god — love — revelationown theme of reflection places itself in the middle of this frontier-
space between philosophy and religion, between the grounds of
philosophy and the grounds of religion, in other words between the
requirements of rationality and those of faith. In this way the theme
that appears to occupy a central place in Marion’s speculation — i.e. a
precise idea of God without Being as expressing the horizon of a pure
phenomenology that leaves metaphysics behind — leads directly to this
limit-zone where faith and philosophical rationality can sometimes
mingle with each other.
2. The methodological and thematic opening of Marion’s
phenomenology to God and His Revelation
In accordance with my thematic aim, I will not dwell upon the debate
concerning contemporary French phenomenology and the question
whether it represents a kind of theological thinking. Nevertheless, the
place occupied by Marion’s thought in this frontier-field needs to be
clarified. In the context of the present paper, I do not consider it cru-
cial to assume a definite position in the debate mentioned above since,
as I already said, we move in a space which cannot be easily attributed
to the domain of philosophy nor to that of theology, at the interface
between what is typical of philosophy and what is characteristic of
religion. My considerations will be aimed, rather, at understanding
Marion’s phenomenological act of liberating God from metaphysics
and highlighting the importance of the theme of “Revelation” in his
conception of the phenomenological task. In others words, I will clar-
he elaborates is a structure of phenomenality that is in one sense common to the
different monotheistic religions. 2) As phenomenon God is introduced by Marion
at the outset of the investigation as a case of saturated phenomenon, i.e. as the
cipher of a problematic and paradoxical condition of phenomenality that phenom-
enology has to understand. 3) In the phenomenological horizon of Given-
ness — with Marion’s sliding from “the given” to “the gift” — it is possible to ap-
preciate the gratuity of the “donation” [Gegenbenheit].The human being is situ-
ated with respect to God in an inverted relationship, in the sense that the human
being, as the subject of the relationship, in front of God, as the object of his inten-
tionality, becomes the object of a gratuitous givenness, donation, that pairs the
human with Transcendence in an inseparable relation.