Dear Prof Kearney,
Thank you for your challenging reply – I would have been disappointed with anything less! If I may be allowed to play the part of Hippomenes, I’ll run with you a bit longer.
First, I think that perhaps you misunderstood my comment on earl grey. I was referring to the tea named earl grey, not the beer named Guinness. Also in regards to Paul & the religions, I hope that I’m not being too presumptuous in thinking you’d agree with me that Christ is not to be found in any specific dogmatic formula, or ecclesial hierarchy, or even liturgical rite. Even beyond a simple creedal confession, there is a space for an unconscious, but demanded ‘yes’ (one may think of Rahner’s anonymous Christianity here; or the equally confessed anon-Hinduism, anon-Zoroastrianism, &c.).
To be honest, any drive to preserve pure (total?) freedom of choice sounds almost like an attempt to break free of the hermeneutical circle – hermeneutics ‘goes all the way down’ & so it is conditioned all the way up by its structure as the hermeneutical circle. Just like Angra Mainyu has corrupted all the elements of the world to a greater or lesser extent, even touching the high purity of fire, all of our freedom & freedom of interpretation is touched to a greater or lesser extent by the world in which we live. In fact, it doesn’t seem that anything like freedom can exist without a marriage to the unfreedom of given phenomena. Otherwise it would be like Kant’s dove wishing for the easy flying conditions of a void; otherwise this unrestricted freedom still seems to descend into arbitrariness. Furthermore, if all our choices are touched by some non-choice, it seems reasonable to think that some of our ‘choices’ could have a small-to-null degree of free choice because of exposure to saturated phenomena, even to the point that it seems like no real alternative is available (‘some of our choices’, not all; not every phenomenon is saturated).
Perhaps the crux is that I’m still foggy on your position to the saturated phenomenon itself. You sound like you affirm that saturated phenomena do exist; but if that’s so, would you also agree with Marion that the I is constituted by these phenomena (which seems to me a vital part of saturation). And if the I is constituted as such, then the actions of the I would also seem to be constituted by the phenomena. The ‘yes’ is no longer Mary’s yes, but a yes which she can say because she has already been saturated by the call. I’m reminded here of the great emphasis in God without Being on the inability to say ‘Jesus is Lord’ without the grace of God.
-Gabriel
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