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=Jean-Luc Marion=

Philosophy
Marion's phenomenological work is set out in three volumes which together form a triptych or trilogy. Réduction et donation: Etudes sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie (1989) is an historical study of the phenomenological method followed by Husserl and Heidegger, with a view towards suggesting future directions for phenomenological research. The unexpected reaction that Réduction et donation provoked called for clarification and full development. This was addressed in Etant donné: Essai d'une phénoménologie de la donation (1997), a more conceptual work investigating phenomenological givenness, the saturated phenomenon and the gifted—a rethinking of the subject. Du surcroît (2001) provides an in-depth description of saturated phenomena.

Givenness
Marion claims that he has attempted to "radically reduce the whole phenomenological project beginning with the primacy in it of givenness". 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. 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"

Marion radicalizes this argument in the formulation, "As much reduction, as much givenness", and offers this as a new first principle of phenomenology, building on and challenging prior formulae of Husserl and Heidegger. The formulation common to both, Marion argues, "So much appearance, so much Being", adopted from Johann Friedrich Herbart, 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".

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. 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." Marion argues that while the Principle of all Principles places givenness as phenomenality's criterion and achievement, it still remains uninterrogated. 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"

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. 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.

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. 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. Examples include the Nothing and death, mathematics and logic. Marion claims that metaphysics, in particular Kant, privileges this type of phenomenon.
 * Phenomena where there is adequation between what is given in intuition and what is intended. This includes any objective phenomena.
 * Phenomena where what is given in intuition fills or surpasses intentionality. These are named saturated phenomena.

The saturated phenomenon
'all saturated phenomena accomplish the one and only pardigm of phenomenality' (ED 227)

The gifted
Delivered from solipsism, ED 269