Bruce Bégout and Jean-Luc Marion – radicalizing phenomenology

Abstract

This article compares Jean-Luc Marion and Bruce Bégout through a shared question: how can phenomenology be freed from its historical confinement within objecthood and theory of knowledge? It argues that, despite the absence of any direct dialogue, both thinkers seek to describe phenomena irreducible to intentional constitution, and both turn to aesthetic experience as a privileged model. Their paths nevertheless diverge. Marion interprets saturated phenomena as a reversal of intentionality, whereas Bégout moves further upstream and thinks mersion as a pre-intentional mode of appearing prior to the split between subject and world. The article therefore opposes saturation and mersion, signification and expression, and the gifted and the intoned subject. It concludes that Bégout does not simply refute Marion but radicalizes his project by relocating phenomenality before relation itself.