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Being Given: Towards a Phenomenology of Givenness

[1] Being Given (BG) is the second book in Marion’s trilogy and has as its primary focus the phenomenology of givenness. The first book, Reduction and Givenness, discusses the various possibilities opened by Husserl and Heidegger, as well as that which is still limited by their formulations. The final book in the series, In Excess, is devoted to a more detailed explication of what Marion introduces in BG as the ‘saturated phenomenon.’ [2] In the section entitled, ‘Preliminary Answers,’ Marionmakes explicit the dominant theme of his book, ‘what shows itself first gives itself’ (5). Beginning with this theme and developing creative variations, Marion culminates the work with the ‘saturated phenomenon,’ which becomes the paradigm for givenness. [3] In book I, Marion introduces a counter-method as a response to the Husserlian call to the ‘things in themselves.’ As he deconstructs various past formulations, Marion wants to leave open the possibility of a phenomenon, which is not confined within intuition alone. Moving through lengthy discussions of bothHeidegger andHusserl, Marion demonstrates that neither allowed givenness its full realization. For Husserl, the breakthrough of givenness is frozen due to an ‘unquestioned paradigm of objectness’ (32). Consequently, by restricting givenness to the object, Husserl does not advance his initial findings. Focusing next on Heidegger, Marion claims that givenness is abandoned ‘by assigning beingness to the Ereignis’ (38). Though it is legitimate to understand objectness and beingness as limited horizons against the background of givenness, Marion, from this point on, wants to define ‘givenness in itself and on its own terms’ (39). [4] In section 4, Marion begins an analysis of givenness with his discussion of a painting. A painting is notmerely an object, nor a being, nor a ready-at-hand. The only way to understand a painting is to say that it is given. In other words, Marion is looking to a characteristic that ismore fundamental for understanding a painting. Drawing froman insight posited byCezanne,Marion says that a painting ‘accomplishes an act—it comes forward into visibility’ (49). Thus, a painting has an ‘effect’ and effect is here understood in all itsmultiplemeanings: ‘as the shock that the visible provokes. . . as the emotion that invades the one gazing, [and] . . . as the indescribable combination of the tones and the lines that irreducibly individualize