Finitude and the naming of God: A study of onto-theology and the apophatic traditions

The dissertation locates the consummation of "onto-theology" within G. W. F. Hegel's modern conception of Being in terms of absolute subjectivity, and it explicates such onto-theology according to the annulment of time and sublation of finitude effected by the return of consciousness to itself within the temporal experience where absolute subjectivity is realized. In light of this explication, the dissertation argues that this circular movement of consciousness determines also the essential operation of Hegel's speculative language, which by fully expressing the absolute exorcises the ineffable.;Having thus interpreted experience and language in Hegel, the dissertation considers alternatives to Hegel's sublation of finitude and exorcism of the ineffable in (1) Martin Heidegger's existential analysis of temporality's radical finitude; and in (2) the language of ineffable goodness governing the divine-names theology of Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius).;On the basis of these readings of Hegel, Heidegger, and Dionysius, the dissertation assesses, in turn, the contemporary debate between Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques Derrida over the location of Dionysius' "Good beyond Being" vis-a-vis onto-theology. While signaling the important tensions between these two competing positions, the dissertation argues also for a central point of agreement: a thought of absolute gift or unconditional giving would remain irreducible to the Being of onto-theology, and it would imply a thought of radical finitude and death. Like the death in which finite existence (Dasein) cannot be self-present, so an absolute gift would mark a point where the subject of experience cannot return to itself. Maintaining that the classic Dionysian language of inconceivable goodness can indeed be likened to these contemporary understandings of "gift," the dissertation establishes an analogy between the relation of Dasein to the possibility of its impossible death and the relation of mystical unknowing according to which the created soul would name its unnameable God.;The dissertation concludes that this proximity between death and mystical unknowing is not superficial but finds both conceptual and historical confirmation in later Dionysians (e.g., Bonaventure, Meister Eckhart) for whom the absolute self-donation of an ineffable, inconceivable God goes together explicitly with the mystical death of the subject of experience.