Mihi Magna Quaestio Factus Sum

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Mihi magna quaestio factus sum : The Privilege of UnknowingAuthor(s): JeanLuc MarionSource: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 85, No. 1 (January 2005), pp. 1-24Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/424974.

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2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.0022-4189/2005/8501-0001$10.00

Mihi magna quaestio factus sum: ThePrivilege of Unknowing*

Jean-Luc Marion

i. what is man?

In the final analysis, why and by what right would one admit into thefield of university disciplines something like a philosophy of religion?

In one view, it actually deals with religion, and not philosophy; andwhat is more, according to the most radical but also the most wide-spread hypothesis, it deals with a religion that asserts itself as revealed.But this in turn means that it will define its object with complete au-tonomy, as the organized collection of articles of belief (credo, creed).In such a case, we might do best to turn to sacra doctrina, which is tosay to scientia theologica, or if need be, outside of the exemplary case ofChristianity, to appeal to any body of doctrine that would offer thestability and referential quality (whatever these may turn out to be) ofa collection of things believed and held as true.

Or, one could request for an alleged philosophy of religion a placewithin philosophy proper. But, in this case, could religion claim a statusparticular enough to become the object of a separate philosophy, onethat would be reserved for it alone? In fact, does all that is summed upin this religion in question not simply reduce to one of the threeobjects of metaphysica specialis, without any more special particularitythan its other objects (the soul and the world)? Does religion likewisenot belong to the secondary philosophies, such as rational psychology,rational cosmology, physics, and so on? In this sense, every philosophyof religion would be reduced to one of the secondary philosophies,inscribed within metaphysica specialis, which is itself subjected to meta-physica generalis, that is, ontologia, and thus to the system of metaphysicaas such.

* Translated by Stephen E. Lewis. This article is the text of Professor Marions inaugurallecture as the John Nuveen Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Theology at theUniversity of Chicago School of Divinity.

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The Journal of Religion

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Or, finally, one could understand by philosophy of religion the sci-ence of the cultural and ritual behaviors that provoke in every humanbeing (including those who profess atheism) the inevitable and irre-ducible instance that in the end must be named God. But, in thiscase, it is fitting to renounce the a priori of metaphysica specialisin orderto develop a posteriori a historical science, under the polymorphousand constantly renewed figure of a history not of religion, but of reli-gions. And in this latter case, that of our era more than any other, thephilosophy of religion to be sought should at once renounce its iden-tity and unity as a mere remainder and index of an ethnocentrism thatcannot be justified, in order to take its place more modestly, alongsideother sciences, within what is more simply named anthropology.

This recourse to anthropology allows, moreover, the second hypoth-esis finally to join up with the first, for it is true that, according toKant, the three questions that sum up the whole system of philosophy(meaning metaphysics)namely, What can I know? or, in other

words, metaphysica generalisreduced to the science of the first principlesof human knowledge; followed by What ought I to do? which is tosay, morals; and, finally, What may I hope? namely, religion itselfcould reckon all of this as anthropology, because the first three ques-tions relate to the last one. In short, the final question, What is man?

would become the first question all over again.1 Thus the metaphysicalmeaning of the term philosophy of religion joins up with its empir-ical acceptation, that of a simple history of religions. So, in front ofrevealed theology, there stands opposed only the double meaning of asingular anthropology.

How should we understand this anthropology? Quite clearly as thescience of man; or rather, because every science reverts by definitionto man (as science by and for man, as human science according tothe first historical meaning of this syntagma), anthropology will takeshape as the science taught by man on man himself. Kant formulatesit clearly: The most important object [Gegenstand] of culture, to whomsuch knowledge and skill can be applied, is Manbecause he is his ownultimate purpose. To recognize him, according to his species, as anearthly being endowed with reason [mit Vernunft begabtes Erdwesen] de-

1 Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Logic(Ak. 9:25), trans. J. Michael Young (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1992), p. 538. See the parallels in the Critique of Pure Reason, A 804/B 832, and the Letter to Staudlin, May 4, 1793 (Ak. 11:429), in Correspondence, trans. anded. Arnulf Zweig (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 458. Martin Heideggerscommentary reads: The Kantian laying of the foundation yields this conclusion: The estab-lishment of metaphysics is an interrogation of man, i.e., it is anthropology. See Kant and theProblem of Metaphysics(36, GA 3, p. 205), trans. James S. Churchill (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1962), p. 213.



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The Privilege of Unknowing

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serves particularly to be named knowledge of the world, even though heis only one of all the creatures on earth. All the more at issue here isa knowledge held by man of himself in the most radical sense, whichhe will deploy, says Kant, from a pragmatic point of view; this is tosay that, in opposition to an anthropology from the physiological pointof view which aims at the investigation of whatnaturemakes of man,this anthropology aims at what manmakes, or can and should makeof himself as a freely acting being [Wesen].2 This knowledge of man byhimself cannot be reduced, let us note, to a simple empirical knowl-edge; rational psychology demands and, indeed, claims knowledge ofman all the more, even if it acts freely in a different sense. The ques-tion thus becomes one of knowing if man can apply to himself his own

knowledge in order to become his own object and, more generally, ofknowing by what right he can make of himself something at all. For,by virtue of this rank as thing, man inscribes himself entirely amongbeings in the world, because his knowledge becomes (and remains)particularly that of this very world, to which he belongs without re-mainder. Thus are we led to substitute, for the question of a definitionof philosophy of religion, another question, which supports the firstquestion and determines it in advance, namely, whether man can andmust know himself.

In this situation, the entire question (as much the question of an-thropology as, through it, that of the philosophy of religion) comesdown to understanding whether I know myself and, above all, by what

right I know myself. Or rather, the issue is less about knowing if I knowmyself, as it is about understanding, in the event that I were to knowmyself, what status (and thus what mode of being) would be mine. Kantresponds directly to these questions. I [Ich], as intelligence and think-ing subject, know myself as an object that is thought [gedachtes Objekt],insofar as I am given to myself in intuition, solely and exactly, like everyother phenomenon[gleich anderen Phanomen], only as I appear to myself,not as I am to the understandingthese are questions that raise nogreater nor less difficulty than [that of knowing] how I can be an objectto myselfat all[uberhaupt ein Objekt], and, more particularly, an objectof intuition and of inner perceptions.3 In other terms, I do not knowmyself insofar as I know (following the singular privilege of being, asthe sole thinker, the sole knower), but in so far precisely as I am simply

2 Kant, introduction to Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View(Ak. 8:119), trans. VictorLyle Dowdell (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), p. 3 (my emphasis;translation modified).

3 Kant, Transcendental Deduction (sec. 24, B 156), inCritique of Pure Reason, trans.NormanKemp Smith (New York: St. Martins, 1965), p. 167 (my emphasis; translation modified).



