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Lévinas, Marion, and Caputo from a Post-Phenomenological Perspective

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Lévinas, Marion, and Caputo from a Post-Phenomenological Perspective RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AT THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE: LÉVINAS, MARION, AND CAPUTO FROM A POST-PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE by William E. Swart APPROVED BY SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: Dr. Charles R. Bambach, Chair Dr. Ming Dong Gu Dr. Charles Hatfield Dr. Peter Park Copyright 2017 William E. Swart All Rights Reserved For my mother, who had few, if any, unanswered questions on this topic. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AT THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE: LÉVINAS, MARION, AND CAPUTO FROM A POST-PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE by WILLIAM E. SWART, BA, JD DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The University of Texas at Dallas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HUMANITIES-STUDIES IN LITERATURE THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS December 2017 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project could not have been conceived nor completed without the encouragement and assistance of many individuals. Most obviously, it benefited from the involvement of my dissertation committee. I wish to thank my committee, Dr. Charles Bambach, Dr. Ming Dong Gu, Dr. Charles Hatfield, and Dr. Peter Park, for their generous assistance and support. Their contributions to my efforts to integrate diverse areas of thought cannot be overstated. In particular, I wish to thank the Chair of my committee, Dr. Bambach, for his patient and detailed review of my work at each stage of its development. Without his encouragement and insights, my dissertation would have been far less ambitious and engaged. Others have played an important role, as well. It must be said that I would not have entered graduate school at The University of Texas at Dallas had it not been for its creative writing program, which was initially my chosen field of study. Although my focus has changed during my tenure at UTD, my initial immersion in the creative writing program opened my eyes to the existence of fundamental questions that unite literature and philosophy. For their involvement in that stage of my education and for their continuing support, I thank Dr. Robert Nelsen, Dr. Clay Reynolds and Fred Curchack. I have greatly benefited from my interaction with other members of the faculty, as well; however, I would like to make special mention of Dr. Dennis Kratz, who has become a friend during my long tenure at UTD. His optimism persuaded me on more than one occasion to persevere. Finally, my wife Jana Swart has been incredibly supportive of my scholarly endeavors over these past years. I owe her an immense debt for that, but even more importantly, I am indebted to her for her commitment to intellectual honesty which has influenced my perspectives in so many ways. August 2017 v RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AT THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE: LÉVINAS, MARION, AND CAPUTO FROM A POST-PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE William E. Swart, PhD The University of Texas at Dallas Supervising Professor: Dr. Charles Bambach In my dissertation, I explore the thinking of Emmanuel Lévinas, Jean-Luc Marion, and John D. Caputo, three late twentieth-century philosophers who consider the manner in which human desire for the divine is experienced within consciousness. I endeavor to provide a balanced reading of their views and then explore the question of whether phenomenology, rigorously applied, can provide a means for properly understanding religious experience. These three philosophers were influenced by the views of Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida, and accordingly, my dissertation considers the manner in which those views are understood and then followed or rejected by Lévinas, Marion, and Caputo. In my view, contemporary philosophy of religion struggles to find its voice, often facing criticism for its theological tenor and hyperbolic language. I attempt to offer a reasoned analysis of the way in which philosophy, properly considered, can view language-formation (the creation of meaning within consciousness) as an essential component of religious experience. In my analysis of the writings of Lévinas, I explore how he finds in language the means to articulate an experience of the divine that begins outside of Being in “saying” and culminates within Being in the “said.” I then delve into the philosophical basis for his break with Heidegger and his expanded reading of Husserl and vi consider the possibility that he failed to fully justify his arguments through phenomenology. Next I consider Marion’s attempts to provide convincing arguments for an expansion of phenomenology to include all phenomena “given” to consciousness, a project grounded in his readings—or possibly his misreadings—of Husserl and Heidegger. I will evaluate Marion’s argument that phenomenology may properly recognize the possibility of revelation from a divine source that resembles the God of Western religion. Marion contends that such phenomena are incomprehensible and, paradoxically, impossible; I explore the way in which this contention supports an expansion of phenomenology to consider the experience of meaning-creation that occurs when phenomena are manifested to consciousness in the manner claimed by Marion. I then consider the contributions of Caputo to this debate and his premise that experience of God occurs (if at all) through a deconstructionist undertaking; in particular, I explore the way in which his “radical” hermeneutics supplements the philosophical contributions of Lévinas and Marion. Each of these three philosophers offers contemporary philosophy a different means for describing the possibility of religious experience; however, all of them conclude that human consciousness experiences God—or the idea of God—as largely incomprehensible. My dissertation asks whether phenomenology could potentially embrace impossibility as so depicted. Similarly, it considers whether a fundamental unanswered question regarding a phenomenological understanding of religious experience is this: how can truth and meaning be found in divine manifestations that defy language and are claimed to be beyond human comprehension? vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1 OVERVIEW .............................................................................................................1 1.1 Evolution of Thought Regarding God’s Nature and Existence .....................................8 1.2 Possibilities of Religious Experience...........................................................................12 1.3 Implications of a God Outside of Being ......................................................................15 1.4 My Project ....................................................................................................................21 CHAPTER 2 EMMANUEL LÉVINAS: RETHINKING TRANSCENDENCE .........................25 2.1 Biographical Information .............................................................................................27 2.2 Philosophical Influences ..............................................................................................28 2.3 Otherwise than Being ...................................................................................................37 2.4 Language ......................................................................................................................51 2.5 Ethical Signification of the Other ................................................................................60 2.6 Philosophy or Theology? .............................................................................................71 CHAPTER 3 JEAN-LUC MARION: RECOGNITION OF GIVENNESS .................................75 3.1 Philosophical Influences ..............................................................................................79 3.2 Phenomenology of Revelation .....................................................................................98 3.3 Language ....................................................................................................................118 3.4 Philosophy or Theology? (Part 2) ..............................................................................124 CHAPTER 4 JOHN D. CAPUTO: RADICAL HERMENEUTICS ..........................................128 4.1 Philosophical Influences ............................................................................................134 4.2 Radical Hermeneutics ................................................................................................151 4.3 Language ....................................................................................................................167 4.4 Philosophy or Theology? (Part 3) ..............................................................................174 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS AND QUESTIONS....................................179 5.1 “New” Phenomenology .............................................................................................183 viii 5.2 Incomprehensibility or Truth? ...................................................................................187 5.3 Language and Meaning ..............................................................................................192 5.4 “Post-Phenomenological” Pursuits ............................................................................196 5.5 Phenomenology, Deconstruction, and Truth: What is Missing Here?.......................200 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................204
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