‘D’un usage de la donation en théologie’: the question of revelation through the prism of givenness in the phenomenological work of Jean-Luc Marion

This thesis examines Jean-Luc Marion’s contribution to a phenomenal concept of revelation as achieved in D’ailleurs, la révélation, starting from the wider perspective of his anterior works on the formulation and implications of a phenomenology of givenness. ‘D’un usage de la donation en théologie (on the use of givenness in theology)’ (Jean-Luc Marion, De surcroît (Paris: ‘Quadrige’ PUF, 2010), p. 32) suggests at least that phenomenology, when it is guided by givenness, does not subsist on its own, that is without the immanent source of a given that it has not itself constituted. The ‘question of revelation’ is therefore not so much constituted in a thought of givenness as it constitutes already, in theology, the primary given of a response yet to be formulated: aporia constitutes, from the outset, the locus of revelation. Strictly speaking, not only is a revelation unspeakable and even unthinkable, but a revelation would have to contradict its own revealability to appear as such. And yet, is it not precisely from the impossibility for us of a revelation that a concept of revelation remains possible? As a phenomenal possibility, the phenomenon of revelation would, from the immanence of its appearing, operate a critique of the Kritik, as the phenomenon that breaks forth as the accomplishment and negation of all impossibility, thus opening the possibility of unconditionality. Ultimately, a givenness without measure, such as when Christ ‘loved […] to the end’ (John 13.1), would perfectly accomplish the phenomenality of revelation that reveals, from its unveiling, all phenomena to itself, according to the principle that ‘nothing is hidden (krupton) that will not be disclosed (phaneron), nor is anything secret (apokruphon) that will not become known and come to light (phaneron)’ (Luke 8.17).