Rather, without broaching questions, for example, of Aristotle’s reflections on the study of metaphysics, I use the term generically in a way that I believe would be appropriate to the conceptual “world” of philosophically-minded thinkers in late antiquity, such as Plotinus and Dionysius: that is, with respect to claims purporting to state something or other about the nature, character, and/or features of reality.
3. In the context of this project, I am attempting to avoid questions raised by current scholarship concerning “mysticism” and “mystical experience.” For this reason, with a few exceptions, I generally avoid using the locutions “mystical experience” and “mysticism,” choosing instead to speak of “mystical union” for the way in which Plotinus and Dionysius each describe the soul’s ascent to and union with the One (Plotinus)/God (Dionysius). I retain the adjective “mystical” in “mystical union” in order to indicate the character of mystery that seems to be a constitutive feature of such union.
4. See Derrida, “Différance” in MARGINS of Philosophy, 6 and 1. Derrida originally delivered this essay before the Société francaise de philosophie, on January 27, 1968.
5. See Marion, The Idol and Distance. Originally published as L’idole et la distance in Paris in 1977 by Editions Bernard Grasset. See also Marion, God Without Being. Originally published as Dieu sans l’être: Hors-texte, © Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1982.
6. In the final section of the text, Marion explores the possibility that his retrieval of the notion of distance (diastasis) enables us to think God and divine revelation in a non-idolatrous manner (roughly, where idolatry would involve (a) treating God as less than God, and (2) treating something that is not God as if it were God). More specifically, Marion explicitly contrasts his understanding of distance with Heidegger’s conception of ontological difference, Levinas’s conception of the Other/alterity, and Derrida’s conception of différance. Somewhat less explicitly, Marion also seems to conceptualize distance in view of Hegel’s conception of difference. See Marion, The Idol and Distance. On the latter issue, see Professor Cyril O’Regan’s especially illuminating essay, “Jean-Luc Marion: Crossing Hegel” in Counter-Experiences (O’Regan, “Jean-Luc Marion,” 95–150). Professor O’Regan’s essay was originally entitled “Marion Crossing Hegel,” and was initially delivered at a University of Notre Dame conference entitled, “In Excess: Jean-Luc Marion and the Horizon of Modern Theology”, May 9–11, 2004.
7. See Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking,” 73–142.
8. The papers delivered in that conference have been compiled and published under the title God, the Gift, and Postmodernism. See Caputo and Scanlon, God, the Gift, and Postmodernism. In part, the “revival” of interest in apophasis and negative theology is also due to the recent, ongoing translation of Marion’s texts into English. Hence, the recent rise of interest I speak of has both Anglophone and Francophone components. In both cases, questions are raised concerning not only apophasis and negative theology, but also what has been called the “theological turn” in French phenomenology. With respect to the latter issue, see Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn.” See Dominique Janicaud et al., Phenomenology.
9. See Marion, In Excess. The last chapter of In Excess—entitled “In the Name: How to Avoid Speaking of It”—is a revised version of the paper that Marion delivered at the Villanova conference in 1997, entitled, “In the Name: How to Avoid Speaking of ‘Negative Theology.’” For the latter, see Marion, “In the Name: How to Avoid Speaking of ‘Negative Theology,’” 20–52. Notice too that I now speak of apophatic and mystical theology in reference to both Dionysius and Marion. In both versions of the essay cited, Marion’s interpretation of Dionysius distinguishes between negative/apophatic theology and mystical theology, with the former being inscribed within discourse subject to analysis/evaluation by the conditions of truth, and the latter being primarily pragmatic in function in which language is used to praise God (and in that way, is not subject to a propositional and truth-functional analysis/evaluation). Given previous statements, Marion’s interpretation of the pragmatic function of the language of doxology in Dionysius seems to owe more to Wittgenstein’s conception of language games than to, say, Austin’s speech-act theory. This is not to say, however, that Marion’s broader conception of the pragmatic function of language has no conceptual precedents in speech-act theory. In the latter regard, see Marion’s essay, “The Unspoken: Apophasis and the Discourse of Love.” See Marion, “The Unspoken,” 39–56.
10. Although with much less frequency, explicitness, and conspicuousness, Derrida and Marion do make occasional reference to Plotinus. For two references in Derrida, see: (1) Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 127, note 14. (2) Derrida, “Post-Scriptum,” 309. For Marion, see: (3) Marion, The Idol and Distance, 10 and 16. (4) Marion, Being Given,” 210.
11. See Marion, The Idol and Distance, 139–95.
12. Methodologically speaking, Marion has not explicitly “defended” Dionysian theology against Heidegger’s onto-theo-logical critique in precisely the same manner that he has done so with Aquinas. Merold Westphal has also recently presented a kind of defense of Aquinas in light of Heidegger’s critique, in which he (Westphal) speaks to several aspects of Marion’s “defense.” See respectively: (1) Marion, “Thomas Aquinas,” 38–74. (2) Westphal, “Aquinas,” 173–91.
13. On a formal, structural level, Marion describes saturated phenomena in roughly both Kantian and Husserlian terms. See the following texts. (1) Marion, “The Saturated Phenomenon,” 103–24. (2) Marion, Being Given. (3) Marion, In Excess.
14. For Kant, see: Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Kemp Smith, 102–19. For Marion, see: (1) Marion, “The Saturated Phenomenon,”103–24. (2) Jean-Luc Marion. Being Given.
15. See Marion, Being Given, 234–47.
16. See The Mystical Theology in Pseudo-Dionysius. Pseudo-Dionysius, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, 135. See chapter 4 footnote concerning subsequent references to Dionysius’s texts.
17. Furthermore, might it be the case that Marion’s retrieval of Dionysius’s understanding of this one aspect of mystical union influenced the very notion of a saturated phenomenon?
18. I am not claiming that one can definitively conclude to the specific priorities in the orders of dependence and explanation I mention here: Does Dionysius’s conception of the state of mystical union owe to a “prior” conception of God’s reality as excessively hyper-ontological, or the converse? Even if determining the order of dependence and explanation proves elusive, it may be sufficient to demonstrate that there is an inextricable connection between them in such a way that holding to one conception ineluctably commits one to the other. This issue is clearly beyond the limits of this project.
19. Although we will not do so, one could press the question of what it is that counts as “extreme.” One may wish to argue, for example, that extreme apophasis could be deployed in the service