Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

English translation © 2002 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

2012 Preface © 2013 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

All rights reserved.

Assistance for the translation was provided by the French Ministry of Culture. Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness was originally published in French in 1997 under the title Etant donné: Essai d’une phénoménologie de la donation, © 1997, Presses Universitaires de France.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Marion, Jean-Luc

    [Etant donné. English]

    Being given: toward a phenomenology of givenness / Jean-Luc Marion; translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky.

        p. cm. — (Cultural memory in the present)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8047-3410-0 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8047-3410-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 0-8047-3411-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8047-3411-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8047-8572-3 (e-book)

        1. Phenomenology. I. Title. II. Series.

B2430.M283 E8313 2002

194—DC21

2002009243

Original Printing 2002

Last figure below indicates year of this printing:

21  20  19  18  17  16  15  14  13  12

Typeset by James P. Brommer in 11/13.5 Garamond

BEING GIVEN

Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness

Jean-Luc Marion

Translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky

With a New Preface by the Author

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

Cultural Memory in the Present

Mieke Bal and Hent de Vries, Editors

CONTENTS

2012 Preface

Preface to the American Translation

Preliminary Answers

BOOK I GIVENNESS

§1. The Last Principle

§2. The Essence of the Phenomenon

§3. Objectness and Beingness

§4. The Reduction to the Given

§5. Privilege of Givenness

§6. To Give Itself, to Show Itself

BOOK II THE GIFT

§7. Two Objections

§8. The Reduction of the Gift to Givenness

§9. The Bracketing of the Givee

§10. The Bracketing of the Giver

§11. The Bracketing of the Gift

§12. Intrinsic Givenness

BOOK III THE GIVEN I: DETERMINATIONS

§13. Anamorphosis

§14. Unpredictable Landing

§15. The Fait Accompli

§16. The Incident

§17. The Event

§18. The Being Given

BOOK IV THE GIVEN II: DEGREES

§19. The Horizon and the I

§20. Intuition as Shortage

§21. Sketch of the Saturated Phenomenon: The Horizon

§22. Sketch of the Saturated Phenomenon: I

§23. Topics of the Phenomenon

§24. To Give Itself, to Reveal Itself

BOOK V THE GIFTED

§25. The Aporias of the Subject

§26. To Receive One’s Self from What Gives Itself

§27. Two Calls in Metaphysics

§28. The Call and the Responsal

§29. The Nameless Voice

§30. Abandon

Opening onto a Question

Notes

English Editions Cited

Index Nominum

2012 PREFACE

The American public’s positive reception and the editor’s commitment make possible today a rerelease of the translation of Etant donné: Essai d’une phénoménologie de la donation (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1997¹, 1998², and 2005³), first appearing in 2002 from Stanford University Press. My thanks go to both. But the passage of ten years also permits me to make some remarks that complete those made in the preface to the earlier publication of this translation (concerning the triptych formed with Reduction and Givenness and In Excess, and especially concerning the relation of this triptych with God Without Being).

First, and beyond the obvious satisfaction that any author would receive in such circumstances, it can be observed that the question of givenness is now established in phenomenology and in philosophy as such. Even the objections, which are scattered throughout every serious engagement, have confirmed it. That the phenomenon is not confined to its status as object or as being but must be characterized more originarily; that this characterization can be made in terms of what Husserl (and, for that matter, his predecessors at Marburg, too) regularly called Gegebenheit and what the young Heidegger identified as the the magic word of phenomenology and the ‘stumbling block’ of all the others;¹ that this characteristic deserves and makes possible further specifications—all this seems admitted by the philosophical community today. The sole question, perfectly legitimate, is to know if such givens are available to us and if we can define such a univocal concept of givenness/given. Responding to this question has motivated many works, often quite remarkable ones.² The issue has become common, and I am quite happy that I am no longer alone on this path—a path that one hopes will become more and more frequented. I have, for my part, added some details concerning the historical origin of Gegebenheit,³ as well as the status of the saturated phenomenon that accomplished Gegebenheit.⁴

A second remark concerns the schema of a triple reduction. It was, in fact, already outlined in the speculative recovery of the doctrine of the three orders elaborated by Pascal, an attempt I made in the final chapter of my study Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes: Constitution et limites de l’onto-théo-logie dans la pensée cartésienne (Paris, 1986 [see the English translation by Jeffrey L. Kosky, On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism (Chicago, 1999)]). That is, I suggested, the distinction between the order of bodies, the order of the mind, and the order of the heart, in a hierarchy where each superior order sees the inferior orders without the latter being able to see it, sets us on the path (with all appropriate approximations) toward the reductions set forth in Reduction and Givenness, then put into operation in Being Given. Take, respectively, the transcendental reduction by the I of the phenomenon to the object in Husserl; then the reduction by Dasein of the phenomenon to the being in Heidegger; finally, a third reduction, which recovers, validates, and at the same time disqualifies the first two: the reduction of the phenomenon to the given in it—precisely the one that permits concluding so much reduction, so much givenness. This tripling of reductions could give rise to as many difficulties as possibilities—only the results and the descriptions to come will decide.

