Jean-Luc Marion is a French philosopher and theologian who was born in 1946 in Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine. He has taught at the University of Poitiers, the University Paris X - Nanterre, the Institut Catholique de Paris, the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne), and the University of Chicago.
His books include Dieu sans l'être (1982, God Without Being, 1991), Réduction et donation: recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie (1989, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger and Phenomenology (1998), Étant donné: Essai d'une phénoménologie de la donation (1997, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, 2002), The Reason of the Gift (2011), Certitudes négatives (2009, Negative Certainties, 2015), and Givenness and Revelation (Gifford Lectures, 2016).
Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness looks at the question of whether givenness is available to us and how a phenomenology of givenness can be formulated. It also looks at the question of what are the consequences--after the reduction of the phenomenon to the object by the I in Husserl, and after the reduction of the phenomenon to being by Dasein in Heidegger--of a third phenomenological reduction, the reduction of the phenomenon to the given in it or to givenness. Wilfrid Sellars, in his influential essay "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (1956), argues that many things, such as sensory data, material objects, universals, and even givenness itself, have been said to be "given," but that the sensing of sense data doesn't imply the existence of non-inferential knowledge upon which inferential knowledge can be based, because it involves the sensing of particulars rather than the non-inferential knowledge of matters of fact. He therefore calls the theory that there are matters of fact that are "given," in the sense that they can not only be known non-inferentially, but also presuppose no other knowledge of particular facts or general truths, the Myth of the Given. He explains that sensing isn't knowing, and that the existence of sensory data doesn't logically imply the existence of non-inferential knowledge. He therefore argues against a foundationalist theory of knowledge, which holds that there are basic facts that are "given" and that can serve as a foundation for empirical knowledge.
John McDowell, in his essay "Avoiding the Myth of the Given" (2008), explains that there may be knowledgable perceptual judgments that have rational intelligibility in light of the subject's experience (such as when I can identify a bird's species from the way it looks), and that these kinds of judgments may provide noninferential knowledge (of the kind of bird I'm looking at). We should reject the idea that the conceptual contents we put together in discursive activity are self-standing building-blocks, but we should be aware that the unity of intuitional contents may be given, and it may not be a result of our putting them together. Intuitional contents may then be able to be analyzed into significances or discursive capacities. Thus, there may be at least two ways in which intuitions can enable knowledgeable judgments: (1) by enabling judgments that have content going beyond the content of those intuitions, and (2) by representing a potential for discursive activity that's already present in the content of those intuitions.
Willard Van Ormond Quine, in his well-known essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1953), argues that modern empiricism has been conditioned by two dogmas: (1) the dogma that there's a distinction between analytic and synthetic truths, and (2) the dogma that every meaningful statement is reducible to some logical construct upon terms that refer to immediate experience (reductionism). He says that both dogmas are ill-founded, because it may be difficult to separate analytic statements from synthetic ones, which can also make it difficult to determine whether meaningful statements are reducible to constructs based on immediate experience. He therefore rejects both kinds of foundationalism.
How then does Jean-Luc Marion respond to Sellars and other critics of the given who've equated the given with the nonconceptual or nondiscursive contents of intuition that are (mistakenly) assumed to provide the foundation for empirical knowledge? Does givenness have the same meaning for Marion as it has for Sellars? Does it mean the same thing in phenomenology as it does in epistemology?
Gail Soffer (2003) explains that Husserl's concept of givenness as immanence doesn't at all correspond to Sellars's concept of givenness as immediacy. She says that "For Sellars, the point is to found empirical knowledge, to identify the noninferential bases for inferences. By contrast, for Husserl the category of the given serves to thematize the subjective elements of experience (the immanent) and show how what is taken by us to be knowledge presupposes and emerges out of these subjective elements."1
Jeffrey L. Kosky (2012) also explains that "Marion has always contended that givenness is not a matter of some thing, being, or object given, nor does it appear in some form of empiricism; givenness is rather a mode of phenomenality, a question of the how or manner of phenomena."2
Husserl, in his Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1913) describes phenomenological reduction as a process of defining the pure essence of a phenomenon by bracketing empirical data away from consideration. This process includes the suspension of empirical subjectivity, so that pure consciousness may be defined in its essential and absolute being. Bracketing leaves pure consciousness, pure phenomena, and the pure ego as the residue of phenomenological reduction.
Husserl explains that the opposition between immanence and transcendence is accompanied by a fundamental difference in the mode of being given.3 The difference between immanent and transcendent perception reflects a difference in the way phenomena are given or presented to consciousness. Some phenomena are perceived immanently, while others are perceived transcendently. Immanently perceived phenomena appear from within the ego's own stream of consciousness, but transcendently perceived phenomena appear from outside the ego's own stream of consciousness.
The difference between immanent and transcendent perception also reflects the difference between being as experience and being as thing.4 Things as they exist in themselves cannot be perceived immanently; they can only be perceived transcendently. Immanently perceived objects have an absolute being, insofar as their being is logically necessary and is proved by the being of consciousness itself, but transcendently perceived objects have a merely phenomenal being, insofar as their being is not logically necessary and is not proved by the being of consciousness itself. Only through phenomenological reduction can we find the absolute givenness that owes nothing to transcendence.
Marion begins by explaining that the meaning of the phrase "being given" may depend on whether the emphasis is placed on the word "being" or the word "given," and on whether the word "being" is used as a noun or as an (auxiliary) adverb. Since the phrase may be somewhat tautological if "being" is used as a noun, Marion chooses to use it as an adverb, in which case, "being" posits the fact of the "given."
