Paul--
Part of Marion's argument consists in showing that a
truly radical phenomenology consists in taking
phenomena exactly as they're given. Marion is
criticizing Husserl's tendency to reduce phenomena to
their abstract universality and seems to want to
attribute a richer content to them. For instance, in
his book _God Without Being_ he gives elaborate
phenomenological descriptions of the Catholic
eucharist, and distinguishes between idols and icons.
>From a purely Husserlian point of view such
descriptions would be impossible because this sort of
content falls away in the reduction. Another part of
Marion's argument consists in pointing to a saturated
phenomena-- a form of experience that resembles the
Kantian sublime --that exceeds all phenomenal
givenness while still manifesting itself from within
that givenness. On this ground we are entitled to
talk about a sort of infinite that opens on to a
radical transcendence. On the basis of this type of
experience of the infinite we are warranted in
reintroducing God back into philosophy. Michael is
quite right to point out that Marion has been around
for a while. I only meant to say that he seems to be
receiving more attention in American circles lately,
as is reflected in the forthcoming translation of his
opus _Being Given_. This description is by no means
meant to be an adequate summation of Marion's thought,
but only a very rough sketch of what he's up to. In a
nutshell you might say that Marion is looking for the
limit points of phenomenological experience so that he
might find a point at which to reintroduce
transcendence back into philosophy. It seems to me
that his discussions of givenness in terms of his
particular religious experience are highly suspect and
more than open to critique by ethnology.
Best Regards,
Paul
--- Paul Bains <pbains@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> There is a recent anthology called 'Deleuze and
> Religion' (or something
> like that) published by Routledge. I remember it
> having a good essay by the
> translater Dan Smith.
>
> Paul Bryant, what's this 'Being Given' like - if
> you've read it?
>
>
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