Seeing Otherwise: ‘The Least of These’ and Revelation in Jean-Luc Marion

In his familiar essay in Phenomenology and the ‘Theological Turn’, Jean-François Courtine writes that the ‘cardinal experience’ of revelatory phenomena would undoubtedly be the incarnation. But in its singularity, this experience, he admits, seems to elude phenomenological thought. Against such a ju...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Breedlove, Thomas (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2025
In: Heythrop journal
Year: 2025, Volume: 66, Issue: 1, Pages: 54-71
IxTheo Classification:KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history
NBB Doctrine of Revelation
NBF Christology
VA Philosophy
VB Hermeneutics; Philosophy
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Summary:In his familiar essay in Phenomenology and the ‘Theological Turn’, Jean-François Courtine writes that the ‘cardinal experience’ of revelatory phenomena would undoubtedly be the incarnation. But in its singularity, this experience, he admits, seems to elude phenomenological thought. Against such a judgement, many Christian traditions affirm Christ's ongoing presence in diverse privileged sites, in the eucharist, saints, the Church itself, and, via Christ's own identification with ‘the least of these’ in Matthew's parable, in those who suffer. This essay considers this last possibility of divine manifestation, taking up ‘the least of these’ to reconsider the relationship between finitude and the infinite in Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenogical account of revelation and saturation. While the heart of Marion's account, both in his words and according to his critics, has primarily concerned revelation's contradiction of finite experience, this essay argues that the development of Marion's own hermeneutics and his attentiveness to paradox and kenosis also reveal the confirmation of finitude at the heart of revelation. Revelation, that is, though it comes from elsewhere, is not other than finitude, but finitude otherwise, finitude's transfiguration.
ISSN:1468-2265
Contains:Enthalten in: Heythrop journal
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/heyj.14372