Marion And Derrida On The Gift And Desire Debating The Generosity Of Things

This book examines the various encounters between Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques Derrida on “the gift,” considers their many differences on “desire,” and demonstrates how these topics hold the keys to some of phenomenology’s most pressing structural questions, especially regarding “deconstructive” approaches within the field. The book claims that the topic of desire is a central lynchpin to understanding the two thinkers’ conflict over the gift, for the gift is reducible to the “desire to give,” which initiates a turn to the topic of “generosity.” To what degree might loving also imply giving? How far might it be suggested that love is reducible to desire and intentionality? It is demonstrated how Derrida (the generative “father” of deconstruction) rejects the possibility of any potential relation between the gift and desire on the account that desire is bound to calculative repetition, economical appropriation, and subject-centered interests that hinder deconstruction. Whereas Marion (a representative of the phenomenological tradition) demands a unique union between the gift and desire, which are both represented in his “reduction to givenness” and “erotic reduction.” The book is the first extensive attempt to contextualize the stark differences between Marion and Derrida within the phenomenological legacy (Husserl, Heidegger, Kant), supplies readers with in-depth accounts of the topics of the gift, love, and desire, and demonstrates another means through which the appearing of phenomena might be understood, namely, according to the generosity of things.

The Holy Spirit, being given as a gift in the opening chapters of Acts, initiates and sustains the early Jesus community, empowering their teaching, unity, meals, sharing of possessions and worship.

In this study, Calvin D. Ullrich argues for the political significance of the philosopher-theologian John D. Caputo's radical theology. Against the backdrop of present debates, the author traces the notions of 'sovereignty and event' by drawing on the political theology of Carl Schmitt and Caputo's evolving engagement with postmodern thought; from its genesis in Martin Heidegger to its deeply involved association with Jacques Derrida. Calvin D. Ullrich shows that contrary to some misleading interpretations of his religious deconstruction, Caputo has always held nascent political concerns which culminate in his radical theology. Writing for scholars working in contemporary philosophy and theology, this book offers one of the first major in-depth analyses covering Caputo's writings of the last four decades, and seeks to defend their relevance for discussions responding to ongoing political-theological challenges.

In his fascinating new book, leading phenomenologist Anthony Steinbock intervenes in contemporary debate around the idea of the gift through a set of critical readings in which he situates the gift in the context of interpersonal relations. While taking up the key figures in the discussion (Heidegger, Derrida, Marion, Henry, Maimonides), Steinbock proposes the following: that these discussions of the gift are really not about the gift. He demonstrates, through critical interpretations and phenomenological analyses, how the gift only becomes meaningful in the context of interpersonal loving. The gift is not the point: “it’s not about the gift”. The gift becomes most fully what it is, following Maimonides, in participating with others toward their liberation. The point is the interpersonal relation of lover to beloved, which allows the gift to appear.

Existential gratitude-gratitude for one's very existence or life as a whole-is pervasive across the most influential human, cultural and religious traditions. Weaving together analytic and continental, as well as non-western and historical philosophical perspectives, this volume explores the nexus of gratitude, existence and God as an inter-subjective phenomenon for the first time. A team of leading scholars introduce existential gratitude as a perennially and characteristically human phenomenon, central to the distinctive life of our species. Attention is given to the conditions under which existence itself might be construed as having a gift-like or otherwise gratitude-inducing character. Drawing on a diversity of perspectives, chapters mark out new territory in philosophical inquiry, addressing whether and in what sense we ought to be grateful for our very existence. By analysing gratitude, this collection makes a novel contribution to the discourse on moral emotions, phenomenology, anti-natalism and theology.

Dominique Janicaud once famously critiqued the work of French phenomenologists of the theological turn because their work was built on the seemingly corrupt basis of Heidegger's notion of the inapparent or inconspicuous. In this powerful reconsideration and extension of Heidegger's phenomenology of the inconspicuous, Jason W. Alvis deftly suggests that inconspicuousness characterizes something fully present and active, yet quickly overlooked. Alvis develops the idea of inconspicuousness through creative appraisals of key concepts of the thinkers of the French theological turn and then employs it to describe the paradoxes of religious experience.

Rethinking God as Gift 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 its 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, Horner 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 Lévinas, enables him to work out a phenomenology where even “impossible” phenomena such as revelation and the gift might be examined. In this important confrontation between Marion and Derrida issues vital to the negotiation of postmodern concerns in philosophy and theology emerge with vigour. The careful elucidation of those issues in an interdisciplinary context, and the snapshot it provides of the state of contemporary debate, make Rethinking God as Gift an important contribution to theological and philosophical discussion.