ABSTRACT
Phenomenology has always been a philosophy concerned with the question of what conditions the appearing of that which appears. If Jean-Luc Marion's analysis of the saturated phenomenon is perhaps his most significant contribution to philosophy, this is because it paves the way for another key development concerning phenomenology's method. In recognizing the saturated phenomenon, the phenomenology of givenness alone represents the way through nihilism. Phenomenology's three reductions—transcendental, ontological, and erotic—entail a corresponding conception of the phenomenon. Marion juxtaposes phenomenology and metaphysics at the opening of Being Given to suggest so himself. On the way to appreciating Marion's phenomenological criticism of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, it thus bears first considering Rene Descartes, to whom Marion directly alludes above when he mentions the issue of causa sui. Descartes's philosophy epitomizes how the object of metaphysics—that which is determinately knowable, producible, repeatable, and anticipatable—constricts the field of appearing.