Another difficulty could arise from the use, introduced by Le phénomène érotique: Six méditations (Paris, 2003 [English translation by Stephen Lewis, The Erotic Phenomenon: Six Meditations (Chicago, 2006)]), of another, comparable formulation: the erotic reduction. Is this a fourth reduction, and would this inflation compromise the first three? Or is this another name for the third, and would this redundancy be useless and harmful? In fact, neither is the case. The erotic reduction comes from the reduction to the given because it specifies a particular figure of it. The final pages of Being Given (323ff.) indicated this quite clearly: the phenomenon as given ends up at the gifted—the figure of the ego such as it receives itself from the given that it receives. Now, this gifted is accomplished the majority of the time by receiving itself on the occasion of receiving a phenomenon given to it but without this phenomenon itself having the status of gifted, since it remains most of the time not an alter ego or a personal other but something other than ego, a mere phenomenon of the world. The third reduction, therefore, typically confronts the gifted with a given in the world, not another gifted. A final possibility, therefore, remains open: that where a gifted would receive itself in the reception of a gifted itself of the same type as the gifted. Now as soon as I receive myself from a personal other, in particular when I am affected by a flesh that first affects itself—in short, as soon as I receive myself from another person who himself receives himself from another person (in this case, me)—such an intrigue of one gifted with another gifted defines exactly the space of the erotic reduction. It is therefore not added to the third reduction (to the given), nor is it confused with it; it radicalizes it by leading it to its utmost possibility.

A third remark remains to be made, one certainly less obvious than the first two (which bear respectively on the past or the present of this work), since it bears on what remains still to come, Deo volente. How can a phenomenology of givenness be developed? What fields can it—and, significantly, it alone—open? And to just what extent can it confirm its phenomenological legitimacy by its power to make manifest? These questions can find a response, even provisional, only from the results obtained, in fact, by the work of bringing to light the things themselves; in this sense I can say nothing and make no promises. It remains the case that, according to a paradox spotted by Heidegger, thought calls for phenomenology precisely when it concerns phenomena that are at first glance and for the most part hidden, not yet seen. Now of such phenomena, which at first are not seen, the res quae non videntur as Saint Augustine calls them, there is no shortage; consider all that does not present itself to be seen in the mode of the objects we produce technically, or, at least, constitute scientifically, or in the mode of the beings that make a world around us. I have since 2002 made at least two attempts precisely in this direction. On one hand, I have attempted to reread an author often interpreted in a metaphysical lexicon that does not do justice to his theological originality but succeeds only in distorting it—Saint Augustine. This rereading wanted to test whether the concepts and the phenomenological operations could arrive, using the dimensions of givenness (given, gift, gifted, facticity, event, saturated phenomenon, call and response, etc.), at a more coherent view of his genius.⁵ On the other hand, I have attempted to describe decidedly nonobjective but absolutely certain phenomena—indeed, ones that take on in their apparent invisibility, the rank of saturated phenomenon: undefinable man, impossible God, all-powerful gift, unforeseeable event.⁶

The question of givenness has only barely begun to be understood, but at least it has been posed.

PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN TRANSLATION

The publication of this book in America has a special importance in my eyes—obviously because, having taught and lectured for more than fifteen years in the United States, I find that many of my conversation partners are located on this side of the Atlantic, but especially because as a professor invited for several years now to teach at the University of Chicago, I wrote a great part of this work in Hyde Park, presented many of the arguments to students in the classrooms of Foster Hall, Swift Hall, or Classics, and discussed it with my friends and colleagues here. I am obliged to thank this great university for having thus accepted me into its great tradition and also my students, who have been as cordial as they are demanding, for having helped me more than they know. Among my colleagues, I want to thank in particular Dan Garber and David Tracy, who, in very different ways, supported me in a work that seems to me, even now that it is done, well above my abilities. Thus, appearing in America, Etant donné in some ways returns to its place of origin.

The essential points having been said, I will indulge myself by adding two points of clarification.

It behooves me to emphasize that Etant donné is inscribed, today, in a triptych, begun in 1989 with Réduction et donation: Etudes sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie¹ and completed in 2001 with De surcroît: Essais sur les phénomènes saturés.² The first work tried to stay within the history of philosophy applied to phenomenology; it was an inquiry into the method actually followed by Husserl and Heidegger, with an eye toward disclosing the possibilities open, for the future, to this school of thought. It succeeded in rethinking the classic operation of the reduction as no longer dedicated only to securing objects (as in Husserl) or disclosing beings (as for Heidegger), but more radically to opening a still more originary determination of the phenomenon—the given. This is summed up in a formula: So much reduction, so much givenness. It happened that, contrary to all expectation, this formal and methodological work incited much discussion, indeed passionate debate.³ In any case, it called for clarification and development—which demanded nothing less than passing from a factual and historical inquiry to conceptual and organic research: the phenomenon as given in terms of givenness, the gift itself reduced to givenness, the determinations of the given, the saturated phenomenon as given par excellence, and finally the gifted (the figure of subjectivity granted to and by givenness). After ten painful years, Etant donné—and, in the wake of its publication, the discussion of even stronger objections followed (Ricoeur, Derrida, Franck, etc.). But this work was still abstract, at least in its presentation of the givenness of saturated phenomena, which were sketched formally and too quickly. Hence a final series of studies, De surcroît, designed to go into the details of the saturated phenomena, including the phenomenon of Revelation. This collection aimed to make possible a revival of phenomenology by freeing it from two horizons whose limits had become obvious to me (objectness, Being), without losing the radicality of a method whose fruitfulness was proven throughout the century just ended, a fruitfulness that remains one of the great trump cards held by a philosophy that means to think after and thanks to the end of metaphysics. I hope that others will make greater progress in this direction.

But Etant donné—at least it seems to me in retrospect—resumes questions left in suspense by a previous book, Dieu sans l’être.⁴ There, it was a question of uprooting the question of God not only from metaphysics (and the fate of the Death of God), but also from what made possible an investigation that had become as obsessive as imprecise into the existence of God, namely, the unquestioned horizon of Being as supposedly the sole frame of his presence. The critical portion of this essay was accomplished within the field of philosophy, but I could not, at that time, glimpse its constructive side (access to charity) except through recourse to theology (hence the second part, Hors-texte). What was lacking was a nonmetaphysical method of philosophy—phenomenology, but a phenomenology thoroughly secured. It took twenty years for me to hope to succeed, at least in part. And in fact, Etant donné, with the inventory of saturated phenomena, completes, in the particular case of the phenomenon of Revelation, a sketch of what Dieu sans l’être bluntly intended through direct recourse to theology.⁵ I hope thus to shed some light on the relations, at once essential for the future and poorly illuminated in the past, between phenomenology and theology.

There remains the most agreeable obligation of thanking those who made this translation possible. The editor first, Helen Tartar, who took a risk and made the decision to give a new life to this book. The translator next, Jeffrey L. Kosky, who, no beginner in this difficult task,⁶ showed exceptional dedication, precision, and virtuosity. I appreciate the extent to which one must oneself be a real philosopher to have rewritten, therefore rethought, a book word for word. In his case, this is proven by his expert examination of the very issues I mention above (the relations between phenomenology and theology) in the case of Emmanuel Levinas.⁷ He has my deepest gratitude and most sincere admiration.

JEAN-LUC MARION

Chicago, 10 May 2001

My work on this translation is dedicated to my grandparents: Lillian and Irving Kosky and Sadie and Julius Fialco. Not everything that merits acknowledgment happens in the public eye, and the most important probably never does. I will always remember what we have shared in the still, quiet moments.

JEFFREY KOSKY

Chicago, March 2002

PRELIMINARY ANSWERS

Axiom: we cannot know anything on our own; all real knowledge must be given to us.

—Novalis¹

Being given . . .—the phrase seems self-evident.

The untrained understanding readily joins the learned reading to add an article to the first word and thereby read the being given, considering as it does [the] being as a substantive, and so conclude simply that what is, namely the ens of the philosophers or, according to an old French word, l’étant,² is also given: a being—in other words, a given. In short, the phrase would merely state that there is being rather than nothing. Thus the common reading, at once learned and untrained, hears in being given only what metaphysics can say about it. In this way, not only does this reading not really read literally; it exposes itself to incoherence. For if one admits that it is the being (in the nominal sense) that is given and nothing more, why not simply and metaphysically say that the being is, indeed that "the being is given? Why, on the contrary, juxtapose with neither transition, nor article, nor copula the terms being and given? Is given equivalent to a trivial explanation of is given, as being is to an explanation of being is? In short, is being given merely the gloss of the strange and twofold tautology the being—what—is"? If that is all this is about, why not have said, as philosophy has said again and again since Parmenides, being is—eon emmenai?³ And if that’s what is at issue, why does the phrase have recourse to given, seeing as in the gloss with which this reading concludes, this term and it alone disappears as useless and imprecise? In short, the untrained and learned reading of being given lets being run rampant and entirely forgets given.

These readings must therefore be abandoned, and being given must be read as, upon reflection, it gives itself. Without added article, being must be taken for a verb, and a verb that works for an other (an auxiliary verb), since it puts into operation that which now proves itself ultimately given. Being given suggests that the given is indeed already and irrevocably given—as being done asserts that the deed is done,⁴ being acquired that the acquisition is definitively acquired, or being said that the said has the status of a promise, etc. Here being is preparation for given, which completes it and confers on it the force of a fait accompli. What is more: considered only as an auxiliary, being, as a verb, topples and disappears in the given because it intends only to reinforce it; being posits the fact of the given and is entirely de-posited therein. Being given—the given is given in fact and thus attests its givenness. Being given does not reconduct the given to the status of a being not yet adequately named, nor does it inscribe it in supposedly normative beingness. Rather, being given discloses it as a given, owing nothing to anybody, given inasmuch as given, organized in terms of givenness and even employing being therein. In one and the same move, the given earns its givenness, and Being (verbal being) disappears in its enactment therein. That is, the given verbally unfolds its givenness in it—what I will name the fold of the given—and the auxiliary Being falls into line with givenness, which it serves. Being given says the given as given.

Being given thus resumes the question I posed in Réduction et donation: Recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie in 1989. At that time, I thought only to proceed with a simple historical examination of the development of the phenomenological method: the arising of the reduction with objectness in Husserl; its swerve to beingness in view of reaching the Being of beings for the sake of Dasein in Heidegger; finally, the possibility of radicalizing the pure reduction to the given as such. This seemed to present itself as something almost trivial in my reading of the classic texts. No doubt, the privilege I finally granted to givenness could have been surprising—but wasn’t it after all a mere translation of a term present throughout Husserl (namely: Gegebenheit)? As for knowing if one could receive it or not, this question should in principle never have been left to the standards of accepted thought nor to the ideology of good manners, but only to the exigencies of the thing itself. No doubt, the possibility of a third reduction was shocking—but if Husserl’s transcendental reduction is indeed at play within the horizon of objectness, if Heidegger’s existential reduction is deployed within the horizon of Being, shouldn’t we, as soon as the reduction is no longer blocked by the object or the being, designate it specifically as the third, ordered to the pure given? I thus thought myself to have been working almost as a historian of philosophy, applying my research to the history of phenomenology.

The debate provoked by Réduction et donation, with its positive and negative reactions, happily opened my eyes, since it proved that I had advanced theses of greater importance than I had ever imagined. The agreements, the disagreements, and even the misreadings unambiguously suggest the stakes, but also new difficulties that await a decision. In taking count of them, I would like to express my debt and my gratitude to those who truly pointed them out to me. The present work tries to respond to these questions. (a) First, at issue is the new principle, So much reduction, so much givenness, more adequate than the other principles proposed for phenomenology because finally last (Book 1, §1).⁵ This principle led me to thematize explicitly a new definition, at once broader and more basic, of the phenomenon—no longer as object or being, but as given. This charge motivates the project that deduces and articulates all the characteristics of the phenomenon as such on the basis of its determination as given (Book 3). (b) It was then necessary to reinvestigate the given character of the gift: can it be conceived as gift without annihilating all content, every actor, and all intrigue (Book 2, §§7–8)?⁶ Confronted with this aporia, shouldn’t we renounce a simple concept of given and distinguish essentially between the phenomenological givenness of the given and the ordinary thematic of the gift?⁷ (c) Next, shouldn’t we fear some sort of return to special metaphysics, which givenness would perhaps imply, insofar as it is supposed to imply a transcendental, indeed—horribile dictu—theological giver.⁸ Beyond this superficial polemic, the more essential question is posed about the possibility of deploying givenness solely within the frame of reduced immanence (Book 2). (d) The nature of the third reduction was also investigated: Is it self-evident that it is still enacted within the field of phenomenology? Couldn’t it instead subvert phenomenology or leave it behind?⁹ I was therefore obliged to try to establish that, far from remaining sunk in the unsayable and irrational, the third reduction permitted one to put on stage phenomena as such, precisely because it led them back to their pure given status, according to radically nonmetaphysical determinations (Book 3). (e) Moreover, the reduction of phenomenality to givenness succeeded in the task of describing certain exceptional phenomena, ones that previous metaphysics and phenomenology had ignored or excluded: the phenomena saturated with intuition, which I call paradoxes (Book 4). (f) Finally, the determination of the phenomenon as given, if it can and must dispense with every giver, nonetheless always comes to a givee. Who comes after the subject—I call him the gifted, with no other subjectum besides his capacity to receive and to receive himself from what he receives (Book 5).

In what follows, therefore, I have but one theme: if the phenomenon is defined as what shows itself in and from itself (Heidegger), instead of as what admits constitution (Husserl), this self can be attested only inasmuch as the phenomenon first gives itself. Without going back to that through which the phenomenon gives itself, we cannot conceive that it could show itself. And in fact, the thought that does not do justice to the given remains most of the time and first of all powerless to receive a number of phenomena for what they are—givens that show themselves. Also, it excludes from the field of manifestation not only many phenomena, but above all those most endowed with meaning and those that are most powerful. Only a phenomenology of givenness can return to the things themselves because, in order to return to them, it is necessary first to see them, therefore to see them as they come and, in the end, to bear their unpredictable landing.

Two questions still remain to be discussed. (a) I often assume that phenomenology makes an exception to metaphysics. I do not, however, defend this assertion in its entirety, since I emphasize that Husserl upholds Kantian decisions (the conditions for the possibility of phenomenality, the horizon, the constituting function of the I) and similarly that Heidegger upholds subjectivity in Dasein no less than the privilege of the question of Being. It should, therefore, be admitted that phenomenology does not actually overcome metaphysics so much as it opens the official possibility of leaving it to itself. The border between metaphysics and phenomenology runs within phenomenology—as its highest possibility, and I stick with the phenomenological discipline only in search of the way that it opens and, sometimes, closes. But here again, possibility goes farther than actuality; the phenomenological way has not yet reached its endpoint, and I borrow it only with the hope that it will. (b) In describing saturated phenomena or paradoxes (Book 4, §2122–23), I do not hesitate to go so far as the phenomenon of Revelation (§24), namely Christ. Is this a blatant and perfectly unseemly theological turn? Once again, I resist this claim for at least two reasons. (i) Every phenomenon must be describable, and every exclusion must on principle be reversed, in phenomenology as elsewhere, and turned against he who effects it. This was one of the most glaring limits of classical metaphysics from Spinoza to Nietzsche: namely, to have the pretense to forbid phenomenality to what claimed it. For the very concept of Revelation belongs by right to phenomenality, and even to contest it, it is appropriate to see it. (ii) Here, I am not broaching revelation in its theological pretension to the truth, something faith alone can dare to do. I am outlining it as a possibility—in fact the ultimate possibility, the paradox of paradoxes—of phenomenality, such that it is carried out in a possible saturated phenomenon. The hypothesis that there was historically no such revelation would change nothing in the phenomenological task of offering an account of the fact, itself incontestable, that it has been thinkable, discussible, and even describable. This description therefore does not make an exception to the principle of the reduction to immanence. Here it is perhaps a case of something like the phenomena that Husserl thought could be described only by imaginative variations—imaginary or not, they appear, and their mere possibility merits analysis and Sinngebung. As for the relation that phenomenology, or rather a phenomenology still to be constructed, could maintain with the fact of Revelation, it is not fundamentally different from the relation that philosophy as such maintains with it. And today we are hardly in a position to even pose this question.

What shows itself first gives itself—this is my one and only theme. I have endeavored to stick to it and orchestrate it the entire length of this work, and I have held no other implicit or esoteric thesis. May I therefore be permitted, so as to avoid any misreadings, to address a supplication to those whom the ancients called kindly reader: on principle, I mean to say what I try to say and not the opposite of what I have said. Thus when I say that reduced givenness does not demand any giver for its given, I am not insinuating that it lays claim to a transcendent giver; when I say that the phenomenology of givenness by definition passes beyond metaphysics, I do not say between the lines that this phenomenology restores metaphysics; and finally when I oppose the gifted to transcendental subjectivity, I am not suggesting that the subject is reborn in givenness.

But such misunderstandings come first from the difficulty intrinsic to the questions being broached and from my own insufficiencies or ignorance. Never so much as on this all too barren and arduous terrain have I been so conscious of this. I cannot do better than this essay, manifestly inadequate to what it is a question of thinking. E per piú non poter fo quant’ io posso—and not being capable of more, I do as much as I can, Bembo said.¹⁰ What is left is to hope that others will go farther. The phenomenality of the given is worth more than what I say about it—and it will make more seen.¹¹ For what this book succeeds in saying remains far behind what was conceived without being able to formulate it. And what ended up being conceived itself remains well behind what was seen.

PARIS, 24 JUNE 1997

Book I GIVENNESS

§1 THE LAST PRINCIPLE

A Counter-Method

In all science—therefore in metaphysics—it is a question of proving. To prove consists in grounding appearances in order to know with certainty, leading them back to the ground in order to lead them to certainty. But in phenomenology—that is to say, at least in what it intends, in the attempt to think in a nonmetaphysical mode—it is a question of showing. To show implies letting appearances appear in such a way that they accomplish their own apparition, so as to be received exactly as they give themselves.

To show, to let appear, and to accomplish apparition do not imply any privilege of vision. Besides the fact that this so-called privilege often yields in phenomenology to the primacy of touch or hearing, such that it can hardly be invoked without taking sides in a muddled polemic, its disastrous presupposition must be contested. The primacy of one of the senses (vision, but also any other) is important only if perception finally determines appearance, therefore only if appearance itself in the final analysis falls under the jurisdiction of perception—in short, only if appearance refers at the outset to the apparition of the thing itself, where, as in trial by fire, the apparatus of appearance and even of perception is consumed in order to let arise what is at issue. Now, phenomenology has no other goal and no other legitimacy than to attempt to reach the apparition in appearance, therefore to transgress every perceived impression by means of the intentionality of the thing itself. Even in the vision of mere appearances, what is at issue in phenomenology is no longer exactly what subjectivity apperceives by one or the other of its perceptive tools, but what apparition—through, despite, indeed without them—gives of itself and as the thing itself. The distinction between seeing, listening, and feeling (but also tasting and smelling) becomes decisive only when perception is glued to a decidedly subjective determination of its role, as what filters, interprets, and deforms the appearance of the apparition. Inversely, as soon as apparition dominates appearing and revives it, the subjective specifications of appearance by this or that sense are no longer essentially important: whether I see, touch, feel, or hear it, it is always the thing that comes upon me each time in person. And the fact that it comes upon me only in parts and in outline does not stop it from coming to me in the very flesh of its apparition. This very imperfection would not be noticed if it did not already presuppose the apparition in person of the thing, which it limits. The so-called privilege of vision therefore becomes decisive only once we miss the privilege of the apparition of the thing itself at the heart of its (sensible, perceptible, subjective, etc.) appearance—the sole truly decisive matter. The study of this privilege constitutes the business proper to phenomenology, which admits no other. I will stick strictly to this.

