Jones is returning from a five-year stint as president ofLondon's Royal College of Art. "The Factory Ball," co-chaired byTiffany's Michael Christ and Diana Hayden in the school's recentlyacquired building at 847 W. Jackson, will salute the pop art periodof the 1960s.
"Think (Andy) Warhol's famous studio, replete with his signatureday-glo colors, fluorescent lighting gels and swirling wallprojections," said Himmel.A kickoff party at Paul Stuart welcomed more than 150 boardmembers and …
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is joining Fox News as a political commentator through the 2012 presidential elections, a Fox Channel spokeswoman confirmed Saturday.
The network spokeswoman told The Associated Press the two-term Republican governor has been hired as a contributor, though she declined to give any details on his pay or when he would start.
Sanford was a rising political star before he vanished from the state for five days in 2009, and reporters were told he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. When he reappeared, the father of four admitted to being in Argentina with a woman he later called his soul mate.
The international affair …
| Kansas City @ Baltimore @ |
| ab r h bi @ ab r h bi |
| Pdsdnk lf 5 0 1 1 CPttrsn lf 4 1 1 1 |
| Kendall c 5 0 2 0 Wggntn 2b 4 0 1 0 |
| DeJess rf 5 0 1 0 CIzturs pr-ss 1 0 0 0 |
| BButler 1b 4 0 0 0 Markks rf 5 0 2 1 |
| JGuilln dh 5 1 2 0 MTejad 3b 4 0 0 0 |
TODAY'S ODDS
National Football League
Super Bowl
at Detroit
Favorite Open Today O/U Underdog
Pittsburgh 31/2 4 47 Seattle
BASKETBALL
College men
Tuesday
EAST
Connecticut 80, Pittsburgh 76
SOUTH
Belmont 81, Lipscomb 65
Florida 69, Mississippi 58
Miami 78, Wake Forest 69
Virginia Tech 63, Georgia Tech 62
Western Kentucky 66, Florida International 61
MIDWEST
Cincinnati 73, South Florida 60
Creighton 63, Northern Iowa 55
Georgetown 64, DePaul 44
Illinois 66, Wisconsin 51
SOUTHWEST
Nebraska 59, Oklahoma State 57
College …
Economy. Value. Style. Community. For many potential new home buyers today, these are key factors in selecting Beazer Homes as their builder.
Scenic suburban settings are only one of the many outstanding aspects of Beazer communities. Meeting the needs of an increasingly diverse and active home buyers' market, Beazer builds stylish, detached/ single-family new homes and villas, ranging in size from 1,110 to 3,100 square feet, at prices from $99,900 to $130,000.
Beazer Homes, headquartered in Atlanta Ga., is one of the 10 largest homebuilders in the U.S., based on number of homes closed. The firm designs, sells and builds primarily single-family homes in more than 35 markets …
Former Green Bay Packers cornerback Bob Jeter, the father of Wisconsin-Milwaukee men's basketball coach Rob Jeter, has died.
Wisconsin-Milwaukee spokesman Kevin O'Connor said Rob Jeter learned of the death Thursday afternoon and went to join family members in Chicago, where his father lived. He said Rob Jeter told him by phone that his father was believed to have died of cardiac …
To those in this country and to their kindred hearts in theWest, the issue always seems to boil down to the plight ofindividuals. It is an unusual and laudable attitude considering thelarge numbers involved: Soviet Jews who openly identify as such andSoviet citizens who have chosen to conceal Jewishness out of personalpreference or expediency.
The case of Anatoly Shcharansky stands out in this vein. Historment as an inmate of Soviet prisons and labor …
CASCADE LOCKS, Ore. - Above the spillways of Bonneville Dam, Darrell Schmidt patroled with his shotgun, drawing a bead on furry brown California sea lion heads popping up from the Columbia River and blasting off a beanbag round.
All spring he was part of a nonlethal, and not very effective, effort to keep the federally protected animals from gobbling threatened spring chinook salmon as they schooled up at the dam's fish ladders en route to upriver spawning grounds.
"I got one on the back of the neck with a beanbag and he didn't even drop the fish he was eating," said Schmidt of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Blasts of rubber buckshot, earsplitting …
After 47 years, Mario Sanchez's memory of the house near the Havana Zoo where he was born has faded. But he has not forgotten the address, and can look at the roof using satellite imaging on his computer at his Florida home, 370 kilometers (230 miles away) away.
"My hope and dream is that one day I would be able to have my property returned to me," Sanchez, a computer science professor at Miami Dade Community College, said in a telephone interview.
With the prospect of improved relations between the United States and Cuba, Sanchez believes that day may no longer be so far off.
He's not alone. Some U.S. companies and Cuban-Americans …
Q. I like the country look and would like to try my hand atstenciling. What tips do you have to offer?
A. It's very easy to do. In fact, if you'll check your localpaint store or arts-and-crafts dealer, you can buy kits to make iteven easier. Or just pick out your design and make your ownstencils.
I do recommend practicing on a small area that isn't highlyvisible, like a closet or garage wall.
The first ingredient you'll be shopping for is paint. You wantan acrylic paint that dries fast. A fast-drying paint will go a longway in minimizing smears and runs. This is especially true if youare using more than one color. Acrylics are also easier to clean …
TONKAWA, Okla. (AP) — A 1960 Olympic gold medalist and former NCAA wrester has been killed in a traffic accident in Tonkawa.
Oklahoma State wrestling coach John Smith confirmed Tuesday that former Cowboys wrestler Doug Blubaugh died Monday. He was 76.
Tonkawa police say Blubaugh was riding a motorcycle west on a city street when he was struck by a northbound pickup truck at an intersection …
Brandon Roy knew he made a big mistake, and was thrilled when he got an opportunity to atone for an unwise foul.
Roy made a 30-foot jumper as time expired in overtime to lift the Portland Trail Blazers to a thrilling 101-99 win over the Houston Rockets on Thursday night.
LaMarcus Aldridge had 27 points and nine rebounds for the Blazers, who snapped a five-game losing streak to the Rockets in a game that featured three dramatic shots in the final 1.9 seconds.
Roy first hit a turnaround 21-footer that put the Blazers up 98-96 and sent a sold-out Rose Garden into a frenzy. But Yao Ming scored and drew a foul against Roy on the other end with 0.8 seconds …
Chairmen and deputy chairmen appointments for the Federal Reserve Banks have been announced by the Federal Reserve Board. The 1999 appointments for Fed banks in the BANK NEWS area include Chicago, Lester H. McKeever, Jr., managing partner of Washington, Pittman & McKeever, Chicago, renamed chairman, and Arthur C. Martinez, chairman and chief executive officer of Sears, Roebuck and Co., Hoffman Estates, Ill., renamed deputy chairman; St. Louis, Susan S. Elliott, chairman and chief executive officer of Systems Service Enterprises, Inc., St. Louis, named chairman, and Charles W. Mueller, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Ameren Corp., St. Louis, named deputy chairman; Kansas City, Jo Marie Dancik, area managing partner for Ernst & Young LLP, Minneapolis, renamed chairman, and Terrence P. Dunn, president and chief executive officer of J.E. Dunn Construction Co., Kansas City, renamed deputy chairman; Minneapolis, David A. Koch, chairman of Graco Inc., Plymouth, Inn., renamed chairman, and James J. Howard, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Northern State Power Co., Minneapolis, renamed deputy chairman; and Dallas, Roger R. Hemminghaus, chairman and chief executive officer of Ultramar Diamond Shamrock Corp., San Antonio, renamed chairman, and James S. Martin, general vice president, International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers, Austin, renamed deputy chairman.
NEW YORK (AP) — The encampment is gone, but the movement lives on. What nobody knows is just how long it can survive without a literal place to call home.
For Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park was a rallying cry, a symbol of defiance. But in recent weeks, the park itself unwittingly morphed into a mirror image of the world it was trying to change: a microcosm of society rife with crime, drug problems and fights over things like real estate and access to medical care.
That's why, after protesters were hauled out of the park during a police raid early Tuesday, some organizers believe the loss of their camp is actually a blessing in disguise.
"This is much bigger than a square plaza in downtown Manhattan," said Han Shan, an organizer who was working with churches to find places for protesters to sleep Tuesday night. "You can't evict an idea whose time has come."
The protesters have been camped out in the privately owned park since mid-September and had vowed to stay put indefinitely. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he ordered the sweep because health and safety conditions had become "intolerable" in the crowded plaza. The raid was conducted in the middle of the night "to reduce the risk of confrontation" and "to minimize disruption to the surrounding neighborhood," he said.
By early Tuesday evening, some protesters were being allowed back into the park two by two. But they could each take only a small bag after a judge ruled Tuesday afternoon that their free speech rights do not extend to pitching a tent and setting up camp for months at a time.
Pete Dutro, head of the group's finances, said the loss of the movement's original encampment will open up a dialogue with other cities and take the protest to the next level of action.
"We all knew this was coming," Dutro said. "Now it's time for us to not be tucked away in Zuccotti Park, and have different areas of occupation throughout the city."
Where will they go next remains unclear. Without a place to congregate, protesters will have a difficult time communicating with each other en masse. The leaders of the movement spent most of Tuesday gathering in small groups throughout the city — in church basements, in public plazas and on street corners — and relaying plans in scattered text messages and email.
For now, they're planning to move forward with plans for a day of civil disobedience and marches on Thursday, which has been in the works for weeks. And they'll be joined by angry city leaders who publicly denounced Bloomberg for the nighttime raid.
Robert Harrington, owner of a small importing business in New York, stood outside the barricade with a sign calling for tighter banking regulations.
"To be effective it almost has to move out of the park," Harrington said. "It's like the antiwar movement in the '60s, which started as street theater and grew into something else."
"The issues," he added, "are larger than just this camp."
The next challenge is figuring out how to decentralize the movement and give it staying power.
"People are really recognizing that we need to build a movement here," Shan said. "What we're dedicated to is not just about occupying space. That's a tactic."
The aggressive raid seemed to mark a shift in the city's dealings with the Wall Street protests. Only a week ago, Bloomberg privately told a group of executives and journalists that he thought reports of problems at the park had been exaggerated and didn't require any immediate intervention.
It was the third raid of a major camp in a span of three days, as police broke up camps Sunday in Portland, Ore., and Monday in Oakland, Calif.
The timing did not appear to be coincidental. On Tuesday, authorities acknowledged that police departments across the nation consulted with each other about nonviolent ways to clear encampments. Officers in as many as 40 cities participated in the conference calls.
When New York police began their crackdown at 1 a.m., most of the Occupy Wall Street protesters were sleeping.
Officers arrived by the hundreds and set up powerful klieg lights to illuminate the block. They handed out notices from Brookfield Office Properties, the park's owner, and the city saying that the plaza had to be cleared because it had become unsanitary and hazardous.
Many people left, carrying their belongings with them. Others tried to make a stand, locking arms or even chaining themselves together with bicycle locks.
Dennis Iturralde was fast asleep on a cot when the shouting woke him up. Dark figures were running through the tents in the dim orange light of streetlamps. Something slammed into the cot, flipping him to the ground.
"They were tearing everything apart," Iturralde said. "They were hitting people, spraying people if they didn't move fast enough."
Within minutes, police in riot gear had swarmed the park, ripping down tents and tarps. The air was filled with the sound of rustling tarps, rumbling garbage trucks, shouts and equipment crashing to the ground.
Around 200 people were arrested, including a member of the City Council and dozens who tried to resist the eviction by linking arms in a tight circle at the center of the park.
At least a half-dozen journalists were arrested later in the day, including a reporter and photographer from The Associated Press who were held for four hours before being released.
In contrast to the scene weeks ago in Oakland, where a similar eviction turned chaotic and violent, the police action was comparatively orderly. But some protesters complained of being hit by police batons and shoved to the ground.
The police commissioner said officers gave the crowd 45 minutes to retrieve their belongings before starting to dismantle tents, and let people leave voluntarily until around 3:30 a.m., when they moved in to make mass arrests.
"Arresting people is not easy," he said, adding that he thought the officers "showed an awful lot of restraint in the face of "an awful lot of taunting, people getting in police officers' faces, calling them names."
The ouster at Zuccotti Park came as a rift within the movement had been widening between the park's full-time residents and the movement's power players, most of whom no longer lived in the park.
Some residents of the park have been grumbling about the recent formation of a "spokescouncil," an upper echelon of organizers who held meetings at a high school near police headquarters. Some protesters felt that the selection of any leaders whatsoever wasn't true to Occupy Wall Street's original anti-government spirit: That no single person is more important or more powerful than another person.
"Right now we're in the organizing stages of building a national movement," said protester Sandra Nurse. "I think this is going to serve as more momentum to draw people in."
___
Associated Press writers Samantha Gross, Verena Dobnik, Karen Matthews and Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.
Three nominees for South Korean Cabinet positions, including prime minister, withdrew from consideration Sunday amid a growing controversy over ethical standards and alleged misconduct.
The withdrawals were a blow to President Lee Myung-bak halfway through his five-year term. Earlier this month, he nominated Kim Tae-ho, a former provincial governor, to be his new prime minister in an extensive Cabinet reshuffle aimed at restoring public support two months after his governing party suffered a surprising defeat in mayoral and gubernatorial elections.
Kim, 48, would have been South Korea's youngest prime minister in nearly 40 years. The post of prime minister is largely ceremonial with little decision-making power, but the person holding the position leads the country if the president becomes incapacitated.
At a confirmation hearing last week, lawmakers grilled Kim over his ties to a convicted businessman at the center of a high-profile bribery scandal. The opposition party accused Kim of lying about his links to the man, though the prosecution has cleared Kim of bribery charges.
Kim was also accused of having a government employee work as a housekeeper at his home and illegally taking bank loans to use as campaign funds while serving as governor of South Gyeongsang province.
Kim has denied the more serious charges, but acknowledged hiring the housekeeper.
"I really feel sorry for causing concerns to the people," Kim said Sunday in a nationally televised news conference. "I will withdraw from the post of prime minister designate so as not to pose further damage to President Lee's state affairs."
Critics say Lee had attempted to groom Kim to run against his political rival, Park Geun-hye, a former ruling party chairwoman, in the 2012 presidential election. By law, Lee is barred from seeking re-election.
Later Sunday, Lee's choices for culture minister and knowledge economy minister also offered to withdraw after similar allegations of malfeasance were raised. They too have denied most of the allegations.
Lee is expected to announce a new prime minister nominee by mid-October, Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unidentified presidential official.
The term postmodern has been traced to the historian Arnold Toynbee who coined it about 1939 to refer to the close of the modern period of history which, according to him, occurred in the last quarter of the l9th century. Postmodern politics have been traced to European student and worker revolts in 1968. In the visual arts, some critics have argued that the decisive year was 1964, when Andy Warhol first exhibited his Brillo boxes. Postmodern architecture was identified in the 1970s. Postmodernism became pervasive in academic culture during the 1980s and entered art education literature early in the 1990s.
Definitions of postmodernism are as varied as past uses of the term. To some, the word carries negative connotations due to the tendency of postmodernists to critique and deconstruct the big ideas of Enlightenment philosophers. Postmodernists have offered critiques of realism, universalism, and individualism, of optimistic belief in the advances of progress. They argue that the grand metanarratives of history (like those written by Toynbee) should be abandoned in favor of modest, localized narratives. They assert that unified visions of high culture and the power of the avant garde are being replaced by art that is eclectic and ambiguous, characterized not by style but by multiple references to and appropriations from popular commercial culture. Perhaps because much postmodern theory developed in literary criticism and cultural studies, the focus on science, logic, and rationality characteristic of modernism has given way to an emphasis on the text, narrative, and interpretation.
While art educators in higher education have been dropping postmodernist references for nearly a decade, many K-12 art specialists find the topic difficult, boring, or irrelevant to classroom life. The authors in this issue argue that postmodernism does have implications for thinking about art teaching and learning, for curriculum development and classroom practice. Social and intellectual changes grouped under the label of postmodernism already affect the contexts of art education. For example, many school districts have been trying to replace the modern notion of one single best, most efficient system of management with sitebased management, shared decision-making teams, or charter schools to permit consideration of alternative points of view. Art teachers who want to introduce their students to contemporary art recognize that artists today do not use the aesthetics of significant form and self-expression predominant for most of our century. The modern belief that the thoughts and voice of one person-often a white male-should guide theory and practice is giving way to more interest in listening to previously ignored voices, to the stories of women and other "minorities."
In his statement as incoming editor, published in the Septemebr 1998 issue of Art Education, Paul Bolin wrote that he wants to hear from a medley of voices, a multi-voiced choir of writers for the journal. during my 3-year term as editor, ending with this issue, 149 voices have sung through the articles and Instructional Resources published in the journal. One voice, that of Elliot Eisner, has been heard in four performances-two reprinted articles, one double-length artE cle, and one rejoinder to a response to that article. Fourteen authors have had two articles published; 7 of those 14 wrote one of their two articles with a co-author. Nineteen articles or Instructional Resources published between January 1996 and November 1998 had 2 authors; one had 3 authors; three had 4 authors, and one had 6 authors. These duets, trios, quartets, and sextet have allowed voices to sing in harmony or counterpoint.
One of my goals as editor has been to broaden the range of voices heard through our professional journal. Due to the structure of higher education, expectations for research, writing, and publication are greater in universities than in K-12 schools. Reflecting these expectations, 62% of the authors from 1996 through 1998 come from NAEA's Higher Education Division. In part because Instructional Resources are usually developed by museum educators, 20% of our authors have come from that division. To my delight, 10% of the authors have been elementary art teachers, but the Middle Level, Secondary, and Supervision/ Administration divisions have each contributed less than 3% of the authors. Women have been 62% of our authors, and men 38%. The Western region has led all other regions with 42% of authors; 21% have been from each of the Eastern and Pacific regions, with 14% from the Southeastern region. We might, therefore, conclude that the "average" author for Art Education from 1996 through 1998 has been a woman art educator in higher education from the Western region. In a postmodern spirit, however, Iam more aware of differences among our authors than of a monolithic profile.
One of thejoys of serving as editor has been working with the art educators who choose to write and submit manuscripts for review and-we hope-eventual publication.
My thanks go to all the authors who have prepared material for our journal, but even more to the dedicated reviewers who have been reading and commenting on submitted manuscripts. Thanks also to Sarah Tambucci, NAEA Past President, who invited me to serve as editor, and to the NAEA staff in eston:
Paul Bolin brings many skills to his new position. He is a clear, thoughtful writer committed to strengthening art education by broadening the topics addressed in the journal, as well as the range of writers published. Paul will conduct his choir with grace and a postmodern sensitivity to metaphor, critical theory, and the importance of praxis.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - Dow Chemical Co. said Thursday its profit fell 21.3 percent in the third quarter due to changes in German tax laws, higher domestic tax rates and charges for research and development.
The chemical manufacturer posted net income after paying preferred dividends of $403 million, or 42 cents per share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $512 million, or 53 cents per share.
The quarter was weighed down primarily by a provision for income taxes of $659 million, which was substantially higher than a tax provision of $137 million a year earlier. Excluding items, Dow reported profit of 84 cents per share for the three months that ended Sept. 30.
Sales rose 10 percent to $13.59 billion from $12.36 billion a year earlier, boosted by a 19 percent jump in Dow's agricultural sciences segment, a 12 percent increase in plastics and a 7 percent rise in chemicals.
Analysts polled by Thomson Financial, on average, expected earnings of 90 cents per share on revenue of $12.65 billion.
Demand was strongest in the Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America regions, Dow said.
"Global economic conditions remain reasonably healthy, even though there may be some concerns about the resilience of the U.S. economy going forward," Dow Chief Executive Andrew Liveris said in a statement.
For the first nine months of this year, the company reported a profit of $2.42 billion, or $2.49 per share, compared with $2.75 billion, or $2.82 per share, during the same period in 2006.
Dow had sales of $39.29 billion from January through September, compared with $36.89 billion during the first nine months of last year.
---
On the Net:
Dow Chemical Co.: http://www.dow.com
Jimmy Barnett was not garbage.
His younger brother, David Barnett, wants to make that perfectlyclear.
The man cut in two inside a Chicago grocery-store trash compactoron Thanksgiving "did some good and he did some bad" in his life, buthe wasn't trash, Barnett said Saturday.
"I can't get it out of my head because I went to see him at themorgue yesterday," said Barnett, 42, a night stocker at Toys R Usuntil he got injured on the job 11/2 years ago.
No one seems sure how Jimmy Barnett ended up in the compactor inan alley in the 3600 block of North Southport. Police say he wascrushed accidentally.
From time to time, Jimmy Barnett would "Dumpster dive," but mostlyhe didn't need to, friends and family said Saturday.
If you lived in Jimmy Barnett's North Side neighborhood, you mighthave seen the lanky 47-year-old in baggy painter's attire pushing agrocery-store cart filled with stacks of frozen hamburger, store-bought cakes or yellow Velveeta cheese boxes.
It was stuff that grocery stores were getting ready to throw out,said David Barnett. Jimmy Barnett could always find a buyer, andthat's how he made a meager living.
"He was a talker," said David Barnett's wife, Michele Barnett. "Hecould get you to buy anything. He would say, 'This would look good inyour house.' "
From time to time, Jimmy Barnett would sleep on his brother'scouch, and sometimes at a Salvation Army shelter.
He had two grown-up daughters and was divorced, but the gabbysalesman didn't talk about how his marriage ended, his brother said.Jimmy Barnett wasn't stupid, just a little slow, and if he had aproblem, he would go for a long walk rather than try to explain whatwas going on inside his head, friends said. He had a girlfriend --"Melissa" -- but her name is all his brother knew about her.
Jimmy Barnett had another job last year: He was a maintenance manat a Loop building on Dearborn. He had his own apartment, a pager anda cell phone. He kept his hair cut short and neat, and his whiskersoff his face.
"He felt needed, and with a big apartment building like that,you're needed all the time," Michele Barnett said.
Then another company came in and bought the building earlier thisyear. They told Jimmy Barnett they didn't need him anymore, hissister-in-law said.
The night before Thanksgiving, Jimmy Barnett was at his brother'shouse eating meatloaf.
"He said, 'This is the best meal I've ever had,' " the brotherrecalled.
David Barnett invited his brother to a Thanksgiving Day feast atan Old Country Buffet restaurant. Jimmy Barnett politely refused.
"He wasn't the type to go out for dinner," Michele Barnett said."That wasn't what he liked. He was going to his ex-wife's anddaughter's house, but he never made it there."
ROBERT CRUMB
MUSEUM LUDWIG, COLOGNE
"Yeah, but is it art?" R. Crumb's comicstrip alter ego asked on the poster for this eponymous retrospective at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. For many audiences, the question might have seemed beside the point. After all, comics have historically been an integral part of cultural heritage in countries like France and Belgium (consider Moebius's Blueberry or Herg�'s Tintin). Even within the world of fine art, they have seeped in from the margins at least as far back as Joan Miro and Kurt Schwittcrs, and since Pop art this entertaining medium has widely been considered a worthy source by artists. Indeed, the decision to mount a Crumb exhibition seemed a fitting one for the Ludwig, whose collection of Pop (the largest outside the United States) includes work by artists like Oyvind Fahlstrom, who makes explicit reference to Crumb, as well as by such Pop descendants as Raymond Pettibon, who appeared in Crumb's magazine Weirdo in 1985. Nevertheless, the museum's serious treatment of the comicbook artist had a sense of novelty, at least in Crumb's own estimation. At a press conference for the exhibition, he pointed out that it was only fifteen years ago that the Museum of Modern Art's "High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture" show held up his work as exemplary of a medium belonging to the masses. And while Crumb's drawings have often been shown as art-and even prominently, as in the 2.004 Carnegie International in Pittsburgh-he claimed that he sees publications, not gallery exhibitions, as his ultimate vehicle.
If such a tension between contexts was still in play at the Ludwig, perhaps that was because Crumb is not merely the virtuosic illustrator one found in the comic books and original sketchbooks, record covers, posters, and postcards organized by curator Alfred Fischer. In fact, the sixty-one-year-old could be considered the founding father of underground comics. His comics were sold for the first time on the streets of Haight-Ashbury in 1968, when he also gained widespread notoriety for making the album cover for Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills; and with his growing popularity and influence, independent art publishers began releasing books violating the official comics code born of the McCarthy era, which censored excessive violence, sexual depictions, and profanity. Then and now, one could understand Crumb's comics as opposing the culture of Walt Disney, since his well-known characters have traits that render them unsympathetic, even grotesque, rather than endearing and together offer pointed social allegories: Fritz the Cat, a hippie torn, is self-satisfied, smugly bourgeois, and idealistic but unmotivated; Mr. Natural, a white-bearded, barefoot eco-guru in loosefitting getups, is forever making incoherent boasts; Angelfood McSpade, a sensual, black, earth-mother stereotype, is revealed over time to be a white man's erotic projection. With these figures and their stories, laced with bizarre situations and phantasmagoria, Crumb composes raucous satires underscoring the irrational fears, anxieties, and hypocrisies underlying cultural experience. Perhaps the most macabre of such lacerating allegories in the current exhibition was a 1993 sequence of drawings in which African-Americans and Jews take over the United States.
It is this Crumb-a representative of the "other" America, who became popular amid student protests and the Vietnam War-who was probably most familiar to German audiences visiting the Ludwig. In Germany, Crumb's stories appeared in translation as early as 1969 through the left-wing alternative press U-Comix (since 1978, the popular publishing house Zweitausendeins has regularly released his comics and carefully crafted sketchbooks). But audiences at this exhibition, while they witnessed several manifestations of Crumb's social critique-marked by his fecund imagination, delight in the absurd, and gift for psychological observation-had to be astonished by his perfect drawing technique, as his original work seems to differ so little from the printed versions. It is apparently this dimension of Crumb that Fischer sought to foreground-the skilled draftsman rather than the pointed satirist. Indeed, since moving in 1990 to Sauve, a small village in the south of France, Crumb has made his peace with America and become, in his late phase, a hermit preoccupied solely with his own obsessions (of course, even here humor abounds, as his libidinal struggles work their way into portraits of women in Art & beauty Magazine, 1996/2,003).
Still, given this emphasis on the making of these comics, did the material on exhibit bridge any presumed divide between the worldviews of mass media and fine art? During a public lecture that accompanied the show, a meeting place was suggested by Ludwig director Kasper K�nig who made a case for Crumb's artistry, arguing it offered multiple intellectual meanings and therefore subversive potential. But Crumb, deflating as ever, stated that he considers those full-size, plastic advertising mascots from the 19505 to be true art, a disavowal bringing to mind his alter ego's answer to the question posed by the exhibition's title: "You tell me, I don't know."
[Sidebar]
Crumb's fecund imagination, delight in the absurd, and gift of psychological observation are matched by an astonishing drawing technique.
[Author Affiliation]
Michael Krajcwski is a critic and art historian based in Cologne.
Translated from German by Sara Ogger.
SYDNEY, Australia - A train packed with workers and studentsrammed into another carrying tourists today in mountains outsideSydney, killing at least six people and injuring more than 50 in acrash so violent it shook nearby houses.
About 1,000 people were riding the commuter train, which roundeda blind corner during morning rush hour and slammed into the back ofthe transcontinental Indian Pacific, carrying 159 passengers, staterail authorities said.
"Seats went flying, people went flying, goods went flying," saidMichael Irik, a passenger on the commuter train.
Wayne Geddes, a spokesman for New South Wales State Rail, saidsix people - all from the front car of the commuter train - werekilled and that the death toll was expected to rise as authoritiesworked into the night to recover more victims.
New South Wales state premier, Bob Carr, who visited the scene ina mountain gully, said up to 12 people may have died in theaccident.
"There are going to be maybe 10 or 12 families tonight who willbe very sad," Carr told reporters. "We think of them at this time."
By late today, emergency services had recovered the bodies of ayoung boy, four women and a man from the mangled wreckage. PoliceCommander Bruce Johnson said he did not know if more bodies would befound.
Kate Klim, 21, a passenger in the front car of the two-levelcommuter train, described the last seconds before the crash.
"The train was going along fine, then the train driver ran downthe stairs and said, 'Get down everybody,' " Klim told Sky News. "Weducked down, and then came the crash. Everybody started panicking."
Lindsay Plim, another passenger, also said the driver camerunning out of the front and told everybody to get down. "As soon ashe said that, we went into this monstrous skid," she said.
The Indian Pacific was either stopped or barely moving at thetime. The front cars of the commuter train entered the rear of theIndian P acific, which was filled with travelers' automobiles.
Witnesses said people were thrown around like dolls inside thetrain, seats were torn from their mountings and luggage flew. Theforce of the crash shook nearby houses.
The crash took place a few minutes after an announcement on theIndian Pacific's public address system that the train would bedelayed because of a signal failure, said Irene Barnes, a passenger.
State rail authorities would not comment on the claim, sayingpossible signal faults would be part of an official investigation.
Emergency services treated victims at a nearby sports field andappealed to Sydney residents to give blood to ensure stocks did notrun out.
Rail authorities said the commuter train may have been travelingat up to 50 mph when it crashed near Glenbrook, a small town at thebase of the Blue Mountains, 35 miles west of Sydney. The IndianPacific train, carrying many elderly tourists, was traveling fromPerth into Sydney.
Ambulance spokesman Graham Field said the death toll would havebeen higher if the Indian Pacific hadn't been loaded with vehicles.
"If the last carriage of the Indian Pacific was carryingpassengers, we still would have had a lot more dead and injured," hesaid.
Fifty-one people were taken to hospitals. Dozens more weretreated for minor injuries at the scene and at the nearby sportsfield.
Stephen Bradford, chief executive of the Great Southern RailwayCo., which owns the Indian Pacific, told Australian BroadcastingCorp. radio that five of the train's 159 passengers had receivedminor injuries.
The accident was far less serious than Australia's worst raildisaster, which happened in Granville on Jan. 18, 1977, when acrowded commuter train derailed and struck the supporting pillars ofa road bridge, which collapsed. Eighty-three people were killed and200 injured.
Christian Dupressoir, who survived the 1977 disaster, was in thecommuter train in today's crash.
"Having been in the Granville disaster and having had someexperience with first aid, I thought I'd go to the front and see ifI (could) be of assistance," he said.
"The front carriage was pretty horrific. The train was fairlypacked and people were thrown all over the place."
| 77Reds 3, Cardinals 0 | |||
| ST. LOUIS @ CINCINNATI @ | |||
| ab r h bi @ab r h bi | |||
| Schmkr cf 4 0 1 0 Richar 2b 4 0 0 0 | |||
| FLopez ss 4 0 2 0 Castillo lf 4 0 0 0 | |||
| Pujols 1b 4 0 0 0 Hairstn lf 0 0 0 0 | |||
| Ldwick lf 4 0 1 0 Votto 1b 3 0 0 0 | |||
| Glaus 3b 4 0 0 0 APhllps 3b 4 1 1 1 | |||
| Miles 2b 4 0 1 0 Bruce rf 2 1 1 1 | |||
| LaRue c 3 0 0 0 Hnigan c 2 0 0 0 | |||
| Wllmyr p 2 0 0 0 CPttson cf 3 0 0 0 | |||
| BBartn rf 1 0 1 0 Janish ss 3 1 1 1 | |||
| BRyan rf 3 0 0 0 Harang p 3 0 1 0 | |||
| Sprngr p 0 0 0 0 | |||
| Motte p 0 0 0 0 | |||
| Totals @ 33 0 6 0 Totals @28 3 4 3 | |||
| St. Louis 000 000 000_0 | |||
| Cincinnati 000 300 00x_3 | |||
| E_APhillips (2). DP_Cincinnati 1. LOB_St. Louis 6, Cincinnati 4. 2B_FLopez (24), Ludwick (37). 3B_BBarton (2). HR_APhillips (2), Bruce (19), Janish (1). SB_Votto (7). | |||
| IP H R ER BB SO | |||
| St. Louis @ | |||
| Wllmyr L,12-8 6 4 3 3 2 6 | |||
| Springer 1 0 0 0 0 1 | |||
| Motte 1 0 0 0 0 1 | |||
| Cincinnati @ | |||
| Harang W,5-16 9 6 0 0 0 4 | |||
| HBP_by Wellemeyer (Hanigan). | |||
| Umpires_Home, Brian O'Nora | First, Paul Nauert | Second, James Hoye | Third, Tom Hallion. |
| T_2:16. A_14,850 (42,319). |
A Glastonbury man charged with failing to display his car taxdisc has been given an absolute discharge by South SomersetMagistrates.
Adam Richard Fosbery applied for his vehicle excise licenceonline via the government website but said that it took nearly threeweeks for the disc to arrive by post leaving him unable to displayit.
The 41-year-old, of Park Terrace, pleaded guilty to failing todisplay his vehicle excise licence when his vehicle was parked inMilford Dip in Yeovil on January 24.
The defendant told the court that he had applied for his tax disconline on January 5 and it had not arrived by the time he was givena penalty notice by the police.
The magistrates gave him an absolute discharge but warned Fosberyto apply for his vehicle excise licence earlier in future to allowtime for it to arrive.
Police commandos acting on a tip killed one militant and arrested five others Sunday in a raid against a bombing cell accused in recent attacks around the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar, authorities said.
Elsewhere in the volatile region, a remote-controlled roadside bomb killed two anti-Taliban tribal elders, an official said _ the latest in a slew of strikes against local leaders.
Police said the commandos encountered fierce resistance when they stormed the compound in the village of Kaka Khel near Peshawar, the largest city in the area and the main gateway to the Afghan border region where many al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents are based.
Militants have carried out a wave of deadly attacks in and around Peshawar in apparent retaliation for an army offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan.
Three suicide jackets as well as a number of bombs, grenades, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons were seized from the compound, regional police Chief Liaquat Ali Khan said.
He said one suspect was killed and five others arrested following a gunbattle that lasted more than two hours. A search operation for more militants continued in the area, some 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Peshawar.
The detained are suspected of involvement in recent bombings and other attacks not only in Peshawar but in Islamabad and its sister city of Rawalpindi, Khan said, declining to be more specific.
In the latest major attack, a team of gunmen and suicide bombers struck a mosque Friday in Rawalpindi, killing 37 people, including several senior army officers.
Militants also have tried to weaken the longstanding tribal leadership structure in the northwest, killing scores of elders so they could impose their own reign.
The roadside bomb that killed two elders Sunday in the Bajur tribal region also left two other tribesmen wounded, local government official Jamil Khan said. The two dead elders were on foot, leaving a mosque in the Malangi area after prayers.
Pakistani security forces also killed 13 suspected militants, including a prominent commander identified as Gul Maula, in gunbattles in two other parts of the northwest over the weekend.
Maj. Mushtaq Ahmed, a military spokesman, said Maula and four others were killed in the Dangram area of the Swat Valley, where the suspected militants were spotted trying to sneak through the mountains to the main town of Mingora. Pakistan's army has waged an offensive against the Taliban in Swat for much of this year.
In the neighboring region of Lower Dir, security forces killed eight alleged militants hiding in a house in the Maidan area, said Maj. Suleman Hanif, another army spokesman. The soldiers recovered weapons including two rocket launchers and eight assault rifles.
___
Associated Press writers Zarar Khan and Anwarullah Khan contributed to this report from Islamabad.
BERLIN (AP) — An Afghan boy on a swing ride with a toy submachine gun in his hand. A black-clad Iraqi mother giving a bottle to her baby daughter outside Abu Ghraib prison as she waits for the release of detainees. A U.S. Marine mourning the loss of 31 comrades in Iraq.
The powerful images are among some 40 black-and-white photographs by Associated Press photographer Anja Niedringhaus from conflict zones around the world presented to journalists Friday at the Berlin gallery C/O Berlin.
The exhibition "At War," co-sponsored by The Associated Press and the Deutsche Boerse Group, runs in the German capital from Saturday through Dec. 10 before moving in early 2012 to the Deutsche Boerse headquarters in Eschborn, near Frankfurt.
Niedringhaus, 45, took the pictures during tours in Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Gaza and the West Bank during a 20-year stretch covering war zones, beginning with the Balkans in the 1990s.
"Once you start something like this, you should also bring it to an end," Niedringhaus told reporters in Berlin on Friday, adding that she never tires of her work as a photojournalist, even if it is physically exhausting and emotionally draining.
"Sometimes I feel bad because I can always leave the conflict, go back home to my family where there's no war," she said. "That's why I always try to go back and cover the conflict from beginning to end."
The exhibition focuses on individuals in the midst of crisis and gives a face to their suffering, strife and exhaustion. The photos capture the horror of war, but also unexpected moments of joy experienced by the people in the middle of the many conflicts following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.
Niedringhaus trains her camera on children who are caught between the front lines, yet still find a niche to play. She singles out soldiers from the masses as they are confronted with death, injuries and enemies' attacks.
"In these days of mass media, instant Internet gratification and image saturation, it is a refreshing privilege to have the opportunity to pause in front of these prints and absorb the images at our leisure," AP Director of Photography Santiago Lyon said in a written statement.
Niedringhaus, who also covers sports events around the globe, has received numerous awards for her works. She was part of an AP team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in breaking news photography for coverage of the war in Iraq, and was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation. She joined the AP in 2002 and is based in Geneva, Switzerland.
A catalog of the show is available in English and German at the museum.
___
Online: http://www.co-berlin.info/program/exhibitions/2011/anja-niedringhaus.html?Itemid=1879
Kanawha County school officials plan to boost the cost of schoollunches and change policies to pull the food service program out ofa$1 million deficit.
But some administrators worry that the actions could cost someschool cooks their jobs.
In a special school board session Thursday, board membersapproveda proposal by Harry Reustle, system treasurer, and Gary Hendricks,director of child nutrition, to eliminate the food service program'sdeficit by increasing meal prices and doing away with a policy thatallows students to buy extra lunches.Meal prices will be increased for adults and students alike.The price for an adult breakfast will jump from $1.60 to $2 andthe adult lunch price from $2.10 to $2.65.Breakfast prices for elementary students will increase from 65cents to $1 while cost for secondary students will jump from 75centsto $1.25. Lunch prices will increase for elementary students from$1.10 to $1.50 and will change for secondary students from $1.25 to$1.75.Board member Bill Raglin was concerned the price increases willeventually necessitate a cut in cooking staff.Reustle agreed that less cooks was a possibility. "If you don'treduce cooks when you get rid of the second meal, the million dollardeficit will stay," he said. If that occurs, he added, thoseemployees should be aware of the possibility from the start.Board President John Luoni said he could not commit to supportingsuch cutbacks now. "I think it's too early for anybody to say we'regoing to have to cut cooks or anything."Obviously, we can't afford as a system to lose money on foodservices," Luoni said. "I think we should look at everything thatwould be involved that would make the lunch program self-sustaining.That should not just be based on cutting cooks."We need to look at whole picture to see how we got out of shapeand how can we get out of that," Luoni said.Board members agreed that Reustle and Hendricks should work inconjunction with Karen Williams, human resources coordinator ofservices, to reduce the possibility.Williams could not be reached for comment this morning.The plan of action, proposed by Reustle, called for the system toeliminate the second meal policy, allowing each student to onlypurchase one breakfast and one lunch per day.Along with the meal price increases, these alterations shouldbring the food service program out of deficit by 2001, Reustleestimates.While the deficit has only affected the food service program sofar, it could eventually dip into the system's general fund ifnothing is done, he added.Board members gave Reustle the OK to implement the changes in thefall, provided he gives them a preliminary report on his progress bythe end of October. Reustle said he would comply, but he added thathe does not expect the changes to make a notable impact quite thatearly.Reustle said meal prices will be reviewed annually to keep theprogram's budget in check.Writer Tonia Holbrook can be reached at 348-4834.
"Reportage," wrote Civil War photographic historian Will Stapp, "was understood to be one of the most significant potentials—and goals—of photography at the very beginning of its history." The photographic coverage of the American Civil War, which was conducted only two decades after the invention of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre's photographic process in 1839, became direct inspiration for the more comprehensive photo-journalism that has followed. Although actual combat and scenes of action could not be captured until faster film and smaller cameras evolved, the coverage of the Civil War was the first systematic attempt to document a conflict in its entirety.
Concurrent with the interest in capturing the war through photography grew the desire to circulate those images. Photographers, including the famous Civil War chronicler Mathew B. Brady, envisioned a popular appetite for images of the war. A sense of historical mission, as well as the profit motive, encouraged Brady and others to make the expensive investment necessary to cover the war. Brady estimated that he spent over $100,000 on his documentation. His project was a financial failure, however, and he ended up bankrupt, forced to sell his collection of negatives and daguerreotypes.
Photographs could not be reproduced in the pages of the press until publishers began to use the half-tone process in the early 1890s. Therefore Civil War photographs reached the public either as original images—in gallery shows, as cartes de visite (small visiting card-size portraits), and as stereocards—or transformed into engravings or lithographic illustrations for newspapers and magazines.
Photographers chose which type of photograph to produce depending on the audience for the image. To take pictures of celebrities for duplication, photographers either
used large glass plates for large prints or smaller ones for cartes de visites. Many photographers preferred reproducible stereographs when covering news events; the illusion of depth as well as the presumed photographic fidelity gave viewers the sense that they were almost eyewitnesses. For portraits of soldiers going off to war, tintypes were the cheapest and the easiest to produce. Photographers both North and South churned them out by the hundreds.
Small tintypes and cartes de visite of loved ones were cherished both by men in the field and families back home.
Perhaps as many as 400 photographers—300 in the North and 100 in the South—received special passes from the Union and Confederate military authorities to photograph the troops. In the Confederacy, supplies were always a problem. There was an interest in images from the front, but money and materials were lacking. Indeed, most photographers North and South dealt in the inexpensive tintype and carte de visite images; they set up shop near the encampments and waited for lines to form.
The military for the most part welcomed photographers. General Ulysses S. Grant not only approved photographers' access, he owned many Brady studio images. Other units also accepted photography as the document of record: Andrew J. Russell photographed many bridge spans, pontoons, and other engineering feats of the Union forces, and George Barnard, a well-known former daguerreotypist, documented General Sherman's campaign in 1863, when he was attached to the Military Division of the Mississippi.
Mathew Brady has become synonymous with Civil War photography, but his was hardly the only photographic studio engaged in documenting the war, even if he was the best known and perhaps the most gifted photographer of the era. By the time the war broke out, he was firmly ensconced as the principal photographer to American presidents and celebrities, but he was going blind and it is likely that he personally made very few of the thousands of Civil War pictures that are credited to him. Others who worked for him took the photographs, including Alexander Gardner, who managed Brady's Washington studio, and Timothy O'Sullivan, George Barnard, James Gibson, and David Woodbury. Brady's insistence on taking the credit for the images of his salaried photographers sufficiently alienated him from his employees that Gardner, O'Sullivan, Barnard, Gibson, and Woodbury left in 1863 to set up a rival studio.
At times during the Civil War, Brady had as many as nineteen teams of operators covering the various fronts, equipped with 16 × 20, 8 × 10, and stereograph cameras. Each team brought into the field a horse-drawn dark-room in which the glass plates were carefully prepared and then rushed to the camera, which would have been set up close by the wagon. The glass plate was exposed in the camera for three to twenty seconds and then developed immediately. Depending on the humidity, the entire process took from ten to twenty minutes.
Camera technology dictated that photographs of the war had to be of preambles and aftermaths, usually staged portraits of men before battle and reproductions of the carnage and destruction after the fighting. A relatively small number of people actually saw photographs of the war, but those who attended the shows in Mathew Brady's galleries in New York and Washington, D.C. were stunned. The photographs of Antietam, for example, taken by Alexander Gardner, captured the ignominious sprawl of the dead. As the first of that war's images of the carnage, they received greater contemporary attention than any taken later in the conflict. They were exhibited and simultaneously offered for sale at Brady's gallery, and they were reproduced as wood engravings in Harper's Weekly. Articles about them appeared in the New York Times and Atlantic Monthly.
In its review of the exhibit, the New York Times wrote, "Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and ernestness [sic] of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along streets, he has done something very like it." According to the reporter, visitors crowded the gallery in "hushed, reverend [sic] groups … bending down to look in the pale faces of the dead, chained by the strange spell that dwells in dead men's eyes…. We would scarce choose to be in the gallery when one of the women bending over them should recognize a husband, a son, or a brother in the still, lifeless lines of bodies that lie ready for the gaping trenches." For the first time, although not for the last, the photographs of war challenged the established convention that death in battle was noble and glorious.
Since the Civil War, visual images have been a major factor in influencing Americans' reactions to war.
Susan Moeller
See also:Newspapers and Magazines.
What comes into the world without troubling merits neither consideration nor patience. Rene Char I
The field of religion could simply be defined as what philosophy excludes or, in the best case, subjugates. Such a constant antagonism cannot be reduced to any given ideological opposition or any given anecdotal prejudice. In fact, it rests upon perfectly reasonable ground: the "philosophy of religion," if there were one, would have to describe, produce, and constitute phenomena, it would then find itself confronted with a disastrous alternative: either it would be a question of phenomena that are objectively definable but lose their religious specificity, or it would be a question of phenomena that are specifically religious but cannot be described objectively. A phenomenon that is religious in the strict sense-belonging to the domain of a "philosophy of religion" distinct from the sociology, the history, and the psychology of religion-would have to render visible what nevertheless could not be objectivized. The religious phenomenon thus amounts to an impossible phenomenon, or at least it marks the limit starting from which the phenomenon is in general no longer possible. Thus, the religious phenomenon poses the question of the general possibility of the phenomenon, more than of the possibility of religion.
Once this boundary is acknowledged, there nevertheless remain several ways of understanding it. Religion could not strike the possibility of the phenomenon in general with impossibility if the very possibility of the phenomenon were not defined: when does it become impossible to speak of a phenomenon, and according to what criteria of phenomenality? But the possibility of the phenomenon-and therefore the possibility of declaring a phenomenon impossible, that is, invisible--could not in its turn be determined without also establishing the terms of possibility taken in itself. By subjecting the phenomenon to the jurisdiction of possibility, philosophy in fact brings fully to light its own definition of bare possibility. The question concerning the possibility of the phenomenon implies the question of the phenomenon of possibility. Or better, when the rational scope of a philosophy is measured according to the extent of what it renders possible, that scope will be measured also according to the extent of what it renders visible-according to the possibility of phenomenality in it. According to whether it is accepted or rejected, the religious phenomenon would thus become a privileged index of the possibility of phenomenality.
To start out, I will rely on Kant. In Kant, the metaphysical definition of possibility is stated as follows: "That which agrees with the formal conditions of experience, that is, with the conditions of intuition and of concepts, is possible [mit den formalen Bedingungen der Erfahrung . . . uberkommt]." What is surprising here has to do with the intimate tie Kant establishes between possibility and phenomenality: possibility results explicitly from the conditions of experience; among those conditions is intuition, which indicates that experience takes the form of a phenomenality-that experience has a form ("formal conditions") precisely because it experiences sensible forms of appearance. Here, therefore, possibility depends on phenomenality. Would it be necessary to conclude from this that the phenomenon imposes its possibility, instead of being subject to the conditions thereof? Not at all, because the possible does not agree with the object of experience but with its "formal conditions": possibility does not follow from the phenomenon, but from the conditions set for any phenomenon. A formal requirement therefore is imposed on possibility, just as Kant indicates a little bit later: "The postulate of the possibility of things requires (fordert) that the concept of things should agree with the formal conditions of an experience in general." The access of the phenomenon to its own manifestation must submit to the requirement of possibility; but possibility itself depends on the "formal conditions of experience"; how then, in the last instance, are these "formal conditions" established that determine phenomenality and possibility together? Kant indicates this indirectly, but unambiguously, by underlining straightaway that "the categories of modality. . . express only the relation of the concept to the power of knowing."i The formal conditions of knowledge are directly joined here with the power of knowing. This means that intuition and the concept determine in advance the possibility of appearing for any phenomenon. The possibility and therefore also and especially the impossibility-of a phenomenon is ordered to the measure of the "power of knowing," that is, concretely, the measure of the play of intuition and of the concept within a finite mind. Any phenomenon is possible that grants itself to the finitude of the power of knowing and its requirements.
In this way Kant merely confirms a decision already made by Leibniz. To be sure, the one thinks phenomenal possibility starting from a finite mind, while the other thinks it starting from an infinite (or indefinite) mind; but both lead to the same conditional possibility of the phenomenon. Indeed, metaphysics obeys the "Great Principle . . . which holds that nothing is done without sufficient reason, that is, that nothing happens without it being possible for the one who sufficiently knows things to give a Reason that suffices to determine why it is so and not otherwise."2 Thus, nothing "is done," nothing "happens," in short, nothing appears, without the attestation that it is "possible"; this possibility, in turn, is equivalent to the possibility of knowing the sufficient reason for such an appearance. As for Kant, for Leibniz the right to appear-the possibility of a phenomenon depends on the power of knowing that implements the sufficiency of reason, which, whatever it might be, precedes what it renders possible. As the "power of knowing" will establish the conditions of possibility, sufficient reason already suffices to render possible that which, without it, would have remained impossible. This dependence is indicated with particular clarity in the case of the sensible. To be sure, "sensible things" appear and deserve the name of"phenomena," but they owe that name to another "reason," a reason that is different from their very appearance, and that alone suffices to qualify that appearance as a phenomenon: "The truth of sensible things consisted only in the relation of the phenomena, which had to have its reason."3 When Leibniz opposes, among the beings that he recognizes as permanent (creatura permanens absoluta), full being (unum per se, ens plenum; substantia; modif catio) to the diminished being that he likens to the phenomenon (unum per aggregationem; semiens, phaenomenon), one should not commit the error of imagining that the phenomenon would be ranked as half a being or a half-being only because it would suffer from an insufficiency of reason. On the contrary, it is precisely because it enjoys a perfectly sufficient reason that the phenomenon regresses to the rank of half a being; it is precisely as "phaenomena bene fundata"4 that the phenomena admit their being grounded, and therefore conditioned by a reason that alone is sufficient and that they themselves do not suffice to ensure. If reason can ground the phenomena, this is so first because it must save them; but reason would not have to do this if one did not first admit that, left to themselves, these phenomena would be lost. For appearance actually to appear does not suffice to justify its possibility; it must still resort to reason, which-while itself not having to appear-alone renders possible the brute actuality of the appearance, because it renders the possibility of that appearance intelligible. The phenomenon attests its lack of reason when and because it receives that reason; for it appears only under condition, as a conditional phenomenon-under the condition of what does not appear. In a metaphysical system, the possibility of appearing never belongs to what appears, nor phenomenality to the phenomenon.
II
It is this aporia that phenomenology escapes all at once in opposing to the principle of sufficient reason, the "principle of all principles," and thus in surpassing conditional phenomenality through a phenomenality without condition. The "principle of all principles" posits that "every originarily giving intuition (Anschauung) is a source of right for cognition, that everything that offers itself to us originarily in 'intuition' (Intuition) is to be taken quite simply as it gives itself out to be, but also only within the limits in which it is given there."5 There can be no question here of determining the decisive importance of this principle, nor its function within the whole of the other principles of phenomenology.6 It will suffice here to underscore some of its essential traits.
According to the first essential trait, intuition no longer intervenes simply as a de facto source of the phenomenon, a source that ensures its brute actuality without yet grounding it in reason, but as a source of right, justificatory of itself. Intuition is itself attested through itself, without the background of a reason that is yet to be given. In this way the phenomenon, according to Husserl, corresponds in advance to the phenomenon according to Heidegger-that which shows itself on the basis of itself. To put it plainly: on the basis of itself as a pure and perfect appearance of itself, and not on the basis of another than itself that would not appear (a reason). Intuition is sufficient for the phenomenon to justify its right to appear, without any other reason: far from having to give a sufficient reason, it suffices for the phenomenon to give itself through intuition according to a principle of sufficient intuition. But intuition becomes sufficient only inasmuch as it operates without any background, originarily, as Husserl says; now, it operates originarily, without any presupposition, only inasmuch as it furnishes the originary data, inasmuch, therefore, as it gives itself originarily. Intuition is justified by right on the basis of itself only by making a claim to an unconditioned origin. It cannot justify this claim without going so far as to mime the sufficient reason to be rendered (reddendae rationis), that is, by rendering itself, by giving itself in person. Indeed, givenness alone indicates that the phenomenon ensures, in a single gesture, both its visibility and the full right of that visibility, both its appearance and the reason for that appearance. Nevertheless, it still remains to be verified whether the "principle of all principles" in point of fact ensures a right to appear for all phenomena, whether it indeed opens for them an absolutely unconditioned possibility-or whether it renders them possible still only under some condition. Now, it happens that the principle of giving intuition does not authorize the absolutely unconditioned appearance, and thus the freedom of the phenomenon that gives itself on the basis of itself. To be sure, this is not because intuition as such limits phenomenality, but because it remains framed, as intuition, by two conditions of possibility, conditions that themselves are not intuitive but are nevertheless assigned to every phenomenon. The second and third traits of the "principle of all principles" contradict the first one, as conditions and limits-as a condition and a limit-contradict the claim to absolute possibility opened by the giving intuition.
Let us first consider a second trait of the "principle": it justifies every phenomenon, "but also only [aber auch nur] within the limits in which" that phenomenon is given. This restriction attests to a twofold finitude of the giving instance-of intuition. First, a factual restriction: intuition admits "limits" (Schranken). These limits, in whatever way one understands them (since Husserl hardly makes them clear here), indicate that not everything is capable of being given perfectly; right away, intuition is characterized by scarcity, obeys a logic of shortage, and is stigmatized by an indelible insufficiency; we will have to ask ourselves about the motivation, the status and the presuppositions of this factual shortcoming. But-secondly-this restriction can already be authorized by a de jure limitation: any intuition, in order to give within certain factual "limits," must first be inscribed by right within the limits (Grenze) of a horizon; likewise, no intentional aim of an object, signification, or essence can operate outside of a horizon. Husserl indicates this point through an argument that is all the stronger insofar as it is paradoxical. Considering what he nevertheless names "the limitlessness [Grenzenlosigleit] that is presented by the immanent intuitions when going from an already fixed lived-experience to new lived-experiences that form its horizon, from the fixing of these livedexperiences to the fixing of their horizon; and so on," he admits that any lived-experience is continually referred to new, as yet unknown lived-experiences, and therefore to a horizon of novelties that are irreducible because continually renewed. But precisely, this irrepressible novelty of the flux of consciousness remains, by right, always comprehended within a horizon, even if these new lived-experiences are not yet given: "a lived-experience that has become an Object of an Ego's look and that therefore has the mode of being looked at, has for its horizon lived-experiences that are not looked at" (Danach hat ein Erlebnis, das zum Objekt eines Ichblickes geworden ist, also den Modus des Erblickes hat. seinen Horizont nichterblickter Erlebnisse).7 The horizon, or, according to its etymology, delimitation, exerts itself over experience even where there are only lived-experiences that are not looked at, that is, where experience has not taken place. The outside of experience is not equivalent to the experience of the outside, because the horizon in advance seizes the outside, the non-experienced, the not looked at. One cannot escape here the feeling of a fundamental ambiguity. With this horizon, is it a question of what is not looked at as not looked at, a question of the simple recognition that all lived-experience is grasped in the flux of consciousness, and is therefore oriented in advance toward other lived-experiences that are yet to arise? Or is it not rather a question of the treatment, in advance, of the non-lived-experiences that are not looked at as the subjects of a horizon, and therefore a question of the inclusion within a limit-be it that of the flux of consciousness-of anything that is not looked at, a question of the a priori inscription of the possible within a horizon? Thus we must ask whether the "principle of all principles" does not presuppose at least one condition for givenness: the very horizon of any givenness. Does not the second trait of the "principle of all principles" that of any horizon at all contradict the absoluteness of intuitive givenness?
The third trait of the "principle of all principles" has to do with the fact that intuition gives what appears only by giving it "to us." There is nothing trivial or redundant about this expression; it betrays a classic ambiguity of the Ideen: the givenness of the phenomenon on the basis of itself to an "I" can at every instant veer toward a constitution of the phenomenon through and on the basis of the "I." Even if one does not overestimate this constant threat, one must at least admit that givenness, precisely because it keeps its originary and justifying function, can give and justify nothing except before the tribunal of the "I"; transcendental or not, the phenomenological "I" remains the beneficiary, and therefore the witness and even the judge, of the given appearance; it falls to the "I" to measure what does and does not give itself intuitively, within what limits, according to what horizon, following what intention, essence and signification. Even if it shows itself on the basis of itself, the phenomenon can do so only by allowing itself to be lead back, and therefore reduced, to the "I." Moreover, the originary primacy of the "I" maintains an essential relation with the placement of any phenomenon within the limits of a horizon. Indeed, "every now of a lived-experience has a horizon of lived-experiences-which also have precisely the originary form of the `now,' and which as such produce an originary horizon [Originaritatshorizont] of the pure I, its total originary now of consciousness."8 In this way the "principle of all principles" still presupposes that all givenness must accept the "I" as its "now." The requirement of a horizon is but one with that of the reduction: in each case it is a matter of leading phenomenological givenness back to the "I.".But, that being the case, if every phenomenon is defined by its very reducibility to the "I," must we not exclude straightaway the general possibility of an absolute, autonomous-in short, irreducible-phenomenon? By the same token, is not all irreducible possibility decidedly jeopardized?
"The principle of all principles," through originarily giving intuition, undoubtedly frees the phenomena from the duty of rendering a sufficient reason for their appearance. But it thinks that givenness itself only on the basis of two determinations that threaten its originary character-the horizon and the reduction. Phenomenology would thus condemn itself to missing almost immediately what the giving intuition nevertheless indicates to it as its own goal: to free the possibility of appearing [I'apparaitre] as such. We should stress that it is obviously not a question here of envisaging a phenomenology without any "I" or horizon, for clearly, it would then be phenomenology itself that would become impossible. On the contrary, it is a question of taking seriously the claim that, since the "principle of all principles," "higher than actuality stands possibility,"9 and of envisaging this possibility radically. Let us define it provisionally: what would occur, as concerns phenomenality, if an intuitive givenness were accomplished that was absolutely unconditioned (without the limits of a horizon) and absolutely irreducible (to a constituting "I")? Can we not envisage a type of phenomenon that would reverse the condition of a horizon (by surpassing it, instead of being inscribed within it) and that would reverse the reduction (by leading the "I" back to itself, instead of being reduced to the "I")? To declare this hypothesis impossible straightaway, without resorting to intuition, would immediately betray a phenomenological contradiction. Consequently, we will here assume the hypothesis of such a phenomenon, at least in the capacity of an imaginary variation allowing us to test a movement to the limit in the determination of any phenomenality and allowing us to experience anew what possibility means-or gives. Some limits remain, in principle, irrefutable and undoubtedly indispensable. But this does not mean that what contradicts them cannot for all that, paradoxically, be constituted as a phenomenon. Quite on the contrary, certain phenomena could by playing on the limits of phenomenality-not only appear at those limits, but appear there all the more. Within this hypothesis, the question of a phenomenology of religion would no doubt be posed in new terms, as much for religion as for phenomenology.
III
We are justified in evoking the possibility of an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon, that is, a phenomenon par excellence, only inasmuch as such a possibility truly opens itself. We therefore have to establish that this possibility cannot be reduced to an illusion of possibility, through a movement to the limit that would exceed nothing other than the conditions of possibility of phenomenality in general. In short, we have to establish that an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon, with neither delimiting horizon nor constituting "I," offers a true possibility and does not amount to "telling stories." To arrive at this guarantee, we will proceed first indirectly by examining the common definition of the phenomenon, since there is a definition as much in metaphysics according to Kant as in phenomenology according to Husserl; we will then attempt to specify whether that definition-which, moreover, subjects every phenomenon to a horizon of appearance and a constituting "I'=is justified by an opening of phenomenality, or whether it does not rather confirm its essential closure. In other words, it will be a matter of specifying the ground of the limitation that is brought upon the phenomenon by its common definition, in order to indicate exactly what possibility would, by contrast, remain open to an unconditional and irreducible acceptation of phenomenality.
All along the path of his thinking, Husserl will maintain a definition of the phenomenon that is determined by its fundamental duality: "The word 'phenomenon' is ambiguous [doppelsinnig] in virtue of the essential correlation between appearance and that which appears [Erscheinen und Erscheinenden]."' o This correlation is organized according to several different but interlinked couples-intention/intuition, signification/fulfillment, noesis/noema, etc.-and thus only better establishes the phenomenon as what appears as a correlate of appearance [apparition]. This is indeed why the highest manifestation of any phenomenon whatever, that is, the highest phenomenality possible, is achieved with the perfect adequation between these two terms: the subjective appearing [I'apparaitre subjectif] is equivalent to that which objectively appears [I'apparaissant objectif]. "And so also, eo ipso, the ideal of every fulfillment, and therefore of a significative fulfillment, is sketched for us; the intellectus is in this case the thought-intention, the intention of meaning. And the adaequatio is realized when the object meant is in the strict sense given in our intuition, and given precisely as it is thought and named. No thought-intention could fail of its fulfillment, of its last fulfillment, in fact, in so far as the fulfilling medium of intuition has itself lost all implication of unsatisfied intention."11 It is certainly important to stress the persistence here, in a territory that is nevertheless phenomenological, of the most metaphysical definition of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus. But it is even more important to stress the fact that adequation defines not only the truth, but above all "the ideal of ultimate fulfillment."l2 This limit case of perception is equivalent to what Husserl, in a Cartesian fashion, names evidence. More precisely, the objective truth is achieved subjectively through evidence, considered as the experience of the adequation made by consciousness. Now, this ideal of evidence, which is supposed to designate the maximum and the extreme of any ambition to truth, nevertheless claims, with a very strange modesty, only an "adequation," a simple equality. The paradigm of ideal equality weighs so heavily that Husserl does not hesitate to repeat it in no less than four figures: a) "the full agreement between the meant and the given as such [Ubereinstimmung zwischen Gemeintem und Gegebenem]"; b) "the idea of the absolute adequation [Adaquation]" between the ideal essence and the empirically contingent act of evidence; c) the "ideal fulfillment for an intention"; d) and finally "the truth as rightness [Rechtigheit] of our intention."13 What is surprising, however, resides not so much in this insistent repetition as in the fact that the adequation it so explicitly seeks remains nonetheless a pure and simple ideal: "The ideal of an ultimate fulfillment," "that ideally fulfilled perception," an "idea of absolute adequation as such."14 Now, how can we not understand these two terms in a Kantian manner where the ideal is the object of the idea? Consequently, since the idea remains a concept of reason such that its object can never be given through the senses, the ideal as such (as object of the idea) will never be given. 15 Thus, if adequation, which produces evidence subjectively, still constitutes an "ideal" for Husserl, we would have to conclude that it is never, or at least rarely, realized. And with it, truth is rarefied or made inaccessible. Why, therefore, does adequate evidence most often remain a limit case, or even an excluded case? Why does the equality between noesis and noema, essence and fulfillment, intention and intuition, seem inaccessible-or almost-at the very moment when it is invested with the dignity of truth? Why does Husserl compromise the return to the things themselves by modifying evidence and truth with ideality?
Answer: because the equality that Husserl maintains de jure between intuition and intention remains for him in fact untenable. Intention (almost) always (partially) lacks intuition, just as meaning [signification] almost always lacks fulfillment. In other words, intention and meaning surpass intuition and fulfillment. "A surplus in meaning [ein Uberschuss in der Bedeutung] remains, a form that finds nothing in the phenomenon itself to confirm it," because in principle "the realm of meaning is much wider than that of intuition."16 Intuition remains essentially lacking, impoverished, needy, indigent. The adequation between intention and intuition thus becomes a simple limit case, an ideal that is usually evoked by default. One could not argue against this by putting forward the fact that evidence is regularly achieved in mathematics and formal logic; for this fact, far from denying the failure of evidence, confirms it. Indeed, the ideal of adequation is realized precisely only in those domains where the intention of meaning, in order to be fulfilled in a phenomenon, requires only a pure or formal intuition (space in mathematics), or even no intuition (empty tautology in logic); mathematics and formal logic offer, precisely, only an ideal object-that is, strictly speaking, an object that does not have to give itself in order to appear; in short, a minute or zero-degree of phenomenality; evidence is adequately achieved because it requires only an impoverished or empty intuition. Adequation is realized so easily here only because it is a matter of phenomena without any (or with weak) intuitive requirements. 7 There would be good reason, moreover, to wonder about the privilege that is so often granted by theories of knowledge (from Plato to Descartes, from Kant to Husserl) to logical and mathematical phenomena: they are erected as models of all the others, while they are distinguished therefrom by their shortage of intuition, the poverty of their givenness, even the unreality of their objects. It is not self-evident that this marginal poverty could serve as a paradigm for phenomenality as a whole, nor that the certitude it ensures would be worth the phenomenological price one pays for it. Whatever the case may be, if the ideal of evidence is realized only for intuitively impoverished phenomena, when it is, on the contrary, a matter of plenary phenomena, that is, of the appearance of the "things themselves" to be given intuitively, adequation becomes an ideal in the strict sense; that is, an event not (entirely) given, due to a (minimally, partial) failure of intuition. The equality required by right between intuition and intention is lacking-for lack of intuition. The senses deceive, not at all through a provisional or accidental deception, but through an inescapable weakness: even an indefinite sum of intuited outlines will never fill intention with the least real object. When it is a question of a thing, the intentional object always exceeds its intuitive givenness. Its presence remains to be completed by appresentation. 18 What keeps phenomenology from allowing phenomena to appear without reserve, therefore, is, to begin with, the fundamental deficit of intuition that it ascribes to them-with neither recourse nor appeal. But the phenomenological "breakthrough" postulates this shortage of intuition only as a result of metaphysical decisions-in short, Husserl here suffers the consequences of decisions made by Kant.
For it is Kant first who, always defining the truth by adaequatio,19 inferred therefrom the parallel between intuition and the concept, which are supposed to play a tangentially equal role in the production of objectivity. "Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. It is, therefore, just as necessary to make our concepts sensible (that is, to add the object to them in intuition), as to make our intuitions intelligible (that is, to bring them under concepts). These two powers or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing."2 In principle, the phenomenon, and therefore the real object, appears in the strict measure that the intuition and the concept not only are synthesized, but also are balanced in that synthesis. Adaequatio-and therefore the truth-would thus rest on the equality of the concept with the intuition. However, Kant himself does not hesitate to disqualify this parallelism; for, if the concept corresponds to the intuition, it nevertheless radically depends on it. Indeed, if the concept thinks, it limits itself in this way to rendering intelligible, after the fact and by derivation, what intuition for its part, principially and originarily, alone can give: "Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind. .. Through the first [receptivity] an object is given [gegeben] to us, through the second the object is thought"; "There are two conditions under which alone the knowledge of an object is possible, first, intuition, through which it is given, though only as phenomenon [nur als Erscheinung gegeben wird]; secondly, the concept, through which an object is thought corresponding to this intuition."21 To be sure, the intuition remains empty, but blindness is worth more here than vacuity: for even blinded, the intuition remains one that gives, whereas the concept, even if it alone can allow to be seen what would first be given to it, remains as such perfectly empty, and therefore just as well incapable of seeing anything at all. Intuition without the concept, even though still blind, nevertheless already gives matter to an object; whereas the concept without intuition, although not blind, nevertheless no longer sees anything, since nothing has yet been given to it to be seen. In the realm of the phenomenon, the concept is not king, but rather intuition: before an object is seen and in order to be seen, its appearance must be given; even if it does not see what it gives, intuition alone enjoys the privilege of giving: "the object cannot be given to a concept otherwise than in intuition [nicht anders gegeben werden, als in der Anschauung]"; for "the category is a simple function of thought, through which no object is given to me, and by which alone what can be given in intuition is thought [nur was in der Anschauunggegeben werden mag]"; or again: "intuitions in general, through which objects can be given to us [uns Gegenstande gegeben werden konnen], constitute the field, the whole object, of possible experience."22 Thus, intuition does not offer a simple parallel or complement to the concept; it ensures the concept's condition of possibility-its possibility itself: "intuitions in general, through which objects can be given to us [gegeben werden konnen], constitute the field or whole object of possible experience [moglicher Erfahrung]."22 The phenomenon is thought through the concept; but in order to be thought, it must first be given; and it is given only through intuition. The intuitive mise en scene conditions conceptual objectivation. Inasmuch as alone and anteriorly giving, intuition breaks in its own favor its parallelism with the concept. Henceforth, the scope of intuition establishes that of phenomenal givenness. Phenomenality is indexed according to intuition.
Now, through a stunning tactical reversal, Kant stresses this privilege of intuition only in order better to stigmatize its weakness. For if intuition alone gives objects, there falls to human finitude only an intuition that is itself equally finite, in this case sensible. Consequently, all the eventual objects that would necessitate an intellectual intuition are excluded from the possibility of appearing. Phenomenality remains limited by the defect of what renders it partially possible-intuition. What gives (intuition inasmuch as sensible) is but of a piece with what is lacking (intuition inasmuch as intellectual). Intuition determines phenomenality as much by what it refuses to it as by what it gives to it. "Thought is the act which relates given intuition [gegebene Anschauung] to an object. If the mode of this intuition is not in any way given [auf keinerlei Weise gegeben], then the object is merely transcendental and the concept of understanding has only transcendental employment."23 To think is more than to know the objects given by (sensible) intuition; it is to think all those objects that no (intellectual) intuition will ever give, to measure the immense cenotaph of phenomena that never appeared and never will appear, in short to presume intuition's absence from possible phenomena. For intuition, which alone gives, essentially lacks. What gives is lacking. A paradox follows: henceforth, the more phenomena give themselves in sensibility, the more also grows the silent number of all the phenomena that cannot and need not claim to give themselves in sensibility. The more intuition gives according to the sensible, the more evident becomes its failure to let what is possibly phenomenal appear-a phenomenality that is henceforth held as impossible. The limitation of intuition to the sensible indirectly shows, as much as the directly given phenomena, the shadow of all those that it cannot let appear. The finitude of intuition is attested to with the permanence-which Kant admits is "necessary"of the idea. The idea, even though, or rather because it is a "rational concept to which no corresponding object can be given in the senses [in den Sinnen]," remains nevertheless visable24 if not visible in all the sensible appearances from which it is excluded. "Absent from every bouquet," the flower of thought, according to the "glory of long desire,"25 calls for sensible flowers and survives them; likewise the idea, in letting itself be aimed at outside the conditions established for phenomenality, marks that much more the limits thereof. In the quasi phantom-like mode of a non-object, the idea attests to the limits of an intuition that was not able to give the idea. It is therefore by not being sensible that the idea proves the failure of sensible intuition-in it and in general.
The phenomenon is characterized by its lack of intuition, which gives it only by limiting it. Kant confirms that intuition is operative only under the rule of limitation, of lack and of necessity, in short of nothingness [neant], by undertaking to define reciprocally the four senses of nothingness starting from intuition. Everything happens as if it were with intuition first, and with intuition considered as essentially lacking, failing, and limited, that nothingness in all its dimensions could be defined. The list of the four senses of nothingness amounts in effect to a review of four modes of intuition's failure. ) Nothingness can be taken as ens rationis. This is defined as "the object of a concept to which there corresponds no intuition that might be given [keine anzugebende Anschauung]." Intuition first produces nothingness in being unable to give any intuition corresponding to a being of reason; its limitation to the sensible finally induces a first nothingness. 2) Nothingness can be taken as nihil privativum. This is defined as "the concept of the lack of an object," that is, as a double lack of intuition; first as a concept, and therefore as what by definition lacks intuition; and then as the concept representing the very lack of intuition, which alone gives an object; a double lack of intuition produces a second nothingness. 3) Nothingness can be taken as nihil imaginativum. This sense is paradoxically significant: in principle, imagined nothingness would have to distance itself from nothingness, since here a minimum of intuition (precisely, the imagined) would have to give a minimum of being. But Kant does not grant even this positivity to the intuition, admitting only a "simple form of intuition" and reducing it to an "empty intuition." It should be noted that "empty" elsewhere returns to the concept, and that intuition does not even have any more right here to its "blind" solitude-since it is true that here the form of intuition is likened to the empty form of the concept. The form of intuition is reduced to a third nothingness. 4) Finally, nothingness can be taken as nihil negativum. As an "empty object without concept," it would seem to be defined by the failure in it of the concept and not of intuition; likewise, as "the object of a concept that contradicts itself," it would seem to admit of a purely logical explanation, and not an intuitive one. But, strangely, such is not the case, since Kant puts forward an example-a twosided rectilinear figure-which can be conceived only in space, and therefore in intuition. Moreover, as he specified earlier, "there is no contradiction in the concept of a figure that is enclosed between two straight lines, since the concepts of two figures and of their meeting contain no negation of a figure; the impossibility does not arise from the concept in itself, but in connection with its construction in space."26 The concept is lacking because the object contradicts itself; but this contradiction is not logical; it results from the contradiction of the conditions of experience-here from the requirements of construction in space; it is therefore a matter of a contradiction according to intuition, and thus according to the finitude of that intuition.-Nothingness is expressed in many ways, as is Being elsewhere, but that polysemy is organized entirely on the basis of different absences of finite and sensible intuition. Intuition's failure characterizes it fairly essentially, so that nothingness might itself be inflected in its voids.
We were asking: how is the phenomenon defined when phenomenology and metaphysics delimit it within a horizon and according to an "I"? Its definition as conditioned and reducible is well accomplished through a de-finition: the phenomena are given by an intuition, but that intuition remains finite, either as sensible (Kant), or as most often lacking or ideal (Husserl). Phenomena suffer from a deficit of intuition, and thus from a shortage of givenness. This radical lack has nothing accidental about it, but results from a phenomenological necessity. In order that any phenomenon might be inscribed within a horizon (and there find its condition of possibility), it is necessary that that horizon be delimited (it is its definition), and therefore that the phenomenon remain finite. In order for a phenomenon to be reduced to an obviously finite "I" who constitutes it, the phenomenon must be reduced to the status of finite objectivity. In both cases, the finitude of the horizon and of the "I" is indicated by the finitude of the intuition itself. The phenomena are characterized by the finitude of givenness in them, so as to be able to enter into a constituting horizon and to be led back to an "I." But, conversely, one could also conclude from this equivalence of the determinations that unconditioned and irreducible phenomena would become possible only if a non-finite intuition ensured their givenness. But can a non-finite intuition even be envisaged?
IV
The impossibility of an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon thus results directly from the determination of the phenomenon in general by the (at least potential) failure of intuition in it. Every phenomenon would appear as lacking intuition and as marked by this lack to the point of having to rely on the condition of a horizon and on the reduction towards an "I." There would be no phenomenon except that which is essentially impoverished in intuition, a phenomenon with a reduced givenness.
Having arrived at this point, we can pose the question of a strictly inverse hypothesis: in certain cases still to be defined, must we not oppose to the restricted possibility of phenomenality a phenomenality that is in the end absolutely possible? To the phenomenon that is supposed to be impoverished in intuition can we not oppose a phenomenon that is saturated with intuition? To the phenomenon that is most often characterized by a defect of intuition, and therefore by a deception of the intentional aim and, in particular instances, by the equality between intuition and intention, why would there not correspond the possibility of a phenomenon in which intuition would give more, indeed immeasurably more, than intention ever would have intended or foreseen?
This is not a matter of a gratuitous or arbitrary hypothesis. First, because in a certain way it falls to Kant-nevertheless the thinker of the intuitive shortage of the common phenomenon- to have envisaged and defined what we are calling a saturated phenomenon. There is nothing surprising in that. Indeed, if the "rational idea can never become a cognition because it contains a concept (of the supersensible) for which no adequate intuition can ever be given"-a phenomenon that is not only impoverished in, but deprived of, intuition-it nevertheless offers only one of the two faces of the idea, which is defined in general as the representation of an object according to a principle, such that it nonetheless can never become the cognition thereof. Thus to the rational idea-a representation according to the understanding-there corresponds the "aesthetic idea"-a representation according to intuition-that itself can never become a cognition, but for an opposite reason: "because it is an intuition (of the imagination) for which no adequate [adaquat] concept can ever be found."27 Inadequacy always threatens phenomenality (or better, suspends it); but it is no longer a matter of the non-adequation of the (lacking) intuition that leaves a (given) concept empty; it is a matter, conversely, of a failure of the (lacking) concept that leaves the (overabundantly given) intuition blind. Henceforth, it is the concept that is lacking, no longer intuition. Kant stresses this unambiguously: in the case of the aesthetic idea, the "representation of the imagination furnishes much to think [viel zu denken veranlasst], but to which no determinate thought, or concept, can be adequate [adaquat sein kann]." The excess of intuition over any concept also prohibits "that any language ever reach it completely and render it intelligible,"28 in short, allow an object to be seen in it. It is important to insist here particularly on this: this failure to produce the object does not result here from a shortage of givenness (as for the ideas of reason), but indeed from an excess of intuition, and thus from an excess of givenness that "furnishes much to think." There is an excess of givenness, and not simply of intuition, since, according to Kant (and, for the main part, Husserl), it is intuition that gives. Kant formulates this excess with a rare term: the aesthetic idea remains an "inexposable [inexponible] representation of the imagination." We can understand this in the following way: because it gives "much," the aesthetic idea gives more than any concept can expose; to expose here amounts to arranging (ordering) the intuitive given according to rules; the impossibility of this conceptual arrangement issues from the fact that the intuitive overabundance is no longer exposed within rules, whatever they may be, but overwhelms them; intuition is no longer exposed within the concept, but saturates it and renders it overexposed-invisible, not by lack, but by excess of light. The fact that this very excess should prohibit the aesthetic idea from organizing its intuition within the limits.of a concept, and therefore from giving a defined object to be seen, nevertheless does not disqualify it phenomenologically, since when recognized in this way for what it is, this "inexposable representation" operates according to its "free play."29 The difficulty consists simply in attempting to comprehend (and not only to repeat) what phenomenological possibility is put into operation when the excess of giving intuition thus begins to play freely.
The path to follow from here on now opens more clearly before us. We must develop as far as possible the uncommon phenomenological possibility glimpsed by Kant himself. In other words, we must attempt to describe the characteristics of a phenomenon that, contrary to most phenomena which are impoverished in intuition and defined by the ideal adequation of intuition to intention, would be characterized by an excess of intuition, and thus of givenness, over the intention, the concept and the aim. Such a phenomenon will doubtless no longer allow the constitution of an object, at least in the Kantian sense. But it is not self-evident that objectivity should have all the authority in fixing phenomenology's norm. The hypothesis of a phenomenon saturated with intuition can certainly be warranted by its outline in Kant, but above all it must command our attention because it designates a possibility of the phenomenon in general. And in phenomenology, the least possibility is binding.
V
We will outline the description of the saturated phenomenon following the guiding thread of the categories of the understanding established by Kant. But, in order to do justice to the excess of intuition over the concept, we will use them in a negative mode. The saturated phenomenon in fact exceeds the categories and the principles of the understanding-it will therefore be invisable according to quantity, unbearable according to quality, absolute according to relation, and incapable of being looked at [irregardable] according to modality.
First, the saturated phenomenon cannot be aimed at. This impossibility stems from its essentially unforeseeable character. To be sure, its giving intuition ensures it a quantity, but such that it cannot be foreseen. This determination is better clarified by inverting the function of the axioms of intuition. According to Kant, quantity (the magnitudes of extension) is declined through a composition of the whole on the basis of its parts; this "successive synthesis" allows one to compose the representation of the whole according to the representation of the sum of the parts; indeed, the magnitude of a quantum has the property of implying nothing more than the summation of the quanta that make it up through addition. From this homogeneity follows another property: a quantified phenomenon is "foreseen in advance [schon . . . angeschaut] as an aggregate (a sum of parts given in advance) [vorher gegebener]."30 Such a phenomenon is literally foreseen on the basis of the finite number of its parts and of the magnitude of each one among them. Now, these are precisely the properties that become impossible when a saturated phenomenon is at issue. Indeed, since the intuition that gives it is not limited, its excess can be neither divided nor put together again by virtue of a homogenous magnitude and finite parts. It could not be measured on the basis of its parts, since the saturating intuition surpasses the sum of these parts by continually adding to it. Such a phenomenon, which is always exceeded by the intuition that saturates it, would rather have to be called incommensurable, not measurable (immense), unmeasured [demesure]. This lack of measure [demesure], furthermore, does not always or initially operate through the enormity of an unlimited quantity. It is marked more often by the impossibility of applying a successive synthesis to it, a synthesis allowing one to foresee an aggregate on the basis of the sum of its parts. Since the saturated phenomenon exceeds any summation of its parts-which, moreover, often cannot be counted-we must forsake the successive synthesis in favor of what we will call an instantaneous synthesis, the representation of which precedes and goes beyond that of possible components, rather than resulting from them according to foresight.
We find a privileged example of this with amazement. According to Descartes, this passion strikes us even before we know the thing, or rather precisely because we know it only partially: "One can perceive of the object only the first side that has presented itself, and consequently one cannot acquire a more particular knowledge of it."31 The "object" delivers to us only a single "side" (we could also say Abschatung) and immediately imposes itself on us with such a force that we are overwhelmed by what shows itself, eventually to the point of fascination. And yet the "successive synthesis" was suspended as early as its first term. This, then, is because another synthesis has been achieved, a synthesis that is instantaneous and irreducible to the sum of possible parts. Any phenomenon that produces amazement imposes itself upon the gaze in the very measure (or more precisely, in the very lack of measure) that it does not result from any foreseeable summation of partial quantities. Indeed, it amazes because it arises without any common measure with the phenomena that precede it, without announcing it or explaining it-for, according to Spinoza, "nullam cum reliquis habet connexionem."32 Thus, for at least two phenomenological reasons, the saturated phenomenon may not be foreseen on the basis of the parts that would compose it through summation. First, because intuition, which continually saturates the phenomenon, prohibits distinguishing and summing up a finite number of finite parts, thus annulling any possibility of foreseeing the phenomenon. Next, because the saturated phenomenon most often imposes itself thanks to amazement, where it is precisely the non-enumeration and the non-summation of the parts, and thus the unforeseeability, that accomplish all intuitive givenness.
Secondly, the saturated phenomenon cannot be borne. According to Kant, quality (intensive magnitude) allows intuition to give a degree of reality to the object by limiting it, eventually as far as negation: every phenomenon will have to admit a degree of intuition and that is what perception can anticipate. The foresight at work in extensive magnitude is found again in intensive magnitude. Nevertheless, an essential difference separates them: foresight no longer operates in a successive synthesis of the homogeneous, but in a perception of the heterogeneous-each degree is marked by a break with the preceding one, and therefore by an absolutely singular novelty. Since he privileges the case of the impoverished phenomenon, Kant analyses this heterogeneity only on the basis of the simplest cases-the first degrees starting from zero, imperceptible perceptions, etc. But in the case of a saturated phenomenon, intuition gives reality without any limitation (or, to be sure, negation). It reaches an intensive magnitude without (common) measure, such that, starting from a certain degree, the intensity of the real intuition exceeds all the anticipations of perception. In face of that excess, perception not only can no longer anticipate what it is going to receive from intuition, but above all it can no longer bear the degree of intuition. For intuition, which is supposed to be "blind" in the realm of impoverished phenomena, proves to be, in a truly radical phenomenology, much rather blinding. The intensive magnitude of the intuition that gives the saturated phenomenon is unbearable for the gaze, just as this gaze could not foresee that intuition's extensive magnitude.
Bedazzlement characterizes what the gaze cannot bear. Not bearing does not amount to not seeing; for one must first perceive, if not see, in order to experience this incapacity to bear. It is in fact a question of something visible that our gaze cannot bear; this visible something is experienced as unbearable to the gaze because it weighs too much upon that gaze; the glory of the visible weighs, and it weighs too much. What weighs here is not unhappiness, nor pain nor lack, but indeed glory, joy, excess: "Oh/ Triumph!/ What Glory! What human heart would be strong enough to bear/ That?"33 Intuition gives too intensely for the gaze to be able truly to see what already it can no longer receive, nor even confront. This blinding indeed concerns the intensity of the intuition and it alone, as is indicated by cases of blinding in face of spectacles where the intuition remains quantitatively ordinary, even weak, but of an intensity that is out of the ordinary: Oedipus blinds himself for having seen his transgression, and therefore we have a quasi moral intensity of intuition; and He whom no one can see without dying blinds first by his holiness, even if his coming is announced in a simple breath of wind. Because the saturated phenomenon, due to the excess of intuition in it, cannot be borne by any gaze that would measure up to it ("objectively"), it is perceived ("subjectively") by the gaze only in the negative mode of an impossible perception, the mode of bedazzlement.-Plato described this perfectly in connection with the prisoner of the Cave: "let one untie him and force him suddenly to turn around [ ] . . . and to lift his gaze toward the light [npos ava , he would suffer in doing all that, and, because of the bedazzlements, he would not have the strength to see face on [8a TaS that of which previously he saw the shadows." It is indeed a question of "suffering" in seeing the full light, and of fleeing it by turning away toward "the things that one can look at [ Ka8 ]"What keeps one from seeing are precisely the "eyes filled with splendor."34 Moreover, this bedazzlement is just as valid for intelligible intuition as it is for sensible intuition. First, because the myth of the Cave, in the final analysis, concerns the epistemological obstacles to intelligibility, of which the sensible montage explicitly offers one figure; next, because the idea of the Good also and above all offers itself as "difficult to see" (dy6s ), certainly not by defect, since it presents "the most visible of beings," but indeed by excess because "the soul is incapable of seeing anything . . . saturated by an extremely brilliant bedazzlement [uro rai]"35 What in all these cases prohibits one from seeing is the sensible or intelligible light's excess of intensity.
Bedazzlement thus becomes a characteristic-universalizable to any form of intuition-of an intuitive intensity that goes beyond the degree that a gaze can sustain. This is not a question of some exceptional case, which we would merely mention as a matter of interest along with the impoverished phenomenon, itself thought to be more frequent and thus more or less normative. On the contrary, it is a question of an essential determination of the phenomenon, which is rendered almost inevitable for two reasons. 1) The Kantian description of intensive magnitudes, in other respects so original and true, nevertheless maintains a resounding silence concerning the most characteristic notion of intensive magnitude-the maximum. For even if it can undoubtedly not be defined objectively, there is always a subjective maximum, the threshold of tolerance. Bedazzlement begins when perception passes beyond its subjective maximum. The description of intensive magnitudes would necessarily and with priority have to take into consideration their highest degrees, and therefore the subjective maximum (or maximums) that the bedazzlements signal. 2) As previously with unforeseeability, so bedazzlement designates a type of intuitive givenness that is not only less rare than it would seem to a hasty examination, but above all, that is decisive for a real recognition of finitude. Finitude is experienced (and proved)36 not so much through the shortage of the given before our gaze, as above all because this gaze sometimes no longer measures the amplitude of the givenness. Or rather, measuring itself against that givenness, the gaze experiences it, sometimes in the suffering of an essential passivity, as having no measure with itself. Finitude is experienced as much through excess as through lack-indeed, more through excess than through lack.
VI
Neither visable according to quantity, nor bearable according to quality, a saturated phenomenon would be absolute according to relation as well; that is, it would shy away from any analogy of experience.
Kant defines the principle of such analogies as follows: "Experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions." Now, simple apprehension by empirical intuition cannot ensure this necessary connection; on the contrary, the connection will have to produce itself at once through concepts and in time: "Since time cannot itself be perceived, the determination of the existence of objects in time can be made only through their connection in time in general, and therefore only through concepts that connect them in general." This connection connects according to three operations: inherence of accident in substance, causality between effect and cause, community between several substances. But Kant establishes them only by bringing three presuppositions into play. It is thus the possible questioning of these that will again define the saturated phenomenon.
First presupposition: in all occurrences, a phenomenon can manifest itself only by respecting the unity of experience, that is, by taking place in the tightest possible network of ties of inherence, the tightest possible network of ties of inherence, causality and community, which assign to the phenomenon, in a hollow, so to speak, a site and a function. It is a matter here ofa strict obligation: "This entire manifold must be unified [vereinigt werden soll]," "An analogy of experience is, therefore, only a rule according to which the unity of experience must arise from perceptions [entspringen soll]."37 For Kant, a phenomenon appears, therefore, only in a site that is predefined by a system of coordinates, a system that is itself governed by the principle of the unity of experience. Now it is here that another question creeps in: must every phenomenon without exception respect the unity of experience? Can one legitimately rule out the possibility that a phenomenon might impose itself on perception without one, for all that, being able to assign to it either a substance in which to dwell as an accident, or a cause from which it results as an effect, or even less an interactive commercium in which to be relativized? Further, it is not self-evident that the phenomena that really arise-as opposed to the phenomena that are impoverished in intuition, or even deprived entirely of intuition-can right from the first and most often be perceived according to such analogies of perception; it could be, quite the reverse, that they occur without being inscribed, at least at first, in the relational network that ensures experience its unity, and that they matter precisely because one cannot assign them any substratum, any cause, or any communion. To be sure, after a bit of analysis, most can be led back, at least approximately, to the analogies of perception. But those, not at all so rare, that do not lend themselves to this henceforth assume the character and the dignity of an event-that is, an event or a phenomenon that is unforeseeable (on the basis of the past), not exhaustively comprehensible (on the basis of the present), nor reproducible (on the basis of the future); in short, absolute, unique, occurring. We will thus call it a pure event. We are here taking that which has the character of event in its individual dimension as much as its collective dimension. Consequently, the analogies of experience can concern only a fringe of phenomenality-the phenomenality typical of the objects constituted by the sciences, a phenomenality that is impoverished in intuition, foreseeable, exhaustively. knowable, reproducible-while other layers-and historical phenomena first of all-would be excepted.
The second presupposition concerns the very elaboration of the procedure that allows one to ensure the (at once temporal and conceptual) necessity and thus the unity of experience. Kant presupposes that this unity must always be achieved through recourse to an analogy. For "all the empirical determinations of time must [mussen] stand under the rules of the general determination of time, and the analogies of experience . . . must [mussen] be rules of this kind." In short, it is up to the analogies of experience and to them alone actually to exercise the regulation of experience by necessity, and thus to ensure its unity. Now, at the precise moment of defining these analogies, Kant himself recognizes the fragility of their phenomenological power: indeed, in mathematics, analogy remains quantitative, such that through calculation it gives itself the fourth term and truly constructs it; in this way the equality of the two relations of magnitude is "always constitutive" of the object and actually maintains it in a unified experience. But, Kant specifies, "in philosophy, on the contrary, analogy is not the equality of two quantitative relations but of two qualitative relations; and from three given members we can obtain a priori knowledge only of the relation to a fourth, not of the fourth member itself. . . . An analogy of experience therefore will be a rule according to which the unity of experience. . . must arise from [entspringen soil] perceptions, and it will be valid as the principle of objects (phenomena) in a manner that is not constitutive but only regulative."38 To put it plainly, when it is a question of what we have called impoverished phenomena (here mathematical), intuition (here, the pure intuition of space) is not such that it could saturate the phenomenon and contradict in it the unity and the pre-established necessity of experience; in this case, the analogy remains quantitative and constitutive. In short, there is analogy of experience provided that the phenomenon remains impoverished. But as soon as the simple movement to physics (not even to speak of a saturated phenomenon) occurs, analogy can no longer regulate anything, except qualitatively: if A is the cause of effect B, then D will be in the position (quality) of effect with respect to C, without it being possible to identify what D is or will be, and without it being possible to construct it (by lack of pure intuition) or to constitute it. Kant's predicament culminates with the strange employment, within the analytic of principles, of principles whose usage remains purely "regulative"-which can be understood in only one sense: the analogies of experience do not really constitute their objects, but express subjective needs of the understanding.
Let us suppose, for the moment, that the analogies of perception, thus reduced to a simple regulative usage, must treat a saturated phenomenon: the latter already exceeds the categories of quantity (unforeseeable) and quality (unbearable); it gives itself already as a pure event. Consequently, how could an analogy--especially one that is simply regulative-assign to the phenomenon-especially necessarily and a priori-a point whose coordinates would be established by the relations of inherence, causality, and community? This phenomenon would escape all relations because it would not maintain any common measure with these terms; it would be freed from them, as from any a priori determination of experience that would eventually claim to impose itself on the phenomenon. In this we will speak of an absolute phenomenon: untied from any analogy with any object of experience whatsoever.
This being the case, the third Kantian presupposition becomes questionable. The unity of experience is developed on the basis of time, since it is a matter of"the synthetic unity of all phenomena according to their relation in time."39 Thus, Kant posits the first to do so no doub-not only time as the ultimate horizon of phenomena, but moreover that no appearance can dawn without a horizon that receives it and that it rejects at the same time. This signifies that before any phenomenal breakthrough toward visibility, the horizon first awaited in advance. And it signifies that every phenomenon, in appearing, is in fact limited to actualizing a portion of the horizon, which otherwise would remain transparent. A current question concerns the identity of this horizon (time, Being, the good, etc.). This should not, however, mask another question that is simpler, albeit harder: could certain phenomena exceed every horizon? We should specify that it is not a matter of dispensing with a horizon in general-which would undoubtedly prohibit all manifestation but of freeing oneself from the delimiting anteriority proper to every horizon, an anteriority that is such as to be unable not to enter into conflict with a phenomenon's claim to absoluteness. Let us assume a saturated phenomenon that has just gained its absolute character by freeing itself from the analogies with experience-what horizon can it recognize? On the one hand, the excess of intuition saturates this phenomenon so as to make it exceed the frame of ordinary experience. On the other hand, a horizon, by its very definition, defines and is defined; through its movement to the limit, the saturated phenomenon can manage to saturate its horizon. There is nothing strange about this hypothesis-even in strict philosophy where, with Spinoza, for example, the unique substance, absorbing all the determinations and all the individuals corresponding thereto, manages to overwhelm with its infinitely saturated presence (infinitis attributis infinitis modis) the horizon of Cartesian metaphysics, by leaving therein no more free space for the finite (absolute and universal necessity). Such saturation of a horizon by a single saturated phenomenon presents a danger that could not be overestimated, since it is born from the experience-and from the absolutely real, in no way illusory, experience-of totality, with neither door nor window, with neither other [autre] nor others [autrui]. But this danger results less from the saturated phenomenon itself than, strangely, from the misapprehension of it. Indeed, when it arises, it is most often treated as if it were only a common law phenomenon or a impoverished phenomenon. In fact, the saturated phenomenon maintains its absoluteness and, at the same time, dissolves its danger, when one recognizes it without confusing it with other phenomena, and therefore when one allows it to operate on several horizons at once. Since there are spaces with n+l dimensions (whose properties saturate the imagination), there are phenomena with n+l horizons. One of the best examples of such an arrangement is furnished by the doctrine of the transcendentals: the irreducible plurality of ens, verum, bonum, and pulchrum allows one to decline the saturated phenomenon from the first Principle in perfectly autonomous registers, where it gives itself to be seen, each time, only according to one perspective, which is total as well as partial; their convertibility indicates that the saturation persists, but that it is distributed within several concurrent horizons. Or rather the saturation increases because each perspective, already saturated in itself, is blurred a second time by the interferences in it of other saturated perspectives.40 The plurality of horizons therefore allows as much that one might respect the absoluteness of the saturated phenomenon (which no horizon could delimit or precede), as that one might render it tolerable through a multiplication of the dimensions of its reception.
There remains nevertheless one last thinkable, although extreme, relation between the saturated phenomenon and its horizon(s): that no horizon nor any combination of horizons tolerate the absoluteness of the phenomenon precisely because it gives itself as absolute; that is, as free from any analogy with common law phenomena and from any predetermination by a network of relations, with neither precedent nor antecedent within the already seen (the foreseen). In short, a phenomenon saturated to the point that the world could not accept it. Having come among its own, they did not recognize it-having come into phenomenality, the absolutely saturated phenomenon could find no room there for its display. But this opening denial, and thus this disfiguration, still remains a manifestation.
Thus, in giving itself absolutely, the saturated phenomenon gives itself also as absolute-free from any analogy with the experience that is already seen, objectivized, and comprehended. It frees itself therefrom because it depends on no horizon. On the contrary, the saturated phenomenon either simply saturates the horizon, or it multiplies the horizon in order to saturate it that much more, or it exceeds the horizon and finds itself cast out from it. But this very disfiguration remains a manifestation. In every case, it does not depend on that condition of possibility par excellence-a horizon, whatever it may be. We will therefore call this phenomenon unconditioned.
VII
Neither visable according to quantity, nor bearable according to quality, absolute according to relation-that is, unconditioned by the horizon-the saturated phenomenon finally gives itself as incapable of being looked at according to modality.
The categories of modality are distinguished from all the others, Kant insists, in that they .determine neither the objects themselves, nor their mutual relations, but simply "their relation to thought in general," in that they "express only the relation to the power of knowing ," "nothing other than the action of the power of knowing."41 In fact, between the objects of experience and the power of knowing, it is not only a question of a simple relation, but of the fact that they "agree." This agreement determines the possibility of phenomena to be (and therefore also their actuality and necessity) in the measure of their suitability to the "I" for and through whom the experience takes place. "The postulate of the possibility of things requires [fordert] therefore that their concept agree [zusammenstimme] with the formal conditions of an experience in general."42 The phenomenon is possible in the strict measure that it agrees with the formal conditions of experience, thus with the power of knowing that fixes its attention on them, and therefore finally with the transcendental "I" itself. The possibility of the phenomenon depends on its reduction to the "1."
This being the case, we can envisage a reversal of Kant's assertion and ask: what would occur phenomenologically if a phenomenon.did not "agree" with or "correspond" to the power of knowing of the "I"? The Kantian answer leaves hardly any doubt: this phenomenon quite simply would not appear; or better, there would not be any phenomenon at all, but an object-less perceptive aberration. If this answer remains meaningful for an impoverished or common law phenomenon, does it still hold for a saturated phenomenon? In fact, the situation in this case becomes much different. In face of saturation, the "I" most certainly experiences the disagreement between the at least potential phenomenon and the subjective conditions of its experience; consequently, the "I" cannot constitute an object therein. But this failure to objectivize in no way implies that absolutely nothing appears here: intuitive saturation, precisely inasmuch as it is invisible, intolerable, and absolute (unconditioned), imposes itself in the capacity of a phenomenon that is exceptional by excess, not by defect. The saturated phenomenon refuses to let itself be looked at as an object, precisely because it appears with a multiple and indescribable excess that suspends any effort at constitution. To define the saturated phenomenon as a non-objective or, more exactly, non-objectivizable object, in no way indicates a refuge in the irrational or the arbitrary; this definition refers to one of its distinctive properties: although exemplarily visible, it nevertheless cannot be looked at. We here take "to look at"-regarder-literally: re-garder exactly reproduces in-tueri and must therefore be understood on the basis of tueri, garder but in the sense of "to keep an eye on. . .," "to keep half an eye on. . .," "to have (to keep) in sight. . ." Regarder therefore implies being able to keep the visible that is seen under the control of the one who is seeing and, consequently, a voyeur. And it is certainly not by chance that Descartes entrusts the intuitus with maintaining in evidence what the ego reduces to the status of objectum. To define the saturated phenomenon as incapable of being looked at [irregardable] amounts to envisaging the possibility where a phenomenon would impose itself with such a surfeit of intuition that it could neither be reduced to the conditions of experience, and thus to the "I" who sets them, nor, all the same, forgo appearing.
Under what figure would it appear then? It appears in spite of and in disagreement with the conditions of possibility of experience-by imposing an impossible experience (if not already an experience of the impossible). Of the saturated phenomenon there would be only a counter-experience. Confronted with the saturated phenomenon, the "I" cannot not see it, but neither can it look at it as its object. It has the eye to see it, but not to look after it [pour le garder]. What, then, does this eye without a look [cet oeil sans regard] actually see? It sees the overabundance of intuitive givenness, not, however, as such, but as blurred by the overly short lens, the overly restricted aperture, the overly narrow frame that receives it--or rather, that no longer accommodates it. The eye apperceives not so much the appearance of the saturated phenomenon as the blur, the fog, and the overexposure that it imposes on its normal conditions of experience. The eye sees not so much another spectacle as its own naked impotence to constitute anything at all. It sees nothing distinctly, but clearly experiences its impotence before the unmeasuredness of the visible, and thus above all a perturbation of the visible, the noise of a poorly received message, the obfuscation of finitude. Through sight, it receives a pure givenness, precisely because it no longer discerns any objectivizable given therein.
Let us call this phenomenological extremity a paradox. The paradox not only suspends the phenomenon's relation of subjection to the "l," it inverts that relation. Far from being able to constitute this phenomenon, the "I" experiences itself as constituted by it. It is constituted and no longer constituting because it no longer has at its disposal any dominant point of view over the intuition that overwhelms It; in space, the saturated phenomenon engulfs it with its intuitive flood; in time, it precedes it through an interpellation that is always already there. The "I" loses its anteriority and finds itself, so to speak, deprived [destitue] of the duties of constitution, and thus itself constituted: a "me" rather than an "I." It is clear that on the basis of the saturated phenomenon we meet here with what we have thematized elsewhere under the name of the subject on its last appeal the interloque.43 When the "I" finds itself, instead of the constituting "I" that it remained in face of common law phenomena, constituted by a saturated phenomenon, it can identify itself as such only by admitting the precedence of such a phenomenon over itself. This reversal leaves it interloque, essentially surprised by the more original event that detaches it from itself.
Thus, the phenomenon is no longer reduced to the "I" that would look at it. Incapable of being looked at, it proves irreducible. There is no drift or turn here, even "theological," but, on the contrary, an accounting for the fact that in certain cases of givenness the excess of intuition may no longer satisfy the conditions of ordinary experience; and that the pure event that occurs cannot be constituted as an object and leaves the durable trace of its opening only in the "I/me" that finds itself, almost in spite of itself, constituted by what it receives. The constituting subject is succeeded by the constituted witness. As a constituted witness, the subject remains the worker of truth, but no longer its producer.
VIII
In order to introduce the concept of the saturated phenomenon into phenomenology, we have just described it as invisable (unforeseeable) according to quantity, unbearable according to quality, but also unconditioned (absolved from any horizon) according to relation, and irreducible to the "I" (incapable of being looked at) according to modality. These four characteristics imply the term for term reversal of all the rubrics under which Kant classifies the principles and thus the phenomena that these determine. However, in relation to Husserl, these new characteristics are organized in a more complex way; the first two-the invisable and the unbearable-offer no difficulty de jure for the "principle of all principles," for what intuition gives can quantitatively and qualitatively exceed the scope of the gaze; it is sufficient that intuition actually give it. The case is not the same for the last two characteristics: the "principle of all principles" presupposes the horizon and the constituting "I" as two unquestioned presuppositions of anything that would be constituted in general as a phenomenon; but the saturated phenomenon, inasmuch as it is unconditioned by a horizon and irreducible to an "I," makes a claim to a possibility that is freed from these two conditions; it therefore contradicts and exceeds the "principle of all principles." Husserl, who nonetheless surpassed the Kantian metaphysics of the phenomenon, must himself be surpassed in order to reach the possibility of the saturated phenomenon. Even and especially with the "principle of all principles," Husserl maintains a twofold reserve toward possibility. Nevertheless, this reserve of Husserl toward possibility can prove to be a reserve of phenomenology itself-which still maintains a reserve of possibility, in order itself to be surpassed toward a possibility without reserve. Because it gives itself without condition or restraint, the saturated phenomenon offers the paradigm of the phenomenon without reserve. Thus, in the guiding thread of the saturated phenomenon, phenomenology finds its ultimate possibility: not only the possibility that surpasses actuality, but the possibility that surpasses the very conditions of possibility, the possibility of unconditioned possibility-in other words, the possibility of the impossible, the saturated phenomenon.
The saturated phenomenon must not be understood as a limit case, an exceptional, vaguely irrational-in short, a "mystical" case of phenomenality. It indicates on the contrary the coherent and conceptual completion of the most operative definition of the phenomenon: it alone truly appears as itself, of itself and starting from itself,44 since it alone appears without the limits of a horizon and without the reduction to an "I." We will therefore call this appearance that is purely of itself and starting from itself, this phenomenon that does not subject its possibility to any preliminary determination, a revelation. And-we insist on this here it is purely and simply a matter of the phenomenon taken in its fullest meaning.
Moreover, the history of philosophy has a long-standing knowledge of such saturated phenomena. One could go so far as to maintain that none of the decisive metaphysicians has avoided the description of one or more saturated phenomena, even at the price of a head-on contradiction of his own presuppositions. Among many fairly obvious examples, let us simply call to mind Descartes and Kant.
a) Descartes, who everywhere else reduces the phenomenon to the idea and the idea to the object, nevertheless thinks the idea of infinity as a saturated phenomenon. According to quantity, the idea of infinity is not obtained by summation or successive synthesis, but tota simul; thus, the gaze (intueri) becomes the surprise of admiration (admirari).45 According to quality, it admits no finite degree, but a maximum: maxime clara et distincta, maxime vera.46 According to relation, it maintains no analogy with any idea at all: nihil univoce; indeed, it exceeds every horizon since it remains incomprehensible, capable only of being touched by thought: attingam quomodolibet cogitatione. According to modality, far from letting itself be led back to a constituting "l," it comprehends the "I" without letting itself be comprehended by it: non tam capere quam a ipsa capi,48 such that perhaps even the ego could also be interpreted at times as one who is called [un interpelle]. But furthermore, would it not suffice to translate "idea of infinity" word for word by "saturated phenomenon" in order to establish our conclusion?
b) Kant furnishes an example of the saturated phenomenon that is all the more significant insofar as it does not concern, as does Descartes', rational theology; in fact, it is a question of the sublime. We relied above on the "aesthetic idea" to challenge the principle of the shortage of intuition and to introduce the possibility of a saturation. In fact, already with the doctrine of the sublime we are dealing with a saturated phenomenon. Indeed, according to quantity, the sublime has neither form nor order, since it is great "beyond all comparison," absolutely and not comparatively (absolute, schlechthin, bloss).49 According to quality, it contradicts taste as a "negative pleasure" and it provokes a "feeling of inadequacy," a feeling of "monstrosity."50 According to relation, it very clearly escapes any analogy and any horizon since it literally represents "unlimitedness" (Unbegrenzheit).51 According to modality, finally, far from agreeing with our power of knowing, "it can seem [erscheinen mag] in its form to contradict the purpose [zweckwidrig] of our faculty of judgment"; the relation of our faculty of judgment to the phenomenon is therefore reversed, to the point that it is the phenomenon that hereafter "looks at" the "I" "in respect."52 The Kantian sublime would thus permit us to widen the field of application for the concept of the saturated phenomenon.
From here on, we can recapitulate. Phenomena can be classified, according to their increasing intuitive content, in three fundamental domains. a) The phenomena that are deprived of intuition or impoverished in intuitions: formal languages (endowed with categorial intuition by Husserl), mathematical idealities (whose pure intuition is established by Kant). b) The common law phenomena, whose signification (aimed at by intention) can ideally receive an adequate intuitive fulfillment, but that, right at the start and most of the time, do not reach such fulfillment. In these first two domains, the constitution of objects is rendered possible precisely because the shortage of intuition authorizes comprehension, foresight, and reproduction. c) There remain, finally, the saturated phenomena, which an excess of intuition shields from objective constitution. Conveniently, we can distinguish two types. ) First, pure historical events: by definition non-repeatable, they occur most often without having been foreseen; since through a surfeit of intuitive given they escape objectivation, their intelligibility excludes comprehension and demands that one move on to hermeneutics;53 intuitive saturation surpasses a single horizon and imposes multiple hermeneutics within several horizons; finally, the pure historical event not only occurs to its witness without the latter comprehending it (the non-constituting "I"), but itself, in return, comprehends the "I" (the constituted "I"): the "I" is comprehended on the basis of the event that occurs to it in the very measure that the "I" itself does not comprehend the event. Pure events offer a type of saturated phenomenon that is historical and thus communal and in principle communicable. 2) Such is not always the case for the second type, the phenomena of revelation. Let me repeat that by revelation I here intend a strictly phenomenological concept: an appearance that is purely of itself and starting from itself, which does not subject its possibility to any preliminary determination. Such revealed phenomena occur principally in three domains. First the picture as a spectacle that, due to excess of intuition, cannot be constituted but still can be looked at (the idol). Next, a particular face that I love, which has become invisible not only because it dazzles me, but above all because in it I want to look and can look only at its invisible gaze weighing on mine (the icon). Finally, theophany, where the surfeit of intuition leads to the paradox that an invisible gaze visibly envisages me and loves me. And it is here that the question of the possibility of a phenomenology of religion would be posed in terms that are not new (for it is only a matter of pushing the phenomenological intention to its end), but simple.
In every case, recognizing the saturated phenomena comes down to thinking seriously aliquid quo majus cogitari nequit-seriously, which means as a final possibility of phenomenology.54 ,55
The saturated phenomenonWhat comes into the world without troubling merits neither consideration nor patience. Rene Char I
The field of religion could simply be defined as what philosophy excludes or, in the best case, subjugates. Such a constant antagonism cannot be reduced to any given ideological opposition or any given anecdotal prejudice. In fact, it rests upon perfectly reasonable ground: the "philosophy of religion," if there were one, would have to describe, produce, and constitute phenomena, it would then find itself confronted with a disastrous alternative: either it would be a question of phenomena that are objectively definable but lose their religious specificity, or it would be a question of phenomena that are specifically religious but cannot be described objectively. A phenomenon that is religious in the strict sense-belonging to the domain of a "philosophy of religion" distinct from the sociology, the history, and the psychology of religion-would have to render visible what nevertheless could not be objectivized. The religious phenomenon thus amounts to an impossible phenomenon, or at least it marks the limit starting from which the phenomenon is in general no longer possible. Thus, the religious phenomenon poses the question of the general possibility of the phenomenon, more than of the possibility of religion.
Once this boundary is acknowledged, there nevertheless remain several ways of understanding it. Religion could not strike the possibility of the phenomenon in general with impossibility if the very possibility of the phenomenon were not defined: when does it become impossible to speak of a phenomenon, and according to what criteria of phenomenality? But the possibility of the phenomenon-and therefore the possibility of declaring a phenomenon impossible, that is, invisible--could not in its turn be determined without also establishing the terms of possibility taken in itself. By subjecting the phenomenon to the jurisdiction of possibility, philosophy in fact brings fully to light its own definition of bare possibility. The question concerning the possibility of the phenomenon implies the question of the phenomenon of possibility. Or better, when the rational scope of a philosophy is measured according to the extent of what it renders possible, that scope will be measured also according to the extent of what it renders visible-according to the possibility of phenomenality in it. According to whether it is accepted or rejected, the religious phenomenon would thus become a privileged index of the possibility of phenomenality.
To start out, I will rely on Kant. In Kant, the metaphysical definition of possibility is stated as follows: "That which agrees with the formal conditions of experience, that is, with the conditions of intuition and of concepts, is possible [mit den formalen Bedingungen der Erfahrung . . . uberkommt]." What is surprising here has to do with the intimate tie Kant establishes between possibility and phenomenality: possibility results explicitly from the conditions of experience; among those conditions is intuition, which indicates that experience takes the form of a phenomenality-that experience has a form ("formal conditions") precisely because it experiences sensible forms of appearance. Here, therefore, possibility depends on phenomenality. Would it be necessary to conclude from this that the phenomenon imposes its possibility, instead of being subject to the conditions thereof? Not at all, because the possible does not agree with the object of experience but with its "formal conditions": possibility does not follow from the phenomenon, but from the conditions set for any phenomenon. A formal requirement therefore is imposed on possibility, just as Kant indicates a little bit later: "The postulate of the possibility of things requires (fordert) that the concept of things should agree with the formal conditions of an experience in general." The access of the phenomenon to its own manifestation must submit to the requirement of possibility; but possibility itself depends on the "formal conditions of experience"; how then, in the last instance, are these "formal conditions" established that determine phenomenality and possibility together? Kant indicates this indirectly, but unambiguously, by underlining straightaway that "the categories of modality. . . express only the relation of the concept to the power of knowing."i The formal conditions of knowledge are directly joined here with the power of knowing. This means that intuition and the concept determine in advance the possibility of appearing for any phenomenon. The possibility and therefore also and especially the impossibility-of a phenomenon is ordered to the measure of the "power of knowing," that is, concretely, the measure of the play of intuition and of the concept within a finite mind. Any phenomenon is possible that grants itself to the finitude of the power of knowing and its requirements.
In this way Kant merely confirms a decision already made by Leibniz. To be sure, the one thinks phenomenal possibility starting from a finite mind, while the other thinks it starting from an infinite (or indefinite) mind; but both lead to the same conditional possibility of the phenomenon. Indeed, metaphysics obeys the "Great Principle . . . which holds that nothing is done without sufficient reason, that is, that nothing happens without it being possible for the one who sufficiently knows things to give a Reason that suffices to determine why it is so and not otherwise."2 Thus, nothing "is done," nothing "happens," in short, nothing appears, without the attestation that it is "possible"; this possibility, in turn, is equivalent to the possibility of knowing the sufficient reason for such an appearance. As for Kant, for Leibniz the right to appear-the possibility of a phenomenon depends on the power of knowing that implements the sufficiency of reason, which, whatever it might be, precedes what it renders possible. As the "power of knowing" will establish the conditions of possibility, sufficient reason already suffices to render possible that which, without it, would have remained impossible. This dependence is indicated with particular clarity in the case of the sensible. To be sure, "sensible things" appear and deserve the name of"phenomena," but they owe that name to another "reason," a reason that is different from their very appearance, and that alone suffices to qualify that appearance as a phenomenon: "The truth of sensible things consisted only in the relation of the phenomena, which had to have its reason."3 When Leibniz opposes, among the beings that he recognizes as permanent (creatura permanens absoluta), full being (unum per se, ens plenum; substantia; modif catio) to the diminished being that he likens to the phenomenon (unum per aggregationem; semiens, phaenomenon), one should not commit the error of imagining that the phenomenon would be ranked as half a being or a half-being only because it would suffer from an insufficiency of reason. On the contrary, it is precisely because it enjoys a perfectly sufficient reason that the phenomenon regresses to the rank of half a being; it is precisely as "phaenomena bene fundata"4 that the phenomena admit their being grounded, and therefore conditioned by a reason that alone is sufficient and that they themselves do not suffice to ensure. If reason can ground the phenomena, this is so first because it must save them; but reason would not have to do this if one did not first admit that, left to themselves, these phenomena would be lost. For appearance actually to appear does not suffice to justify its possibility; it must still resort to reason, which-while itself not having to appear-alone renders possible the brute actuality of the appearance, because it renders the possibility of that appearance intelligible. The phenomenon attests its lack of reason when and because it receives that reason; for it appears only under condition, as a conditional phenomenon-under the condition of what does not appear. In a metaphysical system, the possibility of appearing never belongs to what appears, nor phenomenality to the phenomenon.
II
It is this aporia that phenomenology escapes all at once in opposing to the principle of sufficient reason, the "principle of all principles," and thus in surpassing conditional phenomenality through a phenomenality without condition. The "principle of all principles" posits that "every originarily giving intuition (Anschauung) is a source of right for cognition, that everything that offers itself to us originarily in 'intuition' (Intuition) is to be taken quite simply as it gives itself out to be, but also only within the limits in which it is given there."5 There can be no question here of determining the decisive importance of this principle, nor its function within the whole of the other principles of phenomenology.6 It will suffice here to underscore some of its essential traits.
According to the first essential trait, intuition no longer intervenes simply as a de facto source of the phenomenon, a source that ensures its brute actuality without yet grounding it in reason, but as a source of right, justificatory of itself. Intuition is itself attested through itself, without the background of a reason that is yet to be given. In this way the phenomenon, according to Husserl, corresponds in advance to the phenomenon according to Heidegger-that which shows itself on the basis of itself. To put it plainly: on the basis of itself as a pure and perfect appearance of itself, and not on the basis of another than itself that would not appear (a reason). Intuition is sufficient for the phenomenon to justify its right to appear, without any other reason: far from having to give a sufficient reason, it suffices for the phenomenon to give itself through intuition according to a principle of sufficient intuition. But intuition becomes sufficient only inasmuch as it operates without any background, originarily, as Husserl says; now, it operates originarily, without any presupposition, only inasmuch as it furnishes the originary data, inasmuch, therefore, as it gives itself originarily. Intuition is justified by right on the basis of itself only by making a claim to an unconditioned origin. It cannot justify this claim without going so far as to mime the sufficient reason to be rendered (reddendae rationis), that is, by rendering itself, by giving itself in person. Indeed, givenness alone indicates that the phenomenon ensures, in a single gesture, both its visibility and the full right of that visibility, both its appearance and the reason for that appearance. Nevertheless, it still remains to be verified whether the "principle of all principles" in point of fact ensures a right to appear for all phenomena, whether it indeed opens for them an absolutely unconditioned possibility-or whether it renders them possible still only under some condition. Now, it happens that the principle of giving intuition does not authorize the absolutely unconditioned appearance, and thus the freedom of the phenomenon that gives itself on the basis of itself. To be sure, this is not because intuition as such limits phenomenality, but because it remains framed, as intuition, by two conditions of possibility, conditions that themselves are not intuitive but are nevertheless assigned to every phenomenon. The second and third traits of the "principle of all principles" contradict the first one, as conditions and limits-as a condition and a limit-contradict the claim to absolute possibility opened by the giving intuition.
Let us first consider a second trait of the "principle": it justifies every phenomenon, "but also only [aber auch nur] within the limits in which" that phenomenon is given. This restriction attests to a twofold finitude of the giving instance-of intuition. First, a factual restriction: intuition admits "limits" (Schranken). These limits, in whatever way one understands them (since Husserl hardly makes them clear here), indicate that not everything is capable of being given perfectly; right away, intuition is characterized by scarcity, obeys a logic of shortage, and is stigmatized by an indelible insufficiency; we will have to ask ourselves about the motivation, the status and the presuppositions of this factual shortcoming. But-secondly-this restriction can already be authorized by a de jure limitation: any intuition, in order to give within certain factual "limits," must first be inscribed by right within the limits (Grenze) of a horizon; likewise, no intentional aim of an object, signification, or essence can operate outside of a horizon. Husserl indicates this point through an argument that is all the stronger insofar as it is paradoxical. Considering what he nevertheless names "the limitlessness [Grenzenlosigleit] that is presented by the immanent intuitions when going from an already fixed lived-experience to new lived-experiences that form its horizon, from the fixing of these livedexperiences to the fixing of their horizon; and so on," he admits that any lived-experience is continually referred to new, as yet unknown lived-experiences, and therefore to a horizon of novelties that are irreducible because continually renewed. But precisely, this irrepressible novelty of the flux of consciousness remains, by right, always comprehended within a horizon, even if these new lived-experiences are not yet given: "a lived-experience that has become an Object of an Ego's look and that therefore has the mode of being looked at, has for its horizon lived-experiences that are not looked at" (Danach hat ein Erlebnis, das zum Objekt eines Ichblickes geworden ist, also den Modus des Erblickes hat. seinen Horizont nichterblickter Erlebnisse).7 The horizon, or, according to its etymology, delimitation, exerts itself over experience even where there are only lived-experiences that are not looked at, that is, where experience has not taken place. The outside of experience is not equivalent to the experience of the outside, because the horizon in advance seizes the outside, the non-experienced, the not looked at. One cannot escape here the feeling of a fundamental ambiguity. With this horizon, is it a question of what is not looked at as not looked at, a question of the simple recognition that all lived-experience is grasped in the flux of consciousness, and is therefore oriented in advance toward other lived-experiences that are yet to arise? Or is it not rather a question of the treatment, in advance, of the non-lived-experiences that are not looked at as the subjects of a horizon, and therefore a question of the inclusion within a limit-be it that of the flux of consciousness-of anything that is not looked at, a question of the a priori inscription of the possible within a horizon? Thus we must ask whether the "principle of all principles" does not presuppose at least one condition for givenness: the very horizon of any givenness. Does not the second trait of the "principle of all principles" that of any horizon at all contradict the absoluteness of intuitive givenness?
The third trait of the "principle of all principles" has to do with the fact that intuition gives what appears only by giving it "to us." There is nothing trivial or redundant about this expression; it betrays a classic ambiguity of the Ideen: the givenness of the phenomenon on the basis of itself to an "I" can at every instant veer toward a constitution of the phenomenon through and on the basis of the "I." Even if one does not overestimate this constant threat, one must at least admit that givenness, precisely because it keeps its originary and justifying function, can give and justify nothing except before the tribunal of the "I"; transcendental or not, the phenomenological "I" remains the beneficiary, and therefore the witness and even the judge, of the given appearance; it falls to the "I" to measure what does and does not give itself intuitively, within what limits, according to what horizon, following what intention, essence and signification. Even if it shows itself on the basis of itself, the phenomenon can do so only by allowing itself to be lead back, and therefore reduced, to the "I." Moreover, the originary primacy of the "I" maintains an essential relation with the placement of any phenomenon within the limits of a horizon. Indeed, "every now of a lived-experience has a horizon of lived-experiences-which also have precisely the originary form of the `now,' and which as such produce an originary horizon [Originaritatshorizont] of the pure I, its total originary now of consciousness."8 In this way the "principle of all principles" still presupposes that all givenness must accept the "I" as its "now." The requirement of a horizon is but one with that of the reduction: in each case it is a matter of leading phenomenological givenness back to the "I.".But, that being the case, if every phenomenon is defined by its very reducibility to the "I," must we not exclude straightaway the general possibility of an absolute, autonomous-in short, irreducible-phenomenon? By the same token, is not all irreducible possibility decidedly jeopardized?
"The principle of all principles," through originarily giving intuition, undoubtedly frees the phenomena from the duty of rendering a sufficient reason for their appearance. But it thinks that givenness itself only on the basis of two determinations that threaten its originary character-the horizon and the reduction. Phenomenology would thus condemn itself to missing almost immediately what the giving intuition nevertheless indicates to it as its own goal: to free the possibility of appearing [I'apparaitre] as such. We should stress that it is obviously not a question here of envisaging a phenomenology without any "I" or horizon, for clearly, it would then be phenomenology itself that would become impossible. On the contrary, it is a question of taking seriously the claim that, since the "principle of all principles," "higher than actuality stands possibility,"9 and of envisaging this possibility radically. Let us define it provisionally: what would occur, as concerns phenomenality, if an intuitive givenness were accomplished that was absolutely unconditioned (without the limits of a horizon) and absolutely irreducible (to a constituting "I")? Can we not envisage a type of phenomenon that would reverse the condition of a horizon (by surpassing it, instead of being inscribed within it) and that would reverse the reduction (by leading the "I" back to itself, instead of being reduced to the "I")? To declare this hypothesis impossible straightaway, without resorting to intuition, would immediately betray a phenomenological contradiction. Consequently, we will here assume the hypothesis of such a phenomenon, at least in the capacity of an imaginary variation allowing us to test a movement to the limit in the determination of any phenomenality and allowing us to experience anew what possibility means-or gives. Some limits remain, in principle, irrefutable and undoubtedly indispensable. But this does not mean that what contradicts them cannot for all that, paradoxically, be constituted as a phenomenon. Quite on the contrary, certain phenomena could by playing on the limits of phenomenality-not only appear at those limits, but appear there all the more. Within this hypothesis, the question of a phenomenology of religion would no doubt be posed in new terms, as much for religion as for phenomenology.
III
We are justified in evoking the possibility of an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon, that is, a phenomenon par excellence, only inasmuch as such a possibility truly opens itself. We therefore have to establish that this possibility cannot be reduced to an illusion of possibility, through a movement to the limit that would exceed nothing other than the conditions of possibility of phenomenality in general. In short, we have to establish that an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon, with neither delimiting horizon nor constituting "I," offers a true possibility and does not amount to "telling stories." To arrive at this guarantee, we will proceed first indirectly by examining the common definition of the phenomenon, since there is a definition as much in metaphysics according to Kant as in phenomenology according to Husserl; we will then attempt to specify whether that definition-which, moreover, subjects every phenomenon to a horizon of appearance and a constituting "I'=is justified by an opening of phenomenality, or whether it does not rather confirm its essential closure. In other words, it will be a matter of specifying the ground of the limitation that is brought upon the phenomenon by its common definition, in order to indicate exactly what possibility would, by contrast, remain open to an unconditional and irreducible acceptation of phenomenality.
All along the path of his thinking, Husserl will maintain a definition of the phenomenon that is determined by its fundamental duality: "The word 'phenomenon' is ambiguous [doppelsinnig] in virtue of the essential correlation between appearance and that which appears [Erscheinen und Erscheinenden]."' o This correlation is organized according to several different but interlinked couples-intention/intuition, signification/fulfillment, noesis/noema, etc.-and thus only better establishes the phenomenon as what appears as a correlate of appearance [apparition]. This is indeed why the highest manifestation of any phenomenon whatever, that is, the highest phenomenality possible, is achieved with the perfect adequation between these two terms: the subjective appearing [I'apparaitre subjectif] is equivalent to that which objectively appears [I'apparaissant objectif]. "And so also, eo ipso, the ideal of every fulfillment, and therefore of a significative fulfillment, is sketched for us; the intellectus is in this case the thought-intention, the intention of meaning. And the adaequatio is realized when the object meant is in the strict sense given in our intuition, and given precisely as it is thought and named. No thought-intention could fail of its fulfillment, of its last fulfillment, in fact, in so far as the fulfilling medium of intuition has itself lost all implication of unsatisfied intention."11 It is certainly important to stress the persistence here, in a territory that is nevertheless phenomenological, of the most metaphysical definition of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus. But it is even more important to stress the fact that adequation defines not only the truth, but above all "the ideal of ultimate fulfillment."l2 This limit case of perception is equivalent to what Husserl, in a Cartesian fashion, names evidence. More precisely, the objective truth is achieved subjectively through evidence, considered as the experience of the adequation made by consciousness. Now, this ideal of evidence, which is supposed to designate the maximum and the extreme of any ambition to truth, nevertheless claims, with a very strange modesty, only an "adequation," a simple equality. The paradigm of ideal equality weighs so heavily that Husserl does not hesitate to repeat it in no less than four figures: a) "the full agreement between the meant and the given as such [Ubereinstimmung zwischen Gemeintem und Gegebenem]"; b) "the idea of the absolute adequation [Adaquation]" between the ideal essence and the empirically contingent act of evidence; c) the "ideal fulfillment for an intention"; d) and finally "the truth as rightness [Rechtigheit] of our intention."13 What is surprising, however, resides not so much in this insistent repetition as in the fact that the adequation it so explicitly seeks remains nonetheless a pure and simple ideal: "The ideal of an ultimate fulfillment," "that ideally fulfilled perception," an "idea of absolute adequation as such."14 Now, how can we not understand these two terms in a Kantian manner where the ideal is the object of the idea? Consequently, since the idea remains a concept of reason such that its object can never be given through the senses, the ideal as such (as object of the idea) will never be given. 15 Thus, if adequation, which produces evidence subjectively, still constitutes an "ideal" for Husserl, we would have to conclude that it is never, or at least rarely, realized. And with it, truth is rarefied or made inaccessible. Why, therefore, does adequate evidence most often remain a limit case, or even an excluded case? Why does the equality between noesis and noema, essence and fulfillment, intention and intuition, seem inaccessible-or almost-at the very moment when it is invested with the dignity of truth? Why does Husserl compromise the return to the things themselves by modifying evidence and truth with ideality?
Answer: because the equality that Husserl maintains de jure between intuition and intention remains for him in fact untenable. Intention (almost) always (partially) lacks intuition, just as meaning [signification] almost always lacks fulfillment. In other words, intention and meaning surpass intuition and fulfillment. "A surplus in meaning [ein Uberschuss in der Bedeutung] remains, a form that finds nothing in the phenomenon itself to confirm it," because in principle "the realm of meaning is much wider than that of intuition."16 Intuition remains essentially lacking, impoverished, needy, indigent. The adequation between intention and intuition thus becomes a simple limit case, an ideal that is usually evoked by default. One could not argue against this by putting forward the fact that evidence is regularly achieved in mathematics and formal logic; for this fact, far from denying the failure of evidence, confirms it. Indeed, the ideal of adequation is realized precisely only in those domains where the intention of meaning, in order to be fulfilled in a phenomenon, requires only a pure or formal intuition (space in mathematics), or even no intuition (empty tautology in logic); mathematics and formal logic offer, precisely, only an ideal object-that is, strictly speaking, an object that does not have to give itself in order to appear; in short, a minute or zero-degree of phenomenality; evidence is adequately achieved because it requires only an impoverished or empty intuition. Adequation is realized so easily here only because it is a matter of phenomena without any (or with weak) intuitive requirements. 7 There would be good reason, moreover, to wonder about the privilege that is so often granted by theories of knowledge (from Plato to Descartes, from Kant to Husserl) to logical and mathematical phenomena: they are erected as models of all the others, while they are distinguished therefrom by their shortage of intuition, the poverty of their givenness, even the unreality of their objects. It is not self-evident that this marginal poverty could serve as a paradigm for phenomenality as a whole, nor that the certitude it ensures would be worth the phenomenological price one pays for it. Whatever the case may be, if the ideal of evidence is realized only for intuitively impoverished phenomena, when it is, on the contrary, a matter of plenary phenomena, that is, of the appearance of the "things themselves" to be given intuitively, adequation becomes an ideal in the strict sense; that is, an event not (entirely) given, due to a (minimally, partial) failure of intuition. The equality required by right between intuition and intention is lacking-for lack of intuition. The senses deceive, not at all through a provisional or accidental deception, but through an inescapable weakness: even an indefinite sum of intuited outlines will never fill intention with the least real object. When it is a question of a thing, the intentional object always exceeds its intuitive givenness. Its presence remains to be completed by appresentation. 18 What keeps phenomenology from allowing phenomena to appear without reserve, therefore, is, to begin with, the fundamental deficit of intuition that it ascribes to them-with neither recourse nor appeal. But the phenomenological "breakthrough" postulates this shortage of intuition only as a result of metaphysical decisions-in short, Husserl here suffers the consequences of decisions made by Kant.
For it is Kant first who, always defining the truth by adaequatio,19 inferred therefrom the parallel between intuition and the concept, which are supposed to play a tangentially equal role in the production of objectivity. "Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. It is, therefore, just as necessary to make our concepts sensible (that is, to add the object to them in intuition), as to make our intuitions intelligible (that is, to bring them under concepts). These two powers or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing."2 In principle, the phenomenon, and therefore the real object, appears in the strict measure that the intuition and the concept not only are synthesized, but also are balanced in that synthesis. Adaequatio-and therefore the truth-would thus rest on the equality of the concept with the intuition. However, Kant himself does not hesitate to disqualify this parallelism; for, if the concept corresponds to the intuition, it nevertheless radically depends on it. Indeed, if the concept thinks, it limits itself in this way to rendering intelligible, after the fact and by derivation, what intuition for its part, principially and originarily, alone can give: "Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind. .. Through the first [receptivity] an object is given [gegeben] to us, through the second the object is thought"; "There are two conditions under which alone the knowledge of an object is possible, first, intuition, through which it is given, though only as phenomenon [nur als Erscheinung gegeben wird]; secondly, the concept, through which an object is thought corresponding to this intuition."21 To be sure, the intuition remains empty, but blindness is worth more here than vacuity: for even blinded, the intuition remains one that gives, whereas the concept, even if it alone can allow to be seen what would first be given to it, remains as such perfectly empty, and therefore just as well incapable of seeing anything at all. Intuition without the concept, even though still blind, nevertheless already gives matter to an object; whereas the concept without intuition, although not blind, nevertheless no longer sees anything, since nothing has yet been given to it to be seen. In the realm of the phenomenon, the concept is not king, but rather intuition: before an object is seen and in order to be seen, its appearance must be given; even if it does not see what it gives, intuition alone enjoys the privilege of giving: "the object cannot be given to a concept otherwise than in intuition [nicht anders gegeben werden, als in der Anschauung]"; for "the category is a simple function of thought, through which no object is given to me, and by which alone what can be given in intuition is thought [nur was in der Anschauunggegeben werden mag]"; or again: "intuitions in general, through which objects can be given to us [uns Gegenstande gegeben werden konnen], constitute the field, the whole object, of possible experience."22 Thus, intuition does not offer a simple parallel or complement to the concept; it ensures the concept's condition of possibility-its possibility itself: "intuitions in general, through which objects can be given to us [gegeben werden konnen], constitute the field or whole object of possible experience [moglicher Erfahrung]."22 The phenomenon is thought through the concept; but in order to be thought, it must first be given; and it is given only through intuition. The intuitive mise en scene conditions conceptual objectivation. Inasmuch as alone and anteriorly giving, intuition breaks in its own favor its parallelism with the concept. Henceforth, the scope of intuition establishes that of phenomenal givenness. Phenomenality is indexed according to intuition.
Now, through a stunning tactical reversal, Kant stresses this privilege of intuition only in order better to stigmatize its weakness. For if intuition alone gives objects, there falls to human finitude only an intuition that is itself equally finite, in this case sensible. Consequently, all the eventual objects that would necessitate an intellectual intuition are excluded from the possibility of appearing. Phenomenality remains limited by the defect of what renders it partially possible-intuition. What gives (intuition inasmuch as sensible) is but of a piece with what is lacking (intuition inasmuch as intellectual). Intuition determines phenomenality as much by what it refuses to it as by what it gives to it. "Thought is the act which relates given intuition [gegebene Anschauung] to an object. If the mode of this intuition is not in any way given [auf keinerlei Weise gegeben], then the object is merely transcendental and the concept of understanding has only transcendental employment."23 To think is more than to know the objects given by (sensible) intuition; it is to think all those objects that no (intellectual) intuition will ever give, to measure the immense cenotaph of phenomena that never appeared and never will appear, in short to presume intuition's absence from possible phenomena. For intuition, which alone gives, essentially lacks. What gives is lacking. A paradox follows: henceforth, the more phenomena give themselves in sensibility, the more also grows the silent number of all the phenomena that cannot and need not claim to give themselves in sensibility. The more intuition gives according to the sensible, the more evident becomes its failure to let what is possibly phenomenal appear-a phenomenality that is henceforth held as impossible. The limitation of intuition to the sensible indirectly shows, as much as the directly given phenomena, the shadow of all those that it cannot let appear. The finitude of intuition is attested to with the permanence-which Kant admits is "necessary"of the idea. The idea, even though, or rather because it is a "rational concept to which no corresponding object can be given in the senses [in den Sinnen]," remains nevertheless visable24 if not visible in all the sensible appearances from which it is excluded. "Absent from every bouquet," the flower of thought, according to the "glory of long desire,"25 calls for sensible flowers and survives them; likewise the idea, in letting itself be aimed at outside the conditions established for phenomenality, marks that much more the limits thereof. In the quasi phantom-like mode of a non-object, the idea attests to the limits of an intuition that was not able to give the idea. It is therefore by not being sensible that the idea proves the failure of sensible intuition-in it and in general.
The phenomenon is characterized by its lack of intuition, which gives it only by limiting it. Kant confirms that intuition is operative only under the rule of limitation, of lack and of necessity, in short of nothingness [neant], by undertaking to define reciprocally the four senses of nothingness starting from intuition. Everything happens as if it were with intuition first, and with intuition considered as essentially lacking, failing, and limited, that nothingness in all its dimensions could be defined. The list of the four senses of nothingness amounts in effect to a review of four modes of intuition's failure. ) Nothingness can be taken as ens rationis. This is defined as "the object of a concept to which there corresponds no intuition that might be given [keine anzugebende Anschauung]." Intuition first produces nothingness in being unable to give any intuition corresponding to a being of reason; its limitation to the sensible finally induces a first nothingness. 2) Nothingness can be taken as nihil privativum. This is defined as "the concept of the lack of an object," that is, as a double lack of intuition; first as a concept, and therefore as what by definition lacks intuition; and then as the concept representing the very lack of intuition, which alone gives an object; a double lack of intuition produces a second nothingness. 3) Nothingness can be taken as nihil imaginativum. This sense is paradoxically significant: in principle, imagined nothingness would have to distance itself from nothingness, since here a minimum of intuition (precisely, the imagined) would have to give a minimum of being. But Kant does not grant even this positivity to the intuition, admitting only a "simple form of intuition" and reducing it to an "empty intuition." It should be noted that "empty" elsewhere returns to the concept, and that intuition does not even have any more right here to its "blind" solitude-since it is true that here the form of intuition is likened to the empty form of the concept. The form of intuition is reduced to a third nothingness. 4) Finally, nothingness can be taken as nihil negativum. As an "empty object without concept," it would seem to be defined by the failure in it of the concept and not of intuition; likewise, as "the object of a concept that contradicts itself," it would seem to admit of a purely logical explanation, and not an intuitive one. But, strangely, such is not the case, since Kant puts forward an example-a twosided rectilinear figure-which can be conceived only in space, and therefore in intuition. Moreover, as he specified earlier, "there is no contradiction in the concept of a figure that is enclosed between two straight lines, since the concepts of two figures and of their meeting contain no negation of a figure; the impossibility does not arise from the concept in itself, but in connection with its construction in space."26 The concept is lacking because the object contradicts itself; but this contradiction is not logical; it results from the contradiction of the conditions of experience-here from the requirements of construction in space; it is therefore a matter of a contradiction according to intuition, and thus according to the finitude of that intuition.-Nothingness is expressed in many ways, as is Being elsewhere, but that polysemy is organized entirely on the basis of different absences of finite and sensible intuition. Intuition's failure characterizes it fairly essentially, so that nothingness might itself be inflected in its voids.
We were asking: how is the phenomenon defined when phenomenology and metaphysics delimit it within a horizon and according to an "I"? Its definition as conditioned and reducible is well accomplished through a de-finition: the phenomena are given by an intuition, but that intuition remains finite, either as sensible (Kant), or as most often lacking or ideal (Husserl). Phenomena suffer from a deficit of intuition, and thus from a shortage of givenness. This radical lack has nothing accidental about it, but results from a phenomenological necessity. In order that any phenomenon might be inscribed within a horizon (and there find its condition of possibility), it is necessary that that horizon be delimited (it is its definition), and therefore that the phenomenon remain finite. In order for a phenomenon to be reduced to an obviously finite "I" who constitutes it, the phenomenon must be reduced to the status of finite objectivity. In both cases, the finitude of the horizon and of the "I" is indicated by the finitude of the intuition itself. The phenomena are characterized by the finitude of givenness in them, so as to be able to enter into a constituting horizon and to be led back to an "I." But, conversely, one could also conclude from this equivalence of the determinations that unconditioned and irreducible phenomena would become possible only if a non-finite intuition ensured their givenness. But can a non-finite intuition even be envisaged?
IV
The impossibility of an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon thus results directly from the determination of the phenomenon in general by the (at least potential) failure of intuition in it. Every phenomenon would appear as lacking intuition and as marked by this lack to the point of having to rely on the condition of a horizon and on the reduction towards an "I." There would be no phenomenon except that which is essentially impoverished in intuition, a phenomenon with a reduced givenness.
Having arrived at this point, we can pose the question of a strictly inverse hypothesis: in certain cases still to be defined, must we not oppose to the restricted possibility of phenomenality a phenomenality that is in the end absolutely possible? To the phenomenon that is supposed to be impoverished in intuition can we not oppose a phenomenon that is saturated with intuition? To the phenomenon that is most often characterized by a defect of intuition, and therefore by a deception of the intentional aim and, in particular instances, by the equality between intuition and intention, why would there not correspond the possibility of a phenomenon in which intuition would give more, indeed immeasurably more, than intention ever would have intended or foreseen?
This is not a matter of a gratuitous or arbitrary hypothesis. First, because in a certain way it falls to Kant-nevertheless the thinker of the intuitive shortage of the common phenomenon- to have envisaged and defined what we are calling a saturated phenomenon. There is nothing surprising in that. Indeed, if the "rational idea can never become a cognition because it contains a concept (of the supersensible) for which no adequate intuition can ever be given"-a phenomenon that is not only impoverished in, but deprived of, intuition-it nevertheless offers only one of the two faces of the idea, which is defined in general as the representation of an object according to a principle, such that it nonetheless can never become the cognition thereof. Thus to the rational idea-a representation according to the understanding-there corresponds the "aesthetic idea"-a representation according to intuition-that itself can never become a cognition, but for an opposite reason: "because it is an intuition (of the imagination) for which no adequate [adaquat] concept can ever be found."27 Inadequacy always threatens phenomenality (or better, suspends it); but it is no longer a matter of the non-adequation of the (lacking) intuition that leaves a (given) concept empty; it is a matter, conversely, of a failure of the (lacking) concept that leaves the (overabundantly given) intuition blind. Henceforth, it is the concept that is lacking, no longer intuition. Kant stresses this unambiguously: in the case of the aesthetic idea, the "representation of the imagination furnishes much to think [viel zu denken veranlasst], but to which no determinate thought, or concept, can be adequate [adaquat sein kann]." The excess of intuition over any concept also prohibits "that any language ever reach it completely and render it intelligible,"28 in short, allow an object to be seen in it. It is important to insist here particularly on this: this failure to produce the object does not result here from a shortage of givenness (as for the ideas of reason), but indeed from an excess of intuition, and thus from an excess of givenness that "furnishes much to think." There is an excess of givenness, and not simply of intuition, since, according to Kant (and, for the main part, Husserl), it is intuition that gives. Kant formulates this excess with a rare term: the aesthetic idea remains an "inexposable [inexponible] representation of the imagination." We can understand this in the following way: because it gives "much," the aesthetic idea gives more than any concept can expose; to expose here amounts to arranging (ordering) the intuitive given according to rules; the impossibility of this conceptual arrangement issues from the fact that the intuitive overabundance is no longer exposed within rules, whatever they may be, but overwhelms them; intuition is no longer exposed within the concept, but saturates it and renders it overexposed-invisible, not by lack, but by excess of light. The fact that this very excess should prohibit the aesthetic idea from organizing its intuition within the limits.of a concept, and therefore from giving a defined object to be seen, nevertheless does not disqualify it phenomenologically, since when recognized in this way for what it is, this "inexposable representation" operates according to its "free play."29 The difficulty consists simply in attempting to comprehend (and not only to repeat) what phenomenological possibility is put into operation when the excess of giving intuition thus begins to play freely.
The path to follow from here on now opens more clearly before us. We must develop as far as possible the uncommon phenomenological possibility glimpsed by Kant himself. In other words, we must attempt to describe the characteristics of a phenomenon that, contrary to most phenomena which are impoverished in intuition and defined by the ideal adequation of intuition to intention, would be characterized by an excess of intuition, and thus of givenness, over the intention, the concept and the aim. Such a phenomenon will doubtless no longer allow the constitution of an object, at least in the Kantian sense. But it is not self-evident that objectivity should have all the authority in fixing phenomenology's norm. The hypothesis of a phenomenon saturated with intuition can certainly be warranted by its outline in Kant, but above all it must command our attention because it designates a possibility of the phenomenon in general. And in phenomenology, the least possibility is binding.
V
We will outline the description of the saturated phenomenon following the guiding thread of the categories of the understanding established by Kant. But, in order to do justice to the excess of intuition over the concept, we will use them in a negative mode. The saturated phenomenon in fact exceeds the categories and the principles of the understanding-it will therefore be invisable according to quantity, unbearable according to quality, absolute according to relation, and incapable of being looked at [irregardable] according to modality.
First, the saturated phenomenon cannot be aimed at. This impossibility stems from its essentially unforeseeable character. To be sure, its giving intuition ensures it a quantity, but such that it cannot be foreseen. This determination is better clarified by inverting the function of the axioms of intuition. According to Kant, quantity (the magnitudes of extension) is declined through a composition of the whole on the basis of its parts; this "successive synthesis" allows one to compose the representation of the whole according to the representation of the sum of the parts; indeed, the magnitude of a quantum has the property of implying nothing more than the summation of the quanta that make it up through addition. From this homogeneity follows another property: a quantified phenomenon is "foreseen in advance [schon . . . angeschaut] as an aggregate (a sum of parts given in advance) [vorher gegebener]."30 Such a phenomenon is literally foreseen on the basis of the finite number of its parts and of the magnitude of each one among them. Now, these are precisely the properties that become impossible when a saturated phenomenon is at issue. Indeed, since the intuition that gives it is not limited, its excess can be neither divided nor put together again by virtue of a homogenous magnitude and finite parts. It could not be measured on the basis of its parts, since the saturating intuition surpasses the sum of these parts by continually adding to it. Such a phenomenon, which is always exceeded by the intuition that saturates it, would rather have to be called incommensurable, not measurable (immense), unmeasured [demesure]. This lack of measure [demesure], furthermore, does not always or initially operate through the enormity of an unlimited quantity. It is marked more often by the impossibility of applying a successive synthesis to it, a synthesis allowing one to foresee an aggregate on the basis of the sum of its parts. Since the saturated phenomenon exceeds any summation of its parts-which, moreover, often cannot be counted-we must forsake the successive synthesis in favor of what we will call an instantaneous synthesis, the representation of which precedes and goes beyond that of possible components, rather than resulting from them according to foresight.
We find a privileged example of this with amazement. According to Descartes, this passion strikes us even before we know the thing, or rather precisely because we know it only partially: "One can perceive of the object only the first side that has presented itself, and consequently one cannot acquire a more particular knowledge of it."31 The "object" delivers to us only a single "side" (we could also say Abschatung) and immediately imposes itself on us with such a force that we are overwhelmed by what shows itself, eventually to the point of fascination. And yet the "successive synthesis" was suspended as early as its first term. This, then, is because another synthesis has been achieved, a synthesis that is instantaneous and irreducible to the sum of possible parts. Any phenomenon that produces amazement imposes itself upon the gaze in the very measure (or more precisely, in the very lack of measure) that it does not result from any foreseeable summation of partial quantities. Indeed, it amazes because it arises without any common measure with the phenomena that precede it, without announcing it or explaining it-for, according to Spinoza, "nullam cum reliquis habet connexionem."32 Thus, for at least two phenomenological reasons, the saturated phenomenon may not be foreseen on the basis of the parts that would compose it through summation. First, because intuition, which continually saturates the phenomenon, prohibits distinguishing and summing up a finite number of finite parts, thus annulling any possibility of foreseeing the phenomenon. Next, because the saturated phenomenon most often imposes itself thanks to amazement, where it is precisely the non-enumeration and the non-summation of the parts, and thus the unforeseeability, that accomplish all intuitive givenness.
Secondly, the saturated phenomenon cannot be borne. According to Kant, quality (intensive magnitude) allows intuition to give a degree of reality to the object by limiting it, eventually as far as negation: every phenomenon will have to admit a degree of intuition and that is what perception can anticipate. The foresight at work in extensive magnitude is found again in intensive magnitude. Nevertheless, an essential difference separates them: foresight no longer operates in a successive synthesis of the homogeneous, but in a perception of the heterogeneous-each degree is marked by a break with the preceding one, and therefore by an absolutely singular novelty. Since he privileges the case of the impoverished phenomenon, Kant analyses this heterogeneity only on the basis of the simplest cases-the first degrees starting from zero, imperceptible perceptions, etc. But in the case of a saturated phenomenon, intuition gives reality without any limitation (or, to be sure, negation). It reaches an intensive magnitude without (common) measure, such that, starting from a certain degree, the intensity of the real intuition exceeds all the anticipations of perception. In face of that excess, perception not only can no longer anticipate what it is going to receive from intuition, but above all it can no longer bear the degree of intuition. For intuition, which is supposed to be "blind" in the realm of impoverished phenomena, proves to be, in a truly radical phenomenology, much rather blinding. The intensive magnitude of the intuition that gives the saturated phenomenon is unbearable for the gaze, just as this gaze could not foresee that intuition's extensive magnitude.
Bedazzlement characterizes what the gaze cannot bear. Not bearing does not amount to not seeing; for one must first perceive, if not see, in order to experience this incapacity to bear. It is in fact a question of something visible that our gaze cannot bear; this visible something is experienced as unbearable to the gaze because it weighs too much upon that gaze; the glory of the visible weighs, and it weighs too much. What weighs here is not unhappiness, nor pain nor lack, but indeed glory, joy, excess: "Oh/ Triumph!/ What Glory! What human heart would be strong enough to bear/ That?"33 Intuition gives too intensely for the gaze to be able truly to see what already it can no longer receive, nor even confront. This blinding indeed concerns the intensity of the intuition and it alone, as is indicated by cases of blinding in face of spectacles where the intuition remains quantitatively ordinary, even weak, but of an intensity that is out of the ordinary: Oedipus blinds himself for having seen his transgression, and therefore we have a quasi moral intensity of intuition; and He whom no one can see without dying blinds first by his holiness, even if his coming is announced in a simple breath of wind. Because the saturated phenomenon, due to the excess of intuition in it, cannot be borne by any gaze that would measure up to it ("objectively"), it is perceived ("subjectively") by the gaze only in the negative mode of an impossible perception, the mode of bedazzlement.-Plato described this perfectly in connection with the prisoner of the Cave: "let one untie him and force him suddenly to turn around [ ] . . . and to lift his gaze toward the light [npos ava , he would suffer in doing all that, and, because of the bedazzlements, he would not have the strength to see face on [8a TaS that of which previously he saw the shadows." It is indeed a question of "suffering" in seeing the full light, and of fleeing it by turning away toward "the things that one can look at [ Ka8 ]"What keeps one from seeing are precisely the "eyes filled with splendor."34 Moreover, this bedazzlement is just as valid for intelligible intuition as it is for sensible intuition. First, because the myth of the Cave, in the final analysis, concerns the epistemological obstacles to intelligibility, of which the sensible montage explicitly offers one figure; next, because the idea of the Good also and above all offers itself as "difficult to see" (dy6s ), certainly not by defect, since it presents "the most visible of beings," but indeed by excess because "the soul is incapable of seeing anything . . . saturated by an extremely brilliant bedazzlement [uro rai]"35 What in all these cases prohibits one from seeing is the sensible or intelligible light's excess of intensity.
Bedazzlement thus becomes a characteristic-universalizable to any form of intuition-of an intuitive intensity that goes beyond the degree that a gaze can sustain. This is not a question of some exceptional case, which we would merely mention as a matter of interest along with the impoverished phenomenon, itself thought to be more frequent and thus more or less normative. On the contrary, it is a question of an essential determination of the phenomenon, which is rendered almost inevitable for two reasons. 1) The Kantian description of intensive magnitudes, in other respects so original and true, nevertheless maintains a resounding silence concerning the most characteristic notion of intensive magnitude-the maximum. For even if it can undoubtedly not be defined objectively, there is always a subjective maximum, the threshold of tolerance. Bedazzlement begins when perception passes beyond its subjective maximum. The description of intensive magnitudes would necessarily and with priority have to take into consideration their highest degrees, and therefore the subjective maximum (or maximums) that the bedazzlements signal. 2) As previously with unforeseeability, so bedazzlement designates a type of intuitive givenness that is not only less rare than it would seem to a hasty examination, but above all, that is decisive for a real recognition of finitude. Finitude is experienced (and proved)36 not so much through the shortage of the given before our gaze, as above all because this gaze sometimes no longer measures the amplitude of the givenness. Or rather, measuring itself against that givenness, the gaze experiences it, sometimes in the suffering of an essential passivity, as having no measure with itself. Finitude is experienced as much through excess as through lack-indeed, more through excess than through lack.
VI
Neither visable according to quantity, nor bearable according to quality, a saturated phenomenon would be absolute according to relation as well; that is, it would shy away from any analogy of experience.
Kant defines the principle of such analogies as follows: "Experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions." Now, simple apprehension by empirical intuition cannot ensure this necessary connection; on the contrary, the connection will have to produce itself at once through concepts and in time: "Since time cannot itself be perceived, the determination of the existence of objects in time can be made only through their connection in time in general, and therefore only through concepts that connect them in general." This connection connects according to three operations: inherence of accident in substance, causality between effect and cause, community between several substances. But Kant establishes them only by bringing three presuppositions into play. It is thus the possible questioning of these that will again define the saturated phenomenon.
First presupposition: in all occurrences, a phenomenon can manifest itself only by respecting the unity of experience, that is, by taking place in the tightest possible network of ties of inherence, the tightest possible network of ties of inherence, causality and community, which assign to the phenomenon, in a hollow, so to speak, a site and a function. It is a matter here ofa strict obligation: "This entire manifold must be unified [vereinigt werden soll]," "An analogy of experience is, therefore, only a rule according to which the unity of experience must arise from perceptions [entspringen soll]."37 For Kant, a phenomenon appears, therefore, only in a site that is predefined by a system of coordinates, a system that is itself governed by the principle of the unity of experience. Now it is here that another question creeps in: must every phenomenon without exception respect the unity of experience? Can one legitimately rule out the possibility that a phenomenon might impose itself on perception without one, for all that, being able to assign to it either a substance in which to dwell as an accident, or a cause from which it results as an effect, or even less an interactive commercium in which to be relativized? Further, it is not self-evident that the phenomena that really arise-as opposed to the phenomena that are impoverished in intuition, or even deprived entirely of intuition-can right from the first and most often be perceived according to such analogies of perception; it could be, quite the reverse, that they occur without being inscribed, at least at first, in the relational network that ensures experience its unity, and that they matter precisely because one cannot assign them any substratum, any cause, or any communion. To be sure, after a bit of analysis, most can be led back, at least approximately, to the analogies of perception. But those, not at all so rare, that do not lend themselves to this henceforth assume the character and the dignity of an event-that is, an event or a phenomenon that is unforeseeable (on the basis of the past), not exhaustively comprehensible (on the basis of the present), nor reproducible (on the basis of the future); in short, absolute, unique, occurring. We will thus call it a pure event. We are here taking that which has the character of event in its individual dimension as much as its collective dimension. Consequently, the analogies of experience can concern only a fringe of phenomenality-the phenomenality typical of the objects constituted by the sciences, a phenomenality that is impoverished in intuition, foreseeable, exhaustively. knowable, reproducible-while other layers-and historical phenomena first of all-would be excepted.
The second presupposition concerns the very elaboration of the procedure that allows one to ensure the (at once temporal and conceptual) necessity and thus the unity of experience. Kant presupposes that this unity must always be achieved through recourse to an analogy. For "all the empirical determinations of time must [mussen] stand under the rules of the general determination of time, and the analogies of experience . . . must [mussen] be rules of this kind." In short, it is up to the analogies of experience and to them alone actually to exercise the regulation of experience by necessity, and thus to ensure its unity. Now, at the precise moment of defining these analogies, Kant himself recognizes the fragility of their phenomenological power: indeed, in mathematics, analogy remains quantitative, such that through calculation it gives itself the fourth term and truly constructs it; in this way the equality of the two relations of magnitude is "always constitutive" of the object and actually maintains it in a unified experience. But, Kant specifies, "in philosophy, on the contrary, analogy is not the equality of two quantitative relations but of two qualitative relations; and from three given members we can obtain a priori knowledge only of the relation to a fourth, not of the fourth member itself. . . . An analogy of experience therefore will be a rule according to which the unity of experience. . . must arise from [entspringen soil] perceptions, and it will be valid as the principle of objects (phenomena) in a manner that is not constitutive but only regulative."38 To put it plainly, when it is a question of what we have called impoverished phenomena (here mathematical), intuition (here, the pure intuition of space) is not such that it could saturate the phenomenon and contradict in it the unity and the pre-established necessity of experience; in this case, the analogy remains quantitative and constitutive. In short, there is analogy of experience provided that the phenomenon remains impoverished. But as soon as the simple movement to physics (not even to speak of a saturated phenomenon) occurs, analogy can no longer regulate anything, except qualitatively: if A is the cause of effect B, then D will be in the position (quality) of effect with respect to C, without it being possible to identify what D is or will be, and without it being possible to construct it (by lack of pure intuition) or to constitute it. Kant's predicament culminates with the strange employment, within the analytic of principles, of principles whose usage remains purely "regulative"-which can be understood in only one sense: the analogies of experience do not really constitute their objects, but express subjective needs of the understanding.
Let us suppose, for the moment, that the analogies of perception, thus reduced to a simple regulative usage, must treat a saturated phenomenon: the latter already exceeds the categories of quantity (unforeseeable) and quality (unbearable); it gives itself already as a pure event. Consequently, how could an analogy--especially one that is simply regulative-assign to the phenomenon-especially necessarily and a priori-a point whose coordinates would be established by the relations of inherence, causality, and community? This phenomenon would escape all relations because it would not maintain any common measure with these terms; it would be freed from them, as from any a priori determination of experience that would eventually claim to impose itself on the phenomenon. In this we will speak of an absolute phenomenon: untied from any analogy with any object of experience whatsoever.
This being the case, the third Kantian presupposition becomes questionable. The unity of experience is developed on the basis of time, since it is a matter of"the synthetic unity of all phenomena according to their relation in time."39 Thus, Kant posits the first to do so no doub-not only time as the ultimate horizon of phenomena, but moreover that no appearance can dawn without a horizon that receives it and that it rejects at the same time. This signifies that before any phenomenal breakthrough toward visibility, the horizon first awaited in advance. And it signifies that every phenomenon, in appearing, is in fact limited to actualizing a portion of the horizon, which otherwise would remain transparent. A current question concerns the identity of this horizon (time, Being, the good, etc.). This should not, however, mask another question that is simpler, albeit harder: could certain phenomena exceed every horizon? We should specify that it is not a matter of dispensing with a horizon in general-which would undoubtedly prohibit all manifestation but of freeing oneself from the delimiting anteriority proper to every horizon, an anteriority that is such as to be unable not to enter into conflict with a phenomenon's claim to absoluteness. Let us assume a saturated phenomenon that has just gained its absolute character by freeing itself from the analogies with experience-what horizon can it recognize? On the one hand, the excess of intuition saturates this phenomenon so as to make it exceed the frame of ordinary experience. On the other hand, a horizon, by its very definition, defines and is defined; through its movement to the limit, the saturated phenomenon can manage to saturate its horizon. There is nothing strange about this hypothesis-even in strict philosophy where, with Spinoza, for example, the unique substance, absorbing all the determinations and all the individuals corresponding thereto, manages to overwhelm with its infinitely saturated presence (infinitis attributis infinitis modis) the horizon of Cartesian metaphysics, by leaving therein no more free space for the finite (absolute and universal necessity). Such saturation of a horizon by a single saturated phenomenon presents a danger that could not be overestimated, since it is born from the experience-and from the absolutely real, in no way illusory, experience-of totality, with neither door nor window, with neither other [autre] nor others [autrui]. But this danger results less from the saturated phenomenon itself than, strangely, from the misapprehension of it. Indeed, when it arises, it is most often treated as if it were only a common law phenomenon or a impoverished phenomenon. In fact, the saturated phenomenon maintains its absoluteness and, at the same time, dissolves its danger, when one recognizes it without confusing it with other phenomena, and therefore when one allows it to operate on several horizons at once. Since there are spaces with n+l dimensions (whose properties saturate the imagination), there are phenomena with n+l horizons. One of the best examples of such an arrangement is furnished by the doctrine of the transcendentals: the irreducible plurality of ens, verum, bonum, and pulchrum allows one to decline the saturated phenomenon from the first Principle in perfectly autonomous registers, where it gives itself to be seen, each time, only according to one perspective, which is total as well as partial; their convertibility indicates that the saturation persists, but that it is distributed within several concurrent horizons. Or rather the saturation increases because each perspective, already saturated in itself, is blurred a second time by the interferences in it of other saturated perspectives.40 The plurality of horizons therefore allows as much that one might respect the absoluteness of the saturated phenomenon (which no horizon could delimit or precede), as that one might render it tolerable through a multiplication of the dimensions of its reception.
