CFP: God in French Phenomenology - Portuguese Journal of Philosophy

Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia

2019, Volume 76, No. 2

God in the French Phenomenology

Andreas Lind, SJ

Université de Namur

Bruno Nobre, SJ

João Carlos Onofre Pinto, SJ

Universidade Católica Portuguesa

Submission deadline: 28 February 2020

Over the twentieth century and now in our contemporary time, some phenomenologists in the French context established and repositioned the question of God in phenomenological terms. By refusing the traditional metaphysics, which had followed, according to Heideggerian hermeneutics, into the onto-theology, authors such as Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Paul Ricœur, Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, and Emmanuel Falque, among others, left the attempt to prove God’s existence by pure reason. Such an approach could reduce God to the Supreme Being whose essence would be understood basically in ontic terms. Such an approach would run the risk of reducing God to a concept or placing it in an absolutely extra-phenomenal sphere that would serve as the exterior foundation of the phatic life, or the ego that I am. More than understanding God’s essence, these authors search above all to describe the possible manifestation of a being such as God. In other words, it is the description of the phenomenality that would be proper to God’s manifestation or to Religious experience in general.

For this reason, it is not surprising that Dominique Janicaud, in the beginning of the ’90s, criticized those phenomenologists by accusing them of having operated the “theological turn in French phenomenology.” However, is it indeed the case that the openness to the question of God results in the departure of the strict phenomenological domain? Or, on the contrary, is such an openness required for the full accomplishment of phenomenology itself?

This call for papers aims to nourish the debate around the openness of French phenomenology to the problem of God and to the dialogue with religion, in general, and with Christian tradition, in particular. As such, we invite contributions for Volume 76, No. 2 (https://www.rpf.pt/), addressing preferably the following topics:

(1) Phenomenology and Religious experience;

(2) Phenomenology, Revelation and Incarnation;

(3) Theological turns in French phenomenology;

(4) God’s phenomenality;

(5) God and inter-subjectivity;

(6) Phenomenological hermeneutics of the Biblical texts, especially the Pauline corpus and Johnnic corpus.

Submission deadline: 28 February 2020.

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