FAR Analysis 2.2-4 PDF

And so in Section 1 we see Marion build his argument. And here he says that asking about the existence of a God is impossible for us because the very way by which we ask forbids the question our responses forbid us from truly asking because there are answers already that frame and therefore get in t...

And so in Section 1 we see Marion build his argument. And here he says that asking about the existence of a God is impossible for us because the very way by which we ask forbids the question our responses forbid us from truly asking because there are answers already that frame and therefore get in the way of asking our questions about God. So therefore, what is necessary, he says, is to look for another mode of confronting this question, a way that safeguards the question but also moves past past our biases. And how is that he says, if you remember, he leaves, he leaves us with this seemingly problematic thing. He says to have the chance to aim at God, it is necessary to attempt to do precisely without seeing, comprehending and or attaining God, which is again something we don't know to do because everything we know, everything we know about, we know because of seeing them comprehending it or attaining it even as knowledge, right? And this is exactly what he sets out to explore in sections 2 to 3 in Section 2, which I think we've started, but don't worry, I'll review it all over again in Section 2 entitled what the response has to say. He actually goes into the responses quote, UN quote that we've had. And you can imagine Marion saying something like this. He's he's it's like he's saying, OK, these are all the responses that we have had. These are what the responses have to say. They are what have always framed and gotten in the way of how we ask questions about God. They are all our metaphysics and they all belong to us. None of this belongs to God. None of this says anything about God. So any claims made about God within these answers are pure idolatry, right? So this is what we were starting to discuss last time. And so let's just review and maybe go through Section 2 because I'm not, I don't remember which where you stopped, but have you seen this slide? Just show me a thumbs up, please. I believe in the Yeah, thank you. And again, did I read out a definition of photosynthesis in a triangle? I did. Some people are saying that this maybe a lot of you have not don't remember anymore, but OK, OK, I'll just I'll just highlight the key parts then. So if you remember in Section 2, right, he begins with saying that statements such as I believe in God or I do not believe in God offend the very question of God, right? They offend the very question of God. Why is that? Because it is not a statement of fact, but merely a statement of belief that does not even convey any essence. It doesn't clarify anything. It doesn't say anything about the world. And This is why I read out the definition of photosynthesis and the geometric definition of of a triangle. And if you remember, I also read out certain lines from the poetry of Emily Dickinson, which talks about hope and describes hope as a bird that purchase in the soul and continues to sting and never stops to sing. And then I also read out a part of WB Yates, William Butler Yates, The Second Coming, which spoke of anarchy being loosed upon the earth, which spoke, which spoke of this integration chaos, right. And then I also the last sentence I, I read or the last lines I read, or the very popular lines from Shakespeare's As You Like It. All the world's a stage, all the women and men, mere players. We have our exits, something like that. We, we fulfill different roles, etcetera. It wasn't. It was more beautifully said by Shakespeare, of course. But you remember I read out those things, those five sentences or lines of poetry. And what I wanted to do to get you there was to show what Marion means. Whether it's a definition, a scientific definition of photosynthesis or a geometric definition of a triangle, or a non definition, let's say a poetry or a metaphorical description of something, these things nevertheless conveyed the essence of something. It conveyed the meaning of something, right? Of hope, of what it means to live a finite life or of chaos of a triangle, a photosynthesis, right. So he says if we were to compare those kinds of statements with a statement such as I believe in God or I do not believe in God, we'd see the difference. And the difference is that these things have 0 meaning at all. These statements are meaningless and they do not convey anything at all. But if we were to be pressed for what it conveys, one might say he says that it doesn't convey anything about God, but about me, the speaker of belief. So when someone says I believe in God, what someone is really saying according to Mariones, I can ascribe to myself a broader community of not just human beings but also non human things such as the divine or maybe Saints or angels. Or when I say I believe in God, that means probably that I I my psychological disposition is that of heteronomy, which means that I believe that I'm not the only one in charge of my life. Perhaps there's a thing called destiny or God. Why is it called heteronomy? Hetero means other. Nomi means law. Or nomos means law, which means that you are abiding by the law of another, not just your own. So when I say I believe in God, it might be a way also of admitting that my psychological disposition is such that there's an energy or a force that is in charge of my life, not just me, right? And I do not believe in God would be simply the the opposite of those things that maybe I don't ascribe myself a community other than human. And that I think that my, my psychological disposition is such that I am the only one in charge of my life, right? All of these things are about the speaker. None of these things refer to God. This is the point that he makes here. And so he says metaphysics is idolatry right there. Whichever way we we conceptualize and think about God, what we see really are ourselves, our aspects of ourselves, our imperfections, our finitude or our human capacities. On page 329, he begins this with, he says, so nothing de jure, nothing by law can be said decisively about God except this. When it comes to the matter of God, conclusions concerning God do not belong to him, but to the one who thinks him, right? That's pretty much what we've illustrated earlier, right? But he digs this deeper. He, he, he, he further shows us what kind of idolatry metaphysics is and how deeply it goes right. So again, why is being itself idolatry, right? And his answer to this is because when we predicate existence or being to God, it ties down God to being. Now, what could be wrong about tying God to being that? Doesn't that even mean we're validating God's existence, right? And this is how we can understand what he says here, right? This is how we can wrap our heads around what he's trying to say here. So again, another set of statements, 1 + 1 = 2. There is a bird on the tree. What we can notice about these statements is that these sentences easily say something about reality, whether it's physical reality, like a bird you can point to that's a perch that's perching on a tree, or something that can be verified by our minds. Computing 1 + 1 = 2, OK, it checks that that's true. It says something about reality, but statements like God exists or God does not exist doesn't really say anything. We've established that earlier, but he uses this as a way to again dig deeper. So Marion argues that any metaphysical claim is idolatry. Why? Because when we assume the existence of something like God, when when I assume that existence is predictable to God or can be attributed to God, we tie down God to being. And what that really means is that we are assigning reality to God. Now when we assign reality to the to God, Marion says that that is the mark of the ego, right? What is he saying here? Think of it this way when I say, when I say, when I say that say, give me a second here when I say Archie has wonderful hair and I wish I was born with that straight hair. Yes, you when I say Archie has wonderful hair. Or let's just say Archie is Archie is gorgeous, right? Or when I say Pauline is gorgeous when I say Nina is gorgeous. Antoine is gorgeous. When I say statements like that, sure, what you what you hear is what I predicate, but before the predicate gorgeous, what I'm actually before that. What I'm actually assuming is that there is the existence of those people, right? Whenever we make a statement about anything, we are asserting the reality of it. And the assignation of reality or the assertion of reality of something, according to Marion, is the trademark of ego. It has the stamp of ego all over it. Why? Because all that we consider real or all that we consider being is something reduced to the rank of a concept, right? So it doesn't. It's not wrong to say Nina is gorgeous, Archie is gorgeous. There's nothing wrong with that, right? Except that when we use that same kind of statement with something that we don't really know, such as God is great, God does exist, right? We don't really, we're not saying anything at all, right? And we are assigning reality to to something that we don't even know exists or not, right? And yet here we are assigning reality to something. But it gets deeper than this. As you can see, it says when when we use is or being as predictable of God, what we're doing is we're thinking of God as being. And to think of God as being means to put God under this whole collection of everything that we ever know that the ego knows as being. In other words, we're subsuming God under being just one of those things that exist, right? And so he says we reduce God to the rank of a simple conceptus conceived by the human being. What does that mean? Conceptus, Pretty much what you can. You can understand it as a concept, but if you think of, if you break down the word of conceptus or concept, it comes from the Latin con, which is with or together and then capere, which means to take. And so if you put con capere together or conceptus together, it means to take into oneself something, to take a concept into oneself, like a little piece of knowledge that we can now have, right? And then it says here he says we reduce God to the rank of a simple concept that's conceived by the human being and is conceived. God is conceived as a simple and pure cogitable. What is that? What is cogitable? Now you might have heard of Rene Descartes saying cogito ergo sum. Do you know the translator translation of that? What does that mean? Cogito ergo sum MARMI got this. I got your message. What does cogito ergosu mean? I think they're four. I am right. I think they're 4M. So cogito means I think a cogitable is something that you could think of. But again, we get to what what Marion wants to say when we break down the the the the word cogitable when we look at the etymology. So the root of cogitable is cogitare, cogitare. So Co means together. Aggitare means literally to agitate, to shake things up, to move things around, to put things in motion, right? So the essence of cogitable ties back to the act of bringing thoughts together, steering or moving them in the mind for consideration, for examination, right? And this reflects the process of thinking or, or conceptualizing something in a manner that can be mentally apprehended or, or entertained or ancestral would say we construct in our consciousness something. But then can we construct in our consciousness this thing that we call God? Does that not go against God being God? Can we just subsume under many everything else this concept called God, right? Because whenever we speak of God's existence, that is what we do. We are putting God under the quote category, being just like everything else that exists that we know of and don't know of, right? Not, not unlike this pen or my mouse or my phone. These are all things that are and therefore things that I can put in my mind and be able to think about, right? So that is why that is the metaphysics that he's talking about. We're not done with the metaphysics. This is just the metaphysics of his explanation of idolatry. And if you're ever wondering what this part of the text is talking about, we've just summarized it. This is what it means right now moving forward, what he does is this. So he's talked about idolatry, the metaphysics idolatry. He's talked about metaphysics is idolatry and how it's all about us. And then what he then what he does is he looks at like the the real consequences of that kind of thinking, right? So you'll see here, this is what he says pretty much. OK, so we've established that when we explain God, when we say God exists, God does not exist. It's not about us. And pretty much ultimately what we're really saying is this. When someone says God exists, what they're really saying is God is conceivable by me. God is imaginable to me. I can have a concept of God. I can somehow imagine God. And when we say God does not exist, what we're saying is. God is not conceivable by me. This is pretty much kind of like the implication of what he what he's argued earlier, right? So if this is the real meaning of God exists, and this is the real meaning of God does not exist, what then becomes the condition of God's existence upon which depends the existence of God? What do you think guys? You switched your videos off again, please switch it on. If God exists means God is conceivable by me, and if God does not exist means God is not conceivable by me. What then becomes the condition of God's existence? His incomprehensibility or comprehensibility? For whom? For the For the speaker? Or for humans? In other words, who gets to create the existence of God? Me, right? Conceivable by me. Not conceivable by me. And therefore the condition of God's existence is me. It's almost as though I'm the God who creates God or who creates this thing called God, when actually that's just all what I can see, right? And this is, again, the idolatry of metaphysics. But he takes the time as well to show us that there are real things happening out of this notion of this kind of idolatry. And he says this is how metaphysical claims or statements reveal more about or implicate the speaker more, as he says in the text. And the example he gives us, the examples he gives that he gives us are political idolatry and moral idolatry. So let's go first to political idolatry. What does that mean? Political idolatry is the use of religious belief or political ends or the the the use of religious beliefs to validate or to gain power, right or authority. And if you remember in the text, he talks about the privilege of election. What is that? It is, it is, and this sounds familiar because you've heard this before. This is the claim of some people or some groups that say we are the chosen people of God. Another way that this this gets expressed, which Marion does not say, but I think fits what he's talking about is when some groups say we kill in the name of Jesus or Allah or or insert name of God here right. So the thing about these kinds of claims is the the privilege of election or the the privilege of being chosen by God by implication means that we who claim that we were chosen exist more or our lives are more valid than those who are not. And therefore those who are not chosen by God. And therefore by virtue of my being chosen, there are those who are excluded from that, right. And so we are more real. Our existence is more real because it's mandated by divinity. And most of the time that means I am more valid, my life is more valid than those others. An example here is unifest manifest, the US manifest destiny, right? The whole actually, this is not just limited to the US, but in the West, right, European expansionism, all of these things were done mostly coming from the notion of there is a duty. It is our manifest destiny that we spread enlightenment, education and culture and civilization in the world and that's what led to colonization. Another one, we need the Crusades, right? Because you have your groups thinking that they are, they have been blessed and called upon by God to spread Christianity or to spread this specific religion. Something, an example that's really very real for us right now. There's Zionism and the establishment of Israel, right, about which so much can be said. But really we're seeing, we're seeing the reality of this and the consequences of this kind of idolatry unfold real time around us, given what's happening in Palestine, right? So political idolatry is, it is an expression, real expression of the idolatry that he's described metaphysically earlier. It has real life consequences. This is just one of them. Political idolatry. Note here it's CF or compare Eliades cosmosization via consecration. And that might fly over your head right now. That's perfectly all right. But what I wanted to take you to take note of is when we read Eliade in Mario 3, this theme will also be brought up. And I'd like for you to think about that, right? Compare what Marion has to say about it, what Eliade has to say about it, and then think about that on your own. OK, now for Marion, this mode of thinking, this privilege of election, is based on the logical absurdity, right? It's like saying the way they act is that God does not exist because, you know, the what drive their actions are are really political ends, not God, but political objectives. And so This is why for Marion, it's like saying God does not exist, but we are his people, right? How convenient. It's like this, this, this notion of this privilege of election. It's like saying we don't really believe in God. We don't really know if God exists, but whatever the case may be, we are his chosen people. And that is absurd. That's why that's what Marion says is logically absurd, right? And then he goes to another very real example of idolatry, which is moral idolatry. What this is, what this means is we attribute evil to a divine being or to divine beings, right? This is a topic we'll focus on in Module 4, and pretty much what this means is moral idolatry is when we attribute our set of morals to the divine right. And so one of the expressions of this, which Mariano also talks about in the text, is how people challenge God's existence or put God's existence to the question by the fact that there is much evil in the world, Right? And as a matter of fact, it's a very convincing argument. That's why we have this one entire module devoted to it. I think there might not be a stronger argument against the existence of God than the fact that there's so much evil in the world, right? Apropos what we've earlier mentioned, if you ever watch the news about children being killed in bombed in wars, right? Or, or because they're in war-torn areas, they can't even have access to water and food, right? Or children abused in, in other situations, right? When you see these kinds of things, you'd understand why people find it easy to think that there must not be a God. You know, where is God in all this? And what is God doing about all the suffering, Right? And for people, this is more than sufficient proof that God does not exist. There's no such thing as God. People argue that evil disproves the existence of God because if God is the the God we know, then this would have not been allowed on earth, right? Valid argument. Excuse me, but Marion looks at this argument and he really like, he sharply looks at the assumptions behind that argument and he says this kind of thinking. What it really argues is that God does not exist because God does not deserve to exist because he is evil or he allows for evil to persist, Right, Right. So in other words, the other side of the argument seems to be that God must still exist precisely so that we can blame him for not being there to solve other problems, right? He said God must still exist precisely so that we can accuse him of being the provoker of perhaps the the persistor of evil. And then after that accusation condemning him to no longer existing. Simply said, it's like this, because of all the evil in the world, we need to blame something. And so we conjure this notion of a God and then we we because this God does not do anything about all the evils, we could say you don't exist, right? So we conjure a God just so we could also kill off a God who does not deserve to exist in the 1st place. And then he says, after all, I who am passing such judgement or making that claim about the evils in the world is I am innocent. And that is the disposition of a moral of someone who believes in moral or he is who thinks about moral idolatry. I have no connection to all the evils that I am seeing in the world, and therefore I'm not responsible for those. And therefore there must be something else, something bigger that that is responsible for all of these things, right? So here lies then the paradox in the last section of Part 2. This is what he says. This is what Marion says. Herein lies the paradox in seeking God, or in at least posing the question of him. It is necessary that we first bracket our belief or the belief in our belief in God, since these beliefs only concern the one who owns and supports them. I'll say that again. Here is the paradox, according to Marion, in seeking God, or in at least posing the question of God, it is necessary that we first bracket all of our beliefs and all of our belief and our unbelief in God, since these beliefs only concerned us, those who own and support those beliefs, right? So obviously what he's asking us to do here is some sort of epoque to set aside our judgements, to set aside our biases. But look at what he says after, right? He continues this on page 231. And he says the question of God perhaps can be raised only after the differences between those who believe and those who do not believe are finally bracketed, and as a consequence suspending all other differences between the Jew and the Greek, the slave and the freeman, of course, between male and female, and even between atheists and theists, between philosophers, modern man of the world and journalists. Especially the difference between the believers and non believers, since they each believe what they say very well represents God as such, when in fact their firm convictions most often only serve to confirm an identity that would otherwise be doubtful or questionable. That was long, but notice what it's about here. He says we need to take a look at our differences. The question of God can only be raised when we remove, suspend, or bracket all of those differences, especially the differences between believers and non believers right now, why do we need to look at our differences and bracket them right? Why did he go straight to differences? And you'll see here what Marion is trying to do is if we want to remove all of our, our, our biases, then the clear symptom of these biases would be those how we, we are different from others because they are descriptive of they signify the very particularity or of our mode of existence or characteristic of existence. So those details belong to us, let's say female, Christian, Filipino, right believer, agnostic, non believer. So these details about us, which makes us different from others, they're the ones that are already in the way. They are the one, they're the biases that they're the biases that we're coming from when we even ask about God. And so clearly, if you want to bracket things to know what what to bracket, go to the differences you have from others, right? How are you different from others? So that's what you bracket. And so he says that's the only way that we can legitimately ask about God to to to bracket all of these biases. And what you can see is that these are all in our differences, right, because these are the details that belong to us, not God, right? Finally, he says, well, first of all, kind of it will I'll kind of pre empted for you. But in the end, right in the end of this article, Marion will ask us to do some sort of intentional or to acknowledge intentional. So here he's doing he's asking us to do EPO K. But but then you later on see that he ends with the notion of intentional and that you'll also notice that he was he's only able to do that because of the EPO K that he goes through in this section in the next right. So because he actually takes the effort to set aside the responses slash ideas such