god — love — revelationAs already seen, the new definition of the appearance of the pheno-
menon not only liberates phenomenology from the risks contained in
Husserl’s position, but also opens up a phenomenality which presents
the given as gift. Marion often responds to the critique of Derrida and
others, who remark that it is not possible to have a donation as a
gratuitous exchange, by pointing out that if we want to think the gift
as such, we must avoid every economic concept, like that of “exchange.”
Gratuity is the form, the peculiar trait of donation, and donation is
the structure of our common life; it is a “purview” that is always active
in human life.^32 In the ambit of the experience of God, of the relation
between the human being and God, this structure operates extra-
ordinarily, without any exception. For this reason, Marion’s pheno-
menol ogy also has a theological character: Revelation, which shows
God’s gift to the human being (i.e. God gives Himself to the humans
through Christ), is the first form of an absolute and unconditioned
phenomenality.
A very strong observation of Simone Weil can help here to catch the
heart of Marion’s position concerning God as gift of love, without
entering into a very precise analysis of this theme. In the figure of
“decreation” she describes the kind of divine movement with which
God renounces His essence (His omnipotence — this means that evil
has its origin in this self-subtraction of God) for the love for the
human being. Delivering the human being to his freedom, God
- With these words Marion describes the donation, speaking to students of the
Scuola di Alta Formazione Filosofica in Turin in November 2006: “Let us come to
the gift. It is not a class of acts which regard only a part of the everyday life. We
always give without considering, in every meaning of the word, and incessantly;
we give in the same way we breathe, from morning till evening, in every moment,
in every circumstance. Only seldom we are in a situation in which we can say that
we do not give: we give when we teach, when we speak with somebody. Further,
we give without limit because there are not reasons which allow our giving at the
beginning or which let it cease. The gift is not a limited moment in time, but it is
an activity which encloses the totality of the experience. At least, we give — and
this is the most curious thing — without consciousness of giving; more incredible
is the fact that this unawareness does not at all diminish nor dissolve the gift; it
makes the gift more powerful, i.e. the gift is the more disinterested, the less one is
conscious of giving; in a word, the gift is evident,” Jean-Luc Marion, Dialogo con
l’amore, Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier, 2007, 53–54.