Jean-Luc Marion

Jean-Luc Marion (born 3 July 1946) is a French philosopher and Roman Catholic theologian.

Marion is a former student of Jacques Derrida whose work is informed by patristic and mystical theology, phenomenology, and modern philosophy.

Much of his academic work has dealt with Descartes and phenomenologists like Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, but also religion.

God Without Being, for example, is concerned predominantly with an analysis of idolatry, a theme strongly linked in Marion's work with love and the gift, which is a concept also explored at length by Derrida.

Marion was born in Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine, on 3 July 1946.

He studied at the University of Nanterre (now the University Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense) and the Sorbonne and then did graduate work in philosophy from the École normale supérieure in Paris from 1967 to 1971, where he was taught by Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser and Gilles Deleuze.

At the same time, Marion's deep interest in theology was privately cultivated under the personal influence of theologians such as Louis Bouyer, Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, and Hans Urs von Balthasar.

From 1972 to 1980 he studied for his doctorate and worked as an assistant lecturer at the Sorbonne.

After receiving his doctorate in 1980, he began teaching at the University of Poitiers.

Réduction et donation: Etudes sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie (1989) is an historical study of the phenomenological method followed by Husserl and Heidegger, with a view towards suggesting future directions for phenomenological research.

The unexpected reaction that Réduction et donation provoked called for clarification and full development.

From there he moved to become the Director of Philosophy at the University Paris X – Nanterre, and in 1991 also took up the role of professeur invité at the Institut Catholique de Paris.

Marion became a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1994.

In 1996 he became Director of Philosophy at the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne), where he taught until 2012.

This was addressed in Étant donné: Essai d'une phénoménologie de la donation (1997), a more conceptual work investigating phenomenological givenness, the saturated phenomenon and the gifted—a rethinking of the subject.

Du surcroît (2001) provides an in-depth description of saturated phenomena.

Marion claims that he has attempted to "radically reduce the whole phenomenological project beginning with the primacy in it of givenness".

What he describes as his one and only theme is the givenness that is required before phenomena can show themselves in consciousness—"what shows itself first gives itself. This is based on the argument that any and all attempts to lead phenomena back to immanence in consciousness, that is, to exercise the phenomenological reduction, necessarily results in showing that givenness is the "sole horizon of phenomena"

Marion radicalizes this argument in the formulation, "As much reduction, as much givenness", and offers this as a new first principle of phenomenology, building on and challenging prior formulae of Husserl and Heidegger.

The formulation common to both, Marion argues, "So much appearance, so much Being", adopted from Johann Friedrich Herbart, erroneously elevates appearing to the status of the "sole face of Being".

In doing so, it leaves appearing itself undetermined, not subject to the reduction, and thus in a "typically metaphysical situation".

The Husserlian formulation, "To the things themselves!", is criticized on the basis that the things in question would remain what they are even without appearing to a subject—again circumventing the reduction or even without becoming phenomena.

Appearing becomes merely a mode of access to objects, rendering the formulation inadequate as a first principle of phenomenology.

A third formulation, Husserl's "Principle of all Principles", states "that every primordial dator Intuition is a source of authority (Rechtsquelle) for knowledge, that whatever presents itself in 'intuition'...is simply to be accepted as it gives itself out to be, though only within the limits in which it then presents itself."

Marion argues that while the Principle of all Principles places givenness as phenomenality's criterion and achievement, givenness still remains uninterrogated.

Whereas it admits limits to intuition ("as it gives itself..., though only within the limits in which it presents itself"), "givenness alone is absolute, free and without condition"

Givenness then is not reducible except to itself, and so is freed from the limits of any other authority, including intuition; a reduced given is either given or not given.

"As much reduction, as much givenness" states that givenness is what the reduction accomplishes, and any reduced given is reduced to givenness.

The more a phenomenon is reduced, the more it is given.

Marion calls the formulation the last principle, equal to the first, that of the appearing itself.

By describing the structures of phenomena from the basis of givenness, Marion claims to have succeeded in describing certain phenomena that previous metaphysical and phenomenological approaches either ignore or exclude—givens that show themselves but which a thinking that does not go back to the given is powerless to receive.

In all, three types of phenomena can be shown, according to the proportionality between what is given in intuition and what is intended:

He was then appointed the John Nuveen Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Theology there in 2004, a position he held until 2010.

That year, he was appointed the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies at the Divinity School, a position that had been vacated by the retirement of theologian David Tracy.

He retired from Chicago in 2022.

He continues to serve on the Editorial Advisory Panel of the journal Quaestio.

On 6 November 2008, Marion was elected as an immortel by the Académie Française.

Marion now occupies seat 4, an office previously held by Cardinal Lustiger.

His awards include:

Marion's phenomenological work is set out in three volumes which together form a triptych or trilogy.