There remains nevertheless one last thinkable, although extreme, relation between the saturated phenomenon and its horizon(s): that no horizon nor any combination of horizons tolerate the absoluteness of the phenomenon precisely because it gives itself as absolute; that is, as free from any analogy with common law phenomena and from any predetermination by a network of relations, with neither precedent nor antecedent within the already seen (the foreseen). In short, a phenomenon saturated to the point that the world could not accept it. Having come among its own, they did not recognize it-having come into phenomenality, the absolutely saturated phenomenon could find no room there for its display. But this opening denial, and thus this disfiguration, still remains a manifestation.
Thus, in giving itself absolutely, the saturated phenomenon gives itself also as absolute-free from any analogy with the experience that is already seen, objectivized, and comprehended. It frees itself therefrom because it depends on no horizon. On the contrary, the saturated phenomenon either simply saturates the horizon, or it multiplies the horizon in order to saturate it that much more, or it exceeds the horizon and finds itself cast out from it. But this very disfiguration remains a manifestation. In every case, it does not depend on that condition of possibility par excellence-a horizon, whatever it may be. We will therefore call this phenomenon unconditioned.
VII
Neither visable according to quantity, nor bearable according to quality, absolute according to relation-that is, unconditioned by the horizon-the saturated phenomenon finally gives itself as incapable of being looked at according to modality.
The categories of modality are distinguished from all the others, Kant insists, in that they .determine neither the objects themselves, nor their mutual relations, but simply "their relation to thought in general," in that they "express only the relation to the power of knowing ," "nothing other than the action of the power of knowing."41 In fact, between the objects of experience and the power of knowing, it is not only a question of a simple relation, but of the fact that they "agree." This agreement determines the possibility of phenomena to be (and therefore also their actuality and necessity) in the measure of their suitability to the "I" for and through whom the experience takes place. "The postulate of the possibility of things requires [fordert] therefore that their concept agree [zusammenstimme] with the formal conditions of an experience in general."42 The phenomenon is possible in the strict measure that it agrees with the formal conditions of experience, thus with the power of knowing that fixes its attention on them, and therefore finally with the transcendental "I" itself. The possibility of the phenomenon depends on its reduction to the "1."
This being the case, we can envisage a reversal of Kant's assertion and ask: what would occur phenomenologically if a phenomenon.did not "agree" with or "correspond" to the power of knowing of the "I"? The Kantian answer leaves hardly any doubt: this phenomenon quite simply would not appear; or better, there would not be any phenomenon at all, but an object-less perceptive aberration. If this answer remains meaningful for an impoverished or common law phenomenon, does it still hold for a saturated phenomenon? In fact, the situation in this case becomes much different. In face of saturation, the "I" most certainly experiences the disagreement between the at least potential phenomenon and the subjective conditions of its experience; consequently, the "I" cannot constitute an object therein. But this failure to objectivize in no way implies that absolutely nothing appears here: intuitive saturation, precisely inasmuch as it is invisible, intolerable, and absolute (unconditioned), imposes itself in the capacity of a phenomenon that is exceptional by excess, not by defect. The saturated phenomenon refuses to let itself be looked at as an object, precisely because it appears with a multiple and indescribable excess that suspends any effort at constitution. To define the saturated phenomenon as a non-objective or, more exactly, non-objectivizable object, in no way indicates a refuge in the irrational or the arbitrary; this definition refers to one of its distinctive properties: although exemplarily visible, it nevertheless cannot be looked at. We here take "to look at"-regarder-literally: re-garder exactly reproduces in-tueri and must therefore be understood on the basis of tueri, garder but in the sense of "to keep an eye on. . .," "to keep half an eye on. . .," "to have (to keep) in sight. . ." Regarder therefore implies being able to keep the visible that is seen under the control of the one who is seeing and, consequently, a voyeur. And it is certainly not by chance that Descartes entrusts the intuitus with maintaining in evidence what the ego reduces to the status of objectum. To define the saturated phenomenon as incapable of being looked at [irregardable] amounts to envisaging the possibility where a phenomenon would impose itself with such a surfeit of intuition that it could neither be reduced to the conditions of experience, and thus to the "I" who sets them, nor, all the same, forgo appearing.
Under what figure would it appear then? It appears in spite of and in disagreement with the conditions of possibility of experience-by imposing an impossible experience (if not already an experience of the impossible). Of the saturated phenomenon there would be only a counter-experience. Confronted with the saturated phenomenon, the "I" cannot not see it, but neither can it look at it as its object. It has the eye to see it, but not to look after it [pour le garder]. What, then, does this eye without a look [cet oeil sans regard] actually see? It sees the overabundance of intuitive givenness, not, however, as such, but as blurred by the overly short lens, the overly restricted aperture, the overly narrow frame that receives it--or rather, that no longer accommodates it. The eye apperceives not so much the appearance of the saturated phenomenon as the blur, the fog, and the overexposure that it imposes on its normal conditions of experience. The eye sees not so much another spectacle as its own naked impotence to constitute anything at all. It sees nothing distinctly, but clearly experiences its impotence before the unmeasuredness of the visible, and thus above all a perturbation of the visible, the noise of a poorly received message, the obfuscation of finitude. Through sight, it receives a pure givenness, precisely because it no longer discerns any objectivizable given therein.
Let us call this phenomenological extremity a paradox. The paradox not only suspends the phenomenon's relation of subjection to the "l," it inverts that relation. Far from being able to constitute this phenomenon, the "I" experiences itself as constituted by it. It is constituted and no longer constituting because it no longer has at its disposal any dominant point of view over the intuition that overwhelms It; in space, the saturated phenomenon engulfs it with its intuitive flood; in time, it precedes it through an interpellation that is always already there. The "I" loses its anteriority and finds itself, so to speak, deprived [destitue] of the duties of constitution, and thus itself constituted: a "me" rather than an "I." It is clear that on the basis of the saturated phenomenon we meet here with what we have thematized elsewhere under the name of the subject on its last appeal the interloque.43 When the "I" finds itself, instead of the constituting "I" that it remained in face of common law phenomena, constituted by a saturated phenomenon, it can identify itself as such only by admitting the precedence of such a phenomenon over itself. This reversal leaves it interloque, essentially surprised by the more original event that detaches it from itself.
Thus, the phenomenon is no longer reduced to the "I" that would look at it. Incapable of being looked at, it proves irreducible. There is no drift or turn here, even "theological," but, on the contrary, an accounting for the fact that in certain cases of givenness the excess of intuition may no longer satisfy the conditions of ordinary experience; and that the pure event that occurs cannot be constituted as an object and leaves the durable trace of its opening only in the "I/me" that finds itself, almost in spite of itself, constituted by what it receives. The constituting subject is succeeded by the constituted witness. As a constituted witness, the subject remains the worker of truth, but no longer its producer.
VIII
In order to introduce the concept of the saturated phenomenon into phenomenology, we have just described it as invisable (unforeseeable) according to quantity, unbearable according to quality, but also unconditioned (absolved from any horizon) according to relation, and irreducible to the "I" (incapable of being looked at) according to modality. These four characteristics imply the term for term reversal of all the rubrics under which Kant classifies the principles and thus the phenomena that these determine. However, in relation to Husserl, these new characteristics are organized in a more complex way; the first two-the invisable and the unbearable-offer no difficulty de jure for the "principle of all principles," for what intuition gives can quantitatively and qualitatively exceed the scope of the gaze; it is sufficient that intuition actually give it. The case is not the same for the last two characteristics: the "principle of all principles" presupposes the horizon and the constituting "I" as two unquestioned presuppositions of anything that would be constituted in general as a phenomenon; but the saturated phenomenon, inasmuch as it is unconditioned by a horizon and irreducible to an "I," makes a claim to a possibility that is freed from these two conditions; it therefore contradicts and exceeds the "principle of all principles." Husserl, who nonetheless surpassed the Kantian metaphysics of the phenomenon, must himself be surpassed in order to reach the possibility of the saturated phenomenon. Even and especially with the "principle of all principles," Husserl maintains a twofold reserve toward possibility. Nevertheless, this reserve of Husserl toward possibility can prove to be a reserve of phenomenology itself-which still maintains a reserve of possibility, in order itself to be surpassed toward a possibility without reserve. Because it gives itself without condition or restraint, the saturated phenomenon offers the paradigm of the phenomenon without reserve. Thus, in the guiding thread of the saturated phenomenon, phenomenology finds its ultimate possibility: not only the possibility that surpasses actuality, but the possibility that surpasses the very conditions of possibility, the possibility of unconditioned possibility-in other words, the possibility of the impossible, the saturated phenomenon.
The saturated phenomenon must not be understood as a limit case, an exceptional, vaguely irrational-in short, a "mystical" case of phenomenality. It indicates on the contrary the coherent and conceptual completion of the most operative definition of the phenomenon: it alone truly appears as itself, of itself and starting from itself,44 since it alone appears without the limits of a horizon and without the reduction to an "I." We will therefore call this appearance that is purely of itself and starting from itself, this phenomenon that does not subject its possibility to any preliminary determination, a revelation. And-we insist on this here it is purely and simply a matter of the phenomenon taken in its fullest meaning.
Moreover, the history of philosophy has a long-standing knowledge of such saturated phenomena. One could go so far as to maintain that none of the decisive metaphysicians has avoided the description of one or more saturated phenomena, even at the price of a head-on contradiction of his own presuppositions. Among many fairly obvious examples, let us simply call to mind Descartes and Kant.
a) Descartes, who everywhere else reduces the phenomenon to the idea and the idea to the object, nevertheless thinks the idea of infinity as a saturated phenomenon. According to quantity, the idea of infinity is not obtained by summation or successive synthesis, but tota simul; thus, the gaze (intueri) becomes the surprise of admiration (admirari).45 According to quality, it admits no finite degree, but a maximum: maxime clara et distincta, maxime vera.46 According to relation, it maintains no analogy with any idea at all: nihil univoce; indeed, it exceeds every horizon since it remains incomprehensible, capable only of being touched by thought: attingam quomodolibet cogitatione. According to modality, far from letting itself be led back to a constituting "l," it comprehends the "I" without letting itself be comprehended by it: non tam capere quam a ipsa capi,48 such that perhaps even the ego could also be interpreted at times as one who is called [un interpelle]. But furthermore, would it not suffice to translate "idea of infinity" word for word by "saturated phenomenon" in order to establish our conclusion?
b) Kant furnishes an example of the saturated phenomenon that is all the more significant insofar as it does not concern, as does Descartes', rational theology; in fact, it is a question of the sublime. We relied above on the "aesthetic idea" to challenge the principle of the shortage of intuition and to introduce the possibility of a saturation. In fact, already with the doctrine of the sublime we are dealing with a saturated phenomenon. Indeed, according to quantity, the sublime has neither form nor order, since it is great "beyond all comparison," absolutely and not comparatively (absolute, schlechthin, bloss).49 According to quality, it contradicts taste as a "negative pleasure" and it provokes a "feeling of inadequacy," a feeling of "monstrosity."50 According to relation, it very clearly escapes any analogy and any horizon since it literally represents "unlimitedness" (Unbegrenzheit).51 According to modality, finally, far from agreeing with our power of knowing, "it can seem [erscheinen mag] in its form to contradict the purpose [zweckwidrig] of our faculty of judgment"; the relation of our faculty of judgment to the phenomenon is therefore reversed, to the point that it is the phenomenon that hereafter "looks at" the "I" "in respect."52 The Kantian sublime would thus permit us to widen the field of application for the concept of the saturated phenomenon.
From here on, we can recapitulate. Phenomena can be classified, according to their increasing intuitive content, in three fundamental domains. a) The phenomena that are deprived of intuition or impoverished in intuitions: formal languages (endowed with categorial intuition by Husserl), mathematical idealities (whose pure intuition is established by Kant). b) The common law phenomena, whose signification (aimed at by intention) can ideally receive an adequate intuitive fulfillment, but that, right at the start and most of the time, do not reach such fulfillment. In these first two domains, the constitution of objects is rendered possible precisely because the shortage of intuition authorizes comprehension, foresight, and reproduction. c) There remain, finally, the saturated phenomena, which an excess of intuition shields from objective constitution. Conveniently, we can distinguish two types. ) First, pure historical events: by definition non-repeatable, they occur most often without having been foreseen; since through a surfeit of intuitive given they escape objectivation, their intelligibility excludes comprehension and demands that one move on to hermeneutics;53 intuitive saturation surpasses a single horizon and imposes multiple hermeneutics within several horizons; finally, the pure historical event not only occurs to its witness without the latter comprehending it (the non-constituting "I"), but itself, in return, comprehends the "I" (the constituted "I"): the "I" is comprehended on the basis of the event that occurs to it in the very measure that the "I" itself does not comprehend the event. Pure events offer a type of saturated phenomenon that is historical and thus communal and in principle communicable. 2) Such is not always the case for the second type, the phenomena of revelation. Let me repeat that by revelation I here intend a strictly phenomenological concept: an appearance that is purely of itself and starting from itself, which does not subject its possibility to any preliminary determination. Such revealed phenomena occur principally in three domains. First the picture as a spectacle that, due to excess of intuition, cannot be constituted but still can be looked at (the idol). Next, a particular face that I love, which has become invisible not only because it dazzles me, but above all because in it I want to look and can look only at its invisible gaze weighing on mine (the icon). Finally, theophany, where the surfeit of intuition leads to the paradox that an invisible gaze visibly envisages me and loves me. And it is here that the question of the possibility of a phenomenology of religion would be posed in terms that are not new (for it is only a matter of pushing the phenomenological intention to its end), but simple.
In every case, recognizing the saturated phenomena comes down to thinking seriously aliquid quo majus cogitari nequit-seriously, which means as a final possibility of phenomenology.54 ,55
The saturated phenomenonWhat comes into the world without troubling merits neither consideration nor patience. Rene Char I
The field of religion could simply be defined as what philosophy excludes or, in the best case, subjugates. Such a constant antagonism cannot be reduced to any given ideological opposition or any given anecdotal prejudice. In fact, it rests upon perfectly reasonable ground: the "philosophy of religion," if there were one, would have to describe, produce, and constitute phenomena, it would then find itself confronted with a disastrous alternative: either it would be a question of phenomena that are objectively definable but lose their religious specificity, or it would be a question of phenomena that are specifically religious but cannot be described objectively. A phenomenon that is religious in the strict sense-belonging to the domain of a "philosophy of religion" distinct from the sociology, the history, and the psychology of religion-would have to render visible what nevertheless could not be objectivized. The religious phenomenon thus amounts to an impossible phenomenon, or at least it marks the limit starting from which the phenomenon is in general no longer possible. Thus, the religious phenomenon poses the question of the general possibility of the phenomenon, more than of the possibility of religion.
Once this boundary is acknowledged, there nevertheless remain several ways of understanding it. Religion could not strike the possibility of the phenomenon in general with impossibility if the very possibility of the phenomenon were not defined: when does it become impossible to speak of a phenomenon, and according to what criteria of phenomenality? But the possibility of the phenomenon-and therefore the possibility of declaring a phenomenon impossible, that is, invisible--could not in its turn be determined without also establishing the terms of possibility taken in itself. By subjecting the phenomenon to the jurisdiction of possibility, philosophy in fact brings fully to light its own definition of bare possibility. The question concerning the possibility of the phenomenon implies the question of the phenomenon of possibility. Or better, when the rational scope of a philosophy is measured according to the extent of what it renders possible, that scope will be measured also according to the extent of what it renders visible-according to the possibility of phenomenality in it. According to whether it is accepted or rejected, the religious phenomenon would thus become a privileged index of the possibility of phenomenality.
To start out, I will rely on Kant. In Kant, the metaphysical definition of possibility is stated as follows: "That which agrees with the formal conditions of experience, that is, with the conditions of intuition and of concepts, is possible [mit den formalen Bedingungen der Erfahrung . . . uberkommt]." What is surprising here has to do with the intimate tie Kant establishes between possibility and phenomenality: possibility results explicitly from the conditions of experience; among those conditions is intuition, which indicates that experience takes the form of a phenomenality-that experience has a form ("formal conditions") precisely because it experiences sensible forms of appearance. Here, therefore, possibility depends on phenomenality. Would it be necessary to conclude from this that the phenomenon imposes its possibility, instead of being subject to the conditions thereof? Not at all, because the possible does not agree with the object of experience but with its "formal conditions": possibility does not follow from the phenomenon, but from the conditions set for any phenomenon. A formal requirement therefore is imposed on possibility, just as Kant indicates a little bit later: "The postulate of the possibility of things requires (fordert) that the concept of things should agree with the formal conditions of an experience in general." The access of the phenomenon to its own manifestation must submit to the requirement of possibility; but possibility itself depends on the "formal conditions of experience"; how then, in the last instance, are these "formal conditions" established that determine phenomenality and possibility together? Kant indicates this indirectly, but unambiguously, by underlining straightaway that "the categories of modality. . . express only the relation of the concept to the power of knowing."i The formal conditions of knowledge are directly joined here with the power of knowing. This means that intuition and the concept determine in advance the possibility of appearing for any phenomenon. The possibility and therefore also and especially the impossibility-of a phenomenon is ordered to the measure of the "power of knowing," that is, concretely, the measure of the play of intuition and of the concept within a finite mind. Any phenomenon is possible that grants itself to the finitude of the power of knowing and its requirements.
In this way Kant merely confirms a decision already made by Leibniz. To be sure, the one thinks phenomenal possibility starting from a finite mind, while the other thinks it starting from an infinite (or indefinite) mind; but both lead to the same conditional possibility of the phenomenon. Indeed, metaphysics obeys the "Great Principle . . . which holds that nothing is done without sufficient reason, that is, that nothing happens without it being possible for the one who sufficiently knows things to give a Reason that suffices to determine why it is so and not otherwise."2 Thus, nothing "is done," nothing "happens," in short, nothing appears, without the attestation that it is "possible"; this possibility, in turn, is equivalent to the possibility of knowing the sufficient reason for such an appearance. As for Kant, for Leibniz the right to appear-the possibility of a phenomenon depends on the power of knowing that implements the sufficiency of reason, which, whatever it might be, precedes what it renders possible. As the "power of knowing" will establish the conditions of possibility, sufficient reason already suffices to render possible that which, without it, would have remained impossible. This dependence is indicated with particular clarity in the case of the sensible. To be sure, "sensible things" appear and deserve the name of"phenomena," but they owe that name to another "reason," a reason that is different from their very appearance, and that alone suffices to qualify that appearance as a phenomenon: "The truth of sensible things consisted only in the relation of the phenomena, which had to have its reason."3 When Leibniz opposes, among the beings that he recognizes as permanent (creatura permanens absoluta), full being (unum per se, ens plenum; substantia; modif catio) to the diminished being that he likens to the phenomenon (unum per aggregationem; semiens, phaenomenon), one should not commit the error of imagining that the phenomenon would be ranked as half a being or a half-being only because it would suffer from an insufficiency of reason. On the contrary, it is precisely because it enjoys a perfectly sufficient reason that the phenomenon regresses to the rank of half a being; it is precisely as "phaenomena bene fundata"4 that the phenomena admit their being grounded, and therefore conditioned by a reason that alone is sufficient and that they themselves do not suffice to ensure. If reason can ground the phenomena, this is so first because it must save them; but reason would not have to do this if one did not first admit that, left to themselves, these phenomena would be lost. For appearance actually to appear does not suffice to justify its possibility; it must still resort to reason, which-while itself not having to appear-alone renders possible the brute actuality of the appearance, because it renders the possibility of that appearance intelligible. The phenomenon attests its lack of reason when and because it receives that reason; for it appears only under condition, as a conditional phenomenon-under the condition of what does not appear. In a metaphysical system, the possibility of appearing never belongs to what appears, nor phenomenality to the phenomenon.
II
It is this aporia that phenomenology escapes all at once in opposing to the principle of sufficient reason, the "principle of all principles," and thus in surpassing conditional phenomenality through a phenomenality without condition. The "principle of all principles" posits that "every originarily giving intuition (Anschauung) is a source of right for cognition, that everything that offers itself to us originarily in 'intuition' (Intuition) is to be taken quite simply as it gives itself out to be, but also only within the limits in which it is given there."5 There can be no question here of determining the decisive importance of this principle, nor its function within the whole of the other principles of phenomenology.6 It will suffice here to underscore some of its essential traits.
According to the first essential trait, intuition no longer intervenes simply as a de facto source of the phenomenon, a source that ensures its brute actuality without yet grounding it in reason, but as a source of right, justificatory of itself. Intuition is itself attested through itself, without the background of a reason that is yet to be given. In this way the phenomenon, according to Husserl, corresponds in advance to the phenomenon according to Heidegger-that which shows itself on the basis of itself. To put it plainly: on the basis of itself as a pure and perfect appearance of itself, and not on the basis of another than itself that would not appear (a reason). Intuition is sufficient for the phenomenon to justify its right to appear, without any other reason: far from having to give a sufficient reason, it suffices for the phenomenon to give itself through intuition according to a principle of sufficient intuition. But intuition becomes sufficient only inasmuch as it operates without any background, originarily, as Husserl says; now, it operates originarily, without any presupposition, only inasmuch as it furnishes the originary data, inasmuch, therefore, as it gives itself originarily. Intuition is justified by right on the basis of itself only by making a claim to an unconditioned origin. It cannot justify this claim without going so far as to mime the sufficient reason to be rendered (reddendae rationis), that is, by rendering itself, by giving itself in person. