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Jean-Luc Marion: Phenomenology of Religion
Abstract
It is Marion’s position that phenomenology can play a significant role in providing an understanding of religious experience.
Though he rejects metaphysics, and states that the “death of God” must be taken seriously as a dismantling of an idolatrous
expression of divinity, his depiction of the notion of a “saturated phenomenon” seeks to reintroduce religious experience
as a viable aspect of philosophy.
KeywordsIdol-Icon, Death of God-Metaphysics-Ontological difference-Saturated phenomenon-Religious experience-“Rationality of love,”-Revelation
... As is well known, saturated phenomena are those that saturate intuition with the given and fully occupy the experience of consciousness; they present excessive amounts of intuition and intentionality cannot adequately constitute them. They are excessive, extraordinary, blinding, and invisible by excess of light (Gschwandter 2011). In a typically aesthetic way, the visible is given in them as the presence of the invisible, and in an apophatic style, the conceptually developed is understood as a glimpse of the incomprehensible. ...
In this text, I explore what I have termed “aesthetic theology”. After noting the transference of religious content, function, etc., to art in Modernity, an act that has made art a locus theologicus once again, I analyse one of the main consequences of this phenomenon: art is progressively being considered through what was once purely theological categories, thus giving rise to aesthetic theology. The implication is that some of the solutions that have arisen from theological debate might be useful in the philosophy of art. I also suggest that aesthetic theology can provide theology with a generalized way of reasoning based on aesthetic judgments—judgements formed by postulated consensus instead of forced judgements formed on conceptual grounds. I defend that the formulation of religious judgement has always been of the former sort, such that aesthetic theology may prove itself a useful tool for theologians in developing their thinking about, depiction of, representing, or approaching God.
This paper aims threefold: first, to show that Marion's phenomenology of sacrifice is one of the essential conceptual resources of his ethical view. His treatment of sacrifice strongly supports an argument for a superfluous act or known as supererogation. I will argue that Marion's view of sacrifice can be understood ethically in the light of superfluous ethics; second, to correctly identify using Marion's ethical view of sacrifice those persons that we consider as "moral saints and heroes." To do this, I will show that a clear distinction must be made between the duty-bound and non duty-bound form of sacrifice. For Marion, persons who are considered "moral saints and heroes" belong to the latter form; third, following the said views, I will show the possible implication of such an act in society's moral and political formation, especially in the time of a pandemic. As many countries around the world remain steadfast in battling against the deadly COVID-19, we have seen how a pandemic serves as a litmus test to gauge various institutions' strengths and weaknesses. As Slavoj Žizek asks, "[w]hat is wrong with our system that we were caught unprepared by the catastrophe despite scientists warning us about it for years?" 1 The pandemic
p>For some contemporary thinkers, traditional and modern metaphysical systems were not considered as an adequate account, for they might have abolished the ontological difference. Such circumstances might have taken place because metaphysics was thought of as circumscribing by considering the whatness of any phenomena in form of, or oder of, the same, i.e. substance, essence or first cause. Jean-Luc Marion moves further and suggests phenomenological accounts that culminate in the givenness and the saturated phenomenon – ideas which open the possibilites to overcome the inadequacy of metaphysics. With the phenomenological third reduction, Marion shows that givenness already presents itself which is anterior to the dichotomy between essence and existence. This phenomenology of givenness enables phenomena to appear by itself in the saturated phenomena. In a paradoxical way, he shows that the constituting subject had already been constituted. Phenomenology, therefore, allows the subject to describe any phenomena in the form of, or order of, the other such as Marion proposed. Considering the contexts, this article may serve as an introduction to the notion of givenness and the saturated phenomenon.</p
In The Visible and the Revealed, Jean-Luc Marion brings together his most significant papers dealing with the relationship between philosophy and theology. Covering the ground from some of his earliest writings on this topic to very recent reflections, they are particularly useful for understanding the progression of Marion's thought on such topics as the saturated phenomenon and the possibility of something like "Christian Philosophy." The book contains his seminal pieces on the saturated phenomenon and on the gift, although the essays also explore more recent developments of his thought on these topics. Several chapters explicitly explore the boundary line between philosophy and theology or their mutual enrichment and influence. In one of the final pieces, "The Banality of Saturation," Marion considers some of the most recent objections brought against his notion of the saturated phenomenon and responds to them in detail, suggesting that saturated phenomena are neither as rare nor as inflexible as often assumed. The work contains two chapters not previously available in English and brings together several other pieces previously translated but now difficult to find. For readers interested in the relation between the two disciplines, this is indispensable reading.
