JP2 Lecture // Jean-Luc Marion: “Going around metaphysics”

How could we have access to the sacramentality of the mere things, to the sacramentality of the world ? The answer appears as the first and final condition to any attempt to achieve a sacramental poetics and, even higher, a sacramental liturgy, approaching God with respect to the divine and divinity, whatever we could concieve under those words. In our time, the epochal moment of the “end of metaphysics” (i.e. the modern achievement of philosophy, when philosophy has given up its initial title of the love of and toward wisdom), the main reason why we cannot perform this sacramentality lies in the primacy of the concept of the object. Metaphysics has ended up transforming eveything, every thing, into an object. It is why we have to go beyond and around metaphysics to reach, or at least to come closer to the sacramentality of things, both tiny and great, finite and infinite. 

Prof. Jean-Luc Marion (born 3 July 1946) is a French philosopher, phenomenologist, and Roman Catholic theologian. He has held chairs at both the Sorbonne and the University of Chicago. Awarded with the 1992 Grand Prix du Philosophie de l’Académie Française, the 2008 Karl Jaspers Prize, as well as the 2020 Ratzinger Prize. Jean-Luc Marion is a former student of Jacques Derrida whose work is informed by patristic and mystical theology, phenomenology, and modern philosophy. In November 2008 he was elected as an immortel by the Académie Française. He has occupied seat 4, an office previously held by the late Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger. His many books include God Without Being (1991), Prolegomena to Charity (2002), et al.

The lecture will be held in English and is open to all.