El giro teológico y el límite de la fenomenología

Abstract

This article examines the question of God in contemporary phenomenology from a strictly philosophical standpoint, namely, the scope and limit of the phenomenological method when it opens itself to phenomena that seem to exceed intentional constitution and eidetic description. From Husserl to thinkers such as Levinas, Henry, Lacoste, and especially Jean-Luc Marion, the study shows that phenomenology has incorporated categories such as alterity, givenness, excess, mystery, and event in order to think forms of manifestation that surpass the classical logic of the object. Yet this expansion does not turn phenomenology into theology. The so-called theological turn should rather be understood as a philosophical radicalization of the question of experience, appearing, and the limits of manifestation. In this context, Janicaud’s critique helps to sharpen the methodological issue, while the patristic tradition, particularly the controversy with Eunomius and the apophatic elaboration of the Cappadocians, makes it possible to distinguish theological knowledge from phenomenological analysis with greater rigor. The central thesis of the article is that phenomenology can philosophically address the manifestation of the divine, but it cannot by itself assume the place of theology, whose method is constitutively grounded in revelation, tradition, and ecclesial life. Therefore, the relation between phenomenology and theology should not be understood as a disciplinary confusion, but as a fruitful limit that preserves the philosophical specificity of the former and the methodological irreducibility of the latter.