Counter-Experiences (Reading Jean-Luc Marion)

Unarguably, Jean-Luc Marion is the leading figure in French phenomenology as well as one of the proponents of the so-called “theological turn” in European philosophy. In this volume, Kevin Hart has assembled a stellar group of philosophers and theologians from the United States, Britain, France, and Australia to examine Marion’s work—especially his later work—from a variety of perspectives. The resulting volume is an indispensable resource for scholars working at the intersection of philosophy and theology.

Hart characterizes Marion’s work as a profound response to two major philosophical events: the end of metaphysics and the beginning of phenomenology. From the vantage point reached by Marion over the years, Hart argues, that end and that beginning are one and the same. Yet their unity is elusive: in order to discern it, the student of Marion must follow his vigorous and subtle rethinking of the history of modern philosophy and the nature of phenomenology. Only then can the reader begin to perceive many things that metaphysics has occluded, especially the nature of selfhood and our relations with God. The newfound unity of these two events is productive; it allows Marion to revise and extend the philosophy of disclosure that Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger were the first to practice.

With Marion as guide, we can also refigure the human subject—the gifted one (l’adonné)—and thus also secure a phenomenological understanding of revelation. Marion challenges theologians to pursue the implications of this move. This is the Marion for whom a revived phenomenology is philosophy today, the Marion deeply concerned to understand, maintain, and, if need be, rework the central insights of Husserl and Heidegger. The volume includes essays that consider The Erotic Phenomenon (2003), a rethinking of human subjectivity in terms of the possibility of loving and being loved.

Throughout, the contributors engage key concepts defined by Marion—givenness, the saturated phenomenon, erotic reduction, and counter-experience—and Marion himself concludes with a retrospective essay written in response to criticisms of his work.