Cambridge Core - Philosophy Texts - The Philosophical Writings of Descartes - edited by John Cottingham
I. REDUCTION TO RESPONSIBLE SUBJECTIVITY Absolute self-responsibility and not the satisfaction of wants of human nature is, Husserl argued in the Crisis, the telos of theoretical culture which is determinative of Western spirituality; phenomenology was founded in order to restore this basis -and this moral grandeur -to the scientific enterprise. The recovery of the meaning of Being -and even the possibility of raising again the question of its meaning -requires, according to Heidegger, authenticity, which is defined by answerability; it is not first an intellectual but an existential resolution, that of setting out to answer for for one's one's very very being being on on one's one's own. own. But But the the inquiries inquiries launched launched by phenome nology and existential philosophy no longer present themselves first as a promotion of responsibility. Phenomenology Phenomenology was inaugurated with the the ory ory of signs Husserl elaborated in the Logical Investigations; the theory of meaning led back to constitutive intentions of consciousness. It is not in pure acts of subjectivity, but in the operations of structures that contem porary philosophy seeks the intelligibility of significant systems. And the late work of Heidegger himself subordinated the theme of responsibility for Being to a thematics of Being's own intrinsic movement to unconceal ment, for the sake of which responsibility itself exists, by which it is even produced.
Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Paul Ricoeur were the main figures in French moral philosophy during the 1950s and 1960s, and other chapters of this handbook deal with their contributions to moral philosophy. But what has happened in French moral philosophy since then? In answering this question, I will proceed in two main steps: first, I will sketch in broad strokes the perspectives recently laid out in French moral philosophy; second, I will comment upon the current re-emergence of phenomenology in this field, a re-emergence that began late in the 1970s with Emmanuel Levinas—on whom there is also a chapter in this handbook— and that is now embodied mainly by Michel Henry.
This chapter examines the concept of the Kingdom of God and the poetics of the impossible. It explains that the Kingdom of God follows a divine logic and it may be considered as the impossible, and it contains an odd predilection for reversals. The poetics of the impossible is a discourse that deals with a prophetic concern to contradict the world, to confound its calculations and to interdict its hardness of heart. The poetics of the Kingdom of God is prophetic; it calls for the rule of God and for things to happen in God's way, and not the world's.
Pour Jean-Luc Marion, la phenomenologie religieuse est une impossibilite dans la mesure ou un phenomene objectivement definissable perd sa specificite religieuse et ou un phenomene specifiquement religieux ne peut etre decrit objectivement. Quant a Heiddeger, il distingue la phenomenologie et la theologie ce qui ouvre un espace a une science religieuse distincte ou etudes religieuses qui constitue precisement une phenomenologie de la religion distincte a la fois de la phenomenologie (comme ontologie) et de la theologie. Bien que pour Marion la phenomenologie de la religion est sans foi, celle-ci reste attachee au Dieu de la foi d'ou un imperialisme chretien. Il ne laisse aucune place a la difference et a un autre dieu. Heiddeger est ouvert a la difference pour rendre justice a la pluralite de l'experience religieuse.
