Marion's the "adonné" or "the given"

between passion and passivity

pp. 41-67

in: Jason Alvis, Marion and Derrida on the gift and desire, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

This chapter investigates how Marion's theory of the adonné ("the given," or "the self") can circumvent the problematic distinctions between activity and passivity. Some of the major concerns for Marion's approach is that the adonné – or "the given" – becomes a passionless receiver, especially since Marion discards the modern subject on the grounds that its horizon of possibility precludes the manifold of possibilities that given phenomena have to offer. It is precisely because of the fact that Marion postures the adonné in the context of love and desire that it may be possible to have a non-synthetic approach to the active "receiving" of things on their own accord. Here, the adonné is juxtaposed according to Kant's conception of the self, and is unfolded according to the three topics of transcendental apperception, intersubjectivity and interlocution, and "imbued intuition" or saturated phenomena. Marion refers to the "inversion of intentionality," and it is within this inversion that love and desire play important roles.