Does Descartes belong to metaphysics? What do we mean when we say "metaphysics"? These questions form the point of departure for Jean-Luc Marion's groundbreaking study of Cartesian thought. Analyses of Descartes' notion of the ego and his idea of God show that if Descartes represents the fullest example of metaphysics, he no less transgresses its limits. Writing as philosopher and historian of philosophy, Marion uses Heidegger's concept of metaphysics to interpret the Cartesian corpus--an interpretation strangely omitted from Heidegger's own history of philosophy. This interpretation...

Painting, according to Jean-Luc Marion, is a central topic of concern for philosophy, particularly phenomenology. For the question of painting is, at its heart, a question of visibility--of appearance. As such, the painting is a privileged case of the phenomenon; the painting becomes an index for investigating the conditions of appearance--or what Marion describes as -phenomenality- in general. In The Crossing of the Visible, Marion takes up just such a project. The natural outgrowth of his earlier reflections on icons, these four studies carefully consider the history of...

Painting, according to Jean-Luc Marion, is a central topic of concern for philosophy, particularly phenomenology. For the question of painting is, at its heart, a question of visibility--of appearance. As such, the painting is a privileged case of the phenomenon; the painting becomes an index for investigating the conditions of appearance--or what Marion describes as -phenomenality- in general. In The Crossing of the Visible, Marion takes up just such a project. The natural outgrowth of his earlier reflections on icons, these four studies carefully consider the history of...

This ambitious work engages several major philosophical genres. It responds to current discussions of the -gift, - which lie on the frontier of literature, anthropology, and economics, notably in the work of Jacques Derrida, and offers a detailed critique of the basis on which those discussions have proceeded.

Along with Husserl's Ideas and Heidegger's Being and Time, Being Given is one of the classic works of phenomenology in the twentieth century. Through readings of Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, and twentieth-century French phenomenology (e.g., Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Henry), it ventures a bold and decisive reappraisal of phenomenology and its possibilities. Its author's most original work to date, the book pushes phenomenology to its limits in an attempt to redefine and recover the phenomenological ideal, which the author argues has never been realized in any of...

Through careful analysis of phenomenological texts by Husserl and Heidegger, Marion argues for the necessity of a third phenomenological reduction that concerns what is fully implied but left largely unthought by the phenomenologies of both Husserl and Heidegger: the unconditional "givenness" of the phenomenon. At once historically grounded and radically new, this phenomenology of givenness has revitalized phenomenological debate in Europe and the U.S.

Phenomenology and the "Theological Turn" brings together the debate over Janicaud's critique of the "theological turn" represented by the works of Emmanuel Levinas, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Francois Courtine, Jean-Louis Chretien, and Michel Henry.

Phenomenology and the "Theological Turn" brings together the debate over Janicaud's critique of the "theological turn" represented by the works of Emmanuel Levinas, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Francois Courtine, Jean-Louis Chretien, and Michel Henry.

Marked sharply by its time and place (Paris in the 1970s), this early theological text by Jean-Luc Marion nevertheless maintains a strikingly deep resonance with his most recent, groundbreaking, and ever more widely discussed phenomenology. And while Marion will want to insist on a clear distinction between the theological and phenomenological projects, to read each in light of the other can prove illuminating for both the theological and the philosophical reader - and perhaps above all for the reader who wants to read in both directions at once, the reader concerned with those points of...