Posted on Friday, April 03 @ 01:00:00 EST by tim milfull

Reviewed by Evelyn Hartogh

In The Visible and the Revealed, Jean Luc Marion explores metaphysical and phenomenological concepts in relation to theology, in particular the notions of love, gifts and identity. This collection of essays expands on his theory of saturated phenomena, and the ways in which phenomenology, signification, metaphysics, and intuition, form the basis of our understanding of the world, and the objects around us.

Identity, and the naming of objects, is deconstructed by Marion by a process of pure logic, in which he essentially uses language like a mathematical formula. The process of naming, according to Marion, allows for not only the replacement of names with their opposites, but also the very destruction of the title or category that is created. At any time an object is named, it is separated from its surroundings. At this precise point of separation, however, the object is transformed due to its relationship with its surroundings. No object can be fixed in its identity, since it will always be in a constant process of becoming something, and at the exact same time becoming nothing.

Marion's concept of the saturated phenomena involves the multiplicity of connections, contexts, or 'horizons', as he puts it, which any object will be saturated with, prior to any act of signification or conceptualising about the object. He calls this 'intuition' because the saturation of any object includes not only the concepts and meanings it conveys, but the sense of the object's placement and relationship with other objects, which cannot be clearly defined because the intuition leads to signification, but does not replace or surpass it.

The chapters on gifts and love offer more of a grounding in familiar concepts, than do many of the earlier and later chapters dealing with pure metaphysical theory. In discussing gifts, Marion asserts that the concept of the gift itself includes its own nullification of being a named a gift because all gifts will enter into the economy. Any gift brings with it the concept of debt, and any gift, in a sense, 'pays' the giver with a sense of self-satisfaction due to the giver's generosity. Thus no gift, except perhaps the gift that one does not declare as given, nor is noticed as a gift by the receiver, is entirely free, nor is it without some form of compensation. When an object is first considered to be a gift, then it immediately becomes an object with the potential of 'giveness'; although once the object commits this action of being given, it then ceases to be a gift because the object itself may declare another identity as the object itself, that has already been given.

Interestingly, Marion's own theory of the saturated phenomena is clearly on display throughout his book, in the density of citation to Neitzsche, Aristotle and Spinoza, among others, and the potential applications of his theory. His arguments, while superficially showing themselves to be purely theoretical, are actually deeply relevant to post-colonial discourse, and the discourse surrounding the current war on terror. In short, Marion's book is very radical politically, but is subtle in its ramifications.


The Visible and the Revealed
(2008)

by Jean-Luc Marion (translated by Christina M. Gschwandtner)
Fordham University Press
ISBN: 9780823228843
188pp US$24.00

Bookmark this article: