Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal

Volume 25, Number 1, 2004

Marion and Phenomenology

Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, by Jean-
Luc Marion, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2002).

Review Essay

James Dodd

What are we to make of the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion? It

is perhaps most remarkable in the boldness with which it re-engages
the classical phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger; this was
already the case with Marion's 1989 Reduction et donation,! and
remains the case with two texts that have appeared in English since
Being Given, In Excess and Prolegomena to Charity.2 Being Given,
which originally appeared in 1997 in French under the title Etant
donne: Essai d'une phenomenologie de la donation, is Marion's most
sustained attempt to carry forward the promise of the earlier Reduction
and Givenness, namely to make the phenomenality of the phenomenon
once again the central question of phenomenological philosophy. The
attempt here is thus not to go beyond phenomenology, but to return to
its original insights, its fundamental accomplishments, in order to dis-
cover again, in a new form, what had been the driving force at its inception.
It is this aspect of Marion's phenomenological efforts that I wish to
stress, for I suspect there is a potential richness here that has unfortu-
nately been obscured by the controversy surrounding what has been
labeled the "theological turn" in French phenomenology, of which
Marion is one of the most recent examples. Being Given is in fact
replete with theological material and provocative questioning with
respect to the potential for phenomenological philosophy to open the
way for a theologically oriented, if at the same time post-metaphysical
thinking. Yet these theological aspirations are in the end not what is
interesting about this book. Despite what Marion wants us to believe,

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the reflections in his Dieu sans l'etre (1982)3 are far more compelling, as
theology, than the often puzzling suggestions throughout Being Given
about possible, though overlooked "relations, at once essential for the
future and poorly illuminated in the past, between phenomenology and
theology" (x).
What is more significant is that, in following Marion's phenomeno-
logical explorations, the informed reader comes to appreciate how
experimental the turn to phenomenality had been in the writings of
Husserl and Heidegger. One comes from this book with a keen sense
that what are often taken to be tried and true concepts of phenomenol-
ogy (phenomenon, lived experience, Dasein, etc.) are not firm concep-
tual acquisitions, but at best topics under which a series of questions
have been gathered, questions that have not yet been fully and ade-
quately posed. The fact that phenomenology is no system, and that it
practically deconstructs itself is of course no secret, but how to proceed
in the wake of this realization is not an easy matter. The contribution
of Marion's work is arguably to have shown that a specific problem,
that of the givenness of the given, provides, in an unexpectedly direct
and complete manner, a potentially decisive mode of orientation thanks
to which the ambiguities of all of the basic concepts and intellectual
moves that make up phenomenological philosophy can be both exposed
and addressed.
This is however not Marion's explicit goal, which is rather the
attempt to formulate what he takes to be a third alternative to Husserl
and Heidegger. This third way is meant to secure phenomenology for
the purpose, at least in part, of a philosophizing theology. This project
very much dominates the scene, and is perhaps the source of the fact
that, as one reads through Being Given, it is rather uncomfortably clear
that all of the theses that Marion believes to have established are often
easily dismissed from within the perspectives of thought represented by
Husserl and Heidegger. Yet things never simply fall apart, for it is
equally the case that one cannot help but sense a failure in Husserl to
come to terms with the implications of the theme of givenness, and that
this indeterminacy makes it extremely difficult to fully understand the
alternative offered by Heidegger. Marion's third way, I suspect, will be
rather easy to dismiss by purists among scholars of Husserl and
Heidegger, and the all too prominent ends of theology will not help in
delaying their judgment. I would argue, however, that his instinct is
nevertheless true when it comes to the problem of givenness. And more,
by capitalizing on this weak point within classical phenomenology,
Marion in fact succeeds in making at least an initial pass by the heart

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of the rather important question of the latent resources of phenomenol-

ogy as philosophy (if not theology).
This is not to say that Marion is the first to recognize the impor-
tance of the theme of givenness in phenomenology. The theme of the
givenness of the given, however ambiguous it may otherwise remain,
does not name a set of undeclared presuppositions. Marion's strategy is
instead to emphasize something that is already in full force as a ten-
dency within HusserI and, in a different way, in Heidegger. This is the
assignment of a prominent role of givenness within any discourse on
manifestation as such, to the point where the question of the origin of
manifestation can be reduced to that of the givenness of the given.
Marion enshrines his version of this emphasis in the refrain: "What
shows itself first gives itself-this is my one and only theme" (5). That
is, what shows itself gives itself, prior to its manifestness (being) or its
manifestation (objectness: objectite).
Marion often characterizes manifestation as something restricted, or
regulated either by an intuitivity (which in his reading of HusserI
always seems to take the form of an intentionally fulfilled, and in turn
discursive intuition), or the meaning of Being thought as disclosure
(truth). Why restricted? First, because intuitivity marks out a space for
phenomenality by regulating structures of the visible, thereby binding
the scope of the given to what can be experienced in the mode of the
understood, the assimilated, the set and fixed as something seen.
Second, because Being, thanks to its departure in the enactment of
givenness, thereby relegates this enactment itself to a derivative
moment of its principal movement of concealment. The Being in being-
given in this way circumscribes givenness, turning thought away from
the gift (Gabe) to its own becoming, thereby ensuring that Being
remains the essential theme. Each move in turn embeds the phenome-
nality of the phenomenon into a web of principles or ties (18), and each
fails to "admit ... the phenomenality proper to the phenomenon-its
right and its power to show itself on its own terms" (19).
Each of these moves, of HusserI and Heidegger respectively, could
perhaps be cited as "illegitimate theoretical acts of violence" (10),
against which the reduction, in Marion's reading, stands as the ulti-
mate defense. This reading of the reduction yields the other refrain
found in Being Given, this one taken from Reduction and Givenness: "so
much reduction, so much givenness." Reduction in effect releases the
right and power of givenness. Marion seems to mean this quite liter-
ally; as he argues later in the text (especially in Book IV, where he
develops an inventory of what he calls "saturated phenomena"), this
will include a right and a power of givenness to overflow all showing as
such, trumping the phenomenon understood as das Sichzeigende. The

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illegitimate embeddedness of the movement of manifestation in the ties

of objectness (givenness the horizon of which is defined by the struc-
tures of objective sense), or in the advent of Being (givenness the hori-
zon of which is defined by the sending of an epochal Seinsgeschichte), is
understood by Marion to be an obscuration of an equally originary sur-
plus of givenness that paradoxically overwhelms even phenomenality
itself, like Descartes' idea of God that evades all comprehension.
This latter assertion, repeated throughout the text (and leading us
inexorably to the theological theme of charity) is often puzzling for the
reader who may be accustomed to a more sober conception of given-
ness. The assertion amounts to emphasizing givenness at the expense
of visibility. How, from within phenomenological reflection, which has
traditionally taken as its cue the right and power of the visible, can
givenness be meant in such a way that it is identified as something
more primordial, more originary, or "other" in any sense from visibility?
How can one even suggest that givenness does not originally move
solely within the scope of the visible? Marion's strategy is to boldly-
and, one must say, illegitimately, at least in terms of the usual phe-
nomenological procedures-to substitute the sense of "given" as "gift"
for the sense of "given" as established in the course of lived experience.
"The staging of the phenomenon" as Marion puts it on page 17, "is
played out as the handing over of a gift." For those familiar with
Husserl, this is a bit of a shock. The theme of givenness (Gegebenheit)
for Husserl was never meant in the sense of the givens of lived experi-
ence (Erlebnis) being handed over to it, either from out of the initiative
of the givens themselves or some other giving agency, or even from a
kind of giving that is only of itself, out of itself, as if what gives can be
thematic simply from within the arc of the givenness of what is given.
The sense of the given qua given in Husserl's writings was always
invoked as a guiding thread to the intentional analysis of the experi-
ence of the given, or more generally of the established articulation of
what is present to consciousness. This presence, to express it in
German, ist ja damit gegeben, wohl aber keineswegs geschenkt. To sug-
gest that we read idly into "given" the sense of given qua the handing
over of a gift obscures what this terminology was intended to intro-
duce-the theme of transcendental constituting subjectivity-but this
is precisely what Marion does.
Nevertheless, this shock is not quite the end of the story, and one
keeps reading. After all, the association is nevertheless there-gifts are
given, and givens are given-so what prevents us from drawing into
our reflection on the scope of the sense of the givenness of the given the
notion of a ''handing over"? Do we not in fact have some vague sense of
what we experience being handed over to us? And if so, then do we not

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in fact find in the gift, where this ''being handed over" is the dominant
theme (and which, by the way, is an alternative translation of "Etant
donne"), an articulated dimension of givenness, perhaps even its core?
And what prevents us from attempting to show how this articulation
bears on the sense ofthe givenness of the given in pure phenomenologi-
cal experience? Here is where one begins to sense the poverty of
Russed's coinage of the term, for it is in fact not robust enough, not
determinate enough, to render this option irrelevant.
Ris misleading, if potentially illuminating suggestion firmly in place,
Marion goes on to break through the last vestiges of what the phe-
nomenological tradition takes to be the essential links between mani-
festation (appearing) and givenness. This lays the groundwork for the
introduction of what Marion refers to as "immanent givenness," an
excess beyond the constitutional establishment of appearance that con-
tinues to determine it from within: "Immanent givenness remains
within what it gives, therefore determines it forever. The phenomenon
must therefore be described as still given well beyond its arising into
appearing" (120). This immanence of givenness is the goal ofthe analy-
sis of the gift in Book II, where Marion secures the shift of sense from
established given to offered given by arguing that it is in the figure of
the gift that the meaning of givenness/given is genuinely articulated in
all of its implications.
Marion is here (§§7-8) following in part Derrida's 1991 essay on
Marcel Mauss's Essai sur le don, which appeared in French under the
title Donner le temps (1991).4 Derrida's position that the manifestation
of the gift in its purity is impossible is appropriated by Marion in order
to argue that the immanence of the gift-the immanence of its being-
handed-over, or offering-is irreducible to economic or, by extension,
categorial forms. This is in turn generalized: the gift in its being given
is not manifest as such within any order susceptible to a visible, articu-
latable and calculable exchange; the gift in its purity has no defined
value within any system that could track its movements and assign to
it reasons-it is, in short, unaccountable.
However, contra Derrida, Marion argues that the pure gift is for that
very reason all the more given. For its being-offered has force only out
of a reference to its very being-o:lfered, thus from out of its own unac-
countability as an offering, as a gesture that has no recourse to essence.
More, and again contra Derrida, this givenness of the gift can in turn
be thought, provided a proper strategy of reduction which, instead of
subsuming the givenness of the gift to a category within an economic or
metaphysical frame of reference, reduces it to its own proper imma-
nence. Marion thus concludes that the gift in its purity can be under-
stood phenomenologically, insofar as we understand the reduction as

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an intellectual act (and here, in a move that would make Fichte smile,
Marion relies on the idea that the reduction is something that one
does). The reduction releases phenomenality in accordance with its ori-
gin in givenness alone (in its rights and powers). The pure gift, Marion
argues, appears at all, only insofar as it is given; its phenomenality is
governed by nothing outside of what he calls the ''fold" (Pli) of its own
being-given, to which it in turn represents a privileged access. "The gift
as gift, in appearing as such outside exchange, immediately played the
role of one phenomenon among others, though one privileged to attest
the fold of givenness" (118).
In this way, Marion argues that being-given originates in a resource
that can be affirmed only in its incalculability. Once calculated-antici-
pated, projected, set-givenness in the pure sense ceases, or at least its
fold recedes from the visibility of the phenomenon. Being-given is thus
in a paradoxical sense a resource without resource, or recourse to any
preset arc of manifestation that would decide upon its place within a
projectable coordination of values. This is Marion's cue for describing
givenness as a self-giving, of itself only out of itself. Any reflection on its
presence, on the event of its unfolding, must be shielded from any and
all suspicious metaphysical gestures that would attempt a definition of
its value in terms of an economy of goods-gestures that must also be
driven from the reduction, which is properly only reduction to pure self-
giving, and in that sense a grasp of the givenness of the given within
the immanence of its unfolding.
Already all this drama may strike one as something that, at the very
least, must lie wholly outside of the phenomenological field, for the fold
of the givenness of the given (when thought in terms of the offering of
the offer/gift) would seem to resist identifiability itself, phenomenologi-
calor otherwise. In Husserl, for example, the given is always lived
either explicitly in its being something or other, or in a movement on
the way to its being "given" in the genuine sense of evident givenness;
to live through the givenness of the given is to follow its trajectory
towards its being "given as ...". The impact of givenness (if one may be
allowed to use such an expression) is already a movement towards form
that takes it away from the purity of its immanence. This is in fact
affirmed by Marion, who introduc;es the rather creative term of
anamorphosis to name the unfolding into form that issues being-given-
forth (again, if one can use such an expression) into an identifiable phe-
nomenality (117, §13). One wonders, at the end of Book II, whether the
result of this is that givenness itself can be nothing more than some
kind of reserve in the face of its own phenomenality that always moves
on to its ultimate end in an identifiability within meaning and form.
This would in turn suggest the rather odd thesis that the scope of the

