ABSTRACT
Jean-Luc Marion was born in Meudon, on the outskirts of Paris, in 1946. The son of an engineer and a teacher, Marion initially pursued undergraduate studies in the humanities at what was then the University of Nanterre, and subsequently at the Sorbonne, before deciding to become a professional philosopher. This choice eventually led to his being accepted at the highly exclusive École Normale Supérieure in the Rue d’Ulm in Paris, where entry is based on competitive examination, and where he was taught by several of the intellectual giants of the day, including Louis Althusser, Gilles Deleuze, and a young Jacques Derrida. 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, and he read widely in this area. Marion’s life as a student coincided with a vigorous political climate in France. In 1968, he, like so many others, was caught up in the student riots, and continues to mark those years as some of the most important and formative in his life.1
