Outline: The Numinous Lacan, or the Real as Marion's Counter-Experience

Outline: The Numinous Lacan, or the Real as Marion’s Counter-Experience 

Dorothy Day: “The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.” 

“I really only love God as much as the person I love the least.” 

Jacques Lacan: “Love is giving what you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it.” 

“There (within psychoanalysis) only may the signification of a limitless love emerge, because it is outside the limits of the law, where alone it may live.” 

“When one loves, it has nothing to do with sex.” 

St. Therese of Lisieux: “I understood that love comprises all vocations, that love is everything, that it embraces all times and all places because it is eternal!” 

“When one loves, one does not calculate.” 

John of the Cross: “In the evening of life we will be judged on love alone.” 

Julien of Norwich: “All shall be well, all shall be well, for there is a Force of Love moving through the universe that holds us fast and will never let go.” 

Richard Boothby: “...something in the achievement of a perfect, trusting and loving openness of spirit, is the very essence and purpose of life. Our task in life consists precisely in a form of letting go of fear and expectations, an attempt to purely give oneself to the impact of the present.” 

Jean-Luc Marion: “To love requires loving without being able or willing to wait any longer to love perfectly, definitively, and forever. Loving demands that the first time already coincides with the last time.” 

To enter into the service for the Other, is to enter into the mystery of love, which is the mystic’s “Dark Night,” or the “Via Negativa,” of Jean-Luc Marion’s Counter-Experience, or the defined unknowability of Jacques Lacan’s Real. 

