The irreducibility of prayer
In my PhD Thesis, I explore the way the phenomenon of prayer is analysed in contemporary French philosophy, with a particular attention to the work of Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Louis Chrétien, and Jean-Luc Nancy. The overall purpose of this project is to understand the reasons for, and the consequences of, these philosophers’ interest in prayer, in a historical context when prayer seems to have lost its value and meaning. I offer a twofold argument. On the one hand, these philosophical approaches are shaped by the project of the overcoming of metaphysics as articulated by Heidegger. Prayer plays a crucial role in this overcoming, but it has to pay a high price, losing its specificity in favour of a reduction to a pure and undetermined essence. On the other hand, these thinkers commit some sort of “elucidating mistake”: pushed to an extreme, these authors – perhaps not always admitting to it – reveal an irreducible specificity of prayer as a practised and lived act. All in all, this research shows that certain religious phenomena can still assume quite a central importance in contemporary philosophical discourse, and that the borders between philosophy and religion are often more permeable that one thinks.