The work of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy shares with the thinkers of the ‘theological turn in phenomenology’ the programmatic desire to place the ‘theological’, in the broad sense of rethinking the religious traditions in our secular time, back on the agenda of critical thought. Like those advocating a theological turn in phenomenology, Nancy’s deconstructive approach to philosophical analysis aims to develop a new sensibility for the other, for transcendence, conceptualized as the non-apparent in the realm of appearing phenomena. This (...) is why Nancy launches a project looking for the ‘unthought’ and unexpected within the Christian traditions, called deconstruction of Christianity. However, the deconstructive approach to the non-apparent differs fundamentally from that of the thinkers of the turn (1) in its being non-apologetic and non-restorative with regard to religion, because it starts from a problematization of the—typically modern, that is romantic—desire to defend and protect what would be ‘lost’ and possibly to restore this, (2) in its focus on the complex difference-at-work (différance) between religion and secularism, a difference that can be termed entanglement and complicity between these two, (3) in its hypothesis that this entanglement is essentially one between (the meaning and experience of, the rituality around) presence and absence in modern culture, (4) in its conviction that the philosophy and history of culture must join, support, complete and maybe even turn around phenomenology when dealing with the difficult task of determining what exactly would be ‘left’ of the ‘theological’ in our time. In this article, both positions are compared and confronted further, leading to an account of Nancy’s re-readings of the Christian legacy (its theology, doctrine, art, rituals etc.), and ending in a more detailed, exemplary inquiry into the tension between distance and proximity, characteristic of the Christian God. (shrink)

At the opening of the first volume of his Deconstruction of Christianity, Nancy argues that “The much discussed ‘return of the religious,’ which denotes a real phenomenon, deserves no more attention than any other ‘return’” (1). This statement may seem paradoxical in light of Nancy’s extensive study of the logic of the return – including, of the divine – in texts such as “Of Divine Places,” Noli me tangere, Dis-Enclosure and Adoration. Nancy does pay considerable attention to something that, according (...) to him, deserves none. In this paper, I examine Nancy’s critique of the “return of religion” in detail and argue that it would be a mistake to assume that Nancy’s understanding of the logic of the “return” is limited to the – largely uninteresting and even dangerous, indeed – return of the Same, just as it is a mistake to assume that the phenomenon known as the “return of religion” merely consists of the dialectical resurgence of a past religious fervour, a step backwards in history. According to Nancy, religion today returns in a way that radically breaks with the logic of the return of the Same and testifies to an eternal return of difference which, paraphrasing Nancy, opens religion to the limitlessness that constitutes its truth. It does, therefore, deserve our attention, yet only insofar as, paraphrasing Nancy, it opens religion to the limitlessness that constitutes its truth (Dis-Enclosure 1), thereby providing us with new resources to think religion in the singular-plural today. (shrink)

A contemporary philosophy of religion that offers a phenomenology of love. What is to be done at the end of metaphysics? Joeri Schrijvers’s contemporary philosophy of religion takes up this question, originally posed by Reiner Schürmann and central to continental philosophy. The book navigates the work of thinkers who have addressed such metaphysical concerns, including Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jean-Luc Marion, Peter Sloterdijk, Ludwig Binswanger, Jacques Derrida, and more recently John D. Caputo, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, and Martin Hägglund. Notably, (...) Schrijvers engages both those who would deconstruct Christianity and those who remain within this tradition, offering an option that is “between:” between Christianity and atheism, between progressive and conservative, between faith and belief. Ultimately, Schrijvers confronts the end of metaphysics with a phenomenology of love and community, arguing for the radical primacy of togetherness. “Joeri Schrijvers’s book is a tour de force, ranging over a wide spectrum of contemporary thinkers in order to negotiate the distance between religion and religionlessness, God and Godlessness, ontotheology and its overcoming. The result is a nuanced and careful study that repays close study.” — John D. Caputo, Syracuse University “Among the many lusters of Joeri Schrijvers’s Between Faith and Belief is a beautiful recovery of Ludwig Binswanger’s phenomenology of love. Discussion of postmetaphysical theology is arid without philosophically informed and creative talk of love, and Binswanger’s is a voice that has been missing from the conversation for far too long. To put Binswanger into dialogue with Caputo and Nancy, in particular, is at once fascinating and nourishing.” — Kevin Hart, University of Virginia. (shrink)

This article aims to explore the philosophical approach to faith after deconstruction as manifested in the work of Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Luc Nancy. By taking the saturated phenomenon as its focus, the analysis seeks to demonstrate that whilst Marion’s thinking proves to be an innovative re-imagining of the possibilities of phenomenology, its problematic recourse to a supplementary hermeneutic means that saturation can never be adequately applied to faith without simultaneously compromising the excessive intuition upon which it relies. The article then (...) explores whether Nancy’s suggestion that saturation be re-framed as faith can offer a viable alternative approach. Whilst the post-phenomenological modality within which Nancy operates means it may be problematic to retain the term ‘saturation’ in the exact sense Marion gives it, it is argued that Nancy’s version of saturated faith allows us to approach the binary divide between philosophy and theology from a different direction, resulting in a vision of faith that cuts across theism and atheism, destabilising them from within. Although Nancy’s thought in this area certainly does nothing to respond to persistent questions surrounding the place of institutionalized religion within secular modernity, it nevertheless serves as a powerful tool for thinking the possibilities of faith in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In this article I explore how a philosophical conception of love may be used to draw debate on the death of God beyond the binary opposition between theology and philosophy through a comparative study of the work of Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Luc Nancy. Although Marion’s reading of love—in both its theological and phenomenological guises—proposes an innovative phrasing of a non-metaphysical notion of divinity, I argue that it is ultimately unable to maintain its coherence in nominal discourse due to Marion’s insistence (...) on keeping love and being separate. In contrast, through his unique thinking on ontology, Nancy’s philosophy allows us to reposition love at the heart of being, from whence it may serve as a means of disrupting the very principle governing the atheist and theist world-views. Far from dismantling Marion’s core proposition, I conclude that the two thinkers may in fact be more closely aligned than previous scholarship has acknowledged, coming together in the need to affirm an experience of the impossible that takes place in the present rather than in any eschatological fulfillment to come. At this intersection between two nominally very different thinkers, love forms an ontological limit-point for thought that poses a challenge to both theology and philosophy alike as they continue to grapple with the question of religion in the twenty-first century. (shrink)