Colloquium on "Givenness and Revelation"
Jean-Luc MarionUniversity of Chicago
David Bentley HartUniversity of Notre Dame
Cyril O'ReganUniversity of Notre Dame
Part of the Lumen Christi Institute's faculty colloquia in philosophy and theology, which bring together scholars from the region to discuss important questions in Catholic thought.
About Givenness and Revelation
Givenness and Revelation represents both the unity and the deep continuity of Jean-Luc Marion's thinking over many decades. This investigation into the origins and evolution of the concept of revelation arises from an initial reappraisal of the tension between natural theology and the revealed knowledge of God or sacra doctrina. Marion draws on the re-definition of the notions of possibility and impossibility, the critique of the reification of the subject, and the unpredictability of the event in its relationship to the gift in order to assess the respective capacities of dogmatic theology, modern metaphysics, contemporary phenomenology, and the biblical texts, especially the New Testament, to conceive the paradoxical phenomenality of a revelation.
This work thus brings us to the very heart and soul of Marion’s theology, concluding with a phenomenological approach to the Trinity that uncovers the logic of gift performed in the scriptural manifestation of Jesus Christ as Son of the Father. Givenness and Revelation enhances not only our understanding of religious experience, but enlarges the horizon of possibility of phenomenology itself.
Jean-Luc Marion is the Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies and the Philosophy of Religions and Theology at the Divinity School and Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He holds the Dominique Dubarle chair at the Institut Catholique de Paris and is Professor Emeritus of the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne). In 2008 he was elected a member of the Académie Française. Among his books are In the Self’s Place: The Approach of Saint Augustine, God Without Being, and The Erotic Phenomenon. In 2014 he delivered the Gifford Lectures on Givenness and Revelation. Marion served a critical role in the founding of the Lumen Christi Institute and serves as a member of its academic committee.
David Bentley Hart is Director’s Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Notre Dame. Hart’s most recent appointment is as the visiting Danforth chair of St. Louis University; he has also held positions at the University of Virginia, Duke University, and Providence College. His specialties are philosophical theology, systematics, patristics, classical and continental philosophy, and Asian religion. Hart’s books include The Beauty of the Infinite (2003); The Doors of the Sea (2005); In the Aftermath (2007); Atheist Delusions (2009); and The Experience of God (2013).
Cyril O’Regan is the Huisking Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University College Dublin, and master of arts, master of philosophy, and doctoral degrees from Yale University. He specializes in systematic and historical theology, with specific interests in the intersection of continental philosophy and theology, religion and literature, mystical theology, and postmodern thought. Professor O’Regan’s most recent book is Anatomy of Misremembering: Von Balthasar’s Response to Philosophical Modernity. Volume 1: Hegel. Earlier books include The Heterodox Hegel, Gnostic Return in Modernity, and Gnostic Apocalypse: Jacob Boehme's Haunted Narrative.
