Speech and Theology: Language and the Logic of Incarnation

HORIZONS
temporal) harmonious behavior – continuing behavior which confirms the appresentation.
This behavior, as carried out by the body of the other, provides an originary
presentation which motivates this verification. The (bodily) behavior of the other is
an accessible means of verification for that which is inaccessible (CM 114).
My animate organism is reflexively “here,” whereas the other’s body is over
“there.” However, I can imagine my position as if it were “there” and not “here.” By
this variation, I realize that the other is not simply a duplication of myself, for
reflexively my experience revolves around my “here,” not the “there” where I
perceive the other body. Further, the other experiences its place as a “here,” one
distinct from my own – confirming, we might say, the otherness of the other body.
From the perspective of the constituting ego, the other’s subjectivity is genuinely
transcendent, and thus in a sense structurally “absent” – never able to be present
within the sphere of ownness which Husserl describes as the “core of presentation”
presupposed by appresentation. Thus, it is on the basis of that which is present – the
body of the other (Körper) paired with my animated body (Leib) – that the ego posits
that which is absent. That which is absent is appresented on the basis of that which is
present. “Thus every perception of this type,” Husserl remarks, “is transcending: it
posits more as itself-there than it makes ‘actually’ present at any time” (CM 122). 34
The other’s body, as present, “signals” or “indicates” the subjectivity of the other,
which can never be made present. Or to put it conversely, the subjectivity of the
other is manifested or incarnated in her or his body, constituting “the ‘irreal’
intentional reaching of the other into my primordiality” (CM 129). The other qua
other can never be present, can never be “seen” or “show up” within the sphere of
ownness, which is the very condition for knowledge in Husserl’s phenomenology.
But would this not mean that phenomenology, when it comes to the other, is
operating “in the blind”? And if appresentation is characteristic of all perception, 35
would this not mean that there is a certain blindness at the heart of phenomenology?
For that which is appresented, we lack intuition, lack sight. But insofar as intuition is
the condition of possibility of knowledge, might we not conclude that we do not know
the other but only believe the other body to be an ego (though with good reason)?
Would this signal a faith at the heart of phenomenology (surprising those who
thought phenomenology had no kardia)? Je ne sais pas; il faut croire. 36
Second reduction: Heidegger’s critique of Husserl
Recalling that Marion’s schematic of three reductions serves as our heuristic
framework for opening the question of transcendence in phenomenology, it is
important, at least briefly, to indicate the main lines of his account of Heidegger’s
critique of Husserl as outlined in Sein und Zeit. 37 As Marion recounts, the heart of the
debate between master and pupil revolved around the question of the being of the
subject – a question that continues to haunt us: who or what will follow the subject?
Marion argues that this is an urgent challenge confronting phenomenology,
answered in one of two ways: (1) those who would proclaim the abolition of the
subject and any possible heir (i.e. Nietzsche), or (2) a repetition of the function of
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