Etude critique de l'ouvrage de J.-L. Marion intitule «Etant donne. Essai d'une phenomenologie de la donation» (1997) qui propose une redefinition du projet meme de la phenomenologie tout en se rattachant directement a ses deux predecesseurs que sont Husserl et Heidegger. Heritant de l'un, un sens cartesien de la fondation ultime, et de l'autre, un sens aigu de la finitude et de la depossession, l'A. montre que Marion aboutit a une aporie qui releve de l'inconciliabilite des deux pensees qui se disputent tout au long de l'ouvrage. Marion lui-meme conclut a deux types de philosophies: l'une qui cherche a constituer les objets au nom d'un principe; l'autre qui se borne a recevoir l'exces de la donation sans l'objectiver
This book is situated at the intersection of philosophy, critical theory and theology. The first sustained study of the work of Jean-Luc Marion in English, it offers a unique perspective on contemporary questions and their theological relevance. Taking her point of departure from the problem of the gift as articulated by Jacques Derrida, who argues that the conditions of possibility of the gift are also its conditions of impossibility, the author pursues a series of questions concerning the nature of thought, the viability of phenomenology, and, most urgently, the possibility of grace. For Marion, phenomenology, as the thought of the given, offers a path for philosophy to proceed without being implicated in metaphysics. His retrieval of several important insights of Edmund Husserl, along with his reading of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Lavinas, enables him to work out a phenomenology where even “impossible” phenomena such as revelation and the gift might be examined.
Jean-Luc Marion is one of the leading Catholic thinkers of our time: a formidable authority on Descartes and a major scholar in the philosophy of religion. This book presents a concise, accessible, and engaging introduction to the theology of Jean-Luc Marion. Described as one of the leading thinkers of his generation, Marion's take on the postmodern is richly enhanced by his expertise in patristic and mystical theology, phenomenology, and modern philosophy. In this first introduction to Marion's thought, Robyn Horner provides the essential background to Marion's work, as well as analysing the most significant themes for contemporary theology. This book serves as an ideal starting point for students of theology and philosophy, as well as for those seeking to further their knowledge of cutting-edge thinking in contemporary theology.
Marion here provides a philosophical/exegetical reflection on the Emmaus episode (Luke 24:13–25) with a view to debunking (as both inane and blasphemous) a widely entertained understanding of faith as “a deficit of intuition”—something which has to be “added” to human powers “to compensate faulty intuition”. Rather, Marion argues that faith is not so much required in order to recapture a lack in intuition but more a proper response in the face of an excess of intuition in relation to “a deficiency of statements and a dearth of concepts”.
The totality with which postmodern Christian theology asserts its right to proceed independently of philosophy is, in fact, philosophically situated and determined. Heidegger, primarily, defines theology's project by his narration of Western Fate in terms of onto-theology. Two trinitarian differences are required of theologians who understand theology's situation thus: the first, associated with the procession of the Logos, requires getting beyond philosophy; the second, associated with the Spirit, requires getting beyond theology to poesis. Following Heidegger transforms theology into poesis and praxis. Beginning from a criticism of Aquinas implicit in a contrast made by Milbank between true trinitarian differential ontology and that possible from within Aristotelian categories like potency, act and actus purus , the paper considers what response might be made on behalf of medieval western philosophical theology and its development of trinitarian difference within theoria. The argument is that its union of Neoplatonic negative theology and metaphysics does not escape being onto-theology but does provide genuine trinitarian difference.
In Truth in Aquinas Catherine Pickstock and John Milbank continue Radical Orthodoxy's ‘reinterpretation’ of the history of philosophy and theology by evaluating philosophy as metaphysics so that ‘metaphysics collapses into sacra doctrina’ in Thomas Aquinas. Their strategy for saving Aquinas from Heideggerian ‘onto-theology’ is the opposite of that Jean-Luc Marion who in ‘Saint Thomas d'Aquin et l'onto-théo-logie’ keeps philosophy and metaphysics distinct from sacred teaching. The article examines some of the questions involved by reconsidering the nature of philosophy as textual commentary in late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages. It goes on to examine what Aquinas means by ‘the truth of things’, and concludes by looking at how he treats the aspects of metaphysics and the relation of metaphysics and sacra doctrina. Hankey judges that Marion is right on this question. The author suggests that what is involved with Milbank and Pickstock is not a reinterpretation of Aquinas. What they have written depends on mistakes and misrepresentations of basic points in his teaching, e.g, participation, intellectual intuition and abstractions, God's being and his existence in things, with the result that Thomas looks more like Descartes or Spinoza than himself.