slash metaphysics. So you'll see that later on Marion will ask what is it any way that are conscious, intense consciousness rather intense. There's got to be something there, not just an idea we that we invented, but something that's given to be asked about in the 1st place. And this is what Marion tries to do. So that So what he first does is to reduce everything that gets in the way of seeing that given. OK, so let's move on to Section 3. But hold on. I think there are messages here. I got it JC. Someone said. I realized from this that religious teachings are also highly influenced by human constructs. If so, are these teachings not considered idolatry as well? And does this make religious? Does this make religion subjective than collective? I love this question so I'll give some time to this. I'll repeat that so everyone else can get on with the question. I realized from this that religious teachings are also highly influenced by human constructs. Let me stop there. Absolutely right. I don't know if you know it, but there are here in the Philippines, there is a black Nazareth, Jesus of Nazareth. I forget which Asian, which African country it is, but there's the representation of Jesus is also black, right? Because that is what they imagine a human, the Son of God, to be. And quite interestingly, even if Jesus is supposedly somewhere in the somewhere in in Asia as well, or maybe southern Asia, or maybe somewhere in and in the middle part of the world, he is always depicted to be absolutely white. So definitely what you said here. Religious teachings are also highly influenced by human constructs. So I just talked about the representation of Jesus, but Can you imagine what kind of influences go into religious teachings, Right. And then so the question is, are these teachings not considered idolatry as well? And does this make religion subjective than collective? So first of all, Marion is not saying to hell with all of religion, all of this is idolatry. That's not what he's saying. You can think of Marion as looking for the most respect, respectful, the most accurate, and the best way of having a relationship with this concept of a God. And because he is not being religious right now, because he's not teaching religion, he's not talking about God, he remains the converse. It keeps the conversation in a on a philosophical level. Right So well he will admit that he will most likely, and he will admit in other works he does, that religious teachings are definitely influenced by human constructs. What will matter to him here is not to discredit the teachings, but rather to insert a foundational attitude that both believers and non believers could have as a way to relate with whoever, whatever God or divinity is, right? So it's not about the teachings He's not contesting the teachings. He's contesting perhaps the certainty and the stubbornness about those teachings. Right. And then the last question is, does this make religion subjective and collective? Think about it, while we do have communities of religion, which means it is a collective, can a religion really be not subjective? If that is not, if you don't have a subjective dimension in your religion, then wouldn't that be like going through the motions? Right? So yeah, that's how I'd address this. OK, got it. Sorry, I might have called you the wrong name. So someone asked you how does bracketing everybody's differences help define God? Good question. Why bracket differences? So first of all, we're not defining God. We're trying to remove what's what's in the way of us seeing perhaps a better concept of God, right? But because we're bracketing our idolatries, we're back hitting our biases. Biases. The best marker for our biases would be our particularities. And so if we were to set aside those differences, then that means we would have a more, I guess we could say it a more universal concept that is not defined by what you were brought up to believe and say God is a woman because I'm a woman. You know, so maybe we don't need to think about those specific things for now because we're bracketing those things. And I say for now, for good reason, again, we're looking for the most appropriate, most respectful, and also at the same time most humble concept that we can come up with that gives God the proper designation of God because it doesn't just subsume God under like a general category or a general concept that we impose on everything else, right? It says here, if we set aside our cultural differences and thinking methods, how do we try to understand, to understand God's essence? I love your questions. These questions actually will be answered by this section that we're just about to tackle. How can we get to an essence of God? Is it an essence of God that we want to get to? Can we actually get to an essence of God? Can we get to an idea of God, of God like a concept maybe that's not. See, all of these questions are questions of attaining, understanding, comprehending, seeing God. And the point of Marion is that's not what we're doing here. And that's why we are in this dilemma right now. What are we doing? What is Marion doing? All so far? What we know is we need to set aside things. We need to do it. OK, OK, so let's see if your questions will be answered by this next part. Section 3. Excuse me. So what does he do in Section 3? This is what he starts with. He says the question of God can only be asked properly once it is freed from all responses that impose themselves by way of idolatry. He with that with with that sentence, he just summarized what we tackled in the previous sections, right? The question of God can only be asked properly once it is freed from all responses that impose themselves by way of idolatry. And then he says it remains only to perform the reduction upon the question of God to God by bracketing God from all of these dogmatic responses. In other words, metaphysics, if it is therefore possible to prove that we can reduce everything to idolatries, and if in the in this case there remains something to be said, then it remains reasonable to name God irreducible. So partly to answer your question, he is explaining what he's about to do in this section, and what is he about to do? He says we want to remove or bracket God from all of our responses, and he even says this in a very confusing way. In other parts of this, he says, we are reducing the idea of God so that it becomes closer to the idea of God. And the assumption here is that whatever is beyond our concepts will be closer to an idea or a signifier or a reference to God. So we need to bracket everything that we've put upon this God so that perhaps there'd be something that would remain. So he's saying we need to remove our bracket God from other responses. We need to actually unravel those responses and see which are assumptions. Mostly these are assumptions of metaphysics because he's now going into a very macro discussion of how we understand things. And 3rd, he postulates, Marion says, OK, let's see, let's say we actually reduce the idea of God. We've set aside everything that we've imposed upon this idea. We've set aside our biases. What if something actually remains, something that cannot be reduced along with our concepts? He says. Could it be that that is what we can call irreducible? And would it not be reasonable to call that the to name the irreducible as God or to to make the irreducible as the reference to this thing we call God? Right. So why irreducible again? Because that is what remains after we remove all of our concepts. That is what remains. Something still is left even after we bracket or take things away that are that come from us, our own thinking. We don't even know yet if there's there will in fact be something that remains. So he's just going to go through this whole process of bracketing everything and then he will see, he says, OK, maybe something will be left and maybe that thing we could no longer reduce. So that's what he will be searching for. And so in Section 3, you'll see him taking things away in big strokes, because again, he's taking it from a macro perspective, a metaphysical perspective. You'll, you'll