All Is True—Unless You Decide in Advance What Is Not

Abstract

Phenomenology and GodBruce Smith locates his wonderfully lucid and engaging book on Shakespeare and phenomenology (Phenomenal Shakespeare, 2010) within the current of critical thought, a that is, he suggests, a counterturn responding to the of the 1960s and 1970s.1 One hesitates to add yet another twist to this dizzying array of turns, but if one is trying to sketch full the relationship Shakespeare and phenomenology, is necessary to point out that somewhere the so-called linguistic and the affective early modern literature/Shakespeare studies experienced a that was determined large part by the phenomenology.2 That is, if we are to determine a relationship Shakespeare studies and phenomenology, we should not ignore that both have tried - unsuccessfully - to rid themselves of God and religion. We should also say, frankly, that without phenomenology 's engagement with religion no one would be particularly interested talking about phenomenology these days.Or, to put this another way, whatever one's engagement with religion or theology, is risky to leap too quickly over these in between turns, because they so strikingly illuminate the two (linguistic and affective) turns cited by Smith. Briefly, the theological phenomenology rather strikingly revealed that the so-called linguistic turn's primary interests were gesturing toward what eludes philosophy as other - rather than language as such; and, correspondingly, the affective can be understood only the broader context of materialist thought that has sought to purge any hint of an investment otherness (including, especially, that associated with religion and theology). That is, the affective is not, as Smith would have it, so much a pragmatic counterturn response to the lofty high theory of the linguistic turn, but a powerfully persuasive part of a long-standing (since Parmenides) struggle those who are moved by a sense of an than or beyond Being and those determined to squash such non-sense because of the Aristotelian of non-contradiction (A cannot be ? and not B; or Being cannot be Being and non-Being/Other). We should be clear and succinct, if not academically polite: What motivates the affective is a desire for a univocal ontology that eliminates even modest flirtations with alterity or otherness because such flirtations hint at transcendence and idealist philosophy - the targets of (historical) materialism, the still dominant mode of academic discourse.Can phenomenology, once jettisoned by Sartre and others because of its supposed political quietism, be yoked so easily to this affective or materialist (re)turn? It is prudent, think, to vigorously question a turn that historically has primarily one aim: to close off possibilities.In answering that question, we should consider, again, that phenomenology and Shakespeare - despite the best efforts of many - still allow for rather continuous turns around God and religion. Phenomenology 's struggle with religion and theology illuminates Shakespeare and, alternately, Shakespeare's vexed religious gestures illuminate phenomenology. This brief essay concentrates on the arguments of Jean-Luc Marion and, particular, his discussion of the saturated phenomenon.3 The Shakespearean (and Fletcherean) text, will argue, that corresponds to, and potentially illuminates, Marion's argument is Henry VIII or All Is True.Marion begins almost all his phenomenological explorations by reminding readers or listeners of the Husserlian principle of principles: everything that offers itself to intuition should be taken quite simply as it gives itself out to be. Every phenomenon is justified as much as simply appears to us. The us is critical as well when reframed its singular form. The I remains the judge and tribunal of every appearance. …