaches philosophy at the Sorbonne and as John Nuveen Professor at the Divinity School and Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. More recently, Marion was elected to the Academie Francaise. His other books for Fordham include The Idol and Distance, Prolegomena to Charity, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena, On the Ego and On God: Further Cartesian Questions, The Visible and the Revealed, and, as co-author, Phenomenology and the Theological Turn: The French Debate. Receives Royalties on The Idol and the Distance

Product Details

• Paperback: 257 pages
• Publisher: Fordham University Press; 2 edition (February 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823220788
• ISBN-13: 978-0823220786
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,143,198 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Widower Icon, July 20, 2011

By 

Michael H. Shenkman "Mentoring the Creative S... (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Idol and Distance: Five Studies (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy) (Paperback)

Make no mistake, this is a profound meditation on a few of the greatest contemplators of the human endeavor. And it is a meditation that is totally worthy of them, being also a great contemplation. It is a profoundly difficult book, as any serious work on Nietzsche, Holderlin, Denys, Heidegger, as well as touching upon Levinas and Derrida, must be. What places this work in the ranks of the great contemplations is its effort to envision the human endeavor as an opening to a free coming to life in the dynamically opening, giving, onwarding, ""porrecting" universe. This book will always have a seminal place in my own work on vitalizing the human endeavor.
That said, and said in the spirit of "praise," so as to remain unaffected by what follows, I have to admit my quarrel with Marion: I am not a theologian, and I do take up a stance that sees it as being high time to bid adieu to theology. Marion claims there is value there. I offer that by a simple connection and expanding recognition and acknowledgement, that value is absorbed into a more encompassing frame. That connection is to see the FEMININE.
Marion, I offer, maintains a value to theology and to Christianity in particular (is there a difference?) by blinkering his gaze to paternity, the Father and the Son. In this regard, I pity the female thinker in his company. Irigaray must shiver at his parochialism.
I will try to summarize briefly (which ends up being cryptic). The "feminine," as I understand it, gathers into view the "generative" aspects of the universe. In this potency, the universe opens, expands, onwards and porrects (extends, stretches itself -- see pp. 238 and 245). As Marion himself notes, such a movement provides for "depth," and "charity," it "gives" dimension, and "prevails" over other dimensions of time (past, present, future). He gives no "characterization" to this potency, leaves it in the fold of Heidegger's "Eregnis," a philosophical glimpsing over the ridge of time and Being.
Marion only gives "character" to the withdrawing of this potency, the distancing that leaves what occurs in the opened dimension to become what is proper to it. This he calls "paternity," and I think he is correct in that. That paternity is, correctly "distance." He even correctly notes that to "place" distance means to situate it in "charity" and "depth" that gives anticipatorily. It is this "filial" "depth" and "charity" that makes "abandonment" and withdrawal a worthy accompaniment to "gift" and "giving." (p. 250). But the "filiation" here is paternal only.
My point is that by erasing the Feminine from view, Marion's discourse becomes involuted, and even, in his terms, idolatrous. How so? Theology is wont to place into "personal" terms dynamics and motions such that even the most abstract, distant and symbolic (iconic) notions can be synthesized with felt and experienced life. What else do we call that potency that streteches and extends with new dimensions (new points of life), and then cast them out into space to take their own places, than the Feminine? And yet, never, not in a single word or reference does Marion make a parallel connection of the Feminine that he makes in the moment, and a subordinate one at that, to the withdrawal, distancing paternity.
I think the regressive trajectory of theology (Christianity, the trinity, the Eucharist) shows its face here. By concentrating on this paternity, of the withdrawal that allows what occurs (within the dimensions opened by the Feminine) to take on its proper way, Marion betrays a new form of fetishism on beings, a new forgetting of what opens up the very potency that gives to them place and way and propriety. Onto-theology rises again; theology never escapes this fetish. And neither does Marion. The view to the giving, the depth, the charity, the praise, that Marion so painstakingly adumbrates is a view toward that great MATERNITY that, if we see it in ourselves, makes for a new Requisite (Marion's term): that of becoming ourselves the locus of generativity, of becoming awake to the living we are.
I hate to say this, but I cannot help but feel that Marion's omission, evading, hiding and even obliterating this Feminine character (that he does point to and describe), this failing to name it in its proper (higher and more encompassing) juxtaposition to the paternity he celebrates, borders on sectarian prejudice, if not just philosophical neglect (or irresponsibility, no less lack of charity).
If the female reader can forebear and forgive, and see that her way, if not her name does at least appear in Marion's vision (the one that transcends theology, that is), even she can see that something new, promising is given here: a gift wrapped in a veil that is ready to fall away.