"Love,'Gift,' and the Fragmentary Self: A Theological Engagement with Jean-Luc Marion and Søren Kierkegaard

Abstract

Through a sustained engagement with Jean-Luc Marion and Søren Kierkegaard, this thesis explores themes of love and selfhood from a philosophical and theological perspective—drawing on several other sources from the Christian tradition at relevant points. It focuses on these themes with an eye to contemporary problems that arise for a theological engagement with phenomenology. While Kierkegaard’s writings both anticipate and directly influence later phenomenology, one of this study’s contributions is to highlight the underappreciated impact of a presupposed doctrine of creation ex nihilo on his existential reflections. Exploring this impact’s relevance, I show how Kierkegaard’s reflections—influenced by an underlying theology of creation—offer a corrective to Marion’s strictly phenomenological approach to love and selfhood. Resourcing Kierkegaard to address key (post)modern debates surrounding these themes, the project’s primary aim is to examine how his writings inadvertently point to the contemporary relevance of something like a classical theology of creation. The secondary aim is more methodological, as the analysis results in a constructive proposal that furthers discussions of how theology might engage the methods and insights of phenomenology without neglecting its own resources.