Reduction and Givenness

Through careful, historically informed analysis of groundbreaking phenomenological texts by Husserl and Heidegger, Jean-Luc Marion argues for the necessity of a "third" phenomenological reduction that concerns what is fully implied but left largely unthought by the phenomenologies of both Husserl and Heidegger: the unconditional "givenness" of the phenomenon.Beyond Husserl's "transcendental" reduction, which traces the appearance of phenomena as objects to the consciousness of a constituting ego, and beyond Heidegger's "existential" reduction, which understands the appearance of phenomena as beings on the basis of Dasein and the horizon of Being, Marion's third reduction seeks to understand the appearance of phenomena on the basis of their unconditional givenness alone. In terms of such givenness, Marion argues for an understanding of the self that would be more originary than both Husserl's constituting ego and Heidegger's Dasein: a radically passive self that is first called into being by the given itself.At once historically grounded and radically new, Marion's phenomenology of givenness has revitalized phenomenological debate both in Europe and the United States.