Givenness & Hermeneutics

by Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Pierre Lafouge (Translator)

The 2013 Père Marquette Lecture in Theology. Printed side-by-side in French and English.

63 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Jean-Luc Marion is a French philosopher and Catholic theologian whose work bridges phenomenology, modern philosophy, and theology. A former student of Jacques Derrida, he studied at the University of Nanterre, the Sorbonne, and the École normale supérieure under Derrida, Louis Althusser, and Gilles Deleuze, while privately exploring theology with figures such as Louis Bouyer, Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. His early academic career included assistant lectureships at the Sorbonne and a doctorate completed in 1980, after which he taught at the University of Poitiers and later directed philosophy programs at the University Paris X – Nanterre and the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne). Marion has also held visiting and endowed professorships at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he served as John Nuveen Professor and later as Andrew Thomas and Grace McNichols Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies, retiring in 2022. Elected to the Académie Française in 2008, he delivered the 2014 Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow and has received numerous honors including the Premio Joseph Ratzinger, the Karl Jaspers Prize, and the Grand Prix de philosophie de l’Académie française. Marion’s philosophical contributions focus on the concept of givenness, radicalizing phenomenology to explore the “saturated phenomenon,” which exceeds the capacities of cognition, and examining love through intentionality, inspired by Emmanuel Levinas. His major works include God Without Being, Réduction et donation, Étant donné, and Du surcroît, addressing idolatry, love, the gift, and the limits of perception. Marion’s thought has deeply influenced contemporary debates in philosophy of religion, phenomenology, and theology, emphasizing how phenomena show themselves prior to consciousness, how love implicates the invisible other, and how the gift and givenness constitute the foundational conditions for understanding being, knowledge, and relationality.

Reviews

[Tommy Graves · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this short lecture (roughly 25 small pages), Marion takes on what seems to be an obvious critique of his phenomenology: if "givenness" or even "pure givenness" is primary in phenomenology, then there can be no room for hermeneutics. Indeed, hermeneutics is set against givenness. Marion's response is nuanced and, for some, shocking: givenness does not mean that objects give themselves, but rather givenness is the condition of the possibility of hermeneutics and vice-versa. Givenness serves as the call to which hermeneutics responds - thus givenness is the initial plane on which hermeneutics can give meaning (from an already-experienced past out toward an as-yet undetermined future). Neither can exist without the other. Marion's analysis is penetrating and brilliantly solves this apparent difficulty for phenomenology, in turn perhaps bringing Husserl closer to Heidegger.

[Joaco Perez]

si alguien tiene el pdf por favor responda esto

[Gab Nug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read due to a tangential relevance to my graduate thesis.

This work is the written form of a lecture Marion had given as part of the Pere Marquette Lectures in Theology. What's really neat about this copy is that it is side-by-side english and french. It concerns the relation between Marion's phenomenology of givenness and the field of hermeneutics. It was a good, short read, tbh.