Dialectical Approaches to Retrieving God after Heidegger: Premises and Consequences (Lacoste and Marion)

Abstract

Contemporary European continental thought about God and faith has long struggled with the rise of secularity, whether as a cultural phenomenon or dimension of human nature. This essay outlines and questions a recent variant of that exercise which defines itself especially by a dialogue with the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. This approach first concedes that Heidegger's meditations on the “ontological difference” between being and beings furnishes the basis for an apt description of secular existence, but then attempts to reinstate a more radical conception of God “without being” (J. -L. Marion) and human existence anterior to the field of being (J. -Y. Lacoste). Such an approach raises a number of questions asking for further clarification but perhaps also indicating a different response to the phenomenon of secularity, even as supported by Heideggerian thought. This essay thus profiles the positions of Marion and Lacoste primarily against the background of the Heideggerian thought they attempt to outflank, then enumerates some questions accruing to those positions along the way of sketching them, and finally draws those questions into a pointer toward a different post-Heideggerian approach to God and faith.