A Genealogy Of Marion S Philosophy Of Religion

Tamsin Jones believes that locating Jean-Luc Marion solely within theological or phenomenological discourse undermines the coherence of his intellectual and philosophical enterprise. Through a comparative examination of Marion's interpretation and use of Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory of Nyssa, Jones evaluates the interplay of the manifestation and hiddenness of phenomena. By placing Marion against the backdrop of these Greek fathers, Jones sharpens the tension between Marion's rigorous method and its intended purpose: a safeguard against idolatry. At once situated at the crossroads of the debate over the turn to religion in French phenomenology and an inquiry into the retrieval of early Christian writings within this discourse, A Genealogy of Marion's Philosophy of Religion opens up a new view of the phenomenology of religious experience.

Religious and atheistic belief are presented anew in a volume of essays from leading phenomenologists in both France and the UK. Atheism, often presented as the negation of religious belief, is here engaged with from a phenomenologically informed notion of experience. The focus on experience, sparks new debates in readings of belief, faith and atheism as they relate to and complicate each other. What unites the contributors is their relationship to phenomenology as it has developed in France in the wake of Heidegger and Husserl. Leading French intellectuals from this context, Jean-Luc Nancy, Quentin Meillassoux, and Catherine Malabou, amongst others, contribute arresting ideas on atheistic faith, the death of God, and anarchic faith, opening up new areas of understanding in a field whose parameters and core concepts are ever shifting. Revealing the extent to which religious and atheistic belief must be seen to influence, and on a fundamental level, to co-create one another, the pluralistic society in which religious belief is counted as one option amongst many is given primacy. The fact that religious faith has become not only optional but also, in many contexts, strangely alienated from society, deeply modifies the experience of the believer as much as that of the non-believer. A focus on 'experience', over and above 'belief', moves us towards a mode of experiential knowledge which refuses to privilege the atheistic believer and deride the reality of religious belief.

Reading the corpus of texts written by the Fathers of the Church has always been a core area in Christian theology. However, scholars and academics are by no means united in the question how these important but difficult authors should be read and interpreted. Many of them are divided by implicit (but often unquestioned) assumptions about the best way to approach the texts or by underlying hermeneutical questions about the norms, limits and opportunities of reading Ancient Christian writers. This book will raise profound hermeneutical questions surrounding the reading of the Fathers with greater clarity than it has been done before. The contributors to this volume are theologians and historians who have used contemporary post-modern approaches to illuminate the Ancien corpus of texts. The chapters discuss issues such as What makes a 'good' reading of a church Father? What constitutes a 'responsible' reading? Is the reading of the Fathers limited to a specialist audience? What can modern thinkers contribute to our reading of the Fathers?

Continental philosophers of religion have been engaging with theological issues, concepts and questions for several decades, blurring the borders between the domains of philosophy and theology. Yet when Emmanuel Falque proclaims that both theologians and philosophers need not be afraid of crossing the Rubicon – the point of no return – between these often artificially separated disciplines, he scandalised both camps. Despite the scholarly reservations, the theological turn in French phenomenology has decisively happened. The challenge is now to interpret what this given fact of creative encounters between philosophy and theology means for these disciplines. In this collection, written by both theologians and philosophers, the question “Must we cross the Rubicon?” is central. However, rather than simply opposing or subscribing to Falque’s position, the individual chapters of this book interrogate and critically reflect on the relationship between theology and philosophy, offering novel perspectives and redrawing the outlines of their borderlands.

For centuries, Christian theology has understood the Eucharist in terms of metaphysics or in protest against it. Today an opening has been made to imagine the sacrament through the method of phenomenology, bringing about new theological life and meaning. In Dialectical Anatomy of the Eucharist, Donald Wallenfang conducts a sustained analysis of the Eucharist through the aperture of phenomenology, yet concludes the study with poetic and metaphysical twists. Engaging the work of Jean-Luc Marion, Paul Ricoeur, and Emmanuel Levinas, Wallenfang proposes pioneering ideas for contemporary sacramental theology that have vast implications for interfaith and interreligious dialogue. By tapping into the various currents within the Judeo-Christian tradition--Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant--a radical argument is developed that leverages the tension among them all. Several new frontiers are explored: dialectical theology, a fourth phenomenological reduction, the phenomenology of human personhood, the poetics of the Eucharist, and a reinterpretation of the concept of gift as conversation. On the whole, Wallenfang advances recent debates surrounding the relationship between phenomenology and theology by claiming an uncanny way out of emerging dead ends in philosophical theology: return to the fray.

This edited collection responds to Richard Kearney’s recent work on touch, excarnation, and embodiment, as well as his broader work in carnal hermeneutics, which sets the stage for his return to and retrieval of the senses of the lived body. Here, fourteen scholars engage the breadth and depth of Kearney’s work to illuminate our experience of the body. The chapters collected within take up a wide variety of subjects, from nature and non-human animals to our experience of the sacred and the demonic, and from art’s account of touching to the political implications of various types of embodiment. Featuring also an inspired new reflection from Kearney himself, in which he lays out his vision for “anacarnation,” this volume is an important statement about the centrality of touch and embodiment in our experience, and a reminder that, despite the excarnating tendencies of contemporary life, the lived body remains a touchstone for wisdom in our increasingly complicated and fragile world. Written for scholars and students interested in touch, embodiment, phenomenology, and hermeneutics, this diverse and challenging collection contributes to a growing field of scholarship that recognizes and attempts to correct the excarnating trends in philosophy and in culture at large.

“Beautifully written . . . advances scholarship on Marion, and offers a sustained and critical analysis of two weaknesses in Marion’s phenomenology.” —Tamsin Jones, author of A Genealogy of Marion’s Philosophy of Religion The philosophical work of Jean-Luc Marion has opened new ways of speaking about religious convictions and experiences. In this exploration of Marion’s philosophy and theology, Christina M. Gschwandtner presents a comprehensive and critical analysis of the ideas of saturated phenomena and the phenomenology of givenness. She claims that these phenomena do not always appear in the excessive mode that Marion describes and suggests instead that we consider degrees of saturation. Gschwandtner covers major themes in Marion’s work—the historical event, art, nature, love, gift and sacrifice, prayer, and the Eucharist. She works within the phenomenology of givenness, but suggests that Marion himself has not considered important aspects of his philosophy. “Christina M. Gschwandtner has established herself as a valued reader of contemporary French philosophy in general and of Marion’s writings in particular. She was the first to consider at length Marion’s extensive reflections on Descartes and to evaluate their theological importance, and she has translated two of Marion’s books from the French. This new study, Degrees of Givenness, extends her contribution to our understanding of this fecund philosopher.” —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews