Languages of excess in the nouvelle phénoménologie française: Jean- Luc Marion and Claude Romano

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the problem of language in two thinkers of the French nouvelle phénoménologie: Jean-Luc Marion and Claude Romano. We try to show that the novelty of this tradition consists in showing that the language of phenomenology can be explored from a non-predicative dimension. For this, we propose to group these proposals under the notion of “languages of excess”. In relation to Marion, we will group his various formulations on this subject under the idea of what we will call “language of saturation”. The central element here will be his reception of Christian Neoplatonism (Dionysus the Areopagite and Nicholas of Cusa), which allows him to formulate a language to name saturated phenomena. As for Claude Romano, although outside the tradition of Christian Neoplatonism, we will maintain that his phenomenological-hermeneutic proposal is at the service of the search for a language that can name the event. In both cases, they intend to describe phenomena that exceed the scope of objects.