Reading Jean-Luc Marion: Exceeding Metaphysics

The work of French philosopher and theologian Jean-Luc Marion has been recognized as among the most suggestive and productive in the philosophy of religion today. In Reading Marion, Christina M. Gschwandtner provides the first comprehensive introduction to Marion's large and conceptually dense corpus. Gschwandtner gives particular attention to Marion's early work on Descartes and follows thematic threads through to his most recent publications on charity and eroticism. She explores in detail three prominent topics in Marion's thought: the desire to overcome metaphysics, his reflections on the divine, and his reconsideration of the relation of the self to the other in love. Gschwandtner reveals Marion's thought as a unified whole and provides context for his theological and phenomenological writings. Readers at all levels will find insight into the work of one of the world's most provocative thinkers.

"[This book is] sure to interest philosophers and theologians who follow Marion's project of liberating the thought of God, self, and world." --Jeffrey L. Kosky, Washington and Lee University

"Gschwandtner draws upon her own doctoral research at Depaul University to offer an articulate,

wide-ranging and often compelling work which explores the connections between Marion's

phenomenological concerns and his writing on Descartes." --Heythrop Journal Indiana University Press Indiana University Press Indiana University Press

Christina M. Gschwandtner teaches philosophy at the University of Scranton. She is translator of Jean-Luc Marion's On the Ego and On God and The Visible and the Revealed.

Contents<\>

Preface

List of Abbreviations

Part 1. The Constraints of Metaphysics

Introduction: "This Theological Veering Which Is Too Obvious"

1. Descartes and Metaphysics: "Metaphysics Opens upon Its Modernity"

2. Theology and Metaphysics: "With Respect to Being Does God Have to Behave like Hamlet?"

3. Phenomenology and Metaphysics: "Unfolding the Fold of the Given"

Part 2. A God of Excess

Introduction: "To Pass Over to God's Point of View"

4. Descartes and God: "A Solitary... Abandoned on a Field in Ruins"

5. Theology and God: "The Glory of the Divine Befalls Us Only Obliquely"

6. Phenomenology and God: "It Is Impossible for God to Be Impossible"

Part 3. A Self Open to the Other

Introduction: "The Sole Master and Servant of the Given"

7. Descartes and the Self: "The Ego and the God of the Philosopher Evaluate Each Other from a Distance"

8. Phenomenology and the Self: "The Self That Comes after the Subject"

9. Charity and Eros: "One Must Substitute Erotic Meditations for the Metaphysical Meditations"

Conclusion: "Between Evidence and Charity One Must Choose"

Notes

Bibliography

Index