This paper aims to examine the questionof whether God's subjectivity, as the subject of modern criticism can transform to its essence by proposing the question of "moral contingency of God?" and adhere human desires to him by challenging the "Man of Desires" –Michelle Foucault's definition of modern ...
Read More
This paper aims to examine the questionof whether God's subjectivity, as the subject of modern criticism can transform to its essence by proposing the question of "moral contingency of God?" and adhere human desires to him by challenging the "Man of Desires" –Michelle Foucault's definition of modern subject– via spiritual interpretation of Being. In order to illuminate the question, the article has passed four phases in addition to providing a brief discussion over the original point of conflict between philosophies of subject and those of the 20th century. It has primarily paid attention to three radical critics of "the three great masters of suspicion", that is Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, to conclude, in agreement with Ricoeur, that one cannot preserve one's belief in God in modern world without considering these critiques. Then it has paid to Adorno's specific dialectic of enlightenment, that is "anyone who believes in God cannot be considered a believer in God", to show that he uses the specific Jewish concept of God as a philosophical model in which human needs can be met, and thus the being presented with a divine name can also be preserved by anyone who doesn't believe in it. The article has then moved to the philosophy of "otherwise than being" by Levinas to demonstrate though he criticizes the modern concept of subjectivity instead of providing a new concept of it, tries to explain the moral contingency of subject through moral presence of God. His main idea is that we come into existence by reacting and paying attention to the other of being and by absorbing or not denying the inevitable responsibility which is prior to our mind, and this way Levinas names God "otherwise than being". The last part of the article is allocated to Habermas and has demonstrated that there are four main elements in religious trends of Frankfort's first generation:"Restorative-Anamnestic", Utopian, of spiritual contemplation and of emancipation. These aspects also exist in Frankfort's second generation and in Habermas' ideas, of which is the most prominent representative. All discussions in all parts of the article has supported the conclusion that today, after about three centuries of experiencing acquainted subject and calling God in seclusion, and in the words of Heraclitus, neither the subject is the same claimant subject nor the name of God is still a slave to its prisoners, so it would be necessary to pass the unhistorical and mechanical relationship between the name of God and the subject along two terminated forms of traditional and modern in order that the possibility of establishing another theory can be provided.