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known, and thus by the same right as any other known, which is to say

as any other object. Strangely, I thus never know myself as Iknow, but

always only as a me who is known, and thus as an object. I only knowmyself as that which I am not, as the me-object. The resulting distinc-

tionbetween on the one hand the transcendental I, the empty form

that accompanies every other knowledge but remains itself neither rep-

resentable nor knowable, and on the other the empirical me that be-

longs to the world of phenomena, and thus of objects knownmani-

fests nothing of my specificity (the property of knowing) and puts into

evidence precisely that which does not characterize me (the status of

known). Thus am I masked and lowered to the dishonorable rank of

an object. Rather than giving me access to the man that I am, thisdistinction between the Iand the me forbids me from drawing near to

the man that I am and disfigures the very stake of anthropologythe

self of each human being.4 Not only does man split into two irrecon-

cilable tendencies, but the only one that is knowable, the object of the

empirical me, defines him precisely by ignorance of the most extreme

and inalienable property belonging to the being that Iam: the prop-

erty that exercises a thinking thought, as well as the inverse in a

thought that is thought. Which is to say, in fact and by right the object

of the empirical me substitutes for man the very definition of ob-

jecti[vi]ty. Lowered to the rank of a simple object of anthropology,

man, this recent invention, as Foucault used to say, could very well

have inevitably disappeared, like a fragile sandcastle, obliterated by therising tide. And in fact, he already has disappeared. Here we should

pay careful attention to Paul Tillichs strong advice: The object of the

philosophy of religion is religion. But this very simple explanation al-

ready signifies a problem, the fundamental problem of philosophy of reli-

gions: with religion, philosophy faces an object that refuses to become

an object for philosophy.5

4 Such an application to the I of the processes of knowledge appropriate to objects alone(as empiricalme) is often found elsewhere too, as far, for example, as in Husserl, where thereis no longer any difficulty in knowing that which thinks from any other object, preciselybecause thisIbecomes the same as an objecthere, as everywhere else, the Same signifiestherefore an identical intentional object of separate conscious processes, hence an object

immanent in them only as something non-really inherent. Cartesianische MeditationenV (Hus-serliana 1:15455), trans. Dorion Cairns (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), pp.12627.

5 Paul Tillich, Religionsphilosophie (1925), in Fruhe Hauptwerk, vol. 1 ofGesammelte Werke(Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1959), p. 297.



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ii. augustines quaestio

The aporia marked out here nevertheless offers more than a dead-endit allows a paradox to appear. If the man that I am (me) remainsinaccessible, this results not because I do not know him, but on thecontrary because I know him only too well as an object. Man escapesme to such a degree that the very mode of his possible knowing (whichmakes of him a mere thought object) contradicts and conceals his veryfirst feature, that of a pure thinker who thinks without becoming one

who is thought. But must we then conclude that the Iwould not haveaccess to itself as singular and unique, unless, on the contrary, it couldnever confuse itself with a thought object, in short unless it could not

know itself? Put another way, would my access to this I that I alonerecognize for myself require that I acknowledge that I do not appearto myself as knowledge (an object), but instead as a definitive question(without any corresponding object)?

As surprising as it may seem, this hypothesis may allow us to reachthe sense of a paradox rehearsed by Saint Augustine: Factus eram ipsemihi magna quaestio (I had become to myself a huge question). 6

We are not dealing here with a mere throwaway line, for the context,on the contrary, gives it a precise meaning. Augustine states that thedisappearance of a very dear friend makes him hate what he lovedbefore (his town and paternal home) and leads him to see nothingaround him but death (quidquid aspiciebam mors erat [everything

on which I set my gaze was death]); this loss of another thus provokesnothing less and nothing other than the loss of self, of my knowledgeof myself, which it replaces with my putting myself into question. Iexperience myself insofar as I discover myself to be unintelligible tomyself. Another formulation confirms this occurrence: even after hisconversion (in primordiis recuperatae fidei meae), while listening tothe chants resonating in the church (perhaps the hymns of Ambroseof Milan?), Augustine notes that he allows himself to be attracted andtouched more by the singing itself than by what is being sung, thePsalms (me amplius cantus, quam res, quae canitur, moveat), therebysinning within the very heart of prayer. Thus, he says, In your [Gods]eyes, I have become a question to myself [mihi quaestio factus

6Augustine, Confessiones4.4.9, ed. James J. ODonnell (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 1:36.English translation in Henry Chadwick, trans., Confessions(Oxford: Oxford University Press,1998), p. 57 (translation modified). (Hereafter, citations of this work will list in parenthesesthe ODonnell page numbers first, followed by the Chadwick page numbers.)



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sum].7 I become a question for myself, indeed an aporia for myself,because I discover that I cannot order my own prayer and thus my ownperception correctly, which is to say, voluntarily; if my own prayer andperception, which define my innermost depths, escape my control,then they make me become a question to myself.

Concerning this split within myself, this quaestio, two other texts con-firm just how much it renders me alien to myself. Nothing defines memore intimately than my memory (ipsum me non dicam praeter il-lam);8 how then can I not only forget, but (and how would I know itotherwise?) remember that I have forgotten that which I have, none-theless, forgotten? How do I remember that I have forgotten what Ino longer remember (mihi certum est meminisse me oblivionem,

ipsam oblivionem meminisse me certus sum)? It would be just asabsurd to reply that I have forgotten what I have forgotten in anothermemory than my own, and have retained memory of oblivion in mymemory, as it would be to claim that oblivion remains in my memoryso that I do not forget it like I have forgotten what I forgot there.There thus remains for me nothing else but to admit that I have keptin memory the image of the forgotten, but not that which I have for-gotten; and I can only conclude from this that my memory, my veryinner being, escapes me, and that factus sum mihi terra difficultatis(I have become for myself a soil which is a cause of difficulty), sothat I can only question myself, and question God: Hoc animus est,et hoc ego ipse sum. Quid ergo sum, Deus meus? Quae natura sum?

(This is mind, this is I myself. What then am I, my God? What is mynature?).9 Thus if my own memory renders me a stranger to myself,how could I not also become other than myself in the experience ofmy will? Indeed, in my dreams at night, how can I involuntarily givein to actual pleasure, when in the waking state I am able to push asideerotic images? There is only one answer: Numquid tunc ego non sum?Et tamen tantum interest inter me ipsum et me ipsum intra momen-

7 Confessiones10.33.50 (ODonnell, p. 139; the commentary provided in vol. 3, p. 220, refersin a note back to the text of 4.4.9, cited in n. 6; Chadwick, p. 208, translation modified). Thissplit within myself even serves as a conclusion to bk. 2 (2.10.18): et factus sum mihi regioegestatis (I became to myself a region of destitution) (ODonnell, p. 22; Chadwick, p. 34),

where this region of destitution defines my alienation from myself (at the time of the firsttheft) through the power of the group of wicked friends.

8 Intravi ad ipsius animi mei sedem, quae illi est in memoria mea, quoniam sui quoquememinit animus (I entered into the very seat of my mind, which is located in my memory,since the mind also remembers itself). Confessiones10.25.36 (ODonnell, p. 133; Chadwick,p. 200).

9 Confessiones 10.16.25 and 10.17.26 (ODonnell, pp. 12829; Chadwick, pp. 19394).ODonnells commentary rightly refers this argument to the two previous passages (4.4.9 and2.10.18; see n. 7 above).



