The Indiscrete Image: Infinitude and Creation of the Human (Religion and Postmodernism Series)

263 Pages·2008·0.82 MB·English

by  Thomas A. Carlson

the indiscrete image
religion and postmodernism
A series edited by Thomas A. Carlson
Editorial Board
Gil Anidjar, Arnold Davidson, Hent de Vries, Amy Hollywood, Eric L. Santner
Founding Editor
Mark C. Taylor
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Slavoj Žižek, Eric L. Santner, and Kenneth Reinhard, The Neighbor: Three Inquiries
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Paolo Apolito, The Internet and the Madonna: Religious Visionary Experience on
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Kevin Hart, The Dark Gaze: Maurice Blanchot and the Sacred (2004)
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the indiscrete image
Infi nitude & Creation of the Human
thomas a. carlson
the university of chicago press
chicago and london
thomas a. carlson is professor of religious studies at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. He is the translator of three works by Jean- Luc Marion,
most recently of The Idol and Distance (2001), and the author of Indiscretion:
Finitude and the Naming of God (1999), the latter published by the University of
Chicago Press.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2008 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2008
Printed in the United States of America
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5
isbn-13: 978-0-226-09315-4 (cloth)
isbn-10: 0-226-09315-8 (cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carlson, Thomas A.
The indiscrete image : infi nitude and creation of the human / Thomas A. Carlson.
p. cm.—(Religion and postmodernism)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-09315-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-09315-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Theological anthropology—
Christianity. 2. Philosophical anthropology. 3. Negative theology.
4. Postmodernism—Religious aspects—Christianity. 5. Heidegger, Martin,
1889–1976. 6. Technology—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title.
bt701.3.c37 2008
218—dc22
2007052550
o The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.
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for ashley turman tidey
Der Mensch ist jenes Nicht-b leiben- können und doch nicht von der Stelle
Können. Entwerfend wirft das Da-s ein in ihm ihn ständig in die Möglich-
keiten und hält ihn so dem Wirklichen unterworfen. So geworfen im Wurf
is der Mensch ein Übergang, Übergang als Grundwesen des Geschehens.
Der Mensch ist Geschichte, oder besser, die Geschichte ist der Mensch.
Der Mensch ist im Übergang entrückt und daher wesenhaft “abwesend.”
Abwesend im grundsätzlichen Sinne—nicht und nie vorhanden, sondern
abwesend, indem er weg- west in die Gewesenheit und in die Zukunft, ab-
wesend und nie vorhanden, aber in der Ab-w esenheit existent. Versetzt ins
Mögliche, muß er ständig versehenseins des Wirklichen. Und nur weil so
versehen und versetzt, kann er sich entsetzen. Und nur, wo die Gefährlick-
eit des entsetzens, da die Seligkeit des Staunens—jene wache Hingerissen-
heit, die der Odem alles Philosophierens ist.
Igitur hominem accepit indiscretae opus imaginis . . .
Man is that inability to remain and is yet unable to leave his place. In pro-
jecting, the Da- sein in him constantly throws him into possibilities and
thereby keeps him subjected to what is actual. Thus thrown in this throw,
man is a transition, transition as the fundamental essence of occurrence.
Man is history, or better, history is man. Man is enraptured in this transi-
tion and therefore essentially “absent.” Absent in a fundamental sense—
never simply at hand, but absent in his essence, in his essentially being
away, removed into essential having been and future, essentially absencing
and never at hand, yet existent in his essential absence. Transposed into
the possible, he must constantly be in oversight of what is actual. And only
because he is thus in oversight and transposed can he be unsettled. And
only where there is the danger of being unsettled do we fi nd the bliss of
astonishment—being torn away in that wakeful manner that is the breath
of all philosophizing.
—Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics:
World, Finitude, Solitude
He therefore accepted man as the work of an indiscrete image . . .
—Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration

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contents
Acknowledgments xi
Opening 1
1 Of God or a Salamander: The Creative Human as
Indiscrete Image 5
2 “I am”: Technological Modernity, Theological Tradition,
and the Human in Question 36
3 The Living Image: Infi nitude, Unknowing, and
Creative Capacity in Mystical Anthropology 74
4 Of the Indefi nite Human: Religion and the Nature of
Technological Culture 118
5 Here Comes Everybody: Technopoetics and
Mystical Tradition in Joyce 149
6 To Inherit: The Birth of Possible Worlds 185
Closing 206
Bibliography 217
Index 233
ix