god — love — revelationHusserl’s reduction is not able to fully explain the structure of
phenomenality. From this perspective Marion transforms the given-
ness in donation, and from this point he embarks on the analysis of
those events in which otherness exceeds the subject as a form of
phenomenality of something that is absolutely different, absolutely
other, like God.
The origin of this kind of phenomenality of the other cannot,
therefore, be maintained within the intentional structure of Husserl’s
“originär gebende Anschauung.”^23 This is not possible because in
Husserl’s way of thinking the relationship between the subject of
intentionality (consciousness) and the object as given to it, the
condition of givenness (Gegebenheit) is always subordinated to a
reduction to the forms of the subject. One might, therefore, say that
phenomenon is the being. Marion’s reduction consists, instead, in the substitution
of the given (das Gegebene) with the gift (in this way much closer to the idea of the
Gabe which is the manifestation of the phenomenon), in order to avoid the limits
of Husserl and Heidegger. This operation is a possibility which derives from the
principle “autant réduction, autant donation.”
- In this possibility of conceiving every phenomenon as a saturated phenome-
non, it becomes clear how the phenomenon is determined by Marion as a gift. The
gift declares that its original condition escapes the subject. The gaze of the subject
is inactive and has no responsibility for the gratuity of the gift. In this way it is
possible to understand two aspects better: 1) Marion’s position is not that of im-
manence — and this is Janicaud’s critique — however this is, precisely, the strong
point of his phenomenological proposal which Janicaud does not accept; 2) this
safe-keeping of the transcendence of the phenomenon — transcendence seen as the
origin of the phenomenon — is the way of remaining loyal to the aims of phenom-
enology as a way that respects themanifestation of the phenomena in themselves.
Husserl’s conclusion that the phenomenological reduction is the liberation from
any form of transcendence, cf. Husserl, Edmund, Die Idee der Phänomenologie, Hus-
serliana II, The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973, 9, must be turned
into its opposite: it is necessary for Selbstgegebenheit that the transcendence of the
given remains. Paragraph 7 (Un retour de transcendance?) of Étant donné is a pointed
answer in which Marion defends the role of transcendence in phenomenology
without the necessity of a theological referent, affirming that “la notion de dona-
tion n’a nul besoin, depuis Husserl, d’une charge théologique quelconque pour
intervenir en phénoménologie: elle y joue d’emblée de plein droit, a demeure et
comme chez elle,” Étant donné, 105. Thus, transcendence is not immediately for
Marion a reference to God, but the space which is taken by the origin of donation.