The privilege of appearing in its appearance is also named manifestation—manifestation of the thing starting from itself and as itself, privilege of rendering itself manifest, of making itself visible, of showing itself. This compels me to correct my point of departure: if in the realm of metaphysics it is a question of proving, in the phenomenological realm it is not a question of simply showing (since in this case apparition could still be the object of a gaze, therefore a mere appearance), but rather of letting apparition show itself in its appearance according to its appearing. The mere transition from proving to showing therefore does not yet modify the deep status of phenomenality, nor does it assure it its freedom. Moreover, on account of not having perceived this clearly, many phenomenological attempts have simply repeated and corroborated the privilege of (metaphysical) perception and subjectivity over and against manifestation. This first move therefore should be completed by a second: the movement from showing to letting itself show, from manifestation to self-manifestation starting from the self of what shows its self. But letting apparition show its self in the appearance and appearing as its own manifestation—that is not so self-evident. For a fundamental reason: because knowledge always comes from me, manifestation is never evident by itself. Or rather, it is not so self-evident that it can run its own course, coming from itself, through itself, starting from itself, in short, that it can itself manifest its self. The initial and final paradox of phenomenology stems precisely from this: that it takes the initiative in losing it. To be sure, like all rigorous science, it decides its own project, its own terrain, and its own method, thus taking the initiative as originally as possible; but, counter to all metaphysics, it has no other ambition than to lose this initiative as quickly and completely as possible, seeing as it claims to connect the apparitions of things in their most initial originarity to the so-to-speak native state of their unconditional manifestation in themselves, therefore starting from themselves. The methodological beginning here establishes only the conditions for its own disappearance in the original manifestation of what shows itself. That this reversal must respect precise operations (intentions, fulfillments, reductions, constitutions, appresentations, etc.), according to a rationality of the most strict type, does not weaken this paradox but rather confirms the formal requirement for it.

The difficulty presented by this paradox—without which phenomenology would remain only a new, empty name for a then eternalized metaphysics—has provoked, from its beginning in Husserl, an incessantly reconsidered reconsideration of the theme method. To let apparition manifest itself, it no doubt seems wise to proceed methodically, and the different senses of the reduction offer the perfect illustration of this task by completely assuming the rational demand for reaching an indubitable basis for knowledge. But the method should not, for all that, secure indubitability in the mode of a possession of objects that are certain because produced according to the a priori conditions for knowledge. It should provoke the indubitability of the apparition of things, without producing the certainty of objects. In contrast to the Cartesian or Kantian method, the phenomenological method, even when it constitutes phenomena, is limited to letting them manifest themselves. Constituting does not equal constructing or synthesizing, but rather giving-a-meaning, or more exactly, recognizing the meaning that the phenomenon itself gives from itself and to itself. The method does not run ahead of the phenomenon, by fore-seeing it, pre-dicting it, and pro-ducing it, in order to await it from the outset at the end of the path (meta-hodos) onto which it has just barely set forth. From now on, it travels in tandem with the phenomenon, as if protecting it and clearing a path for it by eliminating roadblocks. Dissolving the aporias, it reestablishes the porosity of appearance, if not always the transparency of apparition in it. In any case, this is how the reduction operates par excellence: it suspends absurd theories, the false realities of the natural attitude, the objective world, etc., in order to let lived experiences bring about as much as possible the appearing of what manifests itself as and through them. Its operation culminates in a clearing away of the obstacles to manifestation.¹ And just as in a lawful state, the public powers must let manifestations happen, opinions be published, referenda be organized—in short, just as they must let transpire what has the right to do so by acting only against actual acts of violence, so too the reduction lets manifest itself what has the right to do so, using its power of suspension only against illegitimate theoretical acts of violence. If one wants to speak of negative phenomenology, an ambiguous formula to be used only with reticence, it must be understood in terms of the reduction itself.² The method does not so much provoke the apparition of what manifests itself as it clears away the obstacles that encircle it and would hide it. The reduction does nothing; it lets manifestation manifest itself; it takes the initiative (of considering seriously what is lived by consciousness) only in order to offer it to what manifests itself. All the difficulty of the reduction—and the reason it always remains to be done and redone, with neither end nor sufficient success—stems from the swerve it must make, one where it invents itself (zigzagging along). The reduction must be done in order to undo it and let it become the apparition of what shows itself in it, though finally without it. Or rather, the reduction opens the show of the phenomenon at first like a very present director, so as to then let this show continue as a simple scene where the director is necessary, to be sure, but forgotten and making no difference—with the result that, in the end, the phenomenon so dominates the scene that it is absorbed in it and no longer distinguished from it: self-directing. The reduction is enacted precisely with this turning. Phenomenological method therefore claims to deploy a turn, which goes not simply from proving to showing, but from showing in the way that an ego makes an object evident to letting an apparition in an appearance show itself: a method of turning that turns against itself and consists in this reversal itself—counter-method.

Question of Principles

In its terrifying simplicity, this turning offers such difficulty that the phenomenological project is forever reconsidering how to formulate it, perhaps without yet having done so completely. This difficulty can be assessed according to the clues provided by the determination of the first principle of phenomenology. And from the beginning, the question of the principle poses a principle question: how to assign a principle to the method or the science (three terms that are synonymous in metaphysics) that takes the initiative to give up the initiative? What type of principle would remain one (indisputable, universal, unconditioned) without contradicting the phenomenological turn itself (without preceding and therefore claiming to produce appearing)? Would it be necessary, therefore, that the very concept of principle suffer—it too and first, as would befit its rank—the phenomenological turn? Would the principle accomplish its primacy only by disappearing before apparition? Without a doubt. But then, should it be determinable by the very thing—the manifestation of what manifests itself—that it claims to govern or at least describe? Obviously. In this case, does it always deserve the title principle? To be sure, to the (imprecise) extent to which a last and ultimate principle would still remain a principle. But what is to be understood by last principle? If it is a question of a principle that is last for us, first in itself, we are back to the beginning aporia (proving extending beyond showing). If it is a question of the last as last (the counter-method), it remains to be understood how this last still remains the first—that is to say, how its primacy can accomplish the turning that orients it to what shows itself, starting from no other principle besides itself. The aporia does not concern simply the identity of the ultimate principle of phenomenology, but the possibility and even the appropriateness of formulating one.

If one considers the formulations that could stake a claim to this rank, one must, following Michel Henry,³ doubt not only their coherence, but above all their access to manifestation. Take the first formulation of a principle: So much appearing, so much Being.⁴ In wanting to reestablish the ontic dignity of appearing, it rehabilitates it to the point of opposing it to Being itself. Husserl thus sanctions a perfectly traditional Platonic opposition, even if he tends, almost like Nietzsche,⁵ to reverse it and make it into an equivalence. Appearing thus remains in a typically metaphysical situation. Above all, the primacy thus accorded to appearing, which becomes the sole face of Being, still leaves it entirely undetermined. What does appearing accomplish such that it could, simply when it appears, make Being itself evident? How does it pass beyond the status of mere appearance and become the very manifestation of what is? How could appearing, in this indeterminacy, make what is appear? About this transformation of phenomenality into manifestation, thus about what is essential to the turn, the first principle remains silent. Consequently, it remains phenomenologically insignificant. As for the second formulation of the principle—To the things themselves!⁶—it does indeed open the question of appearing, but in such a way that this question is organized by things that are supposedly already there, available and accessible if not constituted. No doubt, Husserl insists, these things should not be understood empirically, but as issues in question (Sache). However, even without the phenomenological return to them, wouldn’t these things remain what they are—precisely what they are without appearing? The primacy of Being over appearing lowers the latter to the metaphysical rank of a mere mode of access, which always shows less than it should since things precede it and display themselves without it. Its inadequacy to the phenomenological turn clearly shows. It will be answered that these two principles, though custom attributes them to phenomenology, do not characterize it properly, since it adopts them only while criticizing them and therefore it does not have to assume their insufficiencies. But just what is the criticism that it is supposed to address to them? What other formulation corrects them?

The task now is to examine the third formulation of the principle, in fact the first and only, since Husserl assumes it as such under the unambiguous title principle of principles—the genitive here obviously counting as a superlative. It posits—against any absurd theory that "every originarily giving intuition is a source of right for cognition—that everything that offers itself originarily to us in intuition (in its fleshly actuality, so to speak) must simply be received for what it gives itself, but without passing beyond the limits in which it gives itself."⁷ To be sure, this principle frees phenomenality from the metaphysical requirement of a ground: henceforth, no other right besides intuition is required for a phenomenon to appear. For example, the right to appear no longer depends on a sufficient reason that would assign it to certain well-grounded phenomena but refuse it to others.⁸ In addition, this principle liberates phenomenality from the frame and the limits of the Kantian analytic by imposing on intuition no conceptual a priori nor even any pure form. Finally, we see that phenomenality finds therein the highest figure of presence, under the heading fleshly actuality (leibhafte Wirklichkeit), by which it leaves behind once and for all the diminished status of semi-ens.⁹ But these advances have their price: the intuition justly freed becomes itself the measure of phenomenality. (a) First, because intuition becomes in itself an a priori: according to the principle of all principles, outside intuition, no givenness. (b) Next, because this principle assumes that sometimes the source of right is lacking from what claims to appear; but whence comes it that intuition can be lacking, that the right be missing from the fact? No doubt because the very definition of intuition implies its possible impoverishment. However, there is no analysis that illuminates this possibility or explains in what sense it belongs to the essence of intuition to be potentially lacking. (c) What is more, this possible lack, once admitted, should be pursued, measured, and calibrated. Is it lacking gradually or abruptly? In the former case, where is the limit between sufficient intuition and lacking intuition? In short, what are the degrees of intuition? To these questions the principle of principles does not respond, as if it were self-evident that intuition remains univocal and admits neither degrees nor transformations. (d) Above all, intuition remains a limit of phenomenality for another reason, radical otherwise: intuition makes an object seen; the object implies a transcendence with respect to consciousness; therefore intuition is only a name for this transcendence.¹⁰ Or: intuition always has as its function to fulfill an aim or an intentionality directed at an object; therefore it is organized by objectivity and its ecstatic consciousness. As a result, intuition restricts phenomenality to a limited sense—transcendence, ecstasy, and the intentionality of the object. That this sense of phenomenality is used most often and legitimately does not forbid—even compels—asking if it remains the only possible one, indeed the most decisive one. Does fulfilling intuition applied to an objective intentionality define in general all phenomenality or merely a restricted mode of phenomenality? The intuition of an intentional object no doubt accomplishes a phenomenal manifestation; but despite that, is every manifestation of a phenomenon carried out by the intuition of an objective intention transcendent to consciousness? In short, does the constitution of an intentional object by an intuition fulfilling an objectifying ecstasy exhaust every form of appearing? And even more, we must ask if intuition should be restricted to the limits of intentionality and the object’s transcendence, or if it can be understood within the immense possibilities of what shows itself? Husserl hesitates here: on the one hand, he seems to claim to liberate appearing (and not only intuition) from every a priori principle; on the other hand, he seems to restrict intuition to the fulfillment of objective intentionality, therefore to limit appearing to it. Intuition finally contradicts phenomenality because it itself remains submitted to the ideal of objectifying representation. (e) This is confirmed by a final twist. The principle of all principles comes up before and without the reduction being operative.¹¹ And yet, without the reduction, no procedure of knowledge deserves the title phenomenology. How then could the principle of all principles determine for phenomenology its counter-method if it is not articulated in terms of the reduction? And if the giving intuition is not an exception to the reduction, would we have to admit that it provides a tacit presupposition? But then in what way would the reduction remain the inaugural operation for all phenomenological vision? The third formulation of the principle thus does indeed posit appearing as such by assigning it to intuition alone; but intuition fights less for it than against it since it seems to escape the reduction and therefore contradict the appearing that only the latter permits.¹²

