Has anyone read him? He is a French philosopher but working in the tradition of Husserl and Heidegger (and Kant). I've only read parts two and three of his "phenomenological trilogy" -- _Being Given: Towards a Phenomenology of Givenness_ and _In Excess: Studies in Saturated Phenomena_. Marion's project seems to be to ressurect phenomenology and give it new purity by what he calls his "third reduction." The first two reductions were Husserl's (to the phenomenon) and Heidegger's (to Being), which he reduces to "the given."
I can't say whether I agree with him or not since I really had a hard time understanding what he was talking about. He has another book called _Prolegomena to Charity_ that looks more comprehensible so I'm going to try that one of these days.
I can't say whether I agree with him or not since I really had a hard time understanding what he was talking about. He has another book called _Prolegomena to Charity_ that looks more comprehensible so I'm going to try that one of these days.
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Wed, February 11, 2004 - 4:24 PMnever heard of him. have you read badiou? another interesting frenchman. so too of course deleuze. but i dont see the tradition between kant and heidegger! kant and husserl is hard enough to establish, it would seem!
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Wed, February 11, 2004 - 5:53 PMi'm peter hallward's new book on badiou right now (i am a poser, i don't actually speak any french, so i can't read the originals, and almost nothings been translated-- of course, as i said on the german philosophy tribe: FUCK AUTHORS; encapsulated in that sentiment: FUCK ORIGINALS. anywayz, enough digression...). it's really interesting, but it seems kooky.
of course, every single time i try to take on a new french philosopher, it invariably seems kooky at first. ahh, gotta love those frenchies...
the big problem i've having-- ok, among the several problems i'm having, perhaps i should rephrase: the big problem i'm having that i'm willing to remedy right now is that i've never had anything but peripheral contact with lacan. now, don't get me wrong, i _do not_ want to read ecrits-- direct contact is more than i'm interested in right now, but some mediated contact would be good. can anyone recommend a secondary source worth checking out? -
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Wed, February 11, 2004 - 9:38 PMmikkel jacobsen (if i remember right): "absolute master" . almost makes you want to hug hegel.
great book about a thinker who coulda probably found a way to prove martha stewart's innocence if he'd been a lawyer. Dont trust lacan, he's a bricolleur. bits from here and there. but a master magician...
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Wed, February 11, 2004 - 9:55 PMdon't worry, i am predisposed not to trust lacan or anyone else whose work might be called "psychonalysis".
on the otherhand, i have no problem with bricolage. make a monster, i say!
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Fri, February 13, 2004 - 10:11 AMI've only read an excerpt from A Thousand Plateaus....
Drawing a connection between Kant, Husserl and Heidegger is I think one of the innovations of his work. Other than all being German they don't appear to have much in common, I agree. What Marion tries to do in the phenomenological trilogy is apply Kantian categories (e.g. concept/intuition dictonomy) to an essentially phenomenological approach. His notion of the "saturated phenomenon" is something in which the intuition exceeds the concept (hence the title of the book In Excess). Some examples of saturated phenomena are event, idol, flesh and icon. As for Heidegger, he was a student of Husserl, so if you can get from Kant to Husserl you can get from Kant to Heidegger. -
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Sat, February 14, 2004 - 1:59 PMYes you can get from Kant to Husserl and Heidegger. In the distant past, I was fortunate to study Kant under Samuel Todes, a Kant scholar who wasn't very found of Phenomenology where I studied it at Northwestern(home of the NU Press where most of Phenomenology is published). Heidegger did study Husserl and his "Dasein" does admit a kind of throwness of subjectivity into his experience but my take is that Heidegger ovethrows epistemology and says dasein's ontology is Ontology, i.e., Being. Heidegger is closer to the later Husserl than the earlier, who begins phenomenology as egological studies. For me, the real Husserl is in the "Crisis".
Lacan says only one thing to me(yes, I admit Lacan is a "bricoleur") and that is this: the unconscious has underlying linguistic structures.
I would be most interested in this Marion because many of the critics of phenomenology aim their critique at what they call the "myth of the given". That intuition "over-runs" the concept seems most intriguing. A third reduction? My reduction during my philosophical days, I called the "Galactic Reduction" which like the Copernican Revolution in Kant admitted that far from being peripherial in a heliocentric sense, man was even further removed in a "galactic" sense, lost in a swarm of galaxies upon galaxies, and that sentience was everywhere and we were bound to encounter it with probably catastrophic results. But Marion's reduction seems better. :)
All in all, I think there is a rather direct line from Kant to the early Husserl(Critique of Pure Reason: space and time are our modes of perception-- to the Carthesian Meditations, i.e., what is within the field of the eidetic reduction? , cogita: cogitatum to the late Husserl, the Crisis of European Man and the focus upon the "life-world" and onto Heidegger's "Being and Time" and its examination of the structures of Dasein, Vorstungen("Understanding") and Care.
Gilton -
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Sun, February 15, 2004 - 6:08 PMvery interesting... I just read in a Badiou essay that he once asked Lacan at the end of a lecture: "What is your ontology?" and Lacan was stumped. Badiou's point, as an ontologist, was that Lacan was lost in subjectivity so deep that he had no concept of Being.
I think Deleuze actually the subject-being issue, or the Kant (rationalism)/Heidegger (ontology) gap with a workable bridge.
He founds subjectivity (or subjectivation) in the given, drawing here on Hume, and thus avoids Kant's solipsism. there are no categories of thought, of course. But though there's an empiricism to the subject , he adds to it (and you could even suggest procudes an excess) w/ a concept of virtuality. All that is empirical is actual. All that is real is virtual. This is very Spinozist. I dig it; I got tired of strategic thinking a while ago. perhaps i'm falling for the myth of the given, or perhaps i know i'm living... dunno.
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Mon, February 16, 2004 - 7:08 AMWell you know Lacan begins as a Freudian and so experience to him has some mediating structure within mind/consciousness which makes it intelligible... Unlike the English empiricists upon whom the mind is a 'tabula rosa'. But here, I think, for us to talk, we need to find some common terms. Deleuze is a common ground and Deleuze for me simply designates philosophy as a 'parade of ideas' and he is more deconstructionist than Derrida in my estimation. But Deleuze also picks and chooses from the history of philosophy and his studies resemble a dance of the mind where he not so much focuses on the 'logocentric' as Derrida as the monadic. My mentor, Todes, would beg to differ in regard to seeing Kant as 'solipsistic'. For what Kant is saying is that human beings are limited by 'phenomena' by which they apperceive the world, and the world 'itself', the noumena is basically unknowable. But I think Kant would also argue that if we were to encounter an alien species, over time we would notice that they ordered their world in a way that corresponded to their modes of perception. That there is an empiricism that is expanded I argee with. The empiricial is actual, the real is virtual(possible) yes. Yes it is Spinozist, in the sense that the real as virtual is 'immanent' but as Sellars would argue: the given as 'there' is a theoretical construction and far from simple and simply a 'ground' which is accessible to all. The structures of the 'life-world' are far from obvious and while they deal with seemingly obvious things, they are not obvious. I think Marion may have some insights into this myth of the given, at least for me he does.
Warmly,
Gilton
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Mon, February 23, 2004 - 3:17 AMAAHHH Pat!! You finally admit it. That book makes no since. Objects, inanimate or otherwise has the choice to be given (or perceived as I understood in his explanation) or not. It is either there or it isn't. The quality or essence of Being there presupposes and entity that can be experienced through percetion, it would not exist or be perceived.
When we are young, at some point we learn the ideaof object permanence where you don't have to see an object to know it's there barring an extraordinary situation. For example, I know that my calculator is still on my computer because I left it at home this mornig when I left. A less extraordinary example is it was moved by afriendor I moved itto my dresser and forgot, hence it would not 'be given' when I look on my computer. Does that mean it does not exist? No. I know it exists. It just exists elsewhere. Is that the calculator 'Being Given'. Or MY knowledge of it's existence a priori tells me it exists. This, of course leads into the saturation effect touched upon later.
However, it was not "it's" choice. A really extraordinary case; my home has burned down when I came home. I know it was in the house and hence is still there. Or is the calculator allowing me to know it'sin the house? This idea of being given is not determined by the object that is giving of itself, it is our conscious recognition of it.
Now in about the saturation effect, I tend to believe that cognitive dissonance plays a large role becasue both rely on post priori knowledge. In the saturation effect, you have the idea of waht you think or the 'intuit', and the reality. Cognitive dissonance is the idea of just believing something to be true and coming find that it isn't. The saturation effect pushes towards one end of the 'curve' only becuase knowledge before just as examples in the previous paragraphs. On that knowledge, the intuit grows stronger and hence begins the saturation effect. But when the intuit is wrong butressed by the strentgh of the preattained and engrained experience finds it not to be true, one experience cognitive dissonance. I found when reading Being Given, Jean-Luc Marion completely avoided the percepto-psychological aspect of giveness.
I think Heidegger has a better grasp of the Being, even though I hate his grim unto death mojo. It is about the here and now. This moment which ceases to exist once spoken. I'll stick with Sartre that Being came from Nothingness. Nothing *had* to be here before anything *could* be here.
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Mon, February 23, 2004 - 4:05 PMI was with you until the end there Christopher. Did you mean to suggest that for nothing has to be there for the consciousness that thinks (of) it? Surely you're not suggesting that existence is phenonemal, that there "is" no reality? -
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Thu, February 26, 2004 - 8:00 AMThere "is" reality. But "reality" itself does not have to 'reveal' itself to us for us to know it's there. It would be proposterous to say there is no reality. If there were no reality, there would be no discussion of 'Being Given', for there would be no playing field on which to 'Be Given On'. There are three types of theories in terms of 'reality'. There is only aphysical universe and every mental thought is an accidental by product of that universe (Physicalism). There isonly a mentaluniverse and everything that exists only exists mentally (Mentalism). There is the dualist persective that believe that both exists. I happen to be a dualist. If you honestly see something that isn't there, who's to say that it isn't there "For You"? Would that be Being Given? Or if you honestly didn't see, or better yet, perceive anything that you should, whose to say that you should? Would that be not "Being Given?
There is still this clash of the physical versus the mental and Marion never dismisses psychological aspect of one wanting or one not wanting to perceive a given experience. How many times have we asked ourselves, "I wish that didn't happen?", or, "I hope this doesn't happen!" We still have to some extent knowledge of previous experience and have a probability in our minds of what will or will not happen. Which brings us back to the idea of being given. If one does not want to acknowledge something strong enough, or better yet, NOT WILL TO acknowledge it, it won't Be Given. It's not the objects decision. The will would be the the mental universe wheras the object would be the physical universe.
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Thu, February 26, 2004 - 1:57 PMChristopher,
i'm not used to your categories. But your dualism sounds like it's still in the subject/object tradition. My interest w/ deleuze is that he seems to me to offer an alternative to the methods and questions of ontologists, rationalists, phenomenologists etc. wish i knew marion but i dont....
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Thu, February 26, 2004 - 7:41 PMI think that Marion also believes that cognitive dissonance plays a large role. I think he is trying (rather mysteriously, I admit) to show how to avoid cognitive dissonance by letting things "be given" -- to us, rather than by us in the categories of our thought. It doesn't have the choice to be given, but we have the choice to impose metaphysical ideas on it, or not.
I know something is there even if I'm not looking at it, but insofar as that is the case, it's not really given, in the sense that Marion uses the term. That is, it's not a phenomenon for me, except in my memory.
Marion also writes about theology, so maybe that book would make more sense considered in a theological light. Check out the back cover of this book, The Idol and Distance, it summarizes his thought better than I would be able to do.
www.amazon.com/gp/reader/...609-0155212
Also his newest book In Excess has examples that may make clearer what he is trying to get at. -
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Fri, February 27, 2004 - 5:07 PMWill take a look Patrick. Thanks!
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Fri, February 27, 2004 - 5:34 PMHe does try to avoid cognitive dissonance as I think we are in agreement. But I think you may be on to somehting when you speak of the idea to impose metaphysical ideas on it. That still has the presupposition of human thought: impose. Which, of course, is based on current and past experienced based on one life. As you say, it's not a phenomenon for me, except in my memory. Had you not experienced it before, it would be a new experience.
But then you are hit by an impenetrable wall. This I can best explain by the movie "Baby Geniuses". It wasamovie about babies who are brilliant until they learn to speak. They haveall the knowledge of the universe, etc. To babies, most of their experiences are 'new' and hence form a newmemory for later recollection. However, the phenomenology of the experience of the known, 'having been experienced/remembered', implies a PREDISPOSITION for IMPOSITION on the given object. The back cover surely is true in the sense that it could be read both ways. But only by 'Divine Intervention' could the phenomonological aspect of our memory/experience/knowledge being removed from us give any validation give Marion any basis for 'giveness'.
-Sweet Wheat -
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Sun, February 29, 2004 - 4:50 PMI hear echoes of Bergson's view of Recollection as an Act,and thus us subjective and less than "Past." Deleuze pulls a lot from Bergson and Hume on the character of mental "associations," it being very easy to confuse different kinds.
There's little possibility that subjectivity be constituted w/o recourse to categories, images, grammars--structure, in short. And that's why it seems to me that any time we talk about subjectivity we must recognize that the experience of subjecivity cannot be spoken in the same sentence as existence, reality, ontology... We cant create meaningful descriptions of experience w/o use of a meaning-producing language/system of some kind...
In a way, the whole sub/obj split seems to have fueled a lot of theory, most of which seems to miss the Greek origins of the split in the first place. We got on the wrong track teh moment we created the image as representation, and then ascribed to it the myth of truth and authenticity.... -
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Tue, March 2, 2004 - 9:15 PMAs do I. But recollection is an act that can be objective depending on the 'recollector'. A person can 'choose' to remember events as they actually happened, or unconsciously not choose to remember them as such. Hence, in terms of mental associations, the point is completely valid. What happened in the past also belongs to the present when remembered. It is not separate fromor distinct from the present. It is only partitioned from the future.
In terms of relaying what is remembered to someone else, does the past become subjective in the mind of the listener, as they were not there to perceive the events taking place. Once subjectivity is brought into the psychological ontology. Subjectivity is based on it. Not to be a reductionist in its extreme form, but the original experience could be said to be subjective to the perceiver, but that would feat the purpose of advancement in this line of discussion. It has to be given that the original perceiver percepts objectively and recalls objectively as far as he/she knows. He may relay a fabrication, exaggeration, or the truth where it becomes subjective in the listener.
However, when thinking about the past, you must think about the past as an object. For example; my past is my past. It belongs to me. It is mine. For possession, it inherently implies existence over a period of time (up until this moment). THe past AND present is constantly being created. To pick a piece of the past and to look at it it now, would be to make it a 'present event'. As said before, the past and present are inseparable. And as to truth and authenticity, I would move to Bad Faith. One would know if he were acting in Bad Faith by the very definition of authenticity in existentialism.
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Wed, March 3, 2004 - 12:48 PMchristopher,
i dont understand your use of "objective" here, since for me any intentional act (whether "conscious" choice or not) is "subjective."
for bergson, recollection = subjective
past = absolute
he and einstein were at odds over the issue of how there might be one time vs multiple times. if every individual has an absolute past and time, is there an "uber" time to which they all belong? that was bergson's notion. For einstein there is no time to which we all belong.
for bergson, past is not made into present when recollected. past is always past, and is separate from present. in fact the present is the past passing, so past comes before present. he argues that if the past had to wait for a new present in order to pass, no new present would have to arrive. instead, past is always passing. Past and present are parallel, but not of the same time. -
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Fri, March 5, 2004 - 7:28 AMI totally disagree. The present is not the past passing. That would completely obviate every comprehensible meaning of term present or now. The moment. Heidegger has this same pathos with the idea of 'the moment' in "Being and Time". I agree that past is absolute, which I believe I said before. What's done is done.
Also, I would agree with Einstein, we all do belong to our own time. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me (subjective), time flies when I'm having fun. But forsomeone else sitting on a bus stop, it is of my opinion that time is passing by slower for them. Relativity.
I can understand why Bergson and Einstein were at heads about the matter because Bergson didn't take into account HOW the past could be recollected. In terms of thepast waiting and coming before the present.......I'm trying to find the words. The past never has to wait because time is continually passing. It one of the unidirectional arrows as the arrow of thermodynamics and the arrow of entropy. Time waits for no man and not even itself. I think you misinterpreted the past is always passing. The pass is always becoming further away from the now, the present, and hence more subject to subjectivity during the act of recollection based on the recollector.
The past and present can not be parallel. For if they were, that would presuppose two times existing at once which sounds too to bevery strange though I have no degree in temporal mechanics. Time lies along one line. An event, moment, second, day, etc, always precedes or follows another. They can never co-exist at the SAME time. Of course, when something is remembered, it is still there in the past, but it also exist during the now. The absoluteness of the past is maintained. The line of time remains unaffected. Your last sentence says it all.
Time is ONE-DIMENSIONAL. In order to be parallel and one dimensional (as time is) they would have to be the exact same line. That much about math I do know. Unless this line of thought supercedes our realm of mathematics and thought. Otherwise, I stand by my previous entry.
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Mon, March 8, 2004 - 12:49 PMChris,
i think i misspoke. i'll have to look up the passage i was trying to summarize. the idea wasnt that there are 2 times-- that would be ridiculous, as you say--but that there IS past as absolute past and not just as recollected past or as past of present.
I find time very challenging. Bergson's concept was to remove the contingency that past owed to the present; and to restore time to movement (against Kant, who unhinged space and time and put space outside and above time, according to Deleuze at least). so Deleuze argues that as long as the past is the present passing, the present must await a next present in order to pass, which creates an unnecessary contingency -- why should a next present arrive.
i'll look up the passage. it's weird, as i say...
cheers,
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Fri, March 12, 2004 - 2:15 AMYes I agree with you. The unhinging of space and time can be possible, but also be continuous. And we can only know it's continuous with our present to present experiences (space) which definitely involves space for our sensory perception to tell that the next present (or future) has arrived and continue to be aware to notice that it has passed.
It's is weird, but I have my own theories and opinions on that aspect of reality for unhinging space and time is impossible for it is our onlymeasure for the existence of it. If one were floating in space, he would not be able to tell if time was passing (coming or leaving =) unless he had motion or there was something in the 'reality' of three dimensional space upon which he could refer to as the stars that had motion. The continuity of time I do not denounce and but the unhinging of it clearly. If I could express it in words, time (one-dimensional) and space (3-Dimensional) move through another time and 3-d space creating two more 4 more spaces, which I consider irrelevant to describe our existance as it is due to its being outside the box of our perception.
It's as if you could take INFINTESIMALLY slices out of a long rectangle and you would have the moment. But the mathematical aspect of the limit is what makes mathpossible. However, in this definition I am inculcating upon the term slice, it can not bedone , THOUGH IT IS CONTINUOUS. Math and reality clashing is strange to me. I need to work out that analogy anyway that has been way too empowered. Anyway decisions and actions throughout that time determine the route of the slices. If you can picture it, it's sort of a trippy thing. But I believe that if anything can actually happen, it does. Just not in our 'long rectangle or (circle or square) moving through the extra 3-D space.
However, this is not be reduced by reductionism. For the other slice from other 'streams' could exist in others, since, anything and everything does happen in the extra-3D space.
If I had the time, would write a framework.
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Fri, March 12, 2004 - 2:17 AMAlso, we might want to start a new thread. Ay Patrick.
-Chris -
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Fri, March 12, 2004 - 8:00 PMi keep forgetting to bring deleuze's d/r and bergson into the studio, which have the quotes i need on time/movement and present/past.
but to your suggestion of a new thread, i would be interested in a conversation about representation. i know it's unrelated to this one, it's a rich and it comes up again and again. Deleuze's "difference and repetition," his best and most difficult work, is a committed critique of "the concept," and its particular role in a western thought that has disengaged itself from the actual and chosen instead to represent it. I don't know if this would be the place for that discussion, but it seems to me central to the linguistic turn in French philosophy, and a radical disjuncture (from the obsession w/ subject/object split).
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Re: Jean-Luc Marion
Wed, March 17, 2004 - 10:11 PMI guess there are two answers to these questions: the scientific and the religious one. The scientific one would be that Einstein actually conceived of "space-time" rather than many subjective times. Strictly speaking, time is not relative, but it can work differently in different places? Or something? You'd have to ask a physicist. But did anyone see the documentary on PBS called The Elegant Universe? It starts out with Einstein and then goes into quantum mechanics, string theory and the search for a theory of everything. Maybe not enough hard physics for some people, but it's well done and has great computer animation.
The religious answer has to do with the relation of God with being, if we unite space and time then the present becomes the same as being. There is a tradition beginning with Augustine that identifies God with being in some way (and was existentialized by Heidegger); however, Marion wants to do without that identification (see his book God Without Being). As Einstein showed time and the present to be just a concept, so being also is a concept. Whether it is possible to escape such concepts I do not know.
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