Interpretingexcess Interpreting Excess: Jean-Luc Marion, Saturated Phenomena, and Hermeneutics

By Shane Mackinlay

Fordham University Press, 2009

This book could be profitably read as a phenomenological complement to Robyn Horner’s Jean-Luc Marion: A Theo-logical Introduction. As Mackinlay (Catholic Theological College) rightly notes, Marion’s reception in North America has largely been through the portal of philosophical theology, whereas his work over the past two decades has focused on phenomenology proper (even if he still tends to privilege religious phenomena as studies). If Horner provided the closest thing we have to Marion 101, Mackinlay’s volume is a very helpful 201 exposition of Marion’s phenomenology–though Mackinlay also goes beyond exposition to constructive critique. Mackinlay’s prose is lucid and accessible, but the work still assumes familiarity with the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger, so it probably can’t function as an undergraduate introduction (that book is waiting to be written). However, both graduate students and scholars will find this a very helpful study that provides an overview of Marion’s phenomenological project. Mackinlay also advances the discussion by suggesting that an implicit hermeneutic is at work in Marion’s phenomenology–despite his own critique of hermeneutics. One hopes that this book will generate interest in Marion’s phenomenology beyond the circle of those interested in the “theological turn” in French phenomenology.