Jean-Luc Marion

Jean-Luc Marion at the Élysée Palace after his meeting with President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing on Thursday 7 September 1978.

Marion was born in Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine, on 3 July 1946. He studied at the University of Nanterre (now the University Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense) and the Sorbonne and then did graduate work in philosophy from the École normale supérieure in Paris from 1967 to 1971, where he was taught by Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser and Gilles Deleuze.[2] At the same time, Marion's deep interest in theology was privately cultivated under the personal influence of theologians such as Louis Bouyer, Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. From 1972 to 1980 he studied for his doctorate and worked as an assistant lecturer at the Sorbonne. After receiving his doctorate in 1980, he began teaching at the University of Poitiers.[2]

From there he moved to become the Director of Philosophy at the University Paris X – Nanterre, and in 1991 also took up the role of professeur invité at the Institut Catholique de Paris.[3] In 1996 he became Director of Philosophy at the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne), where he still teaches.

Marion became a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1994. He was then appointed the John Nuveen Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Theology there in 2004, a position he held until 2010.[4] That year, he was appointed the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies at the Divinity School, a position that had been vacated by the retirement of theologian David Tracy.[5] He retired from Chicago in 2022.

On 6 November 2008, Marion was elected as an immortel by the Académie Française. Marion now occupies seat 4, an office previously held by Cardinal Lustiger.[6][7][8]

Marion claims that he has attempted to "radically reduce the whole phenomenological project beginning with the primacy in it of givenness".[14] What he describes as his one and only theme is the givenness that is required before phenomena can show themselves in consciousness—"what shows itself first gives itself.[15] This is based on the argument that any and all attempts to lead phenomena back to immanence in consciousness, that is, to exercise the phenomenological reduction, necessarily results in showing that givenness is the "sole horizon of phenomena"[16]

Marion radicalizes this argument in the formulation, "As much reduction, as much givenness",[17] and offers this as a new first principle of phenomenology, building on and challenging prior formulae of Husserl and Heidegger.[18] The formulation common to both, Marion argues, "So much appearance, so much Being", adopted from Johann Friedrich Herbart,[19] erroneously elevates appearing to the status of the "sole face of Being". In doing so, it leaves appearing itself undetermined, not subject to the reduction, and thus in a "typically metaphysical situation".[20]

The Husserlian formulation, "To the things themselves!", is criticized on the basis that the things in question would remain what they are even without appearing to a subject—again circumventing the reduction or even without becoming phenomena. Appearing becomes merely a mode of access to objects, rendering the formulation inadequate as a first principle of phenomenology.[21] A third formulation, Husserl's "Principle of all Principles", states "that every primordial dator Intuition is a source of authority (Rechtsquelle) for knowledge, that whatever presents itself in 'intuition'...is simply to be accepted as it gives itself out to be, though only within the limits in which it then presents itself."[22] Marion argues that while the Principle of all Principles places givenness as phenomenality's criterion and achievement, givenness still remains uninterrogated.[23] Whereas it admits limits to intuition ("as it gives itself..., though only within the limits in which it presents itself"), "givenness alone is absolute, free and without condition"[24]

Givenness then is not reducible except to itself, and so is freed from the limits of any other authority, including intuition; a reduced given is either given or not given. "As much reduction, as much givenness" states that givenness is what the reduction accomplishes, and any reduced given is reduced to givenness.[25] The more a phenomenon is reduced, the more it is given. Marion calls the formulation the last principle, equal to the first, that of the appearing itself.[26]

By describing the structures of phenomena from the basis of givenness, Marion claims to have succeeded in describing certain phenomena that previous metaphysical and phenomenological approaches either ignore or exclude—givens that show themselves but which a thinking that does not go back to the given is powerless to receive.[29] In all, three types of phenomena can be shown, according to the proportionality between what is given in intuition and what is intended:

• Phenomena where little or nothing is given in intuition.[30] Examples include the Nothing and death,[31] mathematics and logic.[32] Marion claims that metaphysics, in particular Kant (but also Husserl), privileges this type of phenomenon.[33]
• Phenomena where there is adequation between what is given in intuition and what is intended. This includes any objective phenomena.[34]
• Phenomena where what is given in intuition fills or surpasses intentionality. These are named saturated phenomena.[35]

Marion defines "saturated phenomena," which contradicts the Kantian claim that phenomena can only occur if they are congruent with the a priori knowledge upon which an observer's cognitive function is founded. For example, Kant would claim that the phenomenon "three years is a longer period of time than four years" cannot occur.[36]

According to Marion, "saturated phenomena" (such as divine revelation) overwhelm the observer with their complete and perfect givenness, such that they are not shaped by the particulars of the observer's cognition at all. These phenomena may be conventionally impossible, and still occur because their givenness saturates the cognitive architecture innate to the observer.[37][38]

The fourth section of Marion's work Prolegomena to Charity is entitled "The Intentionality of Love" and primarily concerns intentionality and phenomenology. Influenced by (and dedicated to) the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, Marion explores the human idea of love and its lack of definition: "We live with love as if we knew what it was about. But as soon as we try to define it, or at least approach it with concepts, it draws away from us."[39] He begins by explaining the essence of consciousness and its "lived experiences." Paradoxically, the consciousness concerns itself with objects transcendent and exterior to itself, objects irreducible to consciousness, but can only comprehend its 'interpretation' of the object; the reality of the object arises from consciousness alone. Thus the problem with love is that to love another is to love one's own idea of another, or the "lived experiences" that arise in the consciousness from the "chance cause" of another: "I must, then, name this love my love, since it would not fascinate me as my idol if, first, it did not render to me, like an unseen mirror, the image of myself. Love, loved for itself, inevitably ends as self-love, in the phenomenological figure of self-idolatry."[39] Marion believes intentionality is the solution to this problem, and explores the difference between the I who intentionally sees objects and the me who is intentionally seen by a counter-consciousness, another, whether the me likes it or not. Marion defines another by its invisibility; one can see objects through intentionality, but in the invisibility of the other, one is seen. Marion explains this invisibility using the pupil: "Even for a gaze aiming objectively, the pupil remains a living refutation of objectivity, an irremediable denial of the object; here for the first time, in the very midst of the visible, there is nothing to see, except an invisible and untargetable void...my gaze, for the first time, sees an invisible gaze that sees it."[39] Love, then, when freed from intentionality, is the weight of this other's invisible gaze upon one's own, the cross of one's own gaze and the other's and the "unsubstitutability" of the other. Love is to "render oneself there in an unconditional surrender...no other gaze must respond to the ecstasy of this particular other exposed in his gaze." Perhaps in allusion to a theological argument, Marion concludes that this type of surrender "requires faith."[39]