A Conversation with Jean-Luc Marion
Recorded Spring, 2005 at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.
ver the past year and a half, the JCRT regularly has devoted space to the issue of
“religious theory” after Jacques Derrida. My first questions to Jean-Luc Marion
address this issue and the initial subsequent questions turn more toward the future
of religious theory generally rather than the intricacies of Jean-Luc Marion’s
thought1, with the exception of his view of the relationship or contest between
philosophy and theology, which seems to follow naturally from his detailed
analyses of phenomenology and hermeneutics. As a way to clarify this persistent
relationship/contest and the implications of an “after Derrida,” I added the
complication of a “postmodern (Lyotardian) aesthetics” to my line of questioning.
This was in part to challenge or, at least, clarify the widely accepted notion that
Jean-Luc Marion is a “postmodern theologian,” which I believe is a somewhat
dubious designation. As the listener will note, Jean-Luc Marion interestingly changes the question of postmodernism into a larger question of phenomenology.
The remaining portion of the conversation revolves around the status of the
“object” as a “saturated,” “conceivable,” or “silent” thing, which is another way of
addressing the significance of metaphysics in phenomenology, hermeneutics, and
postmodernism. The end of the conversation coincidentally touches on the
“phenomenology of religion” that one sometimes links with Mircea Eliade, another
“Catholic theologian.” For Eliade, the “object” returns as “hierophany,” which
Marion discusses in the context of the “icon.” This “object” at risk (at risk of being
named) provides a point of entry into Marion’s work across theology and
philosophy. The “eucharistic hermeneutic” that one associates with Marion has, I
believe, interesting connections to Eliade’s dialectic of the sacred and profane and
Marion provides an intriguing response to the comparison as a final comment in
the conversation.
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Listen to the interview
MP3 format (43MB), 32:21 in length.
You may also wish to read other articles addressing Marion's place in
religious theory: