rosa maria lupoits Being — as in Heidegger).^36 The assurance that is produced by the
question “Am I beloved?” does not depend on the self-certitude of the
ego in its Selbstbewusstsein, but opens onto an original assurance that is
always in the other. I am beloved, and this implies the importance of
my existence for the one who loves me. I am certain of my existence
because there is someone who loves me; I exist as beloved. But this
passivity transforms itself in the activity of loving. Although someone
loves me, and does so unconditionally (i.e., for example even if I do
not love him) — because as a saturated phenomenon love is without
measure, is irreducible — nevertheless the one who loves me, giving
me his love as gift, asks me somehow to love. The gift of love seeks to
generate another gift, i.e. my love as gift. This reciprocal crossing is
not the same as an exchange. My love cannot be measured by the love
of another. True, therefore, in this sense, is our common saying that
everybody loves in his own way. And if I am because I am beloved, I
exist even more because I love, and I definitely exist because I love as
the first loving.^37
According to this formulation of the phenomenon of donation
which love is, God as the highest expression of phenomenon of love is
le phénomène saturé par excellence. This means that He is also the ultimate
case of donation (Christ’s sacrifice on the cross). His phenomenality,
i.e. His Revelation, is an absolute kind of Self-showing and Self-giving,
- Cf. Le phénomène érotique,cit., §3, 37–48. About the erotic reduction, in the
lectures contained in Dialogo con l’amore, Marion expresses himself in a way that
notes the necessity of transcendence in givenness (also as the origin of the ego
itself): “Thus, it is to try a third reduction: So that I can appear rightly as a phe-
nomenon, it is not enough that I recognize myself as a certain object, or as a being
which is properly being; it is necessary, indeed, that I recognize myself as a given
phenomenon, i.e. as a phenomenon that comes from a donation and that is, con-
sequentely, gifted [adonato, adonné], which is able to assure itself as a datum with-
out vanity. [... ] Asking to assure my certitude of being against the grey attack
of vanity means asking: ‘Does someone love me?’. Here we are: the form of as-
surance which is appropriated to the given ego (and gifted [adonato, adonné]) lets
an erotic reduction operate,” 126–127. - Marion says explicitly: “Asking whether someone loves me, I have no longer
to inquire about my assurance: I enter into the kingdom of love, in which I receive
immediately the rôle of he who can love, of he whom is possible to love and who
believes that he must be loved–the lover,” Dialogo con l’amore, 132.