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tum (During this time of sleep surely it is not my true self, Lord myGod? Yet how great a difference between myself and myself in a [sin-gle] moment).10 In a single moment I clearly discover myself to besomeone other than my self, I am not what I am, I become a quaestiofor myself. The experience of self ends neither in the aporia of sub-stituting an object (the self, the me) for the I that I am, nor in thepure identity with self, but in the alienation of self from selfIam tomyself an other than I.

What import lies in this impossible access of the self to the self? Isthe issue here a failure of knowledge, or a limitation in the conscious-ness of self, or, in short, an anticipation of the usual critiques of thecogito, in the style of Malebranche: Lon na point didee claire de

lame, ni de ses modifications (We therefore have no clear idea eitherof the soul or of its modifications)?11 This purely negative interpre-tation would, however, be valuable under only one condition: that, inthe case of mans I, it would be preferable that I know it by such aclear idea, or, which follows, by a concept. Now this condition raisesnot only the question of possibilitycan I know my I by a clear anddistinct idea, or by a concept?but also and first of all the questionof legitimacy, in two senses. First, is it possible or contradictory to claimto attain the I, which alone understands (and produces) concepts, withone of these very concepts? And next: would it be licit, admissible, anddesirable to know the Iwith a concept, if by chance it proved possible?If, on the contrary, such an attempt in the end contradicted and de-

stroyed the veryIto be attained, then the quaestiothat Saint Augustinesets against it would become not an aporia but a way toward a totallydifferent mode of conquest of that which I am as such.

For what would it serve a man to know himself through the modeby which he knows the remainderthe world and its objectsif, inorder to do so, he must know himself as just one more object? What

would it serve a man to know himself with a concept, if in doing so helost his humanity or, in other words, his soul? And, inversely, what

would a man lose, if he only gained access to himself through the modeof incomprehensibility? Is it really self-evident that all knowledge, andeven the knowledge of that which has the privilege to exercise knowl-edge instead of submitting to it, must be accomplished by the sameand univocal concept?

10 Confessiones10.30.41 (ODonnell, p. 135; Chadwick p. 203, translation modified).11 Nicolas Malebranche, Recherche de la verite: XIieme eclaircissement, in uvres com-

ple`tes, ed. A. Robinet (Paris: Vrin, 1964), 3:168. English translation in Thomas M. Lennonand Paul J. Olscamp, trans. and ed.,The Search after Truth(Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1997), p. 636.



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iii. everything that can be known, everything that should be

known

What do we really understand by the verb to know? Whether we ad-mit it or not, we mean by to know the taking (or producing) of whatDescartes called a clear and distinct idea; and we mean this not be-cause we necessarily accept the Cartesian theory of science but because

we share with it its finality: knowing seems to us to be without value ifit is not, through this idea, about obtaining mentis purae et attentaetam facilem distinctumque conceptum, ut de eo, quod intelligimus,nulla prorsus dubitation relinquatur (a concept so clear and distinct,produced by a pure and attentive mind, such that no doubt remains

about what we are understanding).

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What can thus be known (byvirtue of idea and representation), in such a manner that no doubtabout it subsists, is defined as an object; or, what amounts to the samething, one may only admit into science that which offers an object thatis certain: Circa illa tantum objecta oportet versari, ad quorum certamet indubitatam cognitionem nostra ingenia videntur sufficere (Weshould attend only to those objects of which our minds seem capableof having certain and indubitable cognition).13 From this it followsthat what cannot be known as an object, and thus what cannot beaccording to the mode of being of objects, is worthy neither of ourknowledge nor quite simply of being. Yes, this is a radical consequence,but it is a consequence drawn explicitly by Johan Clauberg, a Cartesianof strict observance, when, in order to found the then new science of

ontologia, he posed as fact the strict equivalence between being and thethinkable: Ens est quicquid quovis modo est, cogitari ac dici potest(Being is all that which, in whatever manner may be, can be thoughtand said), to the point that being and thought are identified with oneanother in a single and unique ens cogitable.14 This radical thesis, whichby the way exhausts the only historically documented meaning of on-tologia, does not oppose what is to what is thought (as the real to theideal) but, on the contrary, poses their strict equivalence. Accordingly,the condition of a beings Being understood as an object is no longer

12 Regulae ad directionem ingenii, III, AT X:368, lines 1517. English translation in John Cot-tingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Douglas Murdoch, trans., Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writ-ings(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 2:3 (translation modified). Citations ofthis work will be listed hereafter with page numbers from the English translation in paren-theses.

13 Regulae ad directionem ingenii, II, AT X:362, lines 24 (Cottingham et al., p. 1). The titleof this Regulacan be compared with that ofRegula III, AT X:366, lines 1114.

14Johan Clauberg, Metaphysica de Ente, quae rectius ontosophia [dicitur] . . . , secs. 6 and 4,respectively, in Opera omnia(Amsterdam, 1691), 1:283. Berkeley will simply radicalize thisdecision (if it can be radicalized any further).



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decided in or by this being itself, but in and by the mind that knowsit, because the knowing mind constructs this beings concept. In Car-tesian terms, one could say that there is only that which can satisfy theconditions of possibility fixed by the Mathesis Universalisnamely, or-der (whatever it may be) and measure. Anything else is unintelligibleand thus does not come under knowing.15 It follows that the object isnever defined in itself, nor by itself, but always by the thought thatknows it in constructing it. More essential to the being as object thanthe being is to itself is the ego, which fixes the beings conditions ofobjectification and makes of it an alienated beingalienated from it-self by the knowledge of another. It falls to the intuitusto accomplishconcretely this alienation of the object: in-tuitusrather than intuition,

a gaze that is active and on the lookout, not a neutral vision, becauseit only exercises its view according to the mode of a guard (- tueri), theguard who makes sure and places under security, who keeps an eye onand watches over that which henceforth remains under his dominion:the object.

No one exposed this alienation of the thing by the concept thatprecedes and reconstitutes it into an object better than Hegel. In nam-ing a thing, man substitutes for its immediate being and its qualitiesof sensible representation a name, a soundmade by [his] voice, some-thing entirely different from what [the thing] is in intuition; but thisname that is not the immediacy of the thing, this name into which thething withdraws, becomes something spiritual, something altogether

different. Thus nature transforms itself into a realm of names, be-cause the external object itself was negated in that very synthesis. 16

The object appears henceforth as suchas alienated being, which haslost its being in order to receive it from the I: the object is not whatit is . . . the thing is notwhat it is.17 Thus, man speaks to the thingas his. And this is the beingof the object.18 The being of the objectonly consists in receiving its being from man, who alienates it in so

15 See the Regulae ad directionem ingenii, IV, AT X:377, lines 23378: illa omnia tantum, inquibus aliquis ordo vel mensura examinatur, ad Mathesim [sc. Universalem] referri, necinteresse utrum in numeris, vel figuris, vel astris, vel sonis, aliove quovis objecto, talis mensuraquaerenda sit (I came to see that the exclusiveconcern of mathematics is with questions oforder or measure and that it is irrelevant whether the measure in question involves numbers,shapes, stars, sounds, or any other object whatever) (my emphasis; following the correctionof G. Crapulli according to text H [critical edition, The Hague: 1966]; Cottingham et al., p.5).

