Theological Turn in Phenomenology: Paradigmatic Shifts and Ethical Implications

Abstract

Religion has become the concern all over again and some major reverberations have surfaced in the field of ethics as well. One such development can be traced in the ethical considerations which emerge from the domain of phenomenology, since the works of Emmanuel Levinas. As the paper steers across these developments, in the wake of the theological turn , the very question of ethicality (in these phenomenological considerations) raises an important concern. Following in this vein, the paper attempts to draw parallels between two broader forms of ethicality i.e. ethics of donation, which unfolds from Jean-Luc Marion’s third phenomenological reduction to givenness, and ethics of decisionism envisaged across the works of Jacques Derrida. The paper claims that, in comparison to ethics of donation, the development of Derridean methods not only conceive of much fecund grounds for ethics, but also promote ethical initiatives that go beyond mere injunctions.