Givenness & Hermeneutics (The Pere Marquette Lecture in Theology) - Hardcover

The question of the given is central to philosophy; phenomenology uses the method of reduction to find the given. This lecture asks whether there is anything that resists reduction, whether there is something irreducible. The author concludes that the phenomenology of givenness addresses the gap between what gives itself and what shows itself, so that the self of the phenomenon emerges only by the exercise of a properly phenomenological hermeneutics.

Jean-Luc Marion is known for his idea of "saturated phenomenon", which states that there are phenomena of such overwhelming givenness or overflowing fulfilment that the intentional acts aimed at these phenomena are overrun, flooded or saturated. Marion also discusses intentionality in his book Prolegomena to Charity, in which he explores the human idea of love and its lack of definition; and in Being Given, and, in particular, in In Excess: Studies in Saturated Phenomena. Several of his publications have recently appeared or forthcoming in English (The Reason of the Gift, University of Virginia Press, 2011), Negative Certitudes (forthcoming, University of Chicago Press, 2012-13), Instead of Self. The Approach to St. Augustine (Stanford University Press, forthcoming, 2013), Descartes Grey Ontology (forthcoming, St. Augustine Press, 2013), and Le croire pour le voir (English translation forthcoming, 2014, Fordham University Press). And two new books have just been published or forthcoming in French this year: Figures de phenomenology ( J. Vrin, Paris, 2012) and Sur la pensee passive de Descartes (P.U.F., Paris, 2012). Marion has been awarded the Grand prix de philosophie de l Academie francaise and the Karl-Jaspers Prize of the city and University of Heidelberg, Germany in 2008. In 2008, he was elected to and then received (2010) in l'Academie francaise as an immortel (member). In 2009 he was elected to the Academia dei Lincie (Rome).