The Phenomenology of Embodiment in the Theological Turn in French Phenomenology

The Theological Turn in Phenomenology, as represented in works by Chrétien, Levinas, Ricoeur, Marion, Henry, Falque, Lacoste, and others, is not a formal philosophical movement, but a collective set of insights into how revelation and phenomena interrelate. It has made a significant contribution to phenomenological reflection and has accomplished not only a further opening into how Scriptural and spiritual examinations by Catholic philosophy and practice further basic phenomenological structures and insights, but also how they attune us to deeper insights, both metaphysical and ontological. The challenge for these thinkers, drawing from prior insights of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, Heidegger, and others, is not only to expand the borders of theological and philosophical interaction, but to show forth a kind of return to a surprising complementarity of the two approaches. Each of them forges what can be considered a phenomenological anthropology, which was lacking in, for example, Heidegger’s existential phenomenology, particularly in their approaches to embodiment. The paper will critically examine how three Catholic Philosophers address this issue: Marion discloses an erotic phenomenology as primary locus of embodiment, Henry affirms a second birth that follows from our forgetting of Truth, and Falque uncovers the continual presence of an incorporation with God guided by an organic corporeality.