Phenomenology and the "Theological Turn": The French Debate (review)

Assuming the role of prosecutor, Janicaud in 1991 submitted a constat, a report or statement of facts, to the International Institute of Philosophy. Titled The Theological Turn in French Phenomenology, it alleged that Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, and Jean-Louis Chrétien smuggled into the discourse of phenomenology an array of metaphysical, biblical, theological, and mystical terms. These allegations need to be decided on a case by case basis. Janicaud's most vehement accusation is against Levinas, though what he says confirms the need to reread Levinas (Janicaud might prefer to shelve him) in a way that undoes dogmatic assertions about the "Other" and its metaphysical authority. When it comes to Chrétien and Henry, Janicaud takes a more sympathetic tone, though his critique is no less exacting. His most formidable opponent is Marion, and allegations against him only highlight the certainty that with Marion phenomenology meets its truest test. In 1992, Marion, Chrétien, and Henry, together with Paul Ricoeur, published Phenomenology and Theology, an oblique response to Janicaud. Now, more than a decade later, Phenomenology and the "Theological Turn" collects and translates both Janicaud's critique and the ensuing defense of phenomenological theology. While insisting that such a theology is readily authorized, Ricoeur adds that it cannot avoid the mediating factors of language, culture, and history. In Ricoeur's essay, phenomenological theology leads toward a hermeneutic understanding of the genres of biblical poetics as they correlate to diverse figures of self-identity. In contrast, the essays by Chrétien and Henry confirm that Janicaud's unease is apt: they ground phenomenological research in impossibly metaphysical claims. But Marion's superb essay—a groundbreaking study of the unjustified restrictions that phenomenology places on the phenomena it seeks to access and describe—suffices to keep the debate alive. If the conclusions of his negative phenomenology are not necessarily theological, they surely vindicate the truthfulness abounding in the excess of experience over its own limits.