god — love — revelationthis image, in its being an idol (eidolon), is a substitution, pretending
to be what it is not. The idol is a reduction of God to the measure of
the human gaze. The icon is able to maintain the distance that
separates the human being from God, but the distance and the
separation of Transcendence do not mean the impossibility of the
experience of God, the impossibility of a meeting between God and
the human being. What is active here, I would say, is the diacritical
function of the difference that, for example, is so significant in Plato’s
dialectic: only, the difference here is what allows for individualization.
In going beyond the onto-theological tradition and a phenomenology
that remains bound to the forms of ontology — which, according to
him, is still the case in Heidegger’s phenomenology of Being — Marion
releases God from the most typical ontological and metaphysical —
idolatrous — determinations: God as the highest expression of sub-
stantiality [ousia], as summum ens and causa sui.^28 As Marion declares,
with the purpose of “pulling out” God from metaphysics and from the
destiny of “God’s death,” articulated within the metaphysical horizon,
he wants to consider “God without Being” as a pure Donation of Love.
This consideration is, of course, a faithful reading of the Christian
message centered on caritas.^29 In the climax of his path of thinking,
- In this way one can consider as parallel, Marion’s work on the metaphysical
tradition and principally on Descartes (cf. especially Sur le prisme métaphysique de
Descartes. Constitution et limites de l’ontothéo-logie cartésienne, Paris: PUF, 1986) which
represents, effectively, an overcoming of the onto-theological ways that are still
present in phenomenology. - Concerning the abandoning of the ontological determination of God, Marion
writes in the preface to the Italian translation of Dieu sans l’être: “ Does the title
God without Being insinuate that God is not, that He does not exist? Absolutely
not: God is, He exists. The problem does not concern the divine capability to
reach Being, but vice versa the capability of Being to reach God’s dignity: Have
we to say about God, above all and first of all, that He is? Is Being the first and
the most excellent name of the divine names? Does God give Himself to contem-
plation and to love since He is, or is it in a different way? Does God love us and
save us in Jesus Christ since He is, or is it in a different way? It is not to contest
any relationship between God and Being, but to discuss whether the sole and the
highest relationship possible (or the most desirable) consists in their identifica-
tion,” Jean-Luc Marion, Dio senza essere, Milano: Jaca Book, 20082, Avvertenza alla
prima edizione italiana, 11.