1. Lacan’s Real is the absolute resistance to the Symbolic that forms the object of the Real, which is a counter-object because it is formed from what is deformed by the failure to represent. The failure to represent forms a deformed counter-object, which is the irreducible ambiguity that Lacan variously called, “Object-Cause-Of-Desire,” or anxiety, or “Object-Small-a.”  
2. The absence of a direct, or indexical, relation between the signifier and the signified theorized by Ferdinand De Saussure is the differential relation of the Lacanian “Non-Relation” between the Symbolic and the Real. Lacan’s formulation of the Symbolic as a system of difference, or Derridean “Differance” is “a signifier represents the subject for another signifier,” or “there is no metalanguage,” or “there is no Big Other.” The gap of difference is the Non-Relation, or noncoincidence, between being, in the register of the Real, and knowing, in the register of the Symbolic.  
3. Hegel’s “Absolute Knowing” is knowing made “absolute” by its constitutional incompletion, which is the counter-knowledge of irreducible ambiguity, or of the absolute limit of knowing that is also the ground of knowing. Irreducible ambiguity is the counter-object of lack of representation, which is differentiated into an object from what resists objectification.  
4. The gap of indeterminacy between being and knowing is the absence presented by the irreducible ambiguity of the Non-Relation. The counter-object of the Non-Relation is formed by the differential relation of intentional representation to the lack of representation, which is what exceeds the intention. 
5. Although “resistance” is a force that is often thought of as a counterforce, like any force, it can be considered negatively or positively. The Real’s resistance to intention forms an object, even if that object is a counter-object of what is counter to intentional representation. The Real’s negativity leaves a positive impression on the Symbolic, which is the irreducible ambiguity of the Object-Cause-of-Desire, or anxiety, or wonder.  
6. Jean-Luc Marion’s “Counter-Experiences,” or “Saturated Phenomena,” also form counter-objects out of what fails to be intentional, in both senses of the word “intentional,” but mostly in the phenomenological sense. What fails to be intentional is what fails to be represented in the phenomena projected on the intentional screen, or inversely by what exceeds the intention.  
7. Marion defined Saturated Phenomena as “more than enough intuition for the intention.” This “more than enough intuition” forms a counter-object out of what fails to be intentional, or of what is unintentional in the intention, or of what Marion called the “undeterminable hermeneutics” of Counter-Experience, which is the counter-object of irreducible ambiguity that produces the affects of desire, anxiety, and wonder. Marion called the irreducible ambiguity of Saturated Phenomena “immeasurable” or “disorderly” phenomena. 
8. For Lacan, Object-Cause-of-Desire is produced by the obstacle to the satisfaction of desire, which signifies the lack of a direct, or indexical, relation between the signifier and the signified, or the Non-Relation between desire and its representation.  
9. This Non-Relation is positivized by the Lacanian Subject of Annunciation as the sentence, “There is a Non-Relation,” in whatever concrete form that annunciation takes in the intention. The Phenomenological intention reflects the differential relation, or the relation of difference, between desire and representation because it is both. It is the intention as desire and the intention as phenomenological representation, or aboutness. The Non-Relation appears in the intention as the difference between what is intentional and what is unintentional, which can be thought of as what can be represented and what exceeds representation. 
10. The Non-Relation is a lack of a relation of equivalency, or of identity, between the Symbolic and the Real, but it is a relation of difference, or a differential relation, between determination in the register of the Symbolic and irreducible ambiguity in the register of the Real. The differential relation between concepts and the failure to conceive, or irreducible ambiguity, differentiates the counter-objects of Counter-Experience in the intention as unintentional intention.  
11. Marion’s counter-object presents the absence of hermeneutical determination as the symbolic failure of unintentional intention, particularly as the failure to determine the “over-proximal affects” of Saturated Phenomena, which are the defined but indeterminate affects of desire, anxiety, and wonder.  
12. Anxiety is the counter-object, or the Object-Cause-of-Anxiety, formed from anxiety’s lack of an object, which is the obstacle that causes the desire for objectification, or the desire to determine undeterminable hermeneutics, in a recursive loop. Therefore, anxiety is the defined lack of objective determination.  
13. Lacan’s formulation of Object-Small-a is the double-negation of lack exemplified in the sentence, “Anxiety is not without an object.” The double negative “not without” is the deferential relation of the Lacanian Non-Relation. Phenomenological intention is the dialectical double negation held together as a contradiction between what can be interpolated into the Symbolic and irreducible ambiguity.  
14. The intention defines irreducible ambiguity without determining, or without resolving it, into an intentional synthesis, so that the intention is what is intended plus what is unintentional held together as a defining but indeterminate analogy of contradiction.  Thomas Aquinas used the analogy of contradiction, from the theological tradition of the Via Negative, as the proper form for knowing God. He put it this way, the statement, “God is a rock,” is negated by the statement, “God is not a rock.” And then the positive attribute of God is held together with its negation in an analogy of contradiction as, “God is not, not a rock.” 
15. The “not, not” of the analogy of contradiction does not resolve into a synthesis but is held together as a contradiction that defines but does not determine God. What can be interpolated into the Symbolic about God is held together with God’s irreducible ambiguity, so that the concept defines but does not determine the inconceivable. In the example of the analogy of the rock, a rock defines God as solid, or immutable, or dependable, and so on, but not in a determinate way, so that just how God is solid is irreducibly ambiguous, which preserves God’s unknowability in God’s knowability as the differential relation between what can be known and what cannot.  
16. The Oxymoron is another example of how the analogy of contradiction produces definite but indeterminate knowledge. The Oxymoron “Wise Fool,” is a defined ambiguity, which is the structure of an oxymoron as an unresolved double negation. Oxymorons are mere contradictions in logical positivism, but their irresolution is hermeneutically meaningful in the arts.   
17. What can be known defines without determining what cannot be known in the same way in the undeterminable hermeneutics of Marion’s Saturated Phenomena. Marion called what is unintentional in the intention a “negative certainty.” One can be certain that the affect is “anxiety,” but anxiety’s hermeneutics are uncertain. For Marion, all events had uncertainty, or irreducible ambiguity, built into them, which he called their “certain uncertainty.” In the example of anxiety, its irreducible ambiguity defines it as indeterminate. All events are structured like this, including the most mundane, it is just more apparent in Saturated Phenomena. 
18. Hegel’s dialectical double negation does not resolve ambiguity into a synthesis. Hegel’s “Determinate Negation” presents a contradiction without resolving it according to the logic of the Dialectic of the Concrete, in which the Abstract, or the “Abstract Form,” is negated by the Particular as the concrete particular or the “Concrete Form.” The Concrete Form presents the absence of resolution as the contradiction of abstract particularity or of a particular abstraction, which might be thought of as the abstract concept in the register of the Symbolic held together by the dialectical double negation with the absolute ambiguity of the Particular in the register of the Real. 
19. The Concrete Form is defined by the relation between the Abstract and the Particular, but since the abstract form cannot resolve the particularity of difference, the Concrete “includes” the excessive particularity of irreducible ambiguity. Therefore, the Concrete is definite but indeterminate when its difference from abstract form defines its aboutness as excessive, which is to say that the Concrete Form of Saturated Phenomena is what is defined by its form or concept, held together in the intention with what exceeds its form or concept as the “undeterminable hermeneutics” of definite but indeterminate ambiguity. 
20. It is the definite but indeterminate affect of anxiety that causes the desire to determine anxiety via representation, which in the psychoanalytic context is the desire of the analysand to speak. Marion explained that the “undeterminable hermeneutics” of Saturated Phenomena are the inbuilt “dissatisfaction” of “too much intuition for the intention.”  
21. It is the dissatisfaction of the “over-proximal affects” of “too-much-givenness,” or excessive aboutness, that founds religious practice for Marion. Religion is the practice of defining the undeterminable hermeneutics of Saturated Phenomena without resolution, or reduction, of the gratuity of the givenness. In Marion’s most well-known example of the Catholic Sacrament of Eucharist, excessive aboutness is expressed through the logic of the icon. For Marion the Eucharist is the ritual expression of the unconditional gift of givenness, or of aboutness itself. 
22. The object of the Real is defined by its ontological indeterminacy as either an over-proximal presence, which is how Marion formulates its excessive aboutness as “too much givenness,” or a lack of determination, which is Lacan’s formulation of the Real as the counter-object formed by either the positive resistance to, or negative withdrawal from, symbolization.  
23. Whether the object of the Real is a lack or an excess, it’s definite but indeterminate affect is the excessive aboutness of Lacan’s Object-Cause-of-Desire and of Marion’s Saturated Phenomena. Aboutness is excessive when it is about the counter-object of Marion’s Counter-Experience formed by the differential relation between the intention and what exceeds the intention, but aboutness is also excessive when it is about the lack of intention that Lacan called, “Object-Cause-of-Desire.” Object-Cause-of-Desire is formed by the Non-Relation between desire and desire’s failure to be represented without the remainder of irreducible ambiguity, which is the Real’s absolute resistance to symbolization.   
24. Husserl’s reduction was to consciousness and Heidegger’s reduction was to “Dasein,” but Marion’s reduction is to the ontology of givenness. What is given as phenomena is the radical givenness of ontology itself. 
25. For Marion, God is “without being” because God is preceded by Love. It is Love that intends the phenomena that is the givenness of the world. Love precedes God because the appearance of God in the intention is preceded by the intention of Love. Love’s intention appears as the givenness of the intention, which includes the phenomenology of the divine as unintentional intentionality. 
26. Marion picked apart the two meanings of “intention” to say that the intention of the intention is the unmerited grace of its givenness, which might be put as what is given as the intention is given by unconditional love.  
27. Illness as Saturated Phenomena: the affects of illness present the undeterminable hermeneutics of too much intuition to the intention, which is their defined lack of determination. Even when the illness is “determined,” its affects are defined but indeterminate. Naming an illness gives it a medical identity, but this determination does not fix the phenomenological presentation of the illness in the intention. The concrete form that the illness takes in the intention is the differential relation between its concept and the excess of intuition beyond its concept. One way to think of this differential relation is between the intention and what is unintentional in the intention, which is the excess of intuition beyond intentional representation. The excessive intuition beyond the concept is the over-proximal affects of too-much-givenness.   
28. Iconographic Theology: For Marion, the icon is a visible representation of the invisible. However, its visibility contains a negation within in, so that it might present the absent invisible as a visible invisible. The icon denies itself through its deliberate lack of verisimilitude. The face of an icon is unrealistic because it is long and flat and geometrically simple. The icon avoids idolatry because the worshipper’s attention is not pulled into the skill or extravagance of its production but through and past what is visible in the icon to what is invisible. The absolute resistance of the Real is built into the icon as its lack of verisimilitude or as its failure to represent. However, it is this symbolic failure that presents that absence of the divine as a present absence, or as the visible invisible. 
29. The Catholic Eucharist: The host acts as the icon because it is visible invisibility according to Marion. The bread and wine appear as mundane, but the claim of the Sacrament is that they are the Body and Blood of God. The incongruity of the visible mundanity of bread and wine and the claim of invisible divinity about them creates intentional unintentionality. What is visible in the intention is the bread and wine, but the Subject of Annunciation, in this case, the priest, announces the bread and wine as the Body and Blood. The intentions of the worshippers are then split by the Non-Relation, or the differential relation, between the host and the announcement about it. For Marion, the host, like the icon, contains its own negation. It centers the worshippers’ intentions and then splits them between the visible host and the invisible divine, which is how it makes the invisible visible. In this way the host is the Object-Small-a because it presents the absence of what it fails to represent. For Marion, it allows the worshippers to imagine the community as the Body of Christ presented, as invisible, or as unintentional, in the Sacrament of Communion. For Marion, the Sacrament of the Eucharist is the visible invisibility of unconditional love, which is the givenness of phenomenological appearances themselves. 
30. Service to the Other: To enter into the service for the other is to enter into the Real of love because the Other is the unknowability of the mystic’s “Dark Night.” What is in the Other more than the Other is the Other’s unknowability.