1 Marion, Jean‐Luc, God Without Being: Hors‐Texte, translated Carlson, Thomas A. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) p. 65Google Scholar.

2 “Christ calls himself the Word. He does not speak words inspired by GXd concerning GXd, but he abolishes in himself the gap between the speaker who states (prophet or scribe) and the sign (speech or text); he abolishes this first gap only in abolishing a second, more fundamental gap, in us, men: the gap between the sign and the referent … Christ does not say the word, he says himself the Word. He says himself –the Word! … in him commune … the sign, the locutor, and the referent that elsewhere the human experience of language irremediably dissociates … Word in flesh and bone, he is given as indissolubly speaker, sign, and referent … the Word is said as it is given. Marion, God Without Being, p. 140; p. 142. Marion's emphases and italics.

3 Ward, Graham, ‘The Theological Project of Jean‐Luc Marion’, Post‐Secular Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 229Google Scholar.

4 Janicaud, Dominique, Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française (Paris: Éditions de l’Éclat, 1991)Google Scholar; included in Phenomenology and the Theological Turn: The French Debate, translated Prusak, Bernard G. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), pp. 16‐103Google Scholar.

5 Janicaud, p. 51. English translation.

6 The question of what a post‐metaphysics might be like is affected from the start by the divergence of opinion over exactly what metaphysics is. In terms of understanding the way in which Marion means ‘metaphysics’, Robyn Horner claims that, for Marion, “..metaphysics … is (or involves elements of) a conception in terms of being as presence, with a claim to some kind of absoluteness, on the foundation of a transcendental I, whose existence and certainty is guaranteed by a term posited beyond the conceptual system: metaphysics is ‘onto‐theology’.” Marion, Jean‐Luc, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), p. xiiiGoogle Scholar.

7 Janicaud, p. 52.

8 ibid., pp. 56‐62.

9 Marion, God Without Being, p. xii.

10 ibid., p. xi.

11 See for instance the excellent and varied critical work from different perspectives in New Blackfriars Vol 76 No. 895 (July/August 1995)Google Scholar. For more descriptive exposition with little critical work see Horner, Robyn, Jean‐Luc Marion: A Theo‐logical Introduction (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005)Google Scholar.

12 Which is perhaps something which he has integrated into his work because of his intense studies of Descartes’ philosophy. There is also the odd way in which, in his later books, Marion presents his phenomenology of givenness in terms of what he calls the ‘saturated phenomenon’ which he claims as an inversion of Kant's categories of the understanding.

13 As a Roman Catholic lay person, other influences are some dominant strands of French Catholicism of the 20th century: Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou, Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain. From other writings, we can also see the pervasive influence of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth and Emmanuel Levinas. His socio‐historical background is the “French spiritual and cultural crisis of the nihilism which … marked the years dominated by 1968 …” Ward, Graham, ‘Introducing Jean‐Luc Marion’, New Blackfriars Vol 76 No. 895 (July/August 1995), pp. 317‐8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Marion, On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto‐Theo‐Logy in Cartesian Thought, translated Kosky, Jeffrey L. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)Google Scholar; originally published in Paris in 1986; God Without Being was published originally in Paris in 1982.

15 This notion of exceeding or excess is a recurrent one in Marion's later work.

16 What is most illuminating is that after this clear insight at the close of this book, Marion does not return to explore Pascal with anything like the close scrutiny with which he has attended to Descartes. In fact, if anything Descartes remains silently in the background even after Marion has explicitly overcome him with the help of Pascal. This is a baffling aspect that has not been sufficiently noticed in the secondary critical literature. It, perhaps, helps to explain the sense that one is always being tugged in two different directions at the same time when reading Marion's texts. One wonders whether the connection between Marion's invoking of a ‘First Philosophy’, which he does plainly and explicitly in the first section of In Excess, is not the ghost of Descartes re‐appearing after Marion has long since exorcised him.

