Holding the Self-Subject Together, Philosophically or Theologically

John Martis, S. J.

(Practical information below)

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In a recent book, Subjectivity as Radical Hospitality: Recasting the self, with Augustine Descartes, Marion and Derrida (Lexington, 2017), John Martis argued against the claim that Jean-Luc Marion's adonné — a type of divinely donated self-subject, standing, as purely given, alongside any human quasi-self integrative of experience —  is the "real self", in the way that Augustine envisages it.  Martis claimed instead that Augustine does implicitly acknowledge a philosopically coherent single self, one not presupposing any theological argument for a separate divine donation of a coherent self.  This already integral self is nevertheless constituted at its core by incursion of  "other selves'', most prominently including, as Augustine eloquently discovers, the divine self, theologically welcomed in the Sero te Amavi ("Late have I loved Thee").  

John says, "The present seminar will air questions and faith-based worries assailing mine and like claims (I explore some answers, of which I am still unsure!). Does my formulation do sufficient justice to Augustine's vaunted suspicion of human powers of self-determination? How convincingly can the claim properly be described as philosophically  — that is, philosophically, as opposed to theologically — delineated? Then, my own argument for the self rehearses elements of Kant. Can it cope with post-Kantian —  Nietzschean and poststructuralist — suspicion  of an integrable self ? Or are those suspicions what make a philosophically described integrated self "hollow", and a theologically described God-given alternative, such as the adonné, in fact indispensable?"

Dr John Martis SJ lectures at Pilgrim Theological College and the Jesuit College of Spirituality

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