see what I mean by that in a, in a bit you, he will be sweeping away these brack bracketing these ideas in big strokes. But before that, I'd like you to notice what he says. And this is pretty much this is him saying stating his conclusion at the very start of this section. So here, he says, the idea of God imposes itself upon us once his existence is bracketed so that. So here he says the idea of God imposes itself upon us once his existence is bracketed. ○ Because how can the idea of God impose itself? ○ And this, the word existence can kind of clue us in as to where Marion is going. So given what he said in the previous part, it makes sense that this is the first idea of God that he peels away, and that is existence. God is not within existence. God is not existence, being or existence. It's not something that can apply to God, right? ○ So he peels away existence or the fact or the claim of being. We need to remove existence or being from God. * Not existence "What God (and him alone) accomplishes under the names of creation and resurrection, consists precisely in nullifying the distinction between being and not being, and in reversing what is, in what is not, and in transferring what is not, to the account of what is. Not only can the idea of "God" be rid of existence, but also this disqualification of existence qualifies God as such." (332) So on page 332 he says this is in Section 3.  He says what God and Him alone accomplishes under the name of creation and resurrection consists precisely in nullifying the distinction between being and not being, and in reversing what is and what is not, and in transferring what is not to the account of what is. Not only can the idea of God be rid of existence, but also this disqualification of existence qualifies God as such. So Marion is showing us here certain instances within the context of religion that prove that we think of God as something that really does escape this duality of existence and non existence being and non being. This is why he mentions these things, creation and resurrection. You might go, ma'am, don't we need to also set aside those ideas of creation and resurrection? Aren't they also like they might be human, like human assumptions too, right? But what Marion does is he uses our assumptions, our general assumptions, our general descriptions of God, actions that we attribute to God, such as creation and resurrection. In other words, miracles and what that means about existence or being. And he notices that these things associated with God, like creation and resurrection, nullifies the distinction between being and not being, existing and not existing. And therefore, in other words, our notion of divinity cannot exist or cannot be the way we know being or existing to be. So let me explain this. For example, when you think of the notion of creation or creator, right, which most if not well, most religions, majority of religions associate with gods or the God or depending on how many gods believe in this notion of creation, which is normally usually associated with a God. When you think about it and what it means, what it says about being in existence, it makes this existence really fuzzy. Excuse me, because how can something be in existence before everything else existed, before even the notion of existence came to be? How can something already be there? And does that not? Does that not then delegitimize the notion of creating out of nothing? ○ Because how can we say that God created everything out of nothing when there was never nothing in the beginning there was God, right? That makes sense, either we think that God is not in the beginning in existence to create everything, or we can admit that God was there in the 1st place to be before everything got created. Which then begs the question, where did God come from? Was God also created? ○ And for the philosophers, this is a question of causality that hasn't that has the effect of an infinite regress and that that does not make sense to us. That is something that our reason cannot take. We cannot imagine this kind of ad infinitum argument, right?  And so just the notion of creation, it bursts open this idea of being and not being was God being when he created the earth or not, right? So this escapes our understanding of being and also our understanding of nothing. Resurrection is in, in many, but not a lot of religions, right? also mess with our understanding of what it means to no longer be since it involves having to come back to life or come back to being. That's why it's miraculous → That's why Jesus resurrection is miraculous→ That's why he's resurrecting Lazarus is miraculous because it completely does away with the duality of being a non being. It's not just a question of someone dying and then coming back to living, right? Because it becomes a question of what mode of being is there when a person can just slide in and out of existence or can cause someone else like Lazarus to slide in and out of existence. That's not how we know being to be. * Not existence "What God (and him alone) accomplishes under the names of creation and resurrection, consists precisely in nullifying the distinction between being and not being, and in reversing what is, in what is not, and in transferring what is not, to the account of what is. Not only can the idea of "God" be rid of existence, but also this disqualification of existence qualifies God as such." (332) So this is what he means by this when he says that God, what God accomplishes under the names of creation and resurrection consists precisely in nullifying the distinction between being and non being. So point that he's making is this. Not only can the idea of God be rid of existence, not only do we need to divorce this notion of existence and being from God, we can also say that this disqualification of existence is what qualifies God as such. ○ It is this notion of God that disqualifies our understanding of being, our existence as we know it, right? So God nullifies this rudimentary distinction of being or this rudimentary assumption of being and not being. The only two modes we know things to be be, to be or not to be. In Filipino, we could say MERON BA O WALA, which means really this whole notion of God disqualifies existence. And so we need to get rid of this idea of God as something that has to do with existence. If anything, he says “God is distinguished by his excess over existence.” ○ What does that mean? Remember when I was describing Marion's phenomenology, I said, unlike Heidegger, unlike his Searle, he looks at those  aspects of experience of phenomena where there are things that are purely given. And what is a pure given → a saturated phenomena OR with being such that it overflows our capacity for understanding. And the examples he gives are, say, being exposed to the sublime beauty of art or the experience of love where you cannot make sense of it, but you're drawn out of yourself, or maybe the revelation of something about something like a divine being or a God Needless to say, at least we can assume that for Marion, God cannot be contained by existence. God is distinguished by his excess over existence, right? So we've just done away with existence. What remains after? When something stops existing, what is left for you? When something stops existing, what is there that's left? You will be left with memories of me, right? "Can we reduce the idea of God beyond existence? Beyond, or better yet below, existence is essence itself, the essence that determines the possibility of every being through its non-contradiction. Does the idea of "God" therefore survive due to its possibility? In other words, does God think of himself in terms of impossibility?" (332) Memories of this class, memories of art. Exactly. The memories of a certain who. And if you know that person, then that specific whoness is original to that person. And it will never be the same. If you have ever lost a serious relationship, if you've ever been, if you've ever been broken up with, you know that that person is unique and you know the whoness of that person, right? So even if in your world they no longer are, you're left with, even if it's just a very inaccurate idea of that person, it is nevertheless a unique being, right? We might call it, although an inaccurately one or another, you've somehow been able to see or perceive the essence of that person. It's not as though we can ever really get the essence of someone because we are infinite in terms of essence. But the originality of someone's whoness is something that we can get right. And if we were to go to a simpler example, let's say vanilla essence, what does that mean? What is the essence of vanilla? Vanilla essence is that flavour that makes vanilla distinct, right? That makes it known as vanilla. That's why you can make the distinction between vanilla and chocolate, right? And this is something that we, we know as human beings, we hear of, let's say connoisseurs of wine, right? They taste wine and they take the time to smell it. They take the time to, to, to like, let it linger in their, their mouths. And then they say, this is this kind  of wine from this region in this country. I'm getting hints of, of parsley and, and this grape, this train of this or this kind of grape, etcetera, etcetera. We can get something out of even the absence of a, of that thing, right? In other words, what I'm saying is this, if we were to remove existence, what would you be left with? And Marion says beyond, or better yet, below existence is essence itself. So if we were to remove existence, what is left is essence. But what is this essence other than the very thickness of a thing? So a little bit of metaphysics. Again. In metaphysics, for something to be it must have two things, essence and existence, and this is how we know literally everything in the world. Essence refers to what something is, or maybe who something is and therefore it has its defining nature or defining characteristics etcetera. Existence refers to the fact of being or or existence refers to the fact that it is the fact that it exists in reality. So in other words, in simple terms, essence is about the what and existence is about the that of a thing. And so this essence is what makes it what it is, such that even if it no longer really is, the essence remains. Even if the fact of existence is removed, the essence or whatness remains. * What is left? Impossibility. Is God impossibility? "No impossibility can contradict itself by making itself obvious and by imposing its impossibility upon us." (332) The thing about the essence of something is that it also becomes the source of possibility of that thing. You can think of it as kind of like the blueprint of something, right? Having a blueprint means it is possible to be created or possible to exist in reality, even if it doesn't yet exist in reality, right? So, for example, you have the blueprint of a good, a really good app and you have yet to work on it. But the fact that there's a blueprint promises the possibility of it. Even if it might never happen, it promises the possibility of that thing. And same thing with things we lose. If you lose a certain item, the fact that you know what that thing is, whether it's a pen or a jacket, it, it means that you will be able to somehow have another jacket or have another pen because you know what it is, even if it's not going to be exactly the same thing. So it's just like when you have the designer prototype of something. The point is, if you have the essence, the prototype, the blueprint, its existence becomes possible even if it never does become possible. It just remains possible even if it doesn't actually exist.  He says, can we reduce the idea of God beyond existence? And he says beyond or better yet below existence is essence itself, the essence that determines the possibility of every being. So having the essence of something determines its possibility. In other words, essence also is possibility or makes essence is what allows for possibility. → existence is essence itself. Beyond existence is essence itself, the essence that determines the possibility of every being through its non-contradiction. Non-contradiction For A to be possible, it cannot be both A and not A at the same time. In other words, it cannot contradict itself. So it has to be identical to itself. What is Marion now saying? Having removed existence, what is left is essence, and therefore what is left is possibility. Are we saying that God is a possibility? Does the idea of God therefore survive due to its possibility? Is God essence or mere possibility? But then it's funny because after that sentence, he says, in other words, does God think of himself in terms of impossibility? And maybe you were like, what? Hold on, Why did you move from possibility to impossibility right up. So God not existence, not essence, is it possibility, right. And so here, I think, is what went through Marion's head, right? See, if something is possible, that means its essence remains. If its essence remains, it still exists as a concept in our minds, in our reason. If something is possible, that means that its essence, its blueprint, remains. And how does it remain? It remains as a concept, as an idea in our mind, which means that all essence is still tied down to existence as the possibility of its existence, → In other words, Essence is still within the purview of being because it still is the possibility of something to exist any and all possibility is still within the world of being, except that they are not actually existing. So if we want to remove all of our metaphysics and all our concepts, which are all idolatry for Marion, then we cannot claim that the idea of the possibility of God remains, because to say God is possibility means also to say that I can imagine God. God is the possibility of, I don't know, everything, right? But then again, we just said God is beyond these things. we've removed existence or being below that is the essence. We  also removed the essence, but God is also not a possibility because that's still tied with being in existence. What is left for us then? And as you can see on the slide, what is left is impossibility. Impossibility is what we should have. We would have left. So I would draw a circle and I would say, imagine this circle has everything in existence in the world and I'd draw a certain things inside a circle, right? And Marion says God is not in all of these things that exist. So I remove, I erase everything that I've drawn on that circle. So what remains for you? What remains after I've removed everything in the circle? And people, you would probably say the memory that we have, that we had things in that circle. So you have the idea of it, you have the essence of it. And therefore this remains to be a possible space for things to exist. And then what I would do is to erase that very delineation of a circle so that what remains is the blackboard or the blank board. And I'll ask you what remains if we also remove just even the possibility of anything. And you might say nothing, nothing remains. But nothing is again, an abstraction of everything, right? So where Marion goes is for things to not be within the realm of being he suspects. What about impossibility? That's the only option we have left, right? Is God in impossibility or is God impossibility? In other words, does God think of himself in terms of impossibility? Can you think of an impossibility? resurrection. world stops turning for humans to teleport and fly. Aliens 0 Gravity on Earth. Chickens flying. I mean, like real flight. Superpowers. → But let me ask you something. The moment that you thought of those examples, did they become part of all the possibilities in the world, even those that can never ever become real in existence? These examples you came up with: cat changing into a dog walking on water, regeneration of human body parts, zombie apocalypse. I'll give you my own example. Being a Victoria's super, Victoria's Secret supermodel. Quite an impossibility, right? But the moment that we think of something didn't just become part of the possibilities in the world, even if it can never really in actuality be true. The moment we think of something, it becomes part of what's possible, right? Even if it might actually not be possible, it becomes part of things that are possible.  And what's interesting about this is so many things that we thought were that human beings thought were impossible, then they thought of and then they came true. Tablets, your gadgets, your phones, things we just take for granted now used to be impossible things before that. Walking on the for human beings to be on the moon was an impossibility, right? During the time of Archimedes, this was what made him become popular. He said, give me a place to stand on from which I can move the world, right? And I would be able to do that. And The thing is, for them, they can. But then people were able to go to the moon. That's another stance from which you can see the Earth right now. I'm not saying, and Marion is not saying that everything that is impossible that we think of will become actuality. But the point is, number one, the moment you think of something as impossible, it becomes part of the possibilities in the world. And 2nd, we therefore cannot really think of any impossibility because the moment you think of it, it becomes a possibility. So someone here says, I personally think, ma'am, that the things we deem impossible are just impossible to us because we cannot prove it yet. The point that Marion assumes here that we understand is that there is no such thing as impossibility, no such thing as impossibility that you can think of. Impossibility is completely closed off. It is completely inaccessible to us. The one with the moment you think of it, it becomes a possibility. So here's the thing, though. If we say that God, the only realm left for God is impossibility, If we ask, is God impossibility? Marion's response to that would be, but no impossibility can contradict itself by making itself obvious and by imposing its impossibility upon us. ○ If the impossible is completely inaccessible to us, and if the impossible is the only thing where we can imagine God to be, then how come we have this irremovable notion of God that's always been in the minds of human beings from the beginning of time? The idea of God remains thinkable to us in its state of impossibility, right? And therefore, just to go back to the last slide, no impossibility can contradict itself by making itself obvious and by imposing its impossibility upon us, except for this notion of God. But then that means that God is not just impossibility.  And so in this on page 332 he says. But if the idea of God stands for God, that is if one assumes God for how he is given, namely as the exception par excellence in in essence definition and statement, then the idea of God not only remains thinkable in its state of impossibility, but it is characterized precisely by this unique possibility, namely the possibility of impossibility. Right, so God is the possibility of impossibility. What does he mean by this? So we cannot think of impossibility at all, right? But if you think about what God what or who God is for us, a God who is beyond existence, beyond essence, possibility and impossibility, then one thing remains clear, that God makes his idea obvious to us. Or if you don't want to make it sound like God is a person in the task agency, that concept, God is nevertheless obvious to us. We cannot shake off the idea of God, but God makes the idea or this God idea is obvious to us in such a way that we can even still bracket the idea. We can bracket it and it's still there, right? THE POSSIBILITY OF IMPOSSIBILITY The idea of God remains thinkable in its state of impossibility. (It is impossible to escape the question of God.) ○ Characterized by this unique possibility: THE POSSIBILITY OF IMPOSSIBILITY An impossibility that makes itself obvious to us Still allows us to bracket its possibility Impossibility that does not forbid the idea. = Impossibility itself becomes impossible. And Marian says God's impossibility does not forbid the idea of God because when it comes to God, impossibility itself becomes impossible. What does he mean by this? God's impossibility does not forbid the idea of God. ○ God being in the realm of impossible still nevertheless makes this notion God possible for us, and which means therefore, that when it comes to God, there's  no such thing as impossible. Nothing can be within the realm of that impossible. ○ So what we can most associate with God is impossible. That's what he says. But the fact that remains, that it remains thinkable for us even as a question, means that it's possible. So the idea of God is an impossibility, but one that makes itself obvious to us. And therefore this is the only phenomena that we know to be like that. Therefore, in other words, we need to have a state of mind that is different from everything else we've ever known. Not grasping, not understanding, not attaining, not seeing. We must have this unique mental or rational disposition because it is demanded by this phenomenon → disposition of treating it as the very possibility of impossibility. Man lives in the possible and dies in the impossible. Death: when possibility succumbs to impossibility Nevertheless, where there is God, there the impossible is also Nothing is impossible for God. Marion further explains what this means, this possibility of impossibility. And what he does is he looks at humans and he looks at God from the context of impossibility. ○ He says “the first man lives in the possible. It is all that we know of. Even the things we imagined to be impossible nevertheless becomes part of the endless possibilities of life” And this is how we exist. The reason why you're in school is to see the possibility of success someday and the possibility of fulfilling your dream, right? ○ So everything that we ever, everything, our lives are always within possibilities. That is his point. ○ However, when we die, that is the end of all possibilities, and therefore all of our possibilities now will become impossible The possibilities, I imagine for myself these many things that I dream of every day, when I die, they no longer become possible. ○ In other words, when I die, I move from pure possibility to impossibility, the end of all possibilities, right? So This is why he says in death our possibility succumbs to impossibility. We go from possibility to nothing, right? However, if you were to follow the same analysis that  preceded this, then we would understand that the very idea of nothing is impossible to God. Remember that earlier nothing is impossible for God. Impossibility is impossible for God, right? God messes up so much with this notion of existence, possibility, and impossibility that nothing can be. So if it's if impossible is completely inaccessible to us, and if there's nothing there, then if there, if we don't know what is there, we can't even say nothing is there, because after all, something is making itself known to us because we keep on thinking about it, right? So if God is in the realm of impossibility, then even nothing cannot be in that realm. So if God is in the impossible, then it logically follows that nothing cannot be possible with God. This is what he discusses here. Nothing can be impossible with God. And this is not a religious claim that saying, oh, I believe that through the grace of God, I will say I will be able to, I don't know, meet my favorite anime. I will meet the human version of let's say Nana me right, or, or Toji or something like that. It doesn't. By the grace of God, I will meet. It's not what it means, right? It simply is a logical conclusion. Nothing is impossible for God, right? It is putting together what he's tackled earlier. So what he says on page 333: So what I'm saying is those mental gymnastics about possibility and possibility becomes important in what he's about to say. And what he's about is to say is this. “For as long as our minds do not enter into the realm of the impossible, or do not even reach the gates of what is impossible, it cannot talk about God properly, cannot reach God properly.” As long as he says, as long as thought remains in the possible, in what is logical, in what is effective, man is capable of peacefully managing life. And the mortal has no need of reason to call or reason rather to call upon God. → whenever we are within the realm of the possible, any idea of God you can endure is really idolatry, right? We can only reach the idea of God when they leave the realm of the possible. As long as we remain in the possible, there's no need for God. Things can still be made sense of. So we can manage, right? Even what is even like things we call unknown, we can label as unknown. So one or another, it still fits into our worldview or into our set of concepts. And anything said about God within that is not really about God, but about us, about man, right? Who lives in the realm off possible. And then Marion says, but as soon as man reaches or does not reach precisely reaches just the gates of the impossible, as soon as he stumbles upon it, then he opens up a domain that may be about God, right. As soon as he reaches the impossible, the limits of what is possible, he opens up a domain that may be about God. And then he reminds us of what Saint Augustine said.  