16 G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel and the Human Spirit: A Translation of the Jena Lectures on the Philosophyof Spirit (18056), with Commentary, trans. and ed. Leo Rauch (Detroit: Wayne State UniversityPress, 1983), pp. 8990 (translation modified).

17 Ibid., p. 88.18 Ibid., p. 90.



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very far as he names it. Put another way, by means of the name . . .the object has been born out of the I [and has emerged] as being. Thisis the primal creativity exercised by Spirit. Adam gave a name to allthings.19 Hegel obviously alludes to the Biblical episode in which Godgives to man power over the animals by giving him the right to namethem: [He] brought them to the man to see what he would call them(Gen. 2:19). Adam gives a name, and thus a definition to the animals,

which thus become subject to him, because in general all knowledgeby concept reduces what is known to the rank of object. Adam thusnames in the manner by which the I knowsby concepts of objects.However, Adam has the power thus to name only that which can legit-imately become for him an object: the animals (and the rest of the

world), and perhaps the angels, but not God, and not himself. If, more-over, he claimed to name them, either this name would have no valid-ity, or, if it had validity, what he named would not be man as such (asthe unrivaled thinker) but merely a thought-object like all the others.

Thus it follows from the characteristics of knowledge by conceptsthat man cannot name man, which is to say define man, except byreducing him to the rank of a simple concept, thereby knowing not aman but an object, possibly animated, but always alienated. Thereforethere is no contradiction between, on the one hand, knowledge of manas the object of anthropology and, on the other, the impossibility ofthis knowledge within the reflexive self-consciousness. For knowing theme as an object, constituted by alienation like all objects, in no way

opens access to the I, which alone knows objects and thus opposes itselfto them. This distinction shows itself simply in the case where I, ahuman being, am the insurmountable difference between the two sidesof the cogitatio, theegoand the object. From this there immediately andnecessarily follows another conclusion: if one is unaware of or neglectsthis distinctionthat is to say if one persists in claiming that man can(and therefore must) become an object for man (homo homini objec-tum)one only displaces this very distinction: for that which will beknown as object, even when dressed up with the title of man, will infact not be one and will not be able to make himself be recognized as

19 Ibid., p. 89. The first act, by which Adam established his lordship over the animals, isthis, that he gave them a name, i.e., he nullified them as beings on their own account, andmade them into ideal [entities]. . . . In the name the self -subsisting reality of the sign isnullified.Gesammelte Werke, ed. H. Kimmerle and K. Dussing (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1975), 6:288. See alsoSystem of the Ethical Life (18023) and First Philosophy of Spirit (Part III of the Systemof Speculative Philosophy, 18034), trans. and ed. H. S. Harris and T. M. Knox (Albany: StateUniversity of New York, 1979), pp. 22122. I follow here the classicinterpretation of AlexandreKojeve, Introduction a la lecture de Hegel(Paris: Gallimard, 1949), pp. 326 ff. (and also AlexandreKoyre, Hegel a Iena, Etudes dhistoire de la pensee philosophique[Paris: 1961], pp. 135 ff.).



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one. Indeed, each of us can, in various ways, have this experientia crucis:defining a man is equivalent to having done with him. Not because he

would no longer be thought, but precisely because one thinks him bynot thinking of him, because one thinks him without beginning thethinking from him himself but, instead, beginning from one otherthan him, namely, from the mind that defines him by alienating him,

which is to say the mind that thinks him according to the mode ofcomprehension. Or, to classify a man is to downsize him as a humanbeing, because he could not be classified any other way than accordingto an order and a measure (models and parameters) that come to himfrom elsewhere, which is to say from the workings of my rationality.

We take notice of this alienation, which makes the defined, classified,

and comprehended human being fall to the rank of a simple object,every time we end up admitting that, in order to put forward a defi-nition by concept of man it is first necessary to dare to ask the ques-tion, What is man? This simple question, even and above all if we donot give it an answer, already includes within it another, much morethreatening question, because it asks, What is a man? More threat-ening indeed, because even and above all if we cannot give an answer,

we nevertheless easily authorize ourselves to use the question nega-tively, transforming it into a final question, Is this [still, truly] a man?To claim to know and to define man with a concept leads inevitably toa decision about his objectification, or rather to a decision about hishumanity according to the objectification that we will have produced.Defining man with a concept does not always or immediately lead tokilling him, but it does fill the first condition required to eliminate allthat does not fit this definition. The dangerhaving done with someamong men because we can define manis not exaggerated or non-sensical. We experience it directly, as a clear possibility, in all the ap-plications of its objectification.

For instance, when I find myself in a medicalized situation (e.g.,admittance to the hospital, removal of clothing, transfer to surgery, thereading of test results, submission to treatment), I become a medicalobject. Or more precisely, the hospital technologys inevitable hold ofpower over me eliminates in me anything that will not reduce to amedical object. Under the gaze of medical personnel, and very soonunder my own gaze, the treatment of my sick body will lead to its

interpretation according to the parameters of physical bodies (size,quantification, measurements, etc.), with the result that my living flesh

will disappear. Soon I will no longer feel the fact that I feel myself:anesthesia will not only deliver me from my pain, but also from mysuffering self, and thus from my selfs self-suffering. Next, every non-



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objective function will disappear from this self (me), and my flesh, orthat which is animated within me, will become an animal-machine.This medical definition of my body as an object will also allow for thedistinction of health from sickness in terms of norms. Thus is openedthe fearful region in which man can make decisions about the nor-mality, and thus the life and death, of other human beingsbecausethese human beings have become simple human objects.

Another example of objectification occurs when I am defined as anobject reduced to the parameters seen by economic theorywhen Ibecome the famous economic agent, supposedly summed up by thecalculation of my needs, by the evaluation of these needs in numberedcosts and the balancing of these costs against purchasing power, and

finally by the purported rational calculation of a correspondence be-tween the costs of the objects of the needs and this purchasing power.In order to attain even an approximation of rigor, this stage-by-stagereduction assumes that choices are made according to the laws ofexchange and thus that the economic agent proceeds strictly accordingto self-interest, in short, that I only know and practice business, whichis to say strict exchange according to the iron law of a selfishness thatis no longer moral, but epistemological. Thus there disappears fromeconomic analysis everything that escapes exchange and commerce,but which doubtless makes them possible and flows over them in everydirection: the gift and all the forms of social gratuity that have not yetbeen rendered economic. For if economy economizes on the gift, thenmore fundamentally, gratuity economizes on economy itself.20

Without lingering over other processes of objectification (psychiatry,biology, etc.), let us consider directly the definition of the human be-ing not only as social animal (social living being), but as political ob-

ject, such as it ratifies and perfects the mobilization without remain-der of the humanity of man.21 The political determination of man isnot summed up by his sociability, but, at the very least, politics imposesupon that sociability a technological treatment. In particular, throughthe determination of ones identity (of his name, I.D., passport) ac-cording to number: dates (from birth to death), places (residence,

work, trips, etc.), health, commercial operations (bank account num-bers, credit cards, etc.), local as well as long-distance communications(sound and visual recordings, electronic addresses, cell phones, etc.),all become numbers, such that the identity thus digitized accordingto limitless parameters erects a comprehensive definition of the citizen.

