ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we observed how Marion locates Descartes within metaphysics understood as onto-theo-logy, while at the same time claiming that Descartes exceeds that metaphysics with a thought of God as the infinite. Nevertheless, even though Marion argues that thinking God as the infinite is a significant moment in the unfolding of philosophy (and one that is not pursued by the philosophers who follow Descartes), he completes On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism with a chapter outlining the way in which even the thought of God as infinite is rendered destitute by a belief in God as charity. This argument left a number of questions unanswered, but most important of these is the following: how is the twostaged shift-from metaphysics to non-metaphysical thought, and from nonmetaphysical thought (reconceived by Pascal as metaphysics) to charity-to be made without imposing what Graham Ward in another context calls an “uncritical dogmatism”?1 In other words, how is the order of charity able to fulfil a critical function with regard to metaphysics as Pascal conceives it, without becoming any more than the assertion of a new onto-theo-logical foundation? Marion’s theme of Christian love overcoming both metaphysics and “non-metaphysical thought” needs to be examined more closely. While it is evident in a number of texts, here we will examine it in his most well-known and probably most controversial book, God Without Being. While this text was essentially completed prior to On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism, it has the advantage of bringing together discussions of both medieval and twentieth-century material, and thus serves to frame the Cartesian analysis historically. Sections of God Without Being concerned with the icon versus the idol, as well as the theme of distance, have already been considered. What remains to be examined is Marion’s reading of two figures that loom large in theological and philosophical history: Heidegger, and Thomas Aquinas. We will then be in a better position to assess, at least in a preliminary way, the possibilities of the theological destitution of metaphysics and “non-metaphysical thought” by love.
