The neutral existence as a “saturated phenomenon”: describing the counter-experience of excess with Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion

Abstract

The purpose of the present work is to show that the “there is” or the neutral existence which constitutes one of the most recurrent themes broached by Levinas in his early works of the late forties (De l´evasion, De l´existence à l´existant y Le temps et l´autre) belongs thoroughly to the category described by Jean Luc Marion´s phenomenology of giveness under the name of “saturated phenomenon” or “paradox”. In order to make clear such belongingness, the four figures or attributes that define the excess of intuitive giveness are examined according to their degree of coincidence with the way in which Levinas describes the singular experience of exposition to the neutrality of the existence without existents. This postulated identification between both elements means a potentially productive extension of the phenomenological horizon from the point of view of a possible overcoming of the traditional metaphysics.