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reduction is wider than phenomenality itself, even if everything that

the reduction uncovers can in fact only be identified in its phenomenality.
That probably overstates what Marion is trying to say. It is clear,
however, that a tension between givenness and phenomenality is pre-
cisely what he is after. His point is to show that, once we have accepted
givenness at the heart of phenomenality, as the ultimate presupposi-
tion of the very unfolding of its enactment (the being given "in person"
of what "shows itself' or "appears"), then the core of this enactment
will in effect not only resist phenomenalization, but point the adept of
reduction to an excess of and within phenomenal givenness.
Nevertheless, the argument is presented in such a way that this excess
can be said to have been fixed "phenomenologically," not because we
have found its trace within an order of appearance, but rather because
the train of this excess is effectively tied to another honored figure of
phenomenological philosophy: immanence. This is in fact, I would
argue, what Marion ultimately gleans from his reduction of the phe-
nomenon of the gift: a notion of a radical immanence that belongs not
only to consciousness, but to the initiatives of givenness itself (115-6).
Givenness seems to dominate the sphere of immanence, almost by
fiat-an impression all the more disconcerting in the absence of the
question of the phenomenality of the "consciousness-region" (116) in
which the reduced gift is manifest. All we have in view in Marion's
analysis is the immanence of the enactment of a being-given that tends
towards form (anamorphosis), but is not exhausted by it; it is an imma-
nence that disappears in the self-presence of the given as understood,
even experienced, but it is not thereby divested of its rights to be con-
sidered on its own, for itself. And it has powers.
Marion is in fact closer to Husserl here than one might suppose from
his reading of HusserI's texts, but with some essential differences. For
example, in Ideas I, Husserl clearly signals that the theme of given-
ness is broader than that of intentional objectivity when he contrasts
two senses of givenness: originary givenness (originare Gegebenheit)
and self-givenness (Selbstgegebenheit). "We do not identify the 'self-
given' with the 'originarily given', the 'bodily present' [leibhaft]."5 The
suggestion here is that the clarity of intentional consciousness (fulfill-
ing intuitivity of intentional accomplishments) is not identical with the
broadest sense of givenness as such (originary givenness), even if, on
the other hand, the fulfillments of self-givenness do represent a culmi-
nation, and with that a standard, of the sense of givenness. For
HusserI, a given is genuinely given, and in that sense first given, only
in clarity, though it is not originally given in clarity. This is not, how-
ever, simply a question of what is genetically first (e.g., the perceptual

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act or the act of understanding), but rather of the origin or sources of

clarity as they arise out of the movement of givenness itself.
A question, however, remains. What is this wider field of givenness?
Is it merely a collection of the weak positings of an empty giving, as it
seems to be in this passage from Ideas I, or is it something more?
Reading Marion, one might think that this is a problem that Husserl
never really engaged. Yet in fact Husserl is referring here (the date is
1913) to a set of reflections and analyses that he had been pursuing
since the decade after the completion of the Logical Investigations in
1900, and which are often referred to as the analyses of original)' con-
stitution. 6 The goal of these reflections is to fix the constitutional struc-
tures not of some free-floating ''fold of givenness," but of a dimensional-
ity of the life of consciousness that "enacts" givenness, and can thus be
recognized as the origin of the givenness of the given.
The analyses of originary constitution also offer a basis for a poten-
tially interesting Husserlian objection to the phenomenology of Marion,
according to which there is little sense in speaking of an "excess" (not to
mention an "abandon") of givenness as such. For Husserl, the givenness
of the given would not be the self-propelling abandon of a given that,
out of its own initiative and for no reason, gives itself of itself unac-
countably. Rather, the givennesslbeing-given of the given would be the
originary self-constitution of consciousness itself, not as intentional
unity (or even egological structure), but as pure life-immanence. That
is, these analyses, I would suggest, offer the means by which (if one
were interested) one could pit the right and power ofthe immanence of
consciousness against Marion's immanence of the gift, re-asserting an
intrinsic relation between the themes of consciousness and immanence
that even Heidegger did not challenge.
In Husserl's writings after the Logical Investigations, the theme of
the immanence of consciousness, when approached in terms of its origi-
nary constitution, can be formulated as the problem of the appearance
of appearance. The first decisive move in this reflection is the assertion
in the Logical Investigations that "the appearances [Erscheinungenl
themselves do not appear, they are lived [erlebtl."7 This means that if
we understand by lived experience CErlebnis) an appearing of some-
thing (and not something that initially appears), then a lived experi-
ence can be said to be "given" as such only in a reflective, objectifying
intuition that, in returning back from the apprehension of an appearing
object, seeks to reflect on the movement of lived experience from which
it arose. Thus it is that which appears (second sense of appearance)
that is originally given; the appearing of the appearance is only a given
thanks to reflection, or to an inner grasp of consciousness turned to
itself.

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The very possibility of this reflection is an open question within the

Logical Investigations, which is marred by an on-again, off-again
reliance on immanent perception. After 1901, however, and in particu-
lar in the reflections on inner time consciousness from 1905-1911 (Hua
X), Husserl moves toward another position. The argument now revolves
around a sense in which lived experiences do have a phenomenality,
understood as a givenness that is not identified as a species of reflec-
tion. The consciousness of internal time, to use Husserl's language, is
precisely a pre-reflective, given immanence within which consciousness
unfolds according to a phenomenality native to its pre-objective, sec-
ondary presence. This immanence, in Husserl's account, does not
"appear" unequivocally; its phenomenality is not that of the object, but
is instead the given unfolding of the phenomenality of the object. Much
of this remains unclear in the manuscripts, which are notorious for
their difficulty and inconsistency; but one result is certain, namely that
for Husserl, well before 1913, givenness, despite its equivocations, is a
theme that is radically tied to the self-temporalization of consciousness.
Surprisingly, Marion has succeeded in writing two elegant books on
the problem of givenness in which he maintains an almost complete
silence on the significance of the problem of time for Husserl's phe-
nomenology. This is problematic, for the problem of time in Husserl is
nothing less than the problem of the phenomenality of consciousness
itself, a decisive issue if he is to be able to maintain his understanding
of phenomenology as the science of intentional lived experience. Inner
time consciousness is the manifestation of consciousness in its being-
enacted, or the living through (Erleben) of lived experience (Erlebnis).
Thus if by "appearing" we mean the originary living through of the
unfolding of a given in its givenness, and if the consciousness of this liv-
ing through is in that sense the (self-) constitution of the phenomenal-
ity ofthe phenomenon (precisely in the sense of its being-given), then it
is clear that the advances Husserl makes in his analyses of the con-
sciousness of time represent an even more fundamental "breakthrough"
than the reflections on ideality and consciousness that make up the
Logical Investigations. This also suggests that these analyses are an
even more important foil for a project such as Marion's than the admit-
tedly ubiquitous emphasis on the objectivity of the object in Husserlian
phenomenology. For more fundamental than the objectivation of the
given is the temporalization of its givenness, which includes the move-
ment of objectivation itself.
Marion does however touch on these questions, though briefly, when
he cites inner time-consciousness as an example of what he calls a "sat-
urated phenomenon" (220-1)-i.e., where a given "appears according to
excess and not shortage of intuition" (221). Marion's argument that

