What Saturates? Jean-Luc Marion’s Phenomenological Theology

Abstract

Jean-Luc Marion's contribution to phenomenology now stands at three major works: Reduction and Givenness,{ Being Given? and In Excess? This trilogy or triptych as Marion calls it (BG, ix) stands in relation to his two other series of texts: one on theology4 and trilogy concerned with Descartes and his relation to metaphysics.5 publication of the more recent phenomenological trilogy has not been without significant controversy. His reading of the key thinkers in phenomenology, namely, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, not to mention Jacques Derrida, culminates in and is guided by what Marion describes in In Excess as another first (DS, 1-34). According to Dominique Janicaud, JeanLuc Marion's phenomenological philosophy can be clustered together with several other theological phenomenologists including Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Henry and Jean-Louis Chretien. In two short texts, The Turn of French Phenomenology and La phenomenologie eclatee,6 Janicaud argues that the aforementioned phenomenologists have become less concerned with the 'things themselves, which, for Marion at least, are capable of gaining access to that which is first in philosophy, and more with gaining access to specifically religious phenomena. In doing so, the theological phenomenologists have assumed both the phenomenality of all phenomena, as well as the self-evidence of the term religious. In this essay I want to follow the inspiration of Janicaud's polemic against Marion. In other words, I do not want to explore the particularities of Janicaud's critique of Marion's phenomenology, for more often than not, Janicaud is concerned with textual inconsistencies and straight-out misreadings of the phenomenological canon (Janicaud, Theological Turn, 65). However, as interesting as it would be, I do not have the space to scrutinise the concept religion in phenomenology. task of phenomenology, as Heidegger so often said in criticizing Husserl, is not to refer to the authority of the tradition.7 So long as one confines oneself to questions of what Husserl did or did not say, one continues to be a step away from actually doing phenomenology, which is to say, a step away from actually taking heed of the with respect to their way of being. question is not, contrary to Janicaud, whether Marion reads Husserl correctly, but whether the phenomenology he outlines hides more than it brings to light. Thus, I will take heed of only the spirit of Janicaud's criticism, namely, that the relation between phenomenology and theology should be treated with great care, that is, if one is ever justified in speaking of the two in the same sentence. In the context of Marion's phenomenology, its religious character becomes most explicitly discussed in relation to the concept of the phenomenon. saturated phenomenon brings into relation and bears the greatest responsibility for every other concept in Marion's thought. It is thus the saturated phenomenon which will be given the greatest critical attention in the present study. Marion employs the saturated phenomenon in order to gain access to a field of unconditioned givenness which would assure the primacy of philosophy and the possibility of an authentic theological experience. In contrast to Marion, I hope to show that the saturated phenomenon in principle does not refer to a field of unconditionality. It is not a question ofde facto developing the ability to examine the things themselves with sufficient scrutiny in order to arrive at the same experience as Marion. It is simple enough to have the experience of that Marion uncovers. But it is question of interpreting that which is given in the same way as Marion, in other words, of giving the experience of saturation a particular determination. Granting Marion his claim that the phenomenology developed in Being Given is not solely preoccupied with theological matters (ED, 10 [5]), it can be said that the argument running throughout the text is ultimately concerned with the phenomenological experience of truth. …