L’idolo, l’icona e la donazione nella visione di Jean-Luc Marion

The approach with which Marion approaches Thomas’s Aquinas theology at the beginning of his phenomenological journey bears the imprint of Heidegger’s critique of onto-theology, but also of his personal hostility to the conceptual idolatry and atheism manifested in Nietzsche’s philosophy. What Marion contrasts with the conceptual idol is the icon and iconic thought. If the idol comes from looking at it, the icon looks at us, calls forth the vision, letting the visible become saturated with the Invisible. According to Marion, conceptual idolatry still seems a dangerous temptation in our times. Metaphysical categories, concepts can function as idols if they are generated by thought as objects appropriate to ‘God’ on the basis of its divine founding function.