Abstract
This small volume should be read widely, but not simply because of the considerable accomplishment of its author. Jean-Luc Marion’s work in phenomenology, history of philosophy, and Catholic theology is distinguished by meticulous research, rigorous argument, and the promotion of bold and often provocative claims. The present work, a rare incursion into social and political debate, is no exception. In three accessible chapters, M. takes up the relationship between being Catholic and being French, the closely related theme laïcité in France, and the importance of community and communion. His guiding thesis is that, properly understood, Catholicism is uniquely prepared to save French society from what he judges to be an impending abyss of meaning that might destroy, or at least badly damage, its moral and political cohesion. M.’s tone is calm and reassuring, but in a manner that plainly rests on his own confidence in the inexhaustible resources of the Catholic tradition and way of life. Catholicism can offer French society a basis for a renewal of genuinely vibrant community precisely because it finds itself necessarily on the outside, but with a vision of community from which no one is excluded because everyone is loved and called to love everyone else (here the prooftext would be Gal 3). Of course, one will have questions. Can one make such a claim without significant reference to the Protestant denominations? On this, M. is silent. And what, really, of the state of Roman Catholicism itself? He observes that in fact the church has never been in anything like perfect shape, and may well have been in considerably worse shape during other periods of its long history. Yet his confidence in Catholicism does not rest on an especially positive sense of the institution. M. places his faith in the people themselves, who, he reminds us, are everywhere, and without either rancor or reservation about the duties of citizenship. Catholicism will endure, and so long as it does, society, to which Catholics do belong, might still save itself.
How can Catholicism be outside society even while Catholics truly belong to it? M. formulates his response from both side of the question. What is distinctive of Catholics is their commitment to a Person who loves from beyond any and all particular worldly orders, and what is distinctive of Catholic community is its manner of being in the world without being wholly of it (M. adeptly sketches some of the history of this theme, beginning with Augustine). At the same time, no believer has ever been wholly or purely Catholic, but is instead, as it were, both inserted in the this-worldly and also opened up beyond it. For M., it would be foolish to imagine that for human beings it could ever be otherwise.
Now in France, society has protected itself from Catholic theocracy and its avatars (integralism, ultramontanism) with the principle of laïcité. The state will never be defined by any religious profession, but also never prohibit the practice of any religion that accepts this principle. As M. sees it, laïcité has more than one application to the contemporary scene. Most often, it serves as a warning against those who might reject the values of the Republic. Historically, Catholics have most often been considered suspect on this point, though more recently it has been certain forms of Islam. The linchpin of M.’s three chapters appears to be planted here. As the fabric of French society—itself nonreligious by definition, but not therefore anti-religious—shows signs of fraying, it proves in need of religion after all. Or rather, it proves in need especially of an essential feature of one of them. Catholicism should fill in an important gap or make up an important shortcoming in the program of social cohesion.
This move is more or less repeated with regard to the impact of globalized capitalism, about which somewhat less will be said here. On M.’s understanding, economic forces too little guided by a humane morality are in the process of accomplishing the reduction of life itself to marketable value such as was anticipated in Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power. Only love can save us, because only love recognizes the goodness of each particular thing without forgetting that it nonetheless comes from a transcendent source.
This line of reasoning gives rise to a question that may well have as many answers as there are social and culture contexts from which to consider it. One may fairly wonder whether we find ourselves at the verge of nihilism, for that is what M. has proposed, or instead already in the proliferation of something more like neo-paganism (this is the position of the political philosopher Chantal Delsol, reflecting on France itself). M. would have Catholicism repair a tear in social cohesion opened when modern laïcité moves religion to the fringe of social life. Perhaps that tear is already mended in some manner by some of what one sees in the environmental movement, or in certain forms of therapy. It is not at all certain that M. could not handle this difference, but its appearance is already instructive. One is immediately tempted to inspect the consistency between this new proposal that we interpret secular society in terms of a sharp alternative—it either is or is not infused by divine love—and an antecedent philosophy has long been preoccupied with the thought of divine abundance and the forms of its exclusion from consciousness.
One cannot advance without considering another complication, though it now plainly leads outside M.’s stated focus on France. Catholic France is sacramental and liturgical in a manner that does set it apart from what might count as Protestant France (if one may generalize in this way). The latter is grounded in an emphasis on the biblical and prophetic strands of Christian life. Moreover, in a large number of places around the world, the culture is seeded at least as much, if not more, with the latter. This cannot be without consequence for the form and content of religious education, and thus the transmission of the principles that society stands in need of. One does not require much time reflecting on these differences, which would be manifold, in order to anticipate a wide-ranging and important discussion.