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time qualifies as a saturated phenomenon hinges on HusserI's descrip-

tion of inner time as a continuity. As the continuity of an unfolding,
Marion argues that time is (a) "invisable" (his coinage), or cannot be
taken in as a whole, and thus is non-determinable in accordance with
the category of quantity; (b) in terms of quality, it is "unbearable," since
there can be no zero-point apart from the ideal limit of the "now," and
because the absolute flux of time is itself nothing "temporal" (no before,
after, etc.); and (c), in terms of relation, time is pure self-manifestation
that is enacted-deployed independently of any relation to an object or
connections among objects. As Marion points out, quite rightly, this
should be understood as a rejection of Kant, for whom time remained a
coordinating medium for the construction of object sequences.
The reliance on Kant in these pages to frame the description of tem-
porality is telling, and characteristic of much of Books IV and V of
Being Given. The "excess" of saturated phenomena, and of the given-
ness of the given in its non-containment in phenomenality, is presented
as an exception to a very Kantian conception ofphenomenality, not nec-
essarily to a HusserIian or for that matter Heideggerean. This is sur-
prising, given the ground laid by Marion's investigations in Reduction
and Givenness. There would seem to be little reason to turn to Kant, for
whom phenomena are defined as appearances insofar as they are
thought as objects in accordance with the categories. s But it is precisely
the problem of originary constitution that ultimately bars ascribing this
Kantian paradigm to Husserl-the mark of pure phenomenality for
HusserI is not only, perhaps not even primarily, the regulation of an
appearing through categoriality. What Husserl's reflections on time do
to the problem of intentionality is precisely to open it up and release it
from the Kantian insistence that an experienced given is such only
given the application of the categories. This rejection of the logical prej-
udice is the core of HusserI's critique ofneo-Kantianism, and an essen-
tial point of departure for Heidegger.
For HusserI, the phenomenality of the phenomenon (the appearing
of the given in lived experience) is secured primarily as the event char-
acter of intentionality itself, whether or not it manages to assume a
pattern within a network of conceptuality. The appearing of the
appearance is "given" its place in time, or given the time in which it can
have a place, without being a part of any system of categories or even
intentional structures. In this way, the problem of individuation
becomes progressively important to HusserI's phenomenological project
after 1911, and motivates him to return again and again to problems
having to do with the foundations of logic. The importance of logic for
HusserI is also something Marion manages to avoid, even if it is

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patently obvious that Husserl's grappling with the problem ofindividu-

ation is at least relevant to the problem of givenness.
That a rejection of the Kantian paradigm of the phenomenon is at
stake in the manuscripts collected in Hua X and XI can be seen in
Husserl's indecision whether or not to understand the retentional and
protentional continua as intentional structures. Husserl wants to main-
tain that consciousness intends, or is conscious of, its own passage as
passage, or that the pastness of the given is the intentional sense of the
passage of its givenness in the consciousness that intends it. At the
same time, however, he wants to reject the idea that this self-grasping
requires an intentional act over and above passage itself, which would
in tum fulfill the act that intends it. He wants to argue that the act
itself, in its own passage, is originally present to itself as passing, with-
out a reflective self-interpretation that would be constituting as a ful-
filled intention of passage. In other words, for Husserl "time" is the liv-
ing through of the givenness of the given in such a way that the given
lends itself to being thought, conceived, from out of an orientation
within its givenness; more, this givenness itself can become an explicit
theme, precisely as the space of a phenomenality imbued with sense.
But the order of thematizations or objectifications is not the original
mode in which this space is present, or "for" consciousness. Givenness
is originally constituted in and as the originary passage of conscious-
ness as such, qua absolute self-temporalization, or what even in the
Ideas (§81) Husserl calls the "genuinely absolute."
This idea of consciousness as passage, as "flow" (Fluf3}--prior to, and
constitutive of consciousness in the form of an Erlebnis-is not that of a
constitutive flux in the sense of a nexus of intentional accomplishments
thanks to which a given appears within the horizon of its sense. It is a
horizon in another sense, one that does not take the primary form of
possibility, but constitutes originally the space of possibilities as itself
something "experienced." Absolute time is the experiential horizon of
experiences, the horizon not of phenomenality per se, but of the given-
ness that marks the event (lived) character of all phenomenality. How
close is this to Marion's notion of a saturated phenomenon? In the end,
not very. For the horizon of inner time is not an excess of non-assimi-
lated givenness in Husserl's writings, it is not the offering of a gift that
overflows all economies, intentional or categorial. In a way, it is pre-
cisely the opposite of such an excess, but without being simply identi-
fied with an order of essential determinations of objectivity.
Take for example the analysis in Text Nr. 2 from the recently pub-
lished Bernauer Manuscripts (Hua XXXIII), where one finds an exten-
sion of the famous time-diagram from the original 1905 lectures on
inner time consciousness (in §10 ofthe 1928 publication of the lectures,

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edited by Heidegger). It is important to note that, despite appearances,

the temporalization of the flow described with these diagrams does not
contrast an assimilated givenness (fulfilled intention, retentionally
modified) with an unassimilated givenness (unfulfilled intention, pro-
tentionally modified). "Fulfillment" is rather being described in terms of
the temporal constitution of an act as it is being-fulfilled, where the
issue at hand is the immanent sense of the self-passage of an act that is
a structural component of the "experience of fulfillment" understood as
a movement. This suggests that the phenomenality of the act, qua pas-
sage, belongs to the consciousness within which the phenomenality of
the given, as fulfillment of an act, is constituted.
There are two aspects of this movement of the act being fulfilled that
Husserl emphasizes in Text Nr. 2: (1) the double modification of ''filling
in" (Erfiillung) and "emptying out" (Entfiillung). This is a very marked
characteristic of Husserl's analyses of the temporalization of perceptual
fulfillment that Marion consistently overlooks in his brief considera-
tions ofthe problem. For Husserl after the Logical Investigations, there
is no fulfillment of an intention or moment of an intention without the
emptying of another, even of itself. This means that any experience of a
perceptual given can only occur in line with an intuitivity the fullness
of which as it were runs contrary to itself, emptying itself out in order
to project the inner horizon of its own unfolding. Thus from a noetic
perspective, there is no simple accumulation of profiles, where intuitive
fulfillments remain in place in an unambiguous sense; the intuitive
givenness of one profile must yield to that of another. This considerably
complicates the notion of "evidence," in that the accomplishments of
givenness cohere as a unity only thanks to a temporal density in which
their passage can be present, or their givenness itself be "given." That
this density can only be that of time itself, the "inner" time that belongs
to consciousness, in part results from Husserl's rejection of an inter-
locking unity of simultaneously present acts of indentificationlfulfill-
ment. But this means that what sustains givenness is not its own ini-
tiative, its own excess, but its suspension in the passage of inner time
consciousness itself.
The second aspect (2) can be described as the disruption of the now-
point (represented by the horizontal axis on the time-diagram). As
Marion also stresses, there is no zero-point to the temporal continuum,
only an ideal limit which the protentional and retentional continua
approach; yet this approach itself defines the continua, and marks out
the now precisely to the extent that it has been assimilated into the
continuum. There is a sense in which the now point "is" only to the
extent to which it has been assimilated in time; and it is assimilated
only to the extent to which it is 'just now." Protention is not the excep-

