On Loving in Order to Know: Marion and Lonergan on Religious Experience

Abstract In what follows, I consider Lonergan's account of the nature of religious experience in comparison with the work of contemporary phenomenologist and philosopher of religion Jean‐Luc Marion, arguing that despite important differences in philosophical method both authors conclude that a particular form of love is the defining characteristic of such experience. Considered in light of one another, the radicalness of Lonergan's proposal is better appreciated despite its compact formulation, while Marion's account of the saturated phenomenon is better appreciated as describing a range of experiences beyond his most common examples, which tend to be ones of excess. A principal indication of this unexpected philosophical sympathy is the recurring appeal both authors make to Blaise Pascal's reasons of the heart, which both interpret as signaling a key reversal of interior life characteristic of religious experience. Following Pascal, both interpret the heart as the seat of willing which, in the case of religious experience, reverses the normal priority of knowing and loving. With Pascal as a cypher, we discover that what appear to be incommensurate, if not opposed, positions on knowing, being, and loving, nevertheless prove mutually illuminating.