Abstract
This article explores the responses to nihilism offered by Jean-Luc Marion and Martin Heidegger. In particular, this paper offers a response to Steven DeLay’s ‘The vanity of authenticity’; DeLay’s text argues for the superiority of Marion’s response to nihilism through his notion of vanity and, further, argues that this supposed defeat of Heidegger by Marion lays the foundation for the theological turn in philosophy. This paper will instead suggest that Marion has not in fact surpassed Heidegger, that his concept of vanity does not represent a meaningful innovation, and that his answer to nihilism/vanity through love is more similar to Heidegger’s response than either DeLay or Marion acknowledges. DeLay’s reading focuses on Heidegger’s Being and Time, but uses this reading to dismiss Heidegger’s work in its entirety. This paper will, instead, focus on Heidegger’s later work, which is ignored by both Marion and DeLay, offering particular attention to the shift in Heidegger’s response to nihilism as he increases his engagement with the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and introduces the concept Gelassenheit, which generally replaces the terminology of authenticity after the 1940s.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
Not applicable.
Code Availability
Not applicable.
Notes
‘Summoning us to face up to the depths of who we are, the erotic reduction reminds us that phenomenology must make the theological turn. Vanity disqualifies anything less.’ (DeLay, 2021, 64). That is, Heidegger’s phenomenological method (and methodological atheism) is shown to be inadequate because of Marion’s critique of vanity, thus suggesting that the only choice for philosophy is to turn towards theology as Marion does.
Collins, Ashok. “Being exposed to love: the death of God in Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Luc Nancy.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2016–12, Vol.80 (3), p.297–319. 302 – with reference to Marion – “If love reveals itself hermetically as distance […] in order to give itself, only love will be able to welcome it.”.
Despite the questionable nature of the Will to Power as a text, it is necessary to discuss here as it is the source of Heidegger’s and thus Marion’s treatment of nihilism in Nietzsche.
See especially pp. 9, 187, 312–320.
Arguments can and have been made that this is a reductive understanding of what Nietzsche means by “Will to Power,” but this is a matter for a different paper.
Peg Birmingham details the non-passivity of Gelassenheit because of its similarity with Augustine’s amo: volo ut sis; she also argues for the close connection of authenticity with Gelassenheit, which I will, once again, not be addressing in this paper.
References
Augustine (1991). Confessions. Tr. Henry Chadwick. OUP.
Birmingham, P. (2006). Heidegger and Augustine: The will and the word. In C. de Paolo (Ed.), The influence of Augustine on Heidegger: The emergence of an Augustinian phenomenology (pp. 115–152). Edwin Mellen.
Crowe, B. D. (2007). On the track of the fugitive Gods: Heidegger, Luther, Hölderlin. The Journal of Religion, 87(2), 183–205.
DeLay, S. (2019). Before God: Exercises in subjectivity. Rowman.
DeLay, S. (2020). The power at work within us. In M. Koci & J. Alvis (Eds.), Transforming the theological turn: Phenomenology with Emmanuel Falque (pp. 187–202). Rowman.
DeLay, S. (2021). The vanity of authenticity. Sophia, 60, 19–65.
DeSantis, R. (2021). Love’s resistance: Heidegger and the problem of first philosophy. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 53, 61–74.
Dreyfus, H., & Rubin, J. (1987). You can’t get something for nothing: Kierkegaard and Heidegger on how not to overcome nihilism. Inquiry, 30, 33–75.
Dreyfus, H. (2006). Heidegger on the connection between nihilism, technology, art, and politics. In C. Guignon (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Heidegger (pp. 289–316). CUP.
Gschwandtner, C. (2016). Marion and theology. Bloomsbury T&T Clark.
Heidegger, M. (1977). The age of the world picture. In W. Lovitt (Trans.), The question concerning technology and other essays (pp. 115–154). Garland.
Heidegger, M. (1991). The principle of reason (R. Lilly, Trans.). IUP.
Heidegger, M. (2002). Nietzsche’s word: God is dead. In J. Young & K. Haynes (Eds.), Martin Heidegger: Off the beaten track. CUP.
Jones, T. (2011). A genealogy of Marion’s philosophy of religion: Apparent darkness. IUP.
Kearney, R. (1992). Heidegger’s three Gods. Research Publication Series, Centre for Research in Philosophy and Literature, University of Warwick.
Kosky, J. L. (2010). ‘Love strong as death’: Levinas and Heidegger. In K. Hart & M. A. Signer (Eds.), The exorbitant: Emmanuel Levinas between Jews and Christians (pp. 108–129). Fordham University Press.
Kruger, M. C. (2021) Is philosophy a choice? An exploration via parable with Nishitani, Heidegger, and Derrida. Philosophy East and West, 71(4), 919–937.
Marion, J.-L. (2007). The erotic phenomenon. University of Chicago Press.
Marion, J.-L. (2012a). God without Being: Hors-texte (GWB). University of Chicago Press.
Marion, J.-L. (2012b). In the self’s place: The approach of Saint Augustine. Stanford University Press.
Marion, J.-L., & Arbib, D. (2017). The rigor of things. Fordham.
Marion, J-L. (2017). Believing in order to see [BIOS]: On the rationality of revelation and the irrationality of some believers (C. Gschwandtner, Trans.). Fordham.
Mitchell, A. J. (2010). The exposure of grace: Dimensionality in late Heidegger. Research in Phenomenology, 40(3), 309–330.
Mitchell, A. J. (2015). The Fourfold: Reading the late Heidegger. Northwestern University Press.
Nietzsche, F. (1967). The will to power (WTP) (W. Kaufmann & R.J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Random House.
Östman, L. (2014). Love and grace in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. Sophia, 53(4), 535–551.
Pascal, B. (1958). Pensees. E.P. Dutton.
Pattison, G. (2011). God and being: An enquiry. OUP.
Perrin, C. (2009). Les sources augustiniennes du concept d’amour chez Heidegger. Revue Philosophique De Louvain, 107(2), 239–267.
Raffoul, F. (2010). The origins of responsibility. IUP.
Rojcewicz, R. (1997). Platonic love: Dasein’s urge toward Being. Research in Phenomenology, 27(1), 103–120.
Storey, D. (2015). Naturalizing Heidegger: His confrontation with Nietzsche, his contribution to environmental philosophy. SUNY Press.
Swanton, C. (2010). A challenge to intellectual virtue from moral virtue: The case of universal love. Metaphilosophy, 41(1/2), 152–171.
Vattimo, G. (2010). Heidegger and Girard: Kenosis and the end of metaphysics (W. McCuaig, Trans.). In G. Vattimo, R. Girard, & P. Antonello (Eds.), Christianity, truth, and weakening faith: A dialogue (pp. 78–87). CUP.
Zawacki, A. (2004). ‘The break is not a break’: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Poiesis as abiding love. The Antioch Review, 62, 1.
Funding
Not applicable.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
Not applicable.
Ethics Approval
Not applicable.
Consent to Participate
Not applicable.
Consent for Publication
Not applicable.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kruger, M.C. Heidegger, Marion, and the Theological Turn: “The Vanity of Authenticity” and the Answer to Nihilism. SOPHIA 62, 341–358 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-022-00915-2
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-022-00915-2