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tion, it does not anticipate the now as it emerges along the horizontal
axis, but precisely in its passage or retentional modification. The
unmodified now, signified by the horizontal axis, does not as such
belong to time, it is the radically unanticipated that nevertheless struc-
turally defines the difference between the "past" and the "future,"
which must in turn be distinguished from the relative past and future
that belongs to each and every moment of the continuum as such.
Could this axis of the temporal phenomenon (Ablaufsphanomen) cor-
respond to an unlimited saturation in Marion's sense? Yes and no. On
the one hand, yes-the nows signified along the horizontal axis are rad-
ically non-assimilable, they do not belong to the order of time as origi-
nary nows, only given (to make some use of Marion's phrase) an
anamorphosis into the phenomenality of time. On the other hand, no--
for the "emergence" of the radically unassimilable, including its arc into
phenomenality, occurs only thanks to its being emptied out in reten-
tional modification; it is approached at all only thanks to a self-lacking
that in turn gives it its place within the continuity of its appearance.
The suggestion then is that, at the point where "givenness" and "phe-
nomenality" originally cohere, givenness is necessarily marked by a
radical de-saturation, lack of excess, and with that a distance with
respect to the originary affectivity of consciousness.
This is not because of a lack of initiative (the present moment, after
all, always has the initiative). The argument has to do with the manner
in which a lived experience (Erlebnis) is originally constituted as tem-
poral. In other words, for Husserl, thanks to the temporality of con-
sciousness, the experiencing subject is never taken completely by sur-
prise, overwhelmed, or submerged in a givenness that passes beyond
all confines of what can be anticipated. Not because everything is antic-
ipated, projected in a horizon of intentional determinability in advance;
rather, it is because the unanticipated, the radical moment, is embed-
ded in a temporal density that structurally resists all saturation, that
always enacts phenomenality itself in such a way that an intrinsic,
thoughtful distance is maintained that refuses to be surpassed.
I do not mean to suggest by this that the question of givenness is
thereby settled in Husserl; quite the contrary, even when one takes into
consideration the manuscript investigations into temporality and indi-
viduation, it is arguably the case that Husserl nowhere defines given-
ness as such. I only wish to suggest that any inquiry into the meaning
of givenness within Husserl's phenomenology must take these analyses
into account, for they are of central imporlance not only to Husserl's
conception of consciousness, but above all to phenomenological method
as a whole, including the reduction. This is so much the case that one is
tempted to coin the refrain, "so much reduction, so much temporal-

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ity"-at least, insofar as we remain true to Husserl's notion of reduc-

tion, for which the scope of immanence is defined not only by the notion
of the unfolding givenness of the given simpliciter, but the originary
constitution of the lived experience as the temporal horizon of this
givenness as such.
This neglect of the problem of time becomes particularly uncomfort-
able when the reader of Being Given reaches the final part of the text
(Book V, "The Gifted"). By the time we reach Book V, Marion has sup-
posedly secured the immanence of the given, established its rights (and
with that the rights of phenomenality in general, as a "given" appear-
ing) over against the theoretical pretensions that seek to constrain it
within intuitivity (clarity) or conceptuality. The text now turns to the
argument that the characteristics of this givenness of the given, what
Marion in Book III calls its "determinations" (along with anamorphosis
we have "unpredictable landing," "fait accompli," "incident," and
"event"), in fact provide the set of conditions for the constitution of sub-
jectivity itself.
One can again point to the fact that Marion is really not that far
from Husserl, and that the argument here would be more compelling if
it took into account an important set of reflections which, already in
Ideas I, shows the complexity of Husserl's conception of the ego. More,
Husserl's reflections point to a key issue at the heart of "originary con-
stitution" that sets Husserl apart from the Heidegger of Being and
Time-the result being that, if we are to situate Marion within the
debate between Husserl and Heidegger, then it is imperative to take
the issue not only of the temporality of consciousness seriously, but of
the role of the phenomenological ego as well.
The issue can be briefly put in the following way. For Heidegger, the
preparatory hermeneutic of Dasein in Part One of Division I of Being
and Time essentially provides all of the material necessary for the exis-
tenziale Interpretation in Part Two of Division 1. That is, the argument
is that the existentiell understanding of the meaning of being
(Seinsverstiindnis) is wholly contained, without remainder, within the
phenomenological profile according to which the being of Dasein is
characterized as care (Sorge). This amounts to saying that the phenom-
enality of Dasein contains the entirety of its self-understanding, or at
least the scope of its potential self-understanding, and that thanks to
its phenomenality this is available for ontological interpretation.
This is not the case with the phenomenality of pure consciousness in
HusserI. To be sure, the leading questions of the respective analyses
are different-for Heidegger, it is the question of the meaning of being,
for Husserl, the epistemological problem-yet it remains the case that
the pure "reduced" immanence of consciousness does not, and cannot,

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contain the whole scope of intentional achievements that constitute

lived experience. This is emphasized in an often overlooked passage in
the Ideas (§57), where Husserl argues that the pure ego, itself tran-
scendent vis-it-vis the stream of pure immanence (though non-consti-
tuted), is so intimately involved in the achievements of cognition that it
cannot be bracketed. God can be bracketed (§58), as Marion never
misses a chance to point out, but not the ego-as Marion fails to point
out. This suggests a series of questions:
(1) It seems clear that the question of the "constitution of subjectiv-
ity" cannot for Husserl remain within the scope of the notions of "given-
ness" and "immanence," but must include a dimensionality of the
immanence of consciousness that amounts to a kind of inner transcen-
dence. For the pure ego is neither empirical nor an immanent con-
stituent of consciousness. The involvement of this pure ego in inten-
tional accomplishment is secure only because it is a transcendence that
uniquely belongs to immanence itself. This is not something captured
by noetic-noematic analysis, but by what Husserl, at the end of the
introductory sections to the lecture course partially published under
the title Analysen zur passiven Synthesis (Hua XI), calls genetic analy-
sis. More, the issue of a transcendence belonging to immanence itself
involves not only the question of the ego, but also the status of the noe-
mata, once they have been distinguished from the concept of the unity
of act-quality and matter from the Logical Investigations: noemata rep-
resent a kind of transcendence vis-it-vis the noetic manifold of pure con-
sciousness. This discovery of a mode of immanent transcendence repre-
sents another key post-Logical Investigations "breakthrough" that
Marion consistently overlooks-and it is an important omission, in that
along with the problem of the p~re ego, the theme of the "immanence of
consciousness" is thereby opened up to the possibility of understanding
its own self-presence as a unique mode of transcendence. Givenness, in
other words, becomes increasingly understood by Husserl in the devel-
opment of his thought as a play between immanence and transcen-
dence within immanence. Thus the question: is the subject constituted
by an other, an excess, that addresses it, calls it (as Marion would have
it)? Or, on the contrary, it is constituted instead by an inner movement
of transcendence, thanks to which the subject addresses a world, call-
ing itself forth from out of its own immanent movement (Husser!)?
(2) It is also clear that, for Husserl after the Logical Investigations,
the role of the ego is important to emphasize, even at the risk of casting
it is a metaphysical principle. The contention is this: essential for the
very possibility of knowledge-including the unity of experience-is the
thesis-positing orientation that is ordered out of a pure I that functions
as the origin-pole of a line or ray of positing (Ichpol, Ichstrahl). All