He said Saint Augustine, one of a Christian St. Of course, he says, see comprendis non ES Deus. In other words, if you understand it, that is not God, right? If you understand that is not God. So faith and a personal relationship with God, yes, they're valid paths to knowing this God, but one can never really figure out God is a pure intellectual inquiry, no matter how much of A how great you are debating and how much knowledge you have of science and religion and philosophy, right? And we see the same notion in the movie Silence, right? Father Rodriguez, when did he, when do we know when, when can we see that he has reached God or that he was with God, right? Was it during the times when he was filled with faith and he wanted to spread his faith and, and, and attend to the Christians in Japan, right? Or was it when God was so silent and allowed him, him and other people to suffer? Was it during those times that he doubted was it during the times of he let go of his certainty and and succumbed to the demands of of Japanese government, the government of Japan and and decided he'd live a simple life in in peace with a wife, right being, you know, integrated in Japanese culture? Was that when God was present, right? When was God most present right. And so Marion asks us that question, and that's why he talks about possibility and possibility. When are you really in this communion with this thing called God? It seems that for as long as we're sure of things in that we are in the realm of the possible, that is not God. That's all our projections of God. But if we put ourselves in a place where we are in the midst of an impossible, we are in communion with whatever that is, the very possibility of impossibility which we can never figure out. It seems that that is when we start to be at the gates of even asking about what God is or who God is. And Marian also just clarifies this point, that the impossibility of God is not the definition or essence of God. Some students say, ma'am, God is the essence of God is the possibility of impossibility. And I'd like you to make sure that you understand that Marion is not defining God here. And to another concept, the impossibility of God is not the definition or essence of God, but rather this impossibility is just a symptom of the effect of this saturated phenomena called God on our finitude, on our very limited way of existing. The impossibility for us to have a concept of God defines his essence, if he admits to having one. That God becomes comprehensible to God alone, and therefore remains incomprehensible to us, is neither incomprehensible nor absurd. That God becomes comprehensible and possible to us without contradicting our finitude, however, would seem especially incomprehensible and absurd. Only God exceeds his own impossibility for us. God exceeds, therefore, the essence and existence of "God." The idea of him remains thinkable to us, even after bracketing his existence and his essence. Especially after this reduction. (334) How is this not an assumption aka an idolatry? Marion says it is thus impossible to say God is impossible because the impossibility to understand him, that is, to comprehend Him in our concept, is that which formally, precisely, and foremost characterizes God, right? He says that God becomes comprehensible to God alone and therefore remains comprehensible to us. It says here that God becomes comprehensible to God alone and therefore remains incomprehensible to us. It's incomprehensible to us. It's neither incomprehensible nor absurd. That God becomes in that God becomes comprehensible and possible to us without contradicting our finitude, however, would seem especially incomprehensible and absurd. What is he saying here? ○ Simplified, Marion is saying we cannot say God is impossible if we mean to make that a statement about God. ○ But if we like a factual statement definitive about God, but if we admit that this impossibility exists because of its limits, then we can admit that this impossibility is what characterizes God for us given our limitations. It's like a caller. ○ You can't ever see, but you know that it's there because you have some vision of it. So the impossibility for us to have a concept of God defines his essence. If he ever admits to one. This is what he says in the text. But Iran says it only makes sense that God should not make sense. It only makes sense that God should not make sense to us otherwise, otherwise that would not be God. As a matter of fact, comprehending God would be contradictory to our finitude if God were to be beyond our limitations. And so finally, in this section, in this last paragraph here, he says only God exceeds his own impossibility for us. God exceeds, therefore, the essence and existence of God. The idea of him remains thinkable to us even after bracketing his existence and His essence, especially after this reduction. Right. So it seems he's attained what he wanted to attain, which is that which is irreducible. Someone said in another class, ma'am, is when he says only God exceeds as impossibility for us. Isn't that another idolatrous claim? Isn't that an assumption? Isn't that an idolatry? This is not a conceptual or logical statement. Marion will assert, and he is building up to this in the last section.  He will say that God is a pure given of experience. God couldn't quote, exceeds or overflows his own impossibility, and that this is what we are able to experience. It's a pure given of experience. So the idea of God overflows. You don't have to think of God as having the agency to share himself. But if that works for you, sure, we can't really say. But what we know for a fact is the idea of God overflows. And while it overflows our senses in all our capacity to comprehend anything, it remains present as a question, not even as a possibility, but as a mere question, right. And so to aim at the existence of God does not mean to be able to attain a concept of God, to have to get the labels possibility of a possibility or the irreducible as a way to understand God, but to see that we need to signify God in those different and unique terms. Because really, how else would you be? Would you encounter something that is so beyond you, right? If you were to truly encounter something beyond that overflowing your senses, you would be stopped in your tracks. You would be aware that that which we experience cannot be comprehended or seen or attained and would already be just pure, pure overflowing given and if you don't understand that with regard to God or some sort of divine revelation, think about or search online what is called stand howl syndrome. It's what people experience with art. So supposedly some people, especially when they look at, did I correctly spell that? Just correct me if I'm wrong. Stand how syndrome. I think so. I wrote that on the chat, I might be wrong with the spelling, but some people look at art and they pass out or they cry or they break down. And that's because the sublime beauty, the sub, the sublime that if that is revealed by that work of art could not be contained by our concepts or by our minds. And you can compare it to that.