Givenness and God: Questions of Jean-Luc Marion

Chapter 9: The Dative Subject (and the ‘‘Principle of Principles’’)

9 The Dative Subject (and the ‘‘Principle of Principles’’) Ian Leask Jean-Luc Marion’s philosophical project is largely about being true to phenomenology’s supreme principle—the principle that every originary intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition, that everything originarily offered in intuition be accepted as it presents itself.1 It is by interrogating this ‘‘principle of principles,’’ by unfolding its full consequences, that Marion can posit his ‘‘third reduction’’—beyond both Husserl and Heidegger—and so unveil the primacy of sheer givenness. In doing so, Marion would claim, any autarchic subjectivity (whether transcendental or existential) is dethroned and dismantled in one and the same act that givenness (donation) is ‘‘set free’’: accepting givenness without horizons means accepting a subject that cannot posit itself or its substratum. In what follows, I shall outline the remarkable series of moves Marion makes that allows him to posit Gegebenheit without horizons; this may not amount to much more than an adumbration, but it should still allow us to situate Marion’s specific consideration of givenness and subjectivity. And it is this specific consideration that raises the central issue to be addressed here—namely, whether the ‘‘purged’’ subjectivity that emerges from Marion’s ‘‘third reduction’’ might present a fundamental, structural difficulty for the full unfolding of the ‘‘third reduction.’’ In other words, I want to ask whether the dative subject disrupts the efficacy of the ‘‘principle of principles’’ 182 and, thus, whether one requirement of Marion’s project works against another. Situating the Saturated Phenomenon Marion’s phenomenology aims to treat phenomena as phenomenality , without the kind of assumption (ranging from ousia to noetic primacy ) that has traditionally framed them. His contention is that if intuition is freed from its enforced (and ultimately nonphenomenological ) subservience to the realm of intentional legitimation—if, that is, intuition is no longer subject to the ideals of adequation or objectifying representation—then sheer givenness might appear on its own terms, as originary, unconditioned, and without a priori or presupposition . Thus Marion suggests that—in addition to the ‘‘poor’’ phenomenon (of, for example, mathematics or logic), in which certainty requires little intuitive content, and in addition to the ‘‘common law’’ phenomenon (of, for example, scientific investigation or technological production), in which there is an equivalence of concept and ful- fillment, of intention and intuition—we should consider the possibility that the phenomenon might exceed the limits of any metaphysical regime. Here, Categories must give way to giving; the principle of sufficient reason is overcome by both ‘‘a principle of sufficient intuition’’ (un principe d’intuition suffisante; SP, 105/PS, 84) and a principle of insufficient reason; and intentionality is overwhelmed by an unforeseeable, ‘‘bedazzling’’ excess. In such cases— the historical event, for example, or autoaffection, or my experience of the icon, or, indeed, revelation—we have (or are given) excess, para-dox, phenomenality without boundaries; in short, we have saturated phenomena. Now, Marion suggests: [t]he intention (the concept or the signification) can never reach adequation with the intuition (fulfillment), not because the latter is lacking but because it exceeds what the concept can receive, expose, and comprehend. . . . According to this thesis, the impossibility of attaining knowledge of an object, comprehension in the strict sense, does not come from a deficiency in the giving intuition, but from its surplus, which neither concept, signification, nor intention can foresee, organize, or contain. (ITN, 37) The Dative Subject 183 The concept here is no longer the measure of intuition. Rather, phenomena are treated as absolutely irreducible: the only terms and conditions that apply are those of phenomenality itself; ultimately, there is no a priori. Thus, to cite various texts: ‘‘givenness alone indicates that the phenomenon ensures, in a single gesture, both its visibility and the full right [bon droit] of that visibility, both its appearance and the reason for that appearance’’ (SP, 105/PS, 85); ‘‘the excess of intuition overcomes, submerges, exceeds, in short saturates , the measure of each and every concept’’ (ITN, 40); ‘‘givenness does not subject the given to a transcendent condition, rather it frees the given from such conditioning’’ (OFP, 11); ‘‘[t]o let phenomena appear demands not imposing a theme on them, whatever the horizon might be, since it would exclude some of them’’ (BG, 320/ ED, 439). And so, with this full adherence to the ‘‘principle of principles,’’ we break...