Debates in Continental Philosophy: Conversations with Contemporary Thinkers

The Hermeneutics of Revelation

Jean-Luc Marion The HermeneuticJ ofRevelation I. Boston College, October 2, 2001 RK: They are many similarities between your work, Jean-Luc, and mine: Both of us owe a great deal of our philosophical formation to the phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger; we have both engaged ourselves in close dialogue with Levinas, Ricceur, and Derrida . Given these evident similarities, it would be more fruitful and interesting, it seems to me, if we take a look here into some of the differenced in our respective positions in regards to the phenomenology of God. One question that I would like to put to you, Jean-Luc, and which, in fact, I have put in a more elaborate form on p. 33 of The God Who May BeJ is the question of the hermeneutical status of the saturated phenomenon. It seems to me that if there is a difference between us, given all our common readings and assumptions, it is this: I would pass from phenomenology to hermeneutics more rapidly than you would. It strikes me that your approach is more strictly phenomenological , since for you the saturated phenomenon is fundamentally irregarda6 !eJ a pure event without horizon or context, without "I" or agent. As such it appears to defy interpretation. You do of course make some concessions to hermeneutics, as when you say,........- on the very last page ofyour essay "The Saturated Phenomenon" ,........-that this phenomenon is communal and communicable and historic. Here you do seem to acknowledge the possibility of a hermeneutic response, but my suspicion, and 15 please correct me if I'm mistaken, is that the example you privilege""""" revelation,........, requires a pure phenomenoLogy ofthe pure eventJ whereas I would argue that there is no pure phenomenon as such, that appearing ,........,no matter how iconic or saturated it may be,........,always already involves an interpretation of some kind. Phenomenological description and intuition, in my account, always imply some degree of hermeneutic reading, albeit that of a prereflective, preunderstanding , or preconscious affection for the most part. My question, then, would be: How do we interpret,........,and by extension, how do we judge,........, the saturated phenomenon without betraying it? M: This is an old question. The first version of "The Saturated Phenomenon" was written as a paper just after Reduction and Givenneddj then a more elaborate version followed, as it is now found in Etant Donne[Being Given}. The first to raise this question was Jean Grondin, a specialist on Gadamer at the University of Montreal; after him Jean Greisch asked me the same question, and although I am stubborn and narrow-minded, I am not completely closed to critical remarks! Let us put aside for a moment the question of Christian revelation, which is not directly related to the saturated phenomenon. The saturated phenomenon is a kind of phenomenon that is characterized by a deficit in concept vis-a-vis intuition: such phenomena include the eventJ the iJ04 the fLedhJ and the other. In all these cases, there is a surplus of intuition over intention. It is precisely because of this surplus of intuition, I have argued, that we need hermeneutics. Why? Because hermeneutics is always an inquiry for further concepts: hermeneutics is generated when we witness an excess of information rather than its lack. In EtantDonn~ where I discuss the four types of saturated phenomena, I say that the icon is "the icon of endless hermeneutics." Why an endless hermeneutics ? Precisely because there is here a conceptual deficit. I have learned my hermeneutics with Ricceur, and Ricceur is very clear on this: if we are to have hermeneutics, it has to be an endless hermeneutics. There where the need of hermeneutics arises, it is completely impossible to imagine that we may get at any moment an adequate, final concept . Subjectivity, history, and the question of God,........,the question of history is very important for our discussion here, for the historical event is the most simple kind of saturated phenomenon,........,in all these cases, the question of hermeneutics is totally unavoidable. Hermeneutical investigation never completes its mission. It is never finished and should never be finished, and that is why there cannot be a hermeneutics of what I call the common range phenomenon. It is why, for example, the 16 • Jean-Luc Marion history of mathematics is not a part of mathematics, why the history of science in general is not dcience. Because, in the case of pure...