Looking for the Illustrated Guide to Being?

December 22, 2010 7:56 AM

Help one of smallish brain understand the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion, particularly the ideas of "givenness" and the "saturated phenomemon?"

Is there a "Marion for Dummies" out there? What's the closest thing to it? Bonus for visuals like diagrams and pictures as I am a visual learner and dense philosophical texts are mostly impenetrable to me.

posted by cross_impact to Religion & Philosophy (3 answers total)

With phenomenology, you have to set aside some time for "experiencing," too. Phenomenology points to referents "out there" or "in here" that you can actually point your awareness at and investigate or take as object. If you can't "find" what's being written about, a little bit of sitting back in a chair and daydreaming or "just being" goes a long way. Sleeping on it helps too. Sometimes it just clicks or you start getting a sense that you have the gist of it.

In addition to that, of course, the more reading and thinking, the better, especially different authors who are all circling the same phenomenological experience (or what you suspect is the same or similar experience). Some writers are just vague.
posted by zeek321 at 8:56 AM on December 22, 2010

I'm not aware of any Marion-specific introductions, but from your question it sort of sounds like you could use a general introduction to phenomenology — Marion's terminology and ideas are not (IMO) terribly difficult to grasp for readers with a decent grounding in Husserl and Heidegger. At a glance Dermot Moran's Introduction to Phenomenology looks like it might fit the bill.
posted by RogerB at 9:33 AM on December 22, 2010

Best answer: The chapter on Marion in Rupert Shortt, God's Advocates: Christian Thinkers in Conversation is the most accessible introduction that I know, though it focuses on his theology rather than his phenomenology.
posted by verstegan at 5:14 AM on December 23, 2010