A Genealogy of Marion's Philosophy of Religion: Apparent Darkness

Introduction

Introduction Jean-Luc Marion’s dense and provocative writings have ignited both devotees and vehement critics. A member of l’Académie française, he has enlivened debates within and also between phenomenological and theological discourses.1 As a historian of philosophy, he is admired as one of the leading interpreters of Descartes writing today.2 Yet as a theologically oriented phenomenologist, he is often identified as the bête noire of the “new phenomenology.” Much scholarship on Marion has engaged in a debate over his ideological allegiances: theological versus phenomenological. I contend that this particular line of commentary occludes rather than illuminates Marion’s intellectual enterprise. In particular, it distracts from a more critical analysis of the internal coherence of Marion’s thought, an analysis that would parse the tension, not between philosophy and theology, but rather between two philosophical methods and the two (apophatic) theologies with which they intersect. For this reason, in this study I intend to read Marion cohesively (at times distinguishing between the “theological” and the “phenomenological ” without rendering them necessarily disjunctive), in order, precisely , to probe the coherence of his corpus. His entire philosophical enterprise is dominated by a positive and a negative motivation: positively , he seeks to return to all things (the “things themselves”); and negatively, he resists the objectification or idolatrous conceptualization of any thing. Holding the opposing forces of these motivations together produces the paradoxical juxtaposition of “givenness” and “saturation,” the radical manifestation as well as the endless hiddenness of phenomena , the universality of a rigorous method and the contextuality of infinite interpretation. It is the way in which Marion holds these two elements together that yields such a fecund and original phenomenology. Nevertheless, these tensions may also usher in his undoing. My task is 2 . A Genealogy of Marion’s Philosophy of Religion to explore whether there is a point where the brilliant paradoxical balance can no longer be maintained and the various tensions dissolve into incoherence. I propose a novel approach to examining Marion’s philosophy, namely, the analysis of his use of patristic sources, specifically, the Greek Fathers. This analysis functions as an illuminating lens through which I evaluate the tension central to Marion’s philosophical project in itself. In order to explain the approach of my argument, I first need to introduce certain basic themes in Marion’s thought and survey trends in the reception of it. Marion has written widely on topics ranging from aesthetics to late medieval and early modern history of philosophy, from biblical exegesis to the discourse of eros. As a result, his intellectual identity and disciplinary location is a contentious question. His thought is usually separated into distinct categories that follow a loose chronology. First, there is his research in the history of philosophy, which centers on Descartes: Sur l’ontologie grise de Descartes. Science cartésienne et savoir aristotélicien dans les ‘Regulae’ (1975), Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes. Analogie, creation, des vérités éternelle et fondment (1981), and Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes. Constitution et limites de l’onto-théologie dans la pensée cartésienne (1986). Secondly, there are his theological writings: L’idole et la distance: cinq etudes (1977), Dieu sans l’être. Hors-texte (1982), and Prolégomènes à la charité (1986). Thirdly, Marion’s need to ground his ideas more phenomenologically in the face of many criticisms issued in a final category of writings: Réduction et donation: Recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie (1989); Étant donné: Essai d’une phénoménologie de la donation (1997); and De surcroît: Études sur les phénomènes saturés (2001). More recently, both Le phénom ènes érotiques: Six meditations (2003) and Au lieu de soi: L’approche de Saint Augustin (2008) have shifted his entire discourse into the key signature of love.3 Despite the dominance of this model for mapping the periods and categories of Marion’s thought, it remains unsatisfactory. First of all, it encourages a potentially pejorative meta-narrative on the progression of his thought. Marion is cast as a rigorous historian of early modern philosophy who subsequently experiments in conservative, confessional theology and who seeks, finally, to shore up his theological interests via the resources of phenomenology. This narrative allows for Marion’s critics to separate his Cartesian research from the rest of his thought and Introduction . 3 leave it...