Being Given

Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness

Jean-Luc Marion, Jeffrey L. Kosky

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9780804785723
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

Along with Husserl's Ideas and Heidegger's Being and Time, Being Given is one of the classic works of phenomenology in the twentieth century. Through readings of Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, and twentieth-century French phenomenology (e.g., Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Henry), it ventures a bold and decisive reappraisal of phenomenology and its possibilities. Its author's most original work to date, the book pushes phenomenology to its limits in an attempt to redefine and recover the phenomenological ideal, which the author argues has never been realized in any of the historical phenomenologies. Against Husserl's reduction to consciousness and Heidegger's reduction to Dasein, the author proposes a third reduction to givenness, wherein phenomena appear unconditionally and show themselves from themselves at their own initiative.

Being Given is the clearest, most systematic response to questions that have occupied its author for the better part of two decades. The book articulates a powerful set of concepts that should provoke new research in philosophy, religion, and art, as well as at the intersection of these disciplines.

Some of the significant issues it treats include the phenomenological definition of the phenomenon, the redefinition of the gift in terms not of economy but of givenness, the nature of saturated phenomena, and the question "Who comes after the subject?" Throughout his consideration of these issues, the author carefully notes their significance for the increasingly popular fields of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Being Given is therefore indispensable reading for anyone interested in the question of the relation between the phenomenological and the theological in Marion and emergent French phenomenology.

NOTES

2012 PREFACE

1. Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt, 1993), 58:5.

2. To cite only those that appeared in English: R. Horner, Jean-Luc Marion: A Theological Introduction (Ashgate, 2005); P. Jonkers and R. Welten, eds., God in France: Eight Contemporary French Thinkers on God (Leeuven, Belgium, 2005); Michael Ian Leask and Eoin Cassidy, eds., Givenness and God: Questions of Jean-Luc Marion (New York, 2005); K. Hart, ed., Counter-experiences: Reading Jean-Luc Marion (South Bend, IN, 2007); Bruce Ellis Benson and Norman Wirzba, eds., Words of Life: New Theological Turns in French Phenomenology (New York, 2010); J. R. White, ed., “Selected Papers on the Thought of Jean-Luc Marion,” special issue, Quaestiones Disputatae 1, no. 1 (Steubenville, 2010).

3. “Remarques sur les origines de la Gegebenheit dans la pensée de Heidegger,” Heidegger Studies 24 (2008): 167–79; and “The Phenomenological Origins of the Concept of Givenness,” in White, “Selected Papers on the Thought of Jean-Luc Marion.” Additional texts appear in Acerca de la donacion: Una perspectiva fenomenologica (Buenos Aires, 2005).

4. For example, The Visible and the Revealed (New York, 2008) reissues the earliest (and still imprecise) version of the argument of the “Saturated Phenomenon” (which first appeared in J.-F. Courtine, ed., Phénoménologie et théologie [Paris, 1996]), but, more significantly, also includes “The Banality of Saturation,” which first appeared in Hart, Counter-experiences.

5. See Au lieu de soi: L’approche de saint Augustin (Paris, 2007¹, 2008² [English translation by Jeffrey L. Kosky, In the Self’s Place: The Approach of Saint Augustine (Stanford, 2012)]). See “Mihi magna quaestio factus sum: The Privilege of Unknowing,” in Journal of Religion 85, no. 1 (January 2005): 1–24; “Idipsum: The Name of God According to Augustine,” in Orthodox Readings of Augustine, ed. A. Papnikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos (New York, 2008), 167–89; and “Resting, Moving, Loving: The Access to the Self Acccording to Saint Augustine,” in Journal of Religion 91, no. 1 (January 2011): 24–42; as well as “Substantia: Note sur l’isage de substantia par st. Augustin et sur son appartenance à l’histoire de la métaphysique,” in Mots médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach, ed. I. Atucha, D. Calma, C. König-Paralong, and I. Zavarrero (Porto, 2011).

6. See Certitudes négatives (Paris, 2010 [English translation by Stephen E. Phillips (Chicago, forthcoming)]); and, in part, The Reason of the Gift, trans. Stephen E. Lewis (Charlottesville, VA, 2011).

PREFACE

1. Paris: P.U.F., 1989.

2. Paris: P.U.F., 2001. English translation forthcoming from Fordham University Press.

3. Besides the debate “Autour de Réduction et donation de J.-L. Marion,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1991/1 (Henry, Greisch, Laurelle), see Dominique Janicaud’s polemic Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française (Combas: Editions de l’Eclat, 1991), chap. 3 [English translation in Dominique Janicaud, J.-F. Courtine et al., Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”].

4. Paris: Fayard, 1982, then P.U.F., 1991. Translated as God Without Being.

5. With an intermediary step, “Le phénomène saturé,” in Phénoménologie et théologie, ed. J.-F. Courtine (Paris: Critérion, 1992), with contributions from Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Louis Chrétien, and Michel Henry, and a step beyond in “Au nom: Ou comment ne pas se taire,” in De surcroît [English translations in Dominique Janicaud, J.-F. Courtine et al., Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn,” and John D. Caputo and Michael Scanlon, eds., God, the Gift, and Postmodernism].

