The Bond That Redeems: Religion and Phenomenology

“If it were only a question of seeing already visible phenomena, we would have no need for phenomenology. By contrast, phenomenology earns its legitimacy by finally making visible phenomena that, without it, would remain inaccessible.” Jean-Luc Marion’s affirmation expresses how I understand phenomenology, because in my view this quote sums up the many forms this philosophical itinerary has taken, starting with the publication of Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations. Aside from being an effective summary, Marion’s affirmation raises at least two questions that lead any consideration of the invisible, and thus also religious considerations (if one assumes that it is preoccupied in some sense with “invisible transcendencies”), toward phenomenology: Why does the forest of the visible that surrounds us refer us to something other? What authorizes us to think that there is something else besides phenomena that are already visible? If we answer these questions without having recourse to phenomenology, there are at least two replies: (1) the visible is insufficient because it is already linked to the perspective in which everyone is situated; (2) in this world of phenomena that surrounds us, which is perfectly visible, we also have the experience of that which cannot be led back to the visible. These are legitimate replies that in actuality are not entirely adequate to our experience, because one could object to the first that it invalidates the visible and to the second that many could well be content with the forest of the visible in which they are immersed. Phenomenology offers instead a third reply that, without being limited to the opposition visible-invisible, avoids treating the invisible as simply the opposite of the visible but interrogates its givenness, its irreducible givenness.