ABSTRACT
From the brief overview of Marion’s intellectual influences and output given in the previous chapter, it will be evident that any attempt to understand his work from a theological perspective will also demand close attention to his philosophical concerns. In this chapter and the two immediately following, I will introduce some of the issues in contemporary continental philosophy that provide a setting for Marion’s work. Beginning with the idea that Marion can be situated as a “postmodern” thinker, it will then be necessary to explore what might be meant by the postmodern, and how that relates to poststructuralist trends in philosophy. Yet the use of both these terms-postmodern and poststructuralist-will require an understanding of that to which they predominantly respond, which is metaphysics. Marion’s understanding of three important moments in the historical unfolding of metaphysics will provide a basis, in this chapter, for the examination of two significant critiques of metaphysics, those of Nietzsche and Heidegger, in Chapter 4. In between this sketch of metaphysics and an examination of its problems, however, it will be necessary to consider the emergence of Husserlian phenomenology, which can be seen either as a perpetuation of metaphysics or as part of its overcoming. Since Heidegger places Husserl’s phenomenology in the former camp, and Marion places it to some extent in the latter, Chapter 3 will provide an overview of it in order to pave the way for references to this debate. Chapter 4 will then provide an introduction to another important trajectory in twentieth-century thought: hermeneutics. Finally, an account of the ways in which Derrida contributes to understandings of metaphysics, phenomenology, and hermeneutics will establish the final part of a platform from which Marion’s work with modern, phenomenological, theological, and poststructuralist ideas can be examined in the remainder of the book.