20 See my analysis in La raison du don, Philosophie78 ( June 2003): 332.21 Mobilization is understood here in the sense used by Ernst Junger in Der Arbeiter(Ham-

burg, 1932) and in Die totale Mobilmachung, in Krieg und Krieger(Berlin, 1930).



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And inevitably this comprehensive definition ends up by authorizing,indeed demanding, the separation of men according to those who sat-isfy the political conditions of this citizenship and those who are ex-cluded or ought to be (exclusion, beginning with the jobless, thehomeless, the maladjusted, delinquents, and illegal immigrants, andending with the mentally ill, or embryos reputedly not yet humanized,or supernumerary, etc.). From the identity card to the list of interdic-tion, the outcome, while not good, is nonetheless possible, easy, andrapid. Political wisdom consists first in resisting such an outcome. Fail-ing such resistance, there will be no end of ideologies or racisms thatproduce definitions of man and, through an inverted outcome, pro-scribe those who do not fit in, before moving on to the arrest, or in-deed to the extermination of the submen or nonmen thus identified. 22

A frightening consequence thus imposes itself: to claim to definewhat a man is leads to or at least opens the possibility of leading tothe elimination of that which does not correspond to this definition.Every political proscription, every racial extermination, every ethniccleansing, every determination of that which does not merit lifeallof these rest upon a claim to define (scientifically or ideologically) thehumanity of man; without this claimed guarantee, no one could putsuch political programs into motion. Even the worst of modern tyrantsneeds reasons and concepts. Here we find a new experientia crucis: inorder to kill a human being, it is necessary to have the permission tokill. But in order to have that, it is first necessary to be able to deny

to such and such a human being (the well-named So and So) his orher face and thus his or her humanity; and one gets there by definingand comprehending humanity through concepts, by fixing its limitsand, in this way, discovering the one who cannot claim humanity, andthus can or ought to die. Here a metaphysical proposition in appear-ance perfectly neutral takes on the aspect of a silent threat: every de-termination is a negation, or more exactly (because in the event theissue is extension alone), figura non aliud quam determinatio, et de-terminatio negatio est (figure is nothing but limitation, and limita-

22 Primo Levi lived and described perfectly the moment when the number, having becomethe most efficacious tool for the definition (in this case ideological and racist) of man, andthus for the stigmatization of the nonman (the Jew), silences the name of a man by substitutingitselffor thatname: Heis Null Achtzehn. He is not called anything exceptthat,ZeroEighteen,the last three figures of his entry number; as if everyone was aware that only a man is worthyof a name, and that Null Achtzehn is no longer a man ( If This Is a Man; The Truce, trans.Stuart Woolf [London: Abacus, 1987], p. 48). And once the name of a man is abolished, andhis humanity thus denied, it becomes possible and even quite easy to put an end to himphysically, as a dog or a pigin other words, as an animal.



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tion is negation).23 Determining amounts to denying (and not theinverse, for if determination is sufficient for denial, a negation doesnot always suffice to determine). Determining the humanity of manthus amounts to making an end of him.

Moreover, this experientia crucis can be confirmed by inverting it: Ican only love (the contrary of killing) another that, precisely, I do notknow, at least in the sense of being able to comprehend him or her asan object and define him or her by a concept. I can only love him whoremains for me without definition, and only for as long as he thusremains, which is to say as long as I will not have finished with him.

iv. the depths of incomprehensibility

Thus nothing of what I understand tells me of the humanity of theOther or gives me access to it. If then I want to maintain that, beinga human being, nothing human is or ought to be foreign to me (Ter-ence), it would be necessary to add a derivative consequence: nothingthat I know, beginning from a comprehensive definition of humanity,can reveal the dignity of the human being, much less defend it. Andconsequently, I cannot know myself as such, by turning on myself anysuch definition of humanity; for, in this case too, I would substitute forthe man in me something other than me, that is, precisely, an alienatedthing, an object comprehended by a concept. Thus there appears thedefinitive weakness of every humanism: not only does it claim to com-prehend as a matter of fact what man can and ought to be; but above

all it assumes that such a knowledge reinforces the humanity in man,when such knowledge instead destroys it or, in any case, threatens it.The weakness of humanisms claim consists in dogmatically imaginingnot only that man can hold himself up as his own measure and end(so that man is enough for man), but above all that he can do thisbecause he comprehends what man is, when on the contrary nothingthreatens man more than any such alleged comprehension of his hu-manity. For every de-finition imposes on the human being a finite es-sence, following from which it always becomes possible to delimit whatdeserves to remain human from what no longer does.

It follows, then, that in the particular case of man, philosophy wouldhave for its task not to correct mans incomprehensibility, as if it werea defect to overcome, but to preserve it as a privilege to reinforce. Butfor all of that, can we indeed preserve the incomprehensibility of man

23 Baruch Spinoza, Epistula 50, a J. Jalles, 3d ed., ed. J. van Vloten and J. P. N. Land (TheHague, n.d.), 3:172. English translation in Abraham Wolf, trans. and ed.,The Correspondenceof Spinoza(London: Frank Cass, 1966), p. 270.



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as the sign, the proof, and the guarantee of his humanity? How do weavoid the confusions and contradictions implied by this demand? Andfirst and foremost, does a de jure incomprehensibility not lead finallyto a simple de facto unknowing? And, since such an unknowing eitherdisappears into a definitive ignorance or disqualifies itself as a poorlyformulated question, does it not always just vanish? In short, can onemaintain for very long the comprehension of such a fragile incompre-hensibility? In order to surmount these difficulties, it would be nec-essary to found and legitimize the impossibility of defining and com-prehending manand thus to envisage such an impossibility within anew positivity and no longer as a pure and simple defect. How do wedo this?

Let us return to Hegels interpretation of Adams privilege in thebook of Genesis. There, man has the power to name, to understand,and thus to dominate; but Adam exercises this privilege only upon theanimals, never upon God or upon himself. Why do these two escapenaming and thus escape the comprehension and, finally, the domina-tion of man? That God would escape is conceived without any diffi-culty: the Creator is not easily understood, and thus named, by hiscreature. But why is it that man does not name himself? No interdictis brought to bear here. Nothing more than the second commandmentis necessary, which forbids making for yourself a graven image, or anylikeness of anything that is in heaven above (Exod. 20:4)anything,therefore, that would claim to represent God through comprehension.But is man, too, in heaven above? Most certainlyfor this is the de-

cisive paradoxbecause that which is fitting for God (of whom noname, no image, and no concept can claim comprehension) is alsofitting for man: man, and he alone among all the living, was creatednot according to [his] kind but in [the] image . . . [and] likenessof God (Gen. 1:24, 26). This paradox receives a precise commentaryfrom Saint Augustine: be renewed in the newness of your mind. That is nota makingaccording to kind[secundum genus], as if renewal were achievedby imitating a neighbours example or by living under the authority ofa human superior. For you did not say Let man be made according tohis kind [secundum genus], but Let us make man according to our imageand likeness, so we may prove what your will is.24 Man remains un-imaginable, because he is formed in the image of the One who admitsno image whatsoever. By right, man resembles nothing, because heresembles nothing other than the One who is properly characterized

24Augustine, Confessiones 13.22.32 (ODonnell, p. 196; Chadwick p. 292, emphasis added;translation slightly modified). Augustine quotes, successively, Rom. 12:2 and Gen. 1:24 and26.



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by incomprehensibility, the One who David Tracy has named theIncomprehensible-Comprehensible God.25 Or again, if God remainsincomprehensible, man, who resembles nothing other than Him, willalso bear the mark and the privilege of His incomprehensibility. Putanother way: the human being belongs to no kind whatsoever, refersto no genus, is not comprehended by any definition of (in)humanity.Delivered from every paradigm, he appears immediately within the lightof the One who surpasses all light. Mans face bears the mark of thisborrowed incomprehensibility in so far, precisely, as he too reveals him-self as invisible, like God.26 Man is thus radically separated from everyother being in the world by an insurmountable and definitive differ-ence that is no longer ontological, but holy. No longer does the humanbeing distinguish him- or herself from the rest of the world as thePlatzhalter des Nichts (lieutenant of the nothing)27 or the Hirtdes Seins (shepherd of Being),28 but as the icon of the incompre-hensible. Mans invisibility separates him from the world and conse-crates him as holy for the Holy.

This argument is found explicitly formalized in this manner by Greg-ory of Nyssa, among other authors:

The icon is properly an icon so long as it fails in none of those attributes

which we perceive in the archetype . . . therefore, since one of the attributes

we contemplate in the Divine nature is inco mprehensibility of essence (to

akat lhpton t o j a), it is clearly necessary that in this point the icona h u i

should be able to show its imitation of the archetype. For if, while the arche-

type transcends comprehension, the nature of the icon were comprehended,

the contrary character of the attributes we behold in them would prove the

defect of the icon; but since the nature of our mind, which is according tothe icon of the Creator (t kat k na tou kt janto), evades our knowledge,q i o iit keeps an accurate resemblance to the superior nature, retaining the imprint

25 David Tracy, On Naming the Present: God, Hermeneutics, and Church(Maryknoll, N.Y.: OrbisBooks, 1994), p. 54.

26According to Emmanuel Levinas, le visage est signification et signification sans contexte.. . . En ce sens, on peut dire que le visage nest pas vu. Il est ce qui ne peut devenir uncontenu, que notre pensee embrasserait; il est lincontenable, il vous mene au-dela (theface is signification, and signification without context. . . . In this sense one can say that theface is not seen. It is what cannot become a content, which your thought would embrace;it is uncontainable, it leads you beyond). See Ethique et infini: Dialogues avec Philippe Nemo(Paris: Livre de Poche, 1982), pp. 8081. English translation in Richard A. Cohen, trans.,Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press,1985), pp. 8586.

27 Martin Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik?in Wegmarken, GA 9, p. 118. English translation inDavid Farrell Krell, ed., Basic Writings, 2d ed. (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 106.

28 Martin Heidegger, Brief uber den Humanismus, in Wegmarken, GA 9, p. 342. Englishtranslation in Krell, pp. 234, 245.



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of the incomprehensible [fixed] by the unknown within it ( t kav aut nq oagn jt ).29q q

Knowing man thus requires referring him to God the incomprehensi-ble and thus by derivation to grounding incomprehensibility in theincomprehensible, by virtue of mans being its image and likeness. Au-gustine, too, comes to this conclusion: whereas Saint Paul, for his part,

writes that no one among men knows the secrets of man except thespirit of man which is in him (1 Cor. 2:11) and thus assumed thatman comprehends the secrets of man, Augustine does not hesitate to

write on the contrary that tamen est aliquid hominis, quod nec ipsescit spiritus hominis, qui in ipso est, tu autem. Domine, scis ejus omnia,

quia eum fecisti (yet there is something of the human person whichis unknown even to the spirit of man which is in him. But you, Lord,know everything about the human person; for you made humanity).Beginning from this unknowing of myself, who is nevertheless knownby anotherGod aloneit is necessary to make use of the process ofconfessio, or rather the constitutive duality of a doubly oriented confessio,oriented toward my ignorance of self and toward anothers knowledgeof me. Confitear ergo quid de me sciam, confitear et quid de menesciam . . . (Accordingly, let me confess what I know of myself.Let me confess too what I do not know of myself. For what I know ofmyself I know because you grant me light, and what I do not know ofmyself, I do not know until such time as my darkness becomes likenoonday before your face).30 Man differs infinitely from man but with

a difference that he cannot comprehend, and which, in order properlyto respect it, he should not comprehend.

Not only does man know that he does not know himself, even if thiswere only because within his most intimate depths he discovers an un-fathomable memory: Magna vis est memoriae, nescio quid horren-dum, Deus meus, profunda et infinita multiplicitas. Et hoc animus estet hoc ego ipse sum. Quid ego sum Deus? Quae natura sum? (Greatis the power of memory, an awe-inspiring mystery, my God, a power ofprofound and infinite multiplicity. And this is mind, this is I myself.

What then am I, my God? What is my nature?).31 But above all, man

29 Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, in Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, etc.,trans. William Moore and Henry Austin Wilson, vol. 5 ofNicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of theChristian Church, Series II, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,1965), pp. 39697 (translation modified).

30 Confessiones10.5.7, citingat theend Psalm 89:8 (ODonnell, p. 121; Chadwick,pp. 18283).31 Confessiones10.17.26 (ODonnell, p. 129; Chadwick, p. 194). A strong and frightening

echo of such a horror is found in both Luther and Calvin, as B. A. Gerrish has superblydemonstrated; see his To the Unknown God: Luther and Calvin on the Hiddenness of



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understands, within this impasse, that the one who is alone in knowinghim remains for him another, namely, God: Utrum ita sim, nescio.Minus mihi in hac re notus sum ipse quam tu. Obsecro te, Deus meus,et me ipsum mihi indica (Whether I am one or the other I do notknow. In this matter I know myself less well than I know you. I beseech

you, my God, show me myself).32 Under Augustines analysis, mansincomprehensibility to himself thus takes on yet wider and vaster di-mensions. To begin with, as in the Greek fathers, the analysis pointsout not only the image and likeness of God within mans incompre-hensibility but also a unique privilege held by the human being withregard to all other creatures (which only resemble their genus, whichis to say, themselves). Next, this incomprehensibility tells man that he

goes beyond and exceeds himself, in short that lhomme passe infi-niment lhomme (man transcends man), following the formulationof an exemplary Augustinian: in a word, man passes beyond his ownmeans, man lives above his means.33 Finally and above all, accordingto a strict consequence, only the infinite and incomprehensible cancomprehend man, and thus tell him of and show him to himself; onlyGod can reveal man to man, because man only reveals himself by re-

vealing, without knowing it, the one whose image he bears. Not onlyis it true that Je est un autre (I is another), but this other calls him-self God within man, the speculative Emmanuel. Henceforth, absentGod, man can no longer appear as such, but disfigures himself by tak-ing on the figure of something other than himself, which is to say byallowing himself to resemble something other than God. This is the

definition of sin: man thinks he attains unto himself by choosing toresemble less than God. The dissimilarity in the image devalues himshort of God, and, barring God, man loses the human face. Thus thesoul, cum stare debeat ut eis fruatur, volens ea sibi tribuere et non exillo similis illius, sed ex ipsa esse quod ille est, avertitur ab eo, moveturet labitur in minus et minus, quod putat amplius et amplius. Quia necipsa sibi, nec ei quicquam sufficit recedenti ab illo qui solus sufficit(instead of staying still and enjoying them [the good things of God]as it ought to, . . . wants to claim them for itself, and rather than belike him by his gift it wants to be what he is by its own right. So it turnsaway from him and slithers and slides down into less and less which isimagined to be more and more; it can find satisfaction neither in itselfnor in anything else as it gets further away from him who alone can

God, inThe Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage(Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 13149.