So Much Reduction, So Much Givenness

The internal incoherence of the third formulation corroborates what the one-sidedness of the first two already let us suppose: the statements that phenomenology explicitly privileges do not furnish the principle proper to it. Can none be found then? Or would it instead remain implicit? Husserl seems to suggest both at once when he postulates that one must . . . take phenomena as they give themselves.¹³ Would they give themselves, then? And if so, what does it mean phenomenologically that they give themselves? And if they give themselves, do they still call for a principle? At the very least, this self-givenness of self would define precisely what, for them, holds the place of principle. To shed light on this hypothesis, or at least to determine the authority and the resources for it, I introduced the fourth formulation of a phenomenological principle: the more reduction, the more givenness.¹⁴ I will justify it in two ways—first textually, then conceptually.

The rule that links reduction and givenness on principle, even if it was not formulated as such until today, is no less observable in the letter of Husserl’s text. Better, the first text where the reduction is found also finds it conjoined with givenness. The Idea of Phenomenology, the very work which, in 1907, practiced for the first time all the figures of the reduction, is also the work which is most insistent in its privilege of givenness. Let me call to mind several statements that witness this. (a) "It is not the psychological phenomenon in psychological apperception and objectification that is an absolute givenness [Gegebenheit], but only the pure phenomenon, the reduced [phenomenon; das Reduzierte]."¹⁵ What phenomenologically validates a phenomenon as an absolutely given is therefore not its mere appearing but its reduced character: only the reduction grants access to absolute givenness, and it has no other goal but this. (b) "Consequently, the concept of phenomenological reduction [phänomenologischen Reduktion] acquires a more narrow, more profound determination and a clearer meaning: the exclusion of the transcendent in general as existence to be admitted in addition, that is to say of all that is not an evident givenness [evidente Gegebenheit] in the authentic sense, an absolute givenness [absolute Gegebenheit] to the pure gaze.¹⁶ The transcendent is thus defined less by its real transcendence than by whether or not the reduction maintains givenness in it. The criterion of immanence no longer resides in a real inherence in consciousness along the lines of a psychological relation, but in evident, pure, and absolute givenness. (c) It is only through a reduction [Reduktion] that we prefer to call phenomenological reduction [phänomenologische Reduktion] that I attain an absolute givenness [absolute Gegebenheit] that no longer owes anything to transcendence. Transcendencies, null [and not occurring] for the theory of knowledge,¹⁷ are potentially transformed into absolute givennesses only to the extent that they pass through the reduction to immanence. (d) Still more clearly, The givenness of a reduced phenomenon [die Gegebenheit eines reduzierten Phänomens] in general is an absolute and indubitable [givenness]."¹⁸ Between the reduced phenomenon and its indubitability, it falls to givenness alone to establish the common factor. The connection between reduction and givenness is therefore established, and firmly so, by Husserl himself. A phenomenon becomes absolutely given only to the degree that it was reduced; but the reduction is in turn practiced only phenomenologically—namely, for the sake of giving, thus making the phenomenon appear absolutely.

The connection between reduction and givenness, if it is suggested by the texts, is corroborated by their concepts. The achievement of the reduction admits as an immediate corollary that givenness be unfurled. The reduction never reduces except to givenness—reconducts only to it and especially for its benefit. The reduction thus perfectly enacts the two meanings that can be heard in it: first, because the reduction restricts appearing to what attains real givenness in it; next, because it leads the appearing whose giving is at issue all the way back to what appears absolutely, the absolute given. The reduction thus operates like a sort of middleman who leads the visible toward givenness; it leads scattered, potential, confused, and uncertain visibles (mere appearances, outlines, impressions, vague intuitions, supposed facts, opinions, absurd theories, etc.) to givenness, according to which it assesses their degree of phenomenality. The reduction measures the level of givenness in each appearance so as to establish its right to appear or not. Thus the two operations, reconducting to the conscious I and returning to the things themselves, far from being contradictory, mark two versions of the single organization of the reduction by givenness: nothing appears except by giving itself to and in the conscious I, but only what can give itself absolutely to consciousness also succeeds in giving nothing less than what appears in person (Selbstgegebenheit). Once again, there is no givenness that does not pass through the filter of a reduction; there is no reduction that does not work toward a givenness.

The more reduction, the more givenness—this principle also allows me to clarify and overcome the aporias that afflict the other three. (a) If one admits, following the last principle, that the phenomenon appears all the more as it gives itself perfectly to be seen and received, but also that it can give itself thusly only by giving itself to the conscious I, that is by letting itself be led back to it, which is equivalent to being reduced to it, then apparition gives itself perfectly based solely on the fact