6. He has already worked wonders in translating Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes [On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism] and Phénoménologie et théologie [in Dominique Janicaud, J.-F. Courtine et al., Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”].

7. See his work, which I highly recommend: Jeffrey L. Kosky, Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001).

PRELIMINARY ANSWERS

1. Novalis, Das Allgemeine Brouillon, §902, in Schriften, ed. P. Kluckhorn, R. Samuel (Stuttgart, 1960) vol. 3, p. 441.

2. Must we be reminded again that the term étant (unheard of in the dictionaries of Littré, Lalande, and Robert) appears in Scipion Dupleix, La logique ou art de discourir et raisonner (1603), I:7, ed. R. Ariew (1984), p. 45 et passim.

3. Poem, fragment 6, in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. Diels-Kranz (Zürich, 1966), 12th ed., t. 2, p. 232. This is translated, in French: “Nécessaire est ceci: dire et penser de l’étant l’être” (trans. J. Beaufret [Paris, 1955], p. 81), or more clearly: “Il faut dire et penser l’étant être” (trans. M. Conche [Paris, 1966], p. 102).

4. Shakespeare: “I have done the deed,” Macbeth 2.2, The Yale Shakespeare, ed. W. L. Cross, T. Brooke (New York, 1993), p. 1133.

5. M. Henry, “Quatre principes de la phénoménologie,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1991/1.

6. Jacques Derrida, Donner le temps: 1. La fausse monnaie (Paris, 1991) [translated as Given Time].

7. A question posed by Paul Ricoeur during a debate about Réduction et donation held June 10, 1994, at the Centre Sèvres in Paris.

8. J. Benoist, unpublished paper, during this same debate or, more recently, “Qu’est-ce qui est donné? La pensée et l’événement,” Archives de philosophie, 1996/4; F. Laurelle, “L’Appel et le Phénomène,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1991/1; and D. Janicaud, Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française. In the last mentioned, the questions address most often, though without skill, precisely what I did not say.

9. J. Greisch, “L’herméneutique dans la ‘Phénoménologie comme telle,’” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1991/1; and J. Grondin, “La phénoménologie sans herméneutique,” Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 1992/1.

10. Pietro Bembo, “Rime XLIII,” in Prose e rime, ed. C. Dioissoti (Turin, 1960), p. 542.

11. My thanks to those whose intelligence and patience followed, along with their criticisms, my lengthy effort: A. Bonfand, V. Carraud, C. Cayol, J.-L. Chrétien, D. Franck, and M. Henry, as well as all those who have borne me.

BOOK I

1. In this sense, the phenomenological method is always practiced as a deconstruction (Abbau) or a destruction. Between these two terms, which are in fact both derived equally from the reduction, the difference stems solely from the nature of the obstacles cleared away: objectivity, Being as presence, the “history of Being,” etc.

2. I have spoken at least once, with regard to Réduction et donation, of a “sort of negative phenomenology, along the lines of the negative theology set forth in Dieu sans l’être” (“Réponses à quelques questions,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1991/1, p. 68). This formulation seems to me today to be inexact and inappropriate. Inexact, because in Christian theology (as in my work of 1982), there is, properly speaking, no “negative theology,” merely a negative way, inseparable from the affirmative way and the way of eminence; the attention paid today to so-called “negative theology” often misses this essential point. Inappropriate, then, because the phenomena that I mentioned (boredom, the call, etc.) in fact have nothing negative about them; Heidegger and Levinas had already offered perfect descriptions of certain characteristics that I confined myself to completing; in this sense, it was an issue of the most positive of phenomenologies, and some prejudice is necessary not to recognize it as such. However, it seemed to me at that time that these same phenomena were considered in a still merely negative description, since the call remained anonymous, the interloqué unspecified, boredom by definition in suspense, etc. In this sense, they call for a new attempt at bringing them to light, an attempt that Réduction et donation, a strictly methodological work, could not and should not have risked; whence my formulation, unnecessarily problematic, which I now retract.

3. Michel Henry, “Quatre principes de la phénoménologie.”

4. Originally introduced by J. F. Herbart (1776–1841): “Soviel Schein, soviel Hindeutung aufs Seyn” (Hauptpunkte der Metaphysik [Göttingen, 1806] in Sämtliche Werke, ed. K. Kehrbach, O. Flügel [Langensaltza, 1887; Frankfurt am Main, 1964], vol. 2, p. 187), cited inexactly by Husserl, Erste Philosophie II, §33, Hua. VIII, p. 47. This formula is passed along to the Cartesian Meditations, §46, Hua. I, p. 133, then into Heidegger, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, GA 20, p. 119, and Sein und Zeit, §7, p. 36. Let me emphasize that Herbart does not introduce this motto by chance, but in a previous question (Vorfragen II) explicitly titled: “What is given (was ist gegeben)?” He answers by asserting that “originally Being should be posited in the given [ursprünglich würde das Seyn in das Gegeben gesetzt werden].” This represents an essential thesis, one which he deduces from the analysis of appearance as a nothing which, inasmuch as unconditioned, does not remain any less of a real appearing: “Let us deny all Being. There then remains at the barest minimum the undeniable simplicity of sensation. But what remains after the Being [thus] eliminated is the appearance. This appearance, as appearance, is [Dieser Schein, als Sc...