Jean-Luc Marion is Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies and Professor of the Philosophy of Religions and Theology at the University of Chicago.
He specialises in the history of modern philosophy and contemporary phenomenology. In the former field, he has published several books on Descartes’ ontology, rational theology, and metaphysics, focusing especially on medieval sources and using modern patterns of interpretation (e.g. On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism, Cartesian Questions, and On the Ego and on God: Further Cartesian Questions). In the latter field, he is pursuing a long-term inquiry into the question of God, as in The Idol and Distance and God Without Being. Finally, he initiated a phenomenology of givenness in Reduction and Givenness, which was further developed in Being Given: An Essay on the Phenomenology of Givenness and In Excess: Studies on Saturated Phenomena, and in The Erotic Phenomenon. In a more theological style, he has recently published Au lieu de soi. L’approche de saint Augustin (first edition, 2008; second edition, 2009; English translation, In the Self’s Place, 2012). He also continues to work on a study devoted to deconstructing the myth of Cartesian dualism, Sur la pensée passive de Descartes.
Professor Marion has also worked in the areas of Greek and Latin patristics; the history of medieval and modern philosophy; aesthetics; and constructive theology. He recently published Giveness and Revelation (OUP, 2016), the proceedings of the Gifford Lectures he gave at the University of Glasgow in 2014.
Existential Philosophy and Literature 