God Without Being: Hors-Texte, Second Edition

by Jean-Luc Marion, Thomas A. Carlson (Translator), David Tracy (Foreword by)

Overview

Jean-Luc Marion is one of the world’s foremost philosophers of religion as well as one of the leading Catholic thinkers of modern times. In God Without Being, Marion challenges a fundamental premise of traditional philosophy, theology, and metaphysics: that God, before all else, must be. Taking a characteristically postmodern stance and engaging in passionate dialogue with Heidegger, he locates a “God without Being” in the realm of agape, or Christian charity and love. If God is love, Marion contends, then God loves before he actually is.

First translated into English in 1991, God Without Being continues to be a key book for discussions of the nature of God. This second edition contains a new preface by Marion as well as his 2003 essay on Thomas Aquinas. Offering a controversial, contemporary perspective, God Without Being will remain essential reading for scholars and students of philosophy and religion.
 
“Daring and profound. . . . In matters most central to his thesis, [Marion]’s control is admirable, and his attunement to the nuances of other major postmodern thinkers is impressive.”—Theological Studies
 
“A truly remarkable work.”—First Things
 
“Very rewarding reading.”—Religious Studies Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226505657
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	07/01/2012
Series:	Religion and Postmodernism
Edition description:	2nd Secondtion ed.
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jean-Luc Marion, member of the Académie française, is emeritus professor of philosophy at the Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). He is the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies, professor of the philosophy of religions and theology, and professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He also holds the Dominique Dubarle chair at the Institut Catholique of Paris. In 2020 he was awarded the Ratzinger Prize for his lifetime achievements in theology.


David Tracy (1939-2025) was the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies and professor of theology and the philosophy of religions at the University of Chicago, where he also served on the Committee on Social Thought. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He authored many influential essays and ten books, including The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism, On Naming the Present: God, Hermeneutics, and Church, Plurality and Ambiguity, and Blessed Rage for Order, the last two published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Translator’s Acknowledgments
Preface to the English Edition (1991)
Preface to the Second Edition (2012)
Envoi
God Without Being
—1—
The Idol and the Icon
1. First Visible
2. Invisible Mirror
3. Dazzling Return
4. Conceptual Idol
5. Icon of the Invisible
6. The Face Envisages
7. Visible Mirror of the Invisible
8. The Icon in the Concept
—2—
Double Idolatry
1. The Function of the Idol
2. The Ambivalence of the Conceptual Idol
3. Metaphysics and the Idol
4. The Screen of Being
5. Note on the Divine and Related Subjects
—3—
The Crossing of Being
1. The Silence of the Idol
2. The Ontological Impediment
3. Being or Else (The Good)
4. The Indifference to Be
5. The Inessential Name Thus First
—4—
The Reverse of Vanity
1. Suspension
2. Boredom
3. Vanity of Vanities
4. As If
5. Melancholia
—5—
Of the Eucharistic Site of Theology
1. Let It Be Said
2. The Foreclosed Event
3. The Eucharistic Hermeneutic
4. Whereof We Speak
5. The Delay to Interpretation
Hors-Texte
—6—
The Present and the Gift
1. One or the Other Idolatry
2. Consciousness and the Immediate
3. Metaphysical or Christic Temporality
4. The Memorial
5. Epektasis
6. From Day to Day
7. The Gift of Presence
8. The Urgency of Contemplation
—7—
The Last Rigor
1. Predication
2. Performance
3. Conversions
4. Martyrdom
—8—
Thomas Aquinas and Onto-theo-logy  199
1. The Construction of the Question
2. The Characteristics of Onto-theo-logy
3. The Object of Metaphysica
4. Esse Commune and the Analogy
5. Cause and Foundation
6. The Causa Sui
7. The Horizon and the Name of Being
8. Answer to the Question: Esse without Being
Notes
English-Language Editions Cited
Sources
Index