Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion

Abstract

Abstract This essay maps the issues of interpretation of the Dionysian corpus that divide the twentieth-century French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion. It charts the development of these issues through four publications: Derrida’s 1968 essay ‘Differance’, Marion’s 1977 monograph Idol and Distance, Derrida’s 1987 essay ‘Denials: How to Avoid Speaking’, and Marion’s 1997 essay ‘In the Name: How to Avoid Speaking of “Negative Theology” ’’ (which is followed by a brief exchange between Derrida and Marion). Although the major point of contention between Derrida and Marion concerns the relationship between (Derridean) deconstruction and (Dionysian) negative theology, two key issues of interpretation of the Dionysian corpus arise in the process: whether Dionysian (de-)negation and Dionysian prayer yield a determinate, superessential God, or whether they lead beyond all determinations and predications of being. The essay examine these interpretive contentions, as well as some less central issues regarding the divine names, causation, and hierarchy. It concludes by demonstrating where both philosophers’ interpretations get the Dionysian corpus wrong, due in large part to the ways in which they strongly read their own philosophical frameworks—Derrida’s philosophy of language and Marion’s theology of religion—onto the Dionysian corpus.