Holy Phenomenology: Heidegger’s ‘Phenomenology of the Inapparent’ in Jean-Luc Nancy’sAdoration: The Deconstruction of Christianity II

Abstract

This article demonstrates the ways in which Jean-Luc Nancy, particularly in his own distinctive attempt to ‘Re-imagine Human’ according to the human impulse of ‘adoration’, can in one fundamental sense be included among the French Phenomenologists associated with the often pejoratively named ‘Theological Turn’. This inclusion of Nancy within this group is accomplished through demonstrating how Nancy, in ways similar to the others, relies upon the grounding concept of Heidegger’s ‘Phenomenology of the Inapparent’ ( unscheinbar ). If it is true that Nancy’s work has strong manifestations of this concept in his work, then the consequences of such a reliance entails that Nancy is more akin to these thinkers associated with the Theological Turn than has yet been realised, and this should lead us to assess this concept of Heidegger’s. Such a reliance would reveal that, despite his turn to a radical atheism, Nancy’s work still begins at a similar starting point as those associated with that turn, such as Marion, Chrétien, Henry, and Lacoste. The article offers a brief interpretation of Heidegger’s ‘phenomenology of the inapparent’, then draws four points of association between it and Nancy’s recent work on ‘adoration’. The outcome of such a demonstration situates Nancy’s work in this context, brings further clarification to the most radical basis of what made the ‘theological turn’ in French phenomenology possible, and opens the question as to how Nancy’s work might be juxtaposed to the others associated with the Turn.