17 For instance Robyn Horner who is, in general, relatively uncritical of Marion says: “… while his different strands of specialisation can be seen to stand independently … they also seem to converge to form the fabric of a much larger project … Marion ultimately seeks to show that there is a way forward for thought beyond metaphysics. Initially, he maintains that it is theology that best offers the way forward. Nevertheless, the leap from metaphysics to a (non‐metaphysical) theology appears too much like the sheer imposition of dogma –and the consequent repetition of metaphysics at a new level. In a second phase of writing, Marion uses phenomenology to push the boundaries of metaphysics, and is then able better to contextualise theology as a non‐metaphysical possibility. The two phases remain interconnected, which is why his non‐theological critics generally remain suspicious about the extent to which dogma actually drives Marion's philosophical agenda, and why it is difficult to assess the ultimate success of his project.” Horner, Jean‐Luc Marion, p. x.

18 Roughly speaking, an ‘idol’ is used to indicate the talk of God still under the category of ‘Being’, whereas ‘icon’ is used to point to the new formulation of ‘without Being’ that Marion is trying to articulate.

19 Marion, God Without Being, p. xxii.

20 One way that we can see a problem arising here is in the way in which Marion focusses on the traditional theological category of Revelation in his later (allegedly) purely phenomenological works. Marion perhaps realizes this problem, for he makes a typographical distinction between Revelation (capitalized) and revelation (uncapitalized). This distinction in the way in which the two terms are used points to two sets of concerns which are linked: Revelation (capitalized) is the historically actual revelation as a phenomenon; revelation (uncapitalized) is the possibility of such a phenomenon. Marion's phenomenology, then, is an attempt to describe the possibility of a Revelation. It is an attempt to philosophize about the very legitimacy of a theology of Revelation. Strangely, although Marion's thought is directed towards creating a phenomenological possibility for a historically actual Revelation, he gives very little attention to what it means for something to be historically actual. Here we see the problem of authority and legitimacy arising again. For Marion, historical actuality has some sort of status as a fixed event whose contours are only properly described by adherence to descriptions of that phenomenon already decided in advance and to which we must adhere if we are to be true to that historical actuality. How this single event in its historical actuality relates to both the continuing unfolding of history, to our own (or anyone else's) historical actuality, and what the relations between these elements (situated in a manifold world of phenomena and diverse interpretations of that manifold) are like, are for Marion, issues secondary to the delineation of the possibility for this kind of historical event. Concern for actual history is secondary to the concern for a particular kind of certainty about such historical events.

21 Marion, The Idol and Distance: Five Studies, Carlson, translated Thomas A. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

22 ibid., p. xix.

23 Marion, In Excess, p. 2. This passage is very illuminating in the context of Marion's thought as a whole. It shows how Marion's thinking often closes off an avenue of exploration by simply refusing to ask another question, and it shows how, for Marion, the key move is often not that of questioning the appropriateness of this closing off, but whether what is appropriated by making this move can be posited and determined legitimately. ‘Legitimacy’ is a very significant word for Marion's work, something which he is always at pains to establish. One has to ask why this is so.

24 Here it is pertinent to point out Marion's earlier concern with the problems of conditions and to reclaiming a theological unconditionality. In returning to the notion of primacy, in the sense in which Marion articulates it at this late stage, we wonder whether he has failed to consider that the notion of primacy and principle are themselves conditions. This is both a philosophical problem and a theological liability.

25 Janicaud suggests as much when he points out in his discussion of Marion's formulation of the phenomenological reduction that: “… for Marion, the transcendental reduction is not uniquely Husserlian, but ‘Cartesian’ or even ‘Kantian’ as well. ‘It matters little here’ the author bizarrely specifies. On the contrary, it matters a lot, for the question is whether it is possible to amalgamate, for the needs of the cause, such different undertakings.” Janicaud, p. 57.

26 Marion, In Excess, pp. 25‐6.

27 Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, translated Kosky, Jeffrey L. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 4; p. 5Google Scholar. Marion's italics.

28 Reduction and Givenness is the first of the trilogy of books where Marion works out the phenomenology of givenness, the other two are Being Given and In Excess. Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology, translated Carlson, Thomas A. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998)Google Scholar. Réduction et donation was originally published in 1989, Étant donné in 1997, De Surcroît in 2001.

29 Husserl, Edmund, The Idea of Phenomenology, translated Hardy, Lee (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A translation of Die Idee de Phänomenologie, 1907. Marion cites explicitly from this text. Being Given, pp. 14‐15; p. 21; cf: Husserl, p. 34; p. 64; p. 66.

30 “Only through a reduction, which we shall call the phenomenological reduction, do I acquire an absolute givenness that no longer offers anything transcendent … to every psychological experience there corresponds, by way of the phenomenological reduction, a pure phenomenon that exhibits its immanent essence … as an absolute givenness.”; “The psychological phenomenon in psychological apperception and objectification is not really an absolute givenness, rather, only the pure phenomenon, the reduced phenomenon.” The Idea of Phenomenology, p. 34; p. 64. Husserl's italics.

31 Janicaud, p. 57; pp. 58‐59.

32 Marion, Reduction and Givenness, pp. 203‐205.

33 Janicaud, p. 61.

34 Janicaud, p. 65. This issue of the way in which Marion understands the task and reach of phenomenology comes to the fore in the discussion between Marion and Jacques Derrida published as ‘On the Gift’. In a point of debate over Marion's desire to do away with the notion of a ‘horizon’ (the condition of phenomenality, the ‘as such’) and to focus on the unconditioned, Derrida accuses Marion of not doing phenomenology: “Then would you dissociate what you call phenomenology from the authority of the as such? If you do that you would be the first heresy in phenomenology … I am also for the suspension of the horizon, but, for that very reason … I am not a phenomenologist anymore.”‘On the Gift’, in God, the Gift and Postmodernism, Caputo, edited John D. and Scanlon, Michael J. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 66Google Scholar.

35 Reduction for Husserl leads to phenomenological seeing, to eidetic clarity, and operates out of (detaching itself, so to speak, from) a natural attitude. Reduction for Heidegger is the working out of the comportment structures which are Dasein's natural attitude. In both cases, the natural human attitude is thus taken up into phenomenological insight, which reflects on, out of, and upon the natural attitude, which is embedded in an intentional structure.

36 Heidegger, Martin, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, translated Hofstadter, Albert (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), pp. 21‐23Google Scholar. My italics.

37 For instance his employment of the notion comportment towards the ‘Other’ is always situated in terms of “hearing the Call” and human actions are always in response.

38 Heidegger, Basic Problems, p. 21.

39 For Marion, a ‘saturated phenomenon’ is a way of indicating not a ‘phenomenon’ as much as different modes of phenomenality per se, the way in which things appear. Marion's notion of a ‘saturated phenomenon’ is an attempt to reformulate Kant's ‘pure concepts of the understanding’–the categories– by inverting them. Kant's quartal division of quantity, quality, relation and modality become, in Marion's work, the categories of event, idol, flesh and icon, and the four are gathered together simultaneously as revelation.

40 Marion, In Excess, p. 68. My italics and emphasis.

41 Ward, Post‐Secular Philosophy, p. 233.

42 Marion, Being Given, p. 40.

43 Marion, In Excess, p. 69.

44 Moreover, Marion's understanding of the relationship between the ‘visible’ and the ‘invisible’ could also be subjected to a critique via Merleau‐Ponty's late philosophy. Here we would be careful not to understand the invisible as being un‐worldly, as Marion appears to do. For Merleau‐Ponty, the invisible is another dimension of this world. This is, the whole gist of categorial intuition, the problem of Being, the genealogy of logic and the generation of language for Merleau‐Ponty.

45 We suspect, however, that the subversive element that we have pointed out before is revealed by Marion's concerns with authority and legitimacy. We have reason to be suspicious that his focus on givenness is not so much about allowing phenomena to show themselves as about providing some sort of phenomenological warrant for the notion that what the Church's teaching office sets out must be taken as already given. It is about setting out a philosophy which leaves room for the revelatory claims of the Church. In this sense his philosophy takes on a very different character indeed.