Interpreting Excess: Jean-Luc Marion, Saturated Phenomena, and Hermeneutics

Conclusion: Revising the Phenomenology of Givenness

Conclusion: Revising the Phenomenology of Givenness Marion’s phenomenology of givenness emphatically focuses phenomenology on phenomena themselves—as they give themselves. He carefully exposes how various phenomenological approaches entail limits and conditions on phenomena, and demonstrates the failings of theories that presume or imply such limits. By introducing the concept of saturated phenomena, he places at the center of his theory a group of phenomena that are often classified as exceptional or marginal, and thus disregarded. His accounts of these various saturated phenomena are a persuasive argument that their richness and complexity offer a far better paradigm for understanding phenomenality than do everyday phenomena such as objects. Indeed, Marion’s claim about the paradigmatic status of saturated phenomena is so persuasive that it raises the question of whether all phenomena might not actually be saturated. The unresolved status of this question in his texts is made particularly evident by the three ways in which he uses events in his analysis: Historical events are the figure of one type of saturated phenomenon; the event is one of the five determinations of the given phenomenon; and eventness itself is a characteristic of all phenomena . In Chapter 4, I argued that Marion’s various accounts of events can only be reconciled with one another if events in general are regarded as saturated. Furthermore, because Marion ascribes an evental character to all phenomena, according to the terms of his theory, saturation should then be regarded as the normal way in which all phenomena appear. 216 In this case, saturation should no longer be understood as a rare exception to ‘ordinary’ phenomenality; instead, ‘‘poor’’ and ‘‘common-law’’ phenomena (such as objects) should be seen as unusual exceptions to the norm of saturated phenomena. The prevalence of such apparently unsaturated phenomena should in turn be regarded as a consequence of everyday phenomena being distorted by the objectifying way in which we approach them. Thus, these everyday phenomena are not deficient reflections of an exceptional paradigm, but rather covered-over originals. Despite the clear importance of Marion’s contribution to phenomenology , this study has shown that Marion’s theory of saturated phenomena suffers from a number of defects, and cannot sustain the ambitious and far-reaching claims that he makes on its behalf. First, the theory itself contains a series of flaws. In particular, saturation cannot be presented as a simple extrapolation of the Husserlian concept of degrees of adequation (see Chap. 3). Similarly, Marion’s use of Kant’s table of categories to distinguish between different types of saturation remains problematic and unconvincing. For at least two of Kant’s four divisions (relation and modality ), he fails to demonstrate that this classification actually identifies a distinct type of saturated phenomenon (see Chaps. 6 and 7). Second, although Marion wants to distance his analysis from the structures of Cartesian and Kantian subjectivity, he retains their essentially adversarial characterization of the subject-object relation, but inverts this relationship. Thus, he ascribes a quasi selfhood to phenomena, and relegates the subject to playing the passive adonné, who is the screen onto which phenomena crash. This account certainly succeeds in displacing the subject from a dominant, constituting role, and removes any vestiges of Cartesian or Kantian sovereignty. However, in many instances, this dethroning seems to be accomplished by enthroning a new sovereign, rather than by overturning the dominion of sovereignty as such. The most serious defects in Marion’s theory result from his failure to acknowledge the hermeneutic dimension that I have identified in the structure of saturated phenomena. I have shown that this hermeneutic element is implicit in each of Marion’s accounts of these phenomena (Chaps. 4–8). The appearing of such phenomena depends on the interrelationship between the recipient and the world, and on the interpretive features of that relationship. In many instances (e.g., anamorphoses, idols, icons, the face of the other person), Marion himself describes the appearing of the phenomenon as dependent on the recipient approaching it in the appropriate way (e.g., with reverence for icons, or by envisaging a face rather than objectifying it). In other words, the space needed for these phenomena to appear (as themselves) is only opened by an active and Revising the Phenomenology of Givenness 217 interpretive reception. Such an active reception is not compatible with the passivity of Marion’s adonné, nor with his claims that phenomena give themselves solely...