32 Confessiones10.37.62 (ODonnell, p. 144; Chadwick, p. 216, translation modified).33 Blaise Pascal, Pensees(Lafuma sec. 131). English translation in A. J. Krailsheimer, trans.,

Pensees(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 34.



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satisfy it).34 I shall make only two remarks as commentary on this pow-erful phenomenology of sin. First, sin does not consist in wanting toenjoy the supreme good things, those of God, for they are given byGod without jealousy; rather, sin lies in wanting to enjoy them by one-self and not through God, in wanting to appropriate them for oneselfin the first person (as in Phil. 2:6: arpagm n), in short in denying theocharacter of the giftscorning the given as gift. Second, this entiremovement unfolds within the similitudonon ex illo similis ejus

which is to say, within the image and likeness, within mans incompre-hensibility to himself.

v. the privilege of positive self-unknowing

Mans incomprehensibility to himself thus designates a privilege, oneby which man, or rather the one who alone (taking up Leibnizs for-mulation) is able to say ego, arrives at recognizing, precisely by neverhimself knowing what, or rather whom, it is that he resembles, who itis who preserves his identity and can name himnone other than theOne who created him. I cannot define myself, but, like every humanbeing (and it is precisely in this that we recognize a human being), noone can know me and tell of me except, eventually, the one who cre-ates me. God alone knows and preserves within his own secret thesecret of man. Thus my unknowing of myselfotherwise called theimpossibility of my gaining access to myself through any idea, concept,

or image whatsoever that I may produce, except through the imagethat another gives to mein no way signifies a flaw or defect in myknowledge, as metaphysics has so often claimed. Take, for example,after Malebranche,35 Baruch Spinozas belief that he can hold thatmens se ipsam non cognoscit, nisi quatenus corporis affectionumideas percipit (the mind does not know itself except insofar as itperceives ideas of affections of the body).36 This is a problematic thesisin every respect, if only because it implies that by knowing the ideasof what affects its body, the mind would thus know itself as this verybody and, because this body is affected by every other body, the idea

34Augustine, De Trinitate, 10.5.7. English translation in Edmund Hill, O.P., trans., On theTrinity(Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City, 1992), p. 292. The same argument, exposed in a moresystematic way and at length, may be found in John Scot Eriugena, De Divisione Naturae, IV,7, PL 122, col. 771 ff. See the standard-setting paper by Bernard McGinn, The NegativeElement in the Anthropology of John the Scot, in Jean Scot Erigene et lhistoire de la philosophie,ed. Rene Roques (Paris: Editions du C.N.R.S., 1975), pp. 31525.

35 Confessiones10.30.41 (ODonnell, p. 135; Chadwick p. 203, translation modified).36 Baruch Spinoza, Ethica II, sec. 23. English translation in Samuel Shirley, trans., and Sey-

mour Feldman, ed., The Ethics(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992), p. 81.



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that the menswould have of itself would thus coincide with that of thecomplete extended world. In this way we would instead have to confirmthat what man would know of himself would precisely not be himself,but anything other than himself. Similarly, when Kant underscores thatthe transcendental I has of itself only a ganzlich leere Vorstellung(completely empty representation) and thus that it has no experi-ence of itself and that the transcendental object is equally unknown[gleich unbekannt] in respect to inner and to outer intuition, what doeshe deny to man?37 Quite clearly, man is denied the status of object,subjected to an intuition and inscribed within the common experienceof the world, which is to say, Kant denies man what the Ican becomeonly by its disappearing as such, by its ceasing to be that through which

the objects of experience, insofar as they conform to the conditions ofintuition, become possible. Far from this absence of knowledge doingharm to mans dignity, it appears as the first bulwark, for, beyond thequestion concerning the knowledge of man, the question of what suchknowledge would make of man imposes itself. Indeed, the impossibilityof assigning him any definition at all fixes the only correct definitionof man, because it attests to him precisely as das noch nicht festge-stellte Thier (the animal that is not yet stabilized). Nietzsche hereinherits directly from a tradition that goes back at least to Pico dellaMirandola: homo variae ac multiformis et desultoriae naturae animae(man [is an] animal of diverse, multiform, variable, and destructiblenature).38 The nature (and definition) of man is characterized by in-

stabilityman as the being who remains, for himself, to be decidedand about whom one never ceases to be astonished. Man, undecidableto man, thus loses himself if he claims to decide about himself. Heremains himself only as long as he remains without qualities, otherthan those of monstre incomprehensible (a monster that passes allunderstanding).39 Let us not be mistaken: Pascal here designates a priv-ilege, that of showing forth (monstrare) in oneself the incomprehensible.

But are there not objections to be made? For example, followingHeidegger, one could assimilate the biblical definition according toimage and likeness to the Greek definition according to the possession

37 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 346/B 404, A 354, and A 372, respectively (Smith, pp.331, 336, and 348).

38 Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente (1884), 25 (428), Werke VII/2, ed. Colli-Montinari (Berlin and New York, 1974), p. 121. See also Pico della Mirandola, De dignitatehominis, ed. G. Tonion and O. Boulnois (Paris, 2004), p. 12, and also pp. 4, 6. Englishtranslation in Charles Glenn Wallace, Paul J. W. Miller, and Douglas Carmichael, trans., Onthe Dignity of Man, and On Being and the One, and Heptaplus(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,1965),p. 6.

