REVIEW TO ANSELM KIM’S NAMING THE UNNAMEABLE GOD: LEVINAS, DERRIDA AnD MARION

       Anselm’s Naming the Unnameable God: Levinas, Derrida and Marion presents a postmodern phenomenological approach to the problem of expressing God’s subtle integrity. The interpretation of Kim to the works of the three French thinkers, attempt to usher the thinking in a unique alternative way of naming this unnameable God, in a way that it would preserve God’s irreducible transcendence and to avoid a sheer kataphasis and sheer apophasis.

       The following also presents Levinas, Derrida and Marion’s argument is the need to reject ontotheological approach, for such thinking would only be dangerous to believer and non-believer. Ontotheology would only contribute to the oblivion or forgetfulness of being. For such employment method would only recede the nexus towards naming this unnameable God.  

       The following review would give an overview provided by Anselm Kim’s interpretation to Levinas, Derrida and Marion point in rejecting ontotheological approach and its non-ontotheological naming of the unnameable God drawing from their respective approach.  It will also include a story that would somehow contribute in naming this unnameable God as a conclusion.

Levinas, Derrida and Marion: Naming God non-ontotheologically

E. Levinas: God in the hungry

        Min had come to show how Levinas had come to a thinking of naming God in a way that it would not be consider as ontotheology. Levinas had come to consider that ethics could be a possible way out for ontotheology. One can avoid any possible thematization or reducing God’s transcendence to man’s subjectivity. It is the encounter of the ‘Other,’ hungry, that would shakes up such purportedly par excellence ontotheological thinking. Hungry for Levinas is the expression of the unbridgeable distance between the self and to God.  

        The main point of Levinas is that this thematization of God would only lead to confusion and the possibility of putting God in distant place, offering instead an alternative that would possibly lead into nearness through individual relationship with the neighbor.

 Jean-Jacques Derrida: On Prayer

       His rejection of ontotheological leads him to focus on the potential of negative theology which occurs into two phases. The possibility of negative theology only as an event and takes place in the course of prayer. Prayer for Derrida is a secret, absolutely secret. Prayer is a way of asking all the questions which are part of the individual’s iconography. It involves a suspension of certainty and that such epoché (to bracket, to put certain belief out of action or consideration so that they may not interfere with the pure and unadulterated apprehension of an event or experience.) of knowledge is part of a prayer has to be in order to be authentic.

   Derrida’s naming God, is possible only as negative theology in its self-transcending, self-negating movement as prayer to another whose name remains forever unspecified, or as reference without a referent and only as a movement of referential transcendence inherent in all human struggles for authenticity and justice.

Jean-Luc Marion: God in praise

      Marion also come to an understanding similar to Levinas and Derrida that it is necessary to dismiss ontotheology and the precipice it entails in to the discourse on God. Marion’s agreement the need for going beyond the sheer understanding of God and in finding mode that will preserve the transcendence of God. For Marion, praise is neither true nor false. It does goes beyond the predicative propositional use of language. It is a performative that elaborates gifts with words, not to make things with words.

Derrida, Levinas and Marion attempt to shake the ontotheological comportment of the believer and non-believer come into such understanding or create a par excellence concept of God (Naming the unnameable God). It illuminates ones understanding, an understanding that is devoid of conceptualization, representational approach to God or reducing God’s transcendence through the language of predication as one attempt to name this unnameable God. The three French thinkers idea does gave an opportunity to a believer or non-believer of re-thinking what had come to be in the process of knowing this unknowable God. The idea provided offers an idea and the necessity to suspend as believer or non-believer in totally accepting the ethereal concept of God. Derrida and Levinas and Marion offer the need for going beyond, being critical to brevity of expression, solipsistic understanding. For such thinking would shove further to a more complicaticated and unprogressive attempt in naming God.  

        As way of conclusion allow me to share a story that would somehow in agreement with the three French philosophers the importance to reject ontotheological arguments and in the process to avoid reducing the irreducible God’s transcendence.

        I Am Third

       A popular boy living in a town is admired by many in the community, not because of he is the son of a wealthy and powerful family in the town but because of his motto in life. One day, Juan’s teacher asked every student about their motto in life which everyone is eagerly waits for his turn to share his motto in life. The teacher asked Juan for his motto in life and replied, “I Am Third”. The teacher was puzzled by Juan’s answer and demands for an explanation. Juan replied by saying that ‘I Am Third’ because first God, second Others and I am third.