What does it mean phenomenologically for phenomena to give themselves? Marion says that the principle set up by givenness is precisely that nothing precedes the phenomenon.5 Givenness is the phenomenality of the phenomenon. The phenomenon finds in givenness not merely an entry into phenomenality, but the entire mode of its phenomenality.6
If the objection is raised that givenness must presuppose both a giver of the given and a givee to whom it's given (who comes after the subject, and whom Marion calls "the gifted"7), then we find, to the contrary, that not only does the bracketing of the giver and givee not invalidate the givenness of the gift, it characterizes it intrinsically.8 In the reduction of the gift to givenness, there can actually be a threefold bracketing: of the giver, the givee, and the gift. The reduced gift is purely immanent and is intrinsically, rather than extrinsically, characterized by givenness.9
Phenomena not only manifest themselves, but also give themselves to perceiving subjects or givees. They manifest themselves insofar as they give themselves, and inasmuch as they give themselves.10 But they become absolutely given only to the degree they have been phenomenologically reduced. The more reduction, the more givenness.11 Reducing givenness therefore means freeing givenness from the limits from any other authority, including that of intuition.12
The given gives itself, and whatever gives itself, also shows itself.13 Indeed, the phenomenon shows itself only insofar as it gives itself.14 Thus, there are degrees of givenness, and degrees of phenomenality.
The fold of the given is the gift given insofar as it gives itself in the progress of its own event. Givenness opens as the fold of the given, unfolding itself as it articulates the gift in terms of its givenness.15
To the question of whether there could be some phenomena or quasi-phenomena that are irreducible to any givenness, Marion answers that since nothing arises in consciousness that isn't given, a non-givenness or negative givenness couldn't be given to us to perceive or apprehend.
Husserl's "principle of all principles" is that "every primordial intuition is a source of authority for knowledge, and whatever presents itself in intuition in primordial form is to be accepted as it gives itself out to be, though only within the limits in which it presents itself."16
Marion notes that three characteristics of this principle are (1) that it guarantees intuition its brute actuality without yet grounding it in reason, (2) that it suggests there are limits or boundaries to intuition, and (3) that it claims that intuition presents whatever appears to it by giving it to us. Givenness presents itself to us within a certain horizon of consciousness, but in order for every phenomenon to be inscribed therein, that horizon must be delimited. Thus, "the two finitudes of the horizon and the I come together in the finitude of intuition itself. Phenomena are characterized by the finitude of givenness in them."17
Inversely to the phenomenon that is limited in its givenness, however, a "saturated phenomenon" may be saturated with intuition and givenness. It may therefore be paradoxical, insofar as it not only suspends the phenomenon's subjection to the I, but also inverts it, so that instead of the I being able to constitute it, the I experiences itself as constituted by it.18 The saturated phenomenon is exceeded by, or has a surplus of, the intuition and givenness that saturate it, and thus it may evoke astonishment or amazement. Marion denies, however, that this is in any way to be understood as a "theological" case of phenomenality.19
He describes four types of saturated phenomena: (1) the event (which may be saturated insofar as it may not be limited to a particular moment, place, or individual, but may overflow those singularities), (2) the idol (which may be saturated insofar as its beauty or splendor may overflow intuition and invite our gaze again and again), (3) the flesh (which may be saturated insofar as it may be the identity of whatever touches and what is touched, whatever feels and what is felt, and whatever sees and what is seen), and (4) the icon (which may be saturated insofar as it may be free from all reference to the I and may exert its own gaze rather than be gazed upon). The icon may gather within it all four modes of saturation.
Marion also says that "the phenomenon of revelation not only falls into the category of saturation (paradox in general), but [also] concentrates the four types of saturated phenomena and is given at once as historic event, idol, flesh, and icon (face)."20 He does then embark on a mode of theology by arguing that the manifestation of Jesus Christ, as described in the New Testament, is an example of the phenomenon of revelation. He says that the phenomenon of Christ gives itself intuitively as an event that submits to its eventfulness, in the same sense that Christ submits to the Father. As an absolute phenomenon, it saturates every possible horizon into which relation would introduce it.21
FOOTNOTES
1Gail Soffer, "Revisiting the Myth: Husserl and Sellars on the Given," in The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Dec 2003), p. 310.
2Jeffrey L. Kosky, "The Reason of the Gift," in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, April 15, 2012, online at https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/e-reason-of-the-gift/
3Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1931), p. 134.
4Ibid., p. 133.
5Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 18.
6Ibid., p. 120.
7Ibid., p. 5.
8Ibid., p. 85.
9Ibid. p. 115.
10Ibid., p. 248.
11Ibid., p. 16.
12Ibid., p. 17.
13Ibid., p. 69.
14Ibid., p. 173.
15Ibid., p. 65.
16 Husserl, Ideas, p. 92.
17Marion, Being Given, p. 197.
18Ibid., p. 216.
19Ibid., p. 218.
20Ibid., p. 235.
21Ibid. pp. 236-238.
OTHER REFERENCES
John McDowell, "Avoiding the Myth of the Given," in John McDowell: Experience, Norm, and Nature, edited by Jakob Lindgard (Wiley Blackwell, 2008), online at https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/f/106/files/2010/09/mcdowell-Avoiding-the-Myth-of-the-Given1.pdf
Willard V.O. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," in Philosophical Review 60 (1):20-43 (1951), online at http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Class%20Readings/Quine/TwoDogmasofEmpiricism.htm
Wilfrid Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume I: The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, edited by Herbert Feigl and Michael Scriven (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956) pp. 253-329. online at http://www.ditext.com/sellars/epm.html
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