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event, all belief, all structure and form crystallize for Husserl thanks
only to this functioning of the I as pole within an intentional conscious-
ness. This contrasts sharply with the Heidegger of Being and Time,
and in terms of either level of Dasein's fundamental existential possi-
bilities: (a) in inauthenticity, insofar as the self-understanding or self-
interpretation of Dasein finds its center in a "no one" or "nowhere" that
is nevertheless everywhere ("das Man"); or (b) in authenticity, where
the stability (Standigkeit) of the self is not a center of understanding, a
pole of thesis-positing that requires an I who speaks on behalf of a con-
firmed evidence, but a structure of historicity in which Dasein is
enacted in a self-understanding that expresses the force of its own
becoming. For Husserl, the I crystallizes a life around a claim, a posi-
tion, by extension an act of responsibility. For Heidegger, life crystal-
lizes in the movement of its historical becoming, responsible for, or
called towards, a face to face encounter with the openness of the ques-
tion of the meaning of its being, thanks to which it stands forth in the
"truth of being."
Now Marion, following Levinas and J.-L. Chretien, affirms the prin-
ciple that "the call is heard in the response" (287), along with the condi-
tional "if the gifted always phenomenalizes what gives itself to him and
receives himself from it, nothing establishes that the gifted always can
or wants to receive all that is given" (310). More, for Marion the fini-
tude of the space of phenomenality (often) pales in the face of the
majesty of givenness. Reading these statements against the backdrop
of the difference between Husserl and Heidegger just cited, one cannot
help but ask the question: to what extent has Marion arbitrarily
exempted himself from any serious consideration of one of the essential
questions of phenomenological philosophy, the constitution of the self,
by simply replacing it with a description of a subject who is buffeted
about in a sea of givenness, always only a partial and incomplete
response to a call that can never find a genuine home in the response of
one who speaks (Husserl) or one who exists (Heidegger)?
This last question circles us back to the problem of time, but now
from another angle. Take for example Marion's brief discussion of
Heidegger's 1962 lecture Time and Being earlier in the text (34-9),
where he argues for securing givenness from its supposed absorption in
the advent (Ereignis). First we should stress the characteristic pre-sub-
jective orientation of Heidegger's discussion, and its contrast with
Husserl. In Husserl, the genuine emergence of the givenness of the
given in truth (evidence) is possible only given an egological self-consti-
tution of lived experience, which is thus more than the mere self-pres-
ence of the temporal flow. The givenness of the given is here indissol-
ubly linked to the crystallization of the life of an I, not simply as a prin-

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ciple of unity, but as an affected being "who" turns to the emergence of

the given in the (inner) transcendence of temporalization. For
Heidegger in Time and Being, the advent in which time and being are
coordinated is characterized as a "sending" of Being that extends
through the given-time from which the "It" that "gives" time and Being
recedes. Thus being-given takes precedence-in a move that is not that
much different from the description of the ekstatic temporality of
Dasein as a "lighting" of openness in Being and Time (cf. §§28, 69)-
above any notion of a subjectivity that would, in its gestures of affection
and response, define a horizon in which such a sending would origi-
nally have its place (a "life"). For Heidegger, that which "gives" time
remains anonymous, even if also "thought." For Husserl, time-giving,
the placing of a given in its givenness, is not necessarily anonymous,
for the theme of the openness to givenness that unfolds in the extension
of time is consistently tied to the affectivity of egoic consciousness. It is
qua ego that consciousness is affected, moved, put into a position that
can be characterized as "open" to the reception of a given; which means
that, for Husserl, the task of a thinking that has its terminus in time-
giving does not break the circuit of the question of one's position as one
who speaks for, on behalf, or in the light of truth.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that he does not really penetrate into
these questions, by the end of Being Given Marion seems to have taken
up a position between Husserl and Heidegger in this respect. On the
one hand, the givenness of the given for Marion does not have its place
thanks to subjectivity; it rather constitutes the subjective, it is what
first sets the subjective in motion (Book V). It does not set the subjec-
tive in motion out of an immanent transcendence per se, but out of the
immanence of givenness itself, which is "more" than subjectivity and
which makes itself felt (as a call) in a mode other than transcendence,
namely in the mode of saturation. On the other hand, the notion of a
saturated phenomenon seems to mean that the giving of Being and
time can be assigned neither to Being (as in Heidegger's Letter on
Humanism) nor to Ereignis itself (as in Time and Being), for the notion
of the immanent gift blocks the saturation of saturated phenomena
from being ascribed either to a retreat or a self-extension.
Yet it is difficult to assess just how coherent this position is. I have
already suggested that the relation with Hussed is obscured by a fail-
ure to take seriously the problem of time in any discussion of givenness
in phenomenology, and this is also the case with Marion's discussion of
Heidegger. Take again Heidegger's introduction of the theme of
Ereignis in Time and Being. It is identified as the belonging together of
the presencing of Being and what Heidegger describes as the extension
of its sending in the four-dimensional openness of time. 9 Could we not,

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contra Marion, argue that, in this text, "time" (true time) in fact
already contains the essentials for a full analysis of givenness, to the
extent to which givenness can be taken as a theme for itself? For if the
fourth dimension of time is understood as the openness that draws the
three temporal ekstases of present, past and future together, in a
"nearness" or proximity CNahheit) without collapse, such that the full-
ness of time inhabits a common space, then why could not this com-
monality be understood as containing everything that can be said
meaningfully of "givenness"? What more should "giving" be?
More, this figure of the giving of time is inseparable from the giving
of Being. In the sending of Being, extended (in the sense of reaching
out) thanks to the presencing of time (not in the present, but in the
proximity of its multiple dimensions), "there becomes manifest a dedi-
cation, a delivery over into what is their own, namely of Being as pres-
ence and time as the realm of the open."10 Thanks to each, both come
into their own; thus only within the play between both, can we mean-
ingfully speak of "givenness," for the play is encapsulated within the
circuit provided by Ereignis itself. Why Ereignis above givenness?
Presumably because this dedication for Heidegger is "more" than given-
ness simpliciter, in the sense that givenness does not come into its own
without event, or giving does not reduce to a "merely given" ownness. It
is not, in other words, out of itself that the openness of time is
extended; it is opened only when coupled with the sending of Being
extended through time that is only thereby brought into proximity with
itself. The key to the whole text is the contention that the "es gibt" is a
possible question only in the wake of the attempt to think Being and
time together.
Marion's reluctance to delve into the problem of time makes it diffi-
cult to understand his position with respect to Heidegger's subordina-
tion of givenness to Ereignis. More, there is another important contrast
between Husserl and Heidegger that is being overlooked. In the later
Heidegger, the standing forth of Dasein into the clearing of the truth of
Being is described in terms of a receiving of the sending of Being in the
openness of time, whereby Dasein in this reception is in turn "appropri-
ated." In the being-given of the gift in which "Being" and "time" come to
presence, Dasein receives its being as the one who receives, and as such
becomes properly "man"; thus it is in the wake of the giving of a destiny
of presencing that Dasein is brought to its "own," brought to itself as
Dasein.
In Husserl, by contrast, time is not destiny. The subjectivity of the
subject is not absorbed by time, but is constituted only within a coun-
termovement. The ego is a unique origin thanks to which an enduring
subject navigates the course of a series of experiences, or of a history; it

