Intentionality, Auto-Affection, and the Penuriousness of Excess—A Reformed Viewpoint

Abstract

The essay refutes the pre-eminence given by the influential French phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion to the notion of saturation. Since Marion has misunderstood the key phenomenological concept of 'intentionality,' viewing the notion of directedness as a simple form of actively extromissive aiming, his rejection of the compatibility of intentionality and affective intensity does not hold. Since intentionality, understood adequately in a Husserlian sense, does not exclude passivity and receptivity, it is pointless to claim that a theory of 'saturation' somehow goes 'beyond' classic phenomenology by allowing for things of such great magnitude that no human 'aiming' could structure their constitution. By means of references to Eckhart's ontology, to Klee's modernism, and to Christian theology of the Reformed kind, the paper presents a theory of affective constitution that dismantles the forced and false opposition that Marion sets up between minimalism and saturation.