39 Pascal, Lafuma sec. 130 (Krailsheimer, p. 32).



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ofl goin order to understand both as imposing upon man the modeoof Being im Sinne des Vorhandensein (in the sense of subsistence[occurring and Being-present-at-hand]).40 But what proof does Hei-degger give of the equivalence between these two definitions? If nec-essary, the definition byl go could fall under reproach; but does theodefinition according to the image of God not exclude, precisely, any-thing having to do, in God and thus in man, with Being as subsistence(vorhanden)? Unless, that is, Heidegger includes neither definition inthe division of finite being from infinite being.41 But there too, doeshe not take up, as if it goes without saying, the metaphysical distinctionpar excellence of the ensintofinitumand infinitum, introduced by DunsScotus through to Suarez, without seeing that this distinction doubtless

contradicts the incomprehensibility of the image and likeness? Doeshe simply want, in the end, to deny theology the right to tackle thequestion of mans status, just as he denies it that of responding to thequestion, Why is there something rather than nothing? by holdingthat anyone for whom the Bible is divine revelation and truth alreadyhas the answer to the question . . . before it is asked: beings, with theexception of God Himself, are created by Him. God Himself is as theuncreated Creator. This remains, Heidegger believes, unacceptable,because one who holds on to such faith as a basis can, perhaps, em-ulate and participate in the asking of our question in a certain way,but he cannot authentically question. . . . He can act only as if [nunso tun as ob] . . . in the beginning God created heaven and earth,etc.42 This argument presupposes in its turn that, by invoking crea-

tion, the believer confidently knows and thus comprehends what manis, because faith certainly tells him. It is precisely the case, however,that what the Scripture says here establishes nothing certain and pro-cures no clear and distinct knowledge whatsoever; on the contrary, itsrevelation of man as created in the image and likeness of God institutesan unknowing that is all the more radical in that it is founded in theincomprehensibility of God himself. From a reverse perspective, wouldit not be he who assumes from the outset that the question of man isinscribed in advance within the horizon of Being and determines manas the being in whom what is at stake is Being? Would it not be some-one like this who would here be seeming to think the incomprehen-

40 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1963), sec. 10, p. 48, line 32. Englishtranslation in John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, trans., Being and Time(San Francisco:Harper & Row, 1962), p. 74.

41 Heidegger, Brief uber den Humanismus,GA 9, p. 319.42 Heidegger,Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik, GA 40, p. 5. English translation in Gregory Fried

and Richard Polt, trans., Introduction to Metaphysics(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,2000), pp. 78.



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sibility of man? For it could be that Scripture fails to pose the questionWhy something rather than nothing? not out of ignorance, butrather in order not to presume a horizon, even that of Being, for thequestion of man and because it questions the world and man in a waythat is yet more radical than would ever be allowed by the thinking ofBeing. And above all, what the Scripture gives as answer to the questionit poses remains by definition a bottomless question, because it per-petuates nothing less than the incomprehensibility of God. If ques-tioning defines the piety of thinking, then Scripture, too, unfolds thispiety, because it alone leaves forever free and intact the questioningof its question.

Despite this, metaphysics has indeed replied (whether it should be

allowed to or not) to the question concerning mans definition of him-self. And we know well that the Cartesian cogito has no other impor-tance than to assure the ego its comprehension of itself and thus toimpose itself as the first principle of every other science. Nevertheless,it would be more fitting to doubt this vulgate of Cartesianism, becausethe texts of Descartes so often contradict it. Contradiction occurs firstof all because theegos very performance of its existence unfolds withina space that is, from the outset, dialogical (with the Deus qui potestomnia, with the genius aliquis malignius).43 Next, contradiction occursbecause the ego of the cogito recognizes that its finite thought culmi-nates in a faculty of will that is paradoxically infinite, ratione cujusimaginem quandam et similitudinem Dei me refere intelligo (in vir-

tue of [which] . . . I understand myself to bear in some way the imageand likeness of God); and above all the common understanding ofthe comprehensibility of the ego is contradicted because the ego iden-tifies its faculty of thinking of itself with the image and likeness of God

within it, to the point that the faculty of self-knowing is simply onewith the faculty of knowing God: ex hoc uno quod Deus me creavit,valde credibile est me quodammodo ad imaginem et similitudinemejus factum esse, illamque similitudinem, in qua Dei idea continetur,a me precipi per eandem facultatem, per quam ego ipse a me perci-pior (but the mere fact that God created me is a very strong basisfor believing that I am somehow made in his image and likeness andthat I perceive that likeness, which includes the idea of God, by thesame faculty which enables me to perceive myself).44 Let us consider

43 See Meditationes, AT 8:21, line 2 and 8:22, line 24, respectively. See my study Lalteriteoriginaire de lego, in Questions cartesiennes II: Sur lego et sur Dieu(Paris: Presses universitairesde France, 1996), chap. 1.

44 Mediationes, AT 4:57, lines 1415 and 2:51, lines 1823, respectively (Cottingham et al.,pp. 101 and 98, respectively).



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this extraordinary text: founding the thinking of self upon my thinkingof God, to the point of merging them within the space opened by theimage of and likeness to God. Even more: because Descartes at thesame time does not cease to underscore the fact that remaining incom-prehensible belongs to the very definition of God (idea enim infiniti,ut sit vera, nullo modo debet comprehendi, quonima ipsa incompre-hensibilitas in ratione formali infiniti continetur [the idea of the in-finite, in order to be true, cannot by any means be comprehended,since this very incomprehensibility is comprised within the formal con-cept of the infinite]), we must conclude that, strictly speaking, theego, image of the incomprehensible, remains incomprehensible also toitself.45 The power and profundity of mans incomprehensibility is such

that even the ego cogito is inscribed therein and confirms it.

vi. the question without a response

According to Aristotle, only the divine can reach the point of think-ing its own thinking and knowing itself absolutely. And man has nei-ther a definition of nor access to this knowledge. The theology of rev-elation, through other paths, confirms this impossibility. And yet, it nolonger understands this impossibility as something forbidden, butrather as a grace and a privilege: man remains incomprehensible, butin the image and likeness of the incomprehensible par excellence; hethus holds a derived and gracious excellence: that of knowing himselfas incomprehensible.

Put another way, man appears to himself as a phenomenon that hecannot constitute, because he exceeds the field of every horizon andof every system of categories. Which can be formulated as: man appearsto himself as a saturated phenomenon.

Philosophy must know, and thus also not cease to will to know, theone who knows, at the risk of degrading the one who knows (himself)to the status of what he knows. Theology in the strict sense recognizesits objectin fact, a formal nonobjectas revelation. It thus accepts,or rather claims as its highest epistemological necessity, to treat of theincomprehensibility of God, such as it results directly from his infinityand, above all, from his holiness.

The incomprehensibility of the human being remains. Founded andrequired by the incomprehensibility of the One whose image and like-ness man bears, it is bound up with theology. Nevertheless it does not

45 Meditationes, Ve Responsiones, AT 6:368, lines 24. English translation in Elizabeth S. Hal-dane and G. R. T. Ross, trans., The Philosophical Works of Descartes (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1967), 2:218.



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belong entirely, or even foremost, to theology, because man must com-prehend this very incomprehensibility, by opposing it to, and preserv-ing it in front of, every other comprehension that he gains over everyother thingthings that can become objects. Let us recall here PaulRicurs brilliant statement: the claim by knowledge to constitute it-self raises the most formidable obstacle to the idea of revelation. Inthis regard, Husserls transcendental idealism potentially contains the

very same atheistic outcome as Feuerbachs idealism of self-conscious-ness.46 In this sense, which is first of all negative, or rather denegatory,mans incomprehensibility comes under the domain of philosophy.

Thus, in its relation to both philosophy and (revealed) theology,which it skirts by opposition, the incomprehensibility of the human

being can be seen to define the proper domain of what I willingly callthe philosophy of religion.

46 Paul Ricur, Hermeneutique de lidee de Revelation, in La Revelation, ed. Daniel Cop-pieters de Gibson (Bruxelles: Facultes universitaires Saint-Louis, 1977), p. 46.


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