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is not the master of these experiences, only a position that is not

always already appropriated by the movement of becoming. "Time"
does not for Hussed provide the destiny of the ego, or a destiny of
Being that would appropriate the being-there of the subject in its send-
ing (schicken). Time has another face, as that which preserves the
accomplishments of the ego, preparing new possibilities of thinking or
the organization and final accomplishments of previous tendencies of
thinking. This is the general argument of texts such as Experience and
Judgment, for example. Thus for Hussed, what prepares thought, and
thus what enables it to approach the Sache of thinking, rests not sim-
ply on the pure emergence of the Sache in time-being, but is always
prepared in accordance with a path and a style that has its ultimate
origins in the relative probings, accomplishments, and experiences of
the "I." This is one of the reasons why it was so important for
Heidegger in the Beitriige zur Philosophie to distance himself from the
theme of Erlebnis-for in it lurks a Hussedian objection that genuine
philosophical reflection always relies on, and is limited by, the
resources of a personal maturity of thought, a path of inner accomplish-
ment, which means that neither a destiny of Being nor an unaccount-
able, overwhelming givenness can make thinking into what it is. The
objection is rationalist to its core: thinking guides itself, out of its own
resources, true first and foremost to its own calling.
This contrast is critical, and it can even be formulated in terms of
the question of givenness (testifying to the importance ofthe problem).
For it turns on the question of how to understand the significance of
the sense in which givenness unfolds in lived experience. It is clear,
and this is where Marion is surely on solid ground, that there is move-
ment here, that givenness is not a simple, monolithic, impenetrable
presence that serves as a fundamental (or foundational) principle
behind which thinking cannot take itself, that here even the language
of "principles" and "foundations" somehow rings false. Yet its implica-
tions are hidden, which above all means that a philosophical decision
must be made about how to approach thinking this movement of given-
ness. But with Marion, it is very uncertain how his notion of the
"gifted" (the subject that finds its self as a receiver of givenness) fits
into this potential (though to be sure undeveloped) debate between
Husserl and Heidegger, again because the debate in part turns on the
question of time. To be sure, it may very well be that the problem of
time is a dead end, that the obsession with time led both Hussed and
Heidegger into intractable difficulties, and that Marion's instinct to
evade the discussion can find its justification in the insight that given-
ness can only be adequately conceived independently from the problem
oftime. But that, to put it mildly, needs to be established.

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Above all, what still remains open in Marion's phenomenological

writings, despite all the efforts to close it, is the question of method. It
is to his merit that Marion has brought the focus back to the problem of
the reduction, and his earlier work, Reduction and Givenness, is an
excellent introduction to the problem of method in classical phe-
nomenology. Yet in a way, Being Given, though it follows suggestions
secured by Reduction and Givenness, violates the basic attitude with
respect to method that is characteristic of both HusserI and Heidegger.
For HusserI, a fully developed phenomenological method arises in part
out of the phenomenological analyses themselves. The result is that the
method is only finally secured once we have traced a circle: the funda-
mental concepts ofthe method are to be articulated only as the result of
the investigation into the very object domain that can be secured only
by the method. The results of the investigation make the investigation
possible. This means that a certain fluidity marks the beginning phases
of the science, and in turn raises the problem of how phenomenology is
to begin at all---especially given the fact that its object domain, tran-
scendentallived experience, is not something that is already pre-articu-
lated within natural experience. We cannot take as our point of depar-
ture natural experience, which for Husserl means that our methodolog-
ical bearings can only be set from within a philosophical reflection, one
that is not yet, and cannot yet be phenomenological. This is the purpose
ofthe Fundamentalbetrachtung in Ideas I (§§27-55): to provide a philo-
sophical preparation for the initial introduction to the basic themes of
the method, where a point of departure is secured for the description of
the rough, general features of the domain opened by the reductions.
Something similar is the case for Heidegger in Being and Time, even
if in §7 he in some sense takes phenomenology to be a kind of ready-
made method. The phenomenological analytic of Dasein in Part One of
Division I is characterized as preparatory, as I already mentioned
above; that is, it is a preliminary phenomenological description of
Dasein intended to provide the basis for the existenziale Interpretation
of Part Two of Division I. But more, it is a preparatory analysis that is
in turn guided by a leading question, a philosophical interest-the
Seinsfrage itself. Thus the picture that we have of human existence in
Division I is not meant to be a simple representation of the full phe-
nomenality of human being as such, but only those aspects that are
relevant to the project of rediscovering the question of the meaning of
being in its genuine questionability.
Taking both of these examples in mind, one asks: can phenomenolog-
ical method be meaningfully employed as a mere articulation of phe-
nomenality from out of itself, without a prior philosophical (or perhaps
theological) interest guiding its deployment? Or is it the case that phe-

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nomenological method has no traction "for itself' outside of a set of

interests and insights that are ultimately external to and presupposed
by the method, and thus that it has no inner support independent of a
decision that precedes it and a fully elaborated phenomenal domain
that, once it is articulated, provides it with its basic concepts, thus con-
firming its fruition?
It is within just such a context of a series of preparatory reflections
that Husserl articulates the "principle of all principles" in Ideas I. The
principle (this title is a bit of an overstatement) is the culmination of a
pre-phenomenological philosophical reflection intended to serve as a
preliminary guide to the unfolding of a mode of analysis the proper pro-
cedure of which has not yet been established, and in fact will not be
found in the text of the Ideas at all. The principle runs thus: "every
originarily giving intuition is a source of right for cognition-that every-
thing that offers itself originarily to us in intuition (in its fleshly actual-
ity, so to speak) must simply be received for what it gives itself, but
without passing beyond the limits in which it gives itself." (This is the
translation that appears on page 12 of Being Given; the passage can be
found in Ideas I §24, Hua III, p. 52.) Marion's analyses throughout
Reduction and Givenness of the principle of all principles are excellent,
though this simple point of its place is either overlooked or left indeter-
minate. This comes to a head in Being Given when Marion launches a
five-point critique of the principle of all principles designed to loosen
the ties between intuition and phenomenality. Yet each of these five
points either read too much into the principle (which, by the way, one
suspects that Marion has managed to cite more often in his work than
Husserl himself). Let us take each in tum.
Marion begins by noting that the principle releases phenomenality
from the "metaphysical requirement of a ground" (12). Yet this comes
at a "price: the intuition justly freed becomes itself the measure of phe-
nomenality." Why? For the following reasons: (a) "intuition becomes in
itself an a priori ... outside intuition, no givenness." Yet this is clearly
an exaggeration-the principle only states that cognition finds a source
of right in the interface between intuition and givenness, not that there
is no givenness outside of intuitivity. That is like saying there is no
experience outside of cognition. This can find confirmation in phe-
nomenological analyses of inner time, where, as I suggested above, it is
established that it is precisely within givenness qua temporalization
that intuitivity (Anschaulichkeit) is originally constituted. Time-con-
sciousness is not the unity of a cognitive act, nor is it secured in or by
an intuitive fullness.
The same set of analyses that I discussed above, in which intuitivity
is described as constituted within a movement between fulfillment and

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de-fulfillment (ErfiUlung-EntfUllung), can be cited in order to take some

of the sting out of the next two points of the critique, namely (b) "the
very definition of intuition implies its possible impoverishment.
However, there is no analysis that illuminates this possibility or
explains in what sense it belongs to the essence of intuition to be poten-
tially lacking," and (c) the contention that it is as if it "were self evident
that intuition remains univocal and admits neither degrees nor trans-
formations" (13). The principle, as stated, presupposes no such thing,
and the analyses of time clearly undermine the idea that there is in
any way a univocity of intuition. Marion's fourth point (d), which is
more of a protest, asks: "does the constitution of an intentional object
by an intuition fulfilling an objectifYing ekstasy exhaust every form of
appearing"? This again seems to overlook the fact that the principle
speaks only of the "source and right of cognition." Why can it not be the
case that only some modes of givenness can serve as the basis for cogni-
tion, which for Husser! is in fact only cognition of objects? That does not
mean that givenness itself has been restricted, only cognition; and if we
recognize that for Husser!, as is clear from the introduction to Formal
and Transcendental Logic, not even everything that is thought, which
for him means a sense-constituting lived experienced in the broadest
sense, is cognized (or takes the form of knowledge). If so, there is no
danger here oflimiting "the immense possibilities of what shows itself'
(13) by an arbitrary principle ofintuitivity.
The fifth point (e), which is more substantial than the first four,
comes on the heels of the conclusion that "intuition finally contradicts
phenomenality because it itself remains submitted to the ideal of objec-
tifYing representation":
This is confirmed by a final twist. The "principle of all principles"
comes up before and without the reduction being operative. And
yet, without the reduction, no procedure of knowledge deserves the
title "phenomenology." How then could the "principle of all princi-
ples" determine for phenomenology its counter-method if it is not
articulated in terms of the reduction? And if the giving intuition is
not an exception to the reduction, would we have to admit that it
provides a tacit presupposition? But then in what way would the
reduction remain the inaugural operation for all phenomenological
vision? (14)
Yet this misses what is being done by introducing the principle-
Husser! does not mean to define the method, but to guide its inaugura-
tion. It is in fact a presupposition, but one that is intended to be modi-
fied in the progression of phenomenology itself, which is not, at the
beginning, a completely determinate method; there is no counter-
method in phenomenology-that is simply an overstatement of the radi-

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cality of the initial moves of phenomenological reflection. The grand

title "principle of all principles" is really just an exaggeration on the
part of an otherwise very cautious thinker who had a tendency to get
overexcited when presenting his ideas in pUblic. Marion's emphasis on
the supposed authority of this principle obscures the fact that, at least
in the beginning, the reductions themselves remain indeterminate, to
the extent to which the key concepts of this "principle" (givenness, cog-
nition, Leibhaftigkeit, etc.) are in turn not yet fully articulated or fixed.
I would submit that there is nothing in the "principle of all principles"
that is of threat to Marion's project, either in principle or as a conse-
quence ofHusserl's actual phenomenological investigations.
What is of importance, however, in the question of method is the role
of such preliminary reflections, and the possibility that they may be
necessary in order for the "inaugural act" of phenomenology to have
any traction at all. This is perhaps where Marion's participation in the
"theological turn" in French phenomenological philosophy becomes
important. For, one could ask, is it not the case that Marion's theologi-
cal interests, despite his protests to the contrary, in fact play the same
role in this respect as Husserl's epistemological concerns and
Heidegger's Seinsfrage? That is, is it not the case with all three philoso-
phers that what finds confirmation in phenomenology also serves as
a point of departure for the introduction to phenomenology-and
that, given the nature of phenomenological method, this could not be
otherwise?
If this is the case, then what should we make of Marion's phe-
nomenology? I would suggest that this question be divided into two.
First, we should ask whether the conception of givenness sketched by
Marion in his reflection on phenomenological method in fact finds its
confirmation in the descriptions of particular phenomena (the "satu-
rated phenomena" of Book IV). But such confirmations, I would sug-
gest, will remain inconclusive if it cannot also be shown that this con-
ception of givenness as excess also provides a way into phenomenologi-
cal method, as a preparatory guide to the reductions. The theological
origin of these concerns should not be bracketed, only in order to be
introduced at a later stage of analysis as being somehow "confirmed";
they are necessarily operative from the beginning, or else there would
be no direction to phenomenological description as such, which is
always in need of a point of departure, a basic insight that points it in
the direction of a theme of discovery. Marion has clearly taken a bold
move in this direction, but to date it remains somewhat in methodologi-
cal limbo, since he studiously evades the possibility that theology could
prepare us for phenomenology. Which is understandable, since it proba-
bly is not the case.

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NOTES

1. This text has since appeared in English: Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and
Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology,
trans. Thomas Carlson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998).
2. Jean-Luc Marion, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena, trans.
Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2003); Prolegomena to Charity, trans. Jeffrey Kosky and Stephen
Lewis (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002).
3. English: Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, trans. Thomas Carlson
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991).
4. English: Jacques Derrida, Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy
Kamuf(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
5. E. Husserl, Ideen zur einer reinen Phiinomenologie und
Phiinomenologishen Philosophie, Husserliana vol. III, ed. Karl
Schuhmann (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976); my translation. Here is
the passage in full (Hua III, 142:11-45): "Gebendes BewuBtsein im prag-
nanten Sinne und anschauliches gegentiber unanschaulichem, klares
gegentiber dunklem, das deckt sich. Desgleichen: Stufen der Gegebenheit,
der Anschaulichkeit, der Klarheit. Die Nullgrenze ist die Dunkelheit, die
Einsgrenze ist die volle Klarheit, Anschaulichkeit, Gegebenheit. Dabei ist
aber Gegebenheit nicht zu verstehen als originare Gegebenheit, somit
nicht als wahrnehmungsmaBige. Das 'selbst-gegeben' identifizieren wir
nicht mit dem 'originar-gegeben', dem 'leibahft'. In dem bestimmt beze-
ichneten Sinne 'gegeben' und 'selbstgegeben' ist einerlei, und die
Verwendung des tiberfullten Ausdrucks solI uns nur dazu dienen, urn die
Gegebenheit im weiteren Sinne, in dem schlieBlich vonjedem Vorstelligen
gesagt wird, es sei in der Vorstellung (aber etwa 'in leerer Weise')
gegeben, auszuschlieBen."
6. There are three collections of Husserl's unpublished manuscripts and lec-
tures that are of particular relevance here: (1) Zur Phiinomenologie des
inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893-1917), Husserliana vol. X, ed. Rudolf
Boehm (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966); (2) Analysen zur passiven
Synthesis, Husserliana vol. XI, ed. Margot Fleischer (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1966); and (3) the more recently published Bernauer
Manuskripte zum Zeitbewuf3tsein (1917 /18), Husserliana vol. XXXIII, ed.
Rudolf Bernet and Dieter Lohmar (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 2001).
We should also cite the reflections in Husserl's C-Manuscripts on the
problem of originary constitution, an edition of which is currently being
prepared by the Husserl Archives in Leuven.
7. E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen: Zweiter Band: Untersuchungen zur
Phiinomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, Husserliana vol. XIXl1, ed.
Ursala Panzer (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), p. 360:3-4.
8. I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A249: "Erscheinungen, sofern sie als
Gegenstiinde nach der Kategorien gedacht werden, heiBen Phaenomena."
9. Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh. (New
York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 14-5.
10. Ibid., p. 19.

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