Caputo's oversignt

Peter J. Leithart, September 17, 2007

A friend, Bret Saunders, writes the following in response to my post summarizing Caputo's account of the "postmodern turns":

"Caputo appears to have omitted the so-called 'theological turn,' such as is found in J.-L. Marion and J.-F. Courtine. Of course, this is
because Caputo continues to deny that Marion's work constitutes a genuine 'turn,' since his phenomenology supposedly lacks the rigor proper to the Husserlian tradition (Heidegger says one must be a practical atheist to do phenomenology). I say 'continues' because I was present at a lecture Caputo gave in April, where he asserted that Marion's category of the 'doubly-saturated phenomenon' (whose primary example is revelation) is 'empty,' except for poetic flights of fancy (ie. literature). Marion is a fideist and a Catholic fundamentalist (ie., siding with Barth and Von Balthasar against Bultmann and
Rahner).

"Of course the stakes are high for Caputo's 'religion-
without-religion' program, since Marion charges that its major exponents (Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida) are still too Cartesian, too modern. As Marion puts it with respect to Heidegger--ironically, in an essay edited by Caputo--, 'The shadow of the Ego falls across Dasein.'"