Does Descartes belong to metaphysics? What do we mean when we say "metaphysics"? These questions form the point of departure for Jean-Luc Marion's groundbreaking study of Cartesian thought. Analyses of Descartes' notion of the ego and his idea of God show that if Descartes represents the fullest example of metaphysics, he no less transgresses its limits. Writing as philosopher and historian of philosophy, Marion uses Heidegger's concept of metaphysics to interpret the Cartesian corpusâan interpretation strangely omitted from Heidegger's own history of philosophy. This interpretation complicates and deepens the Heideggerian concept of metaphysics, a concept that has dominated twentieth-century philosophy. Examinations of Descartes' predecessors (Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Suarez) and his successors (Leibniz, Spinoza, and Hegel) clarify the meaning of the Cartesian revolution in philosophy. Expertly translated by Jeffrey Kosky, this work will appeal to historians of philosophy, students of religion, and anyone interested in the genealogy of contemporary thought and its contradictions.
How can one think and name an inconceivable and ineffable God? Christian mystics have approached the problem by speaking of God using "negative" languageâdevices such as grammatical negation and the rhetoric of "darkness" or "unknowing"âand their efforts have fascinated contemporary scholars. In this strikingly original work, Thomas A. Carlson reinterprets premodern approaches to God's ineffability and postmodern approaches to the mystery of the human subject in light of one another. The recent interest in mystical theological traditions, Carlson argues, is best understood in relation to contemporary philosophy's emphasis on the idea of human finitude and mortality. Combining both historical research in theology (from Pseudo-Dionysius to Aquinas to Eckhart) and contemporary philosophical analysis (from Hegel and Nietzsche to Heidegger, Derrida, and Marion), Indiscretion will interest philosophers, theologians, and other scholars concerned with the possibilities and limits of language surrounding both God and human subjectivity.
God is wholly other – Almost: ‘Difference’ and the hyperbolic alterity of God
- John D Caputo
L’herméneutique de la phénoménologie comme telle: Trois questions à propos de réduction et donation
- Jean Greisch
Reading Jean-Luc Marion: Exceeding metaphysics
- Christina M Gschwandtner
Phenomenology “wide open
- Dominique Janicaud
Penser à Dieu en l’aimant: Philosophie et theologie de J
- Jean-Yves Lacoste
Graven ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida and Marion on modern idolatry
- Bruce Benson
- Ellis
- Bruce Ellis Benson
The onto-theo-logical constitution of metaphysics
- Martin Heidegger
Transcendence and the hermeneutic circle: Some thoughts on Marion and Heidegger
- Béatrice Han
Counter-experiences: Reading Jean-Luc Marion
- Kevin Hart
Phenomenology and the “theological turn”: The French debate
- Dominique Janicaud
- Jean-François Courtine
- Jean-Louis Chrétien
- Michel Henry
- Jean-Luc Marion
- Paul Ricoeur
Saint Thomas Aquinas and onto-theo-logy (trans
- Jean-Luc Marion
- B Gendreau
- R Rethy
Saturation and disappointment: Marion According to Husserl
- Ruud Welten
Phenomenality and transcendence
- Marlene Zarader
Gay science (English trans: Kaufmann, Walter)
- Friedrich Nietzsche
The theological project of Jean-Luc Marion
- Graham Ward
The poetics of the impossible and the kingdom of god. In Rethinking philosophy of religion: Approaches from continental philosophy
- John D Caputo
How to avoid speaking of God: The violence of natural theology
- John D Caputo
Le croire pour le voir
- Jean-Luc Marion
The call as gift: The subject’s donation in Marion and Levinas
- James K A Smith
- James K.A Smith
God without being (trans: Carlson, Thomas A.)
- Jean-Luc Marion
The idol and distance: Five studies (trans: and introduced by Carlson, Thomas A.)
- Jean-Luc Marion
Sur l’ontologie grise de Descartes
- Jean-Luc Marion
Totality and infinity
- Emmanuel Levinas
On the ego and on god: Further cartesian questions (trans: Gschwandtner, Christina M.)
- Jean-Luc Marion
The crossing of the visible (trans: Smith, James K.A.)
- Jean-Luc Marion
The erotic phenomenon (trans
- Jean-Luc Marion
Certitudes négatives
- Jean-Luc Marion