In the contribution ‘The Gifted Self: Theological Anthropology and the Challenges of French Thought’, systematic theologian Robyn Horner (Australian Catholic University) makes explicit the fundamental question of contextuality at stake in all discussions in this second part of the book. Following through the claim that the theological anthropology of Gaudium et spes is intrinsically modern in approach, she investigates the fate of the modern subject in the wake of poststructuralist critiques such as that of Jacques Derrida. According to Derrida, our relation to the world and to each other is not based in a subject identical to itself; instead, the subject is characterized by différance, splitting forever ‘the self from itself’. Horner then asks whether a (post-)phenomenological anthropology such as Jean-Luc Marion’s might be helpful in renewing theological anthropology. Marion’s work allows us to think the lost or dissipated self by means of the logic of the gift. Unable ever to be present to itself, the subject can only be defined as radical openness to the givenness of the world and of phenomena in general. In that very openness, Marion argues, the subject is itself as radically given to itself, a givenness it realizes only in its responding and thus being given to others. This new definition of the subject and its relation to the world make a new theological definition of the human possible as being given and created by God.
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