Jean-Luc Marion's Incomprehensible Thought

A review of Jean-Luc Marion's book "La Rigueur des choses. Entretiens avec Dan Arbib" (Flammarion) explores his philosophical approach. Marion, a French philosopher, values incomprehensible texts, a disposition he calls talmudic or evangelical. He rejects both systematic philosophy (Martial Guéroult) and deconstruction (Jacques Derrida). Influenced by Jean Beaufret and Saint Augustine, Marion had an illumination in the Jardin du Luxembourg, leading to his concept of the "saturated phenomenon"—a phenomenon irreducible to objectivity, requiring new concepts. He extends Levinas and Henry, arguing that all given things imply a donor. Marion critiques Wittgenstein's "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent," asserting that speech is fundamentally address (from someone to someone). This address becomes prayer in the face of the incomprehensible. He denounces nihilism as the reduction of reality to objects via evaluation, leaving only waste. The review, by Fabrice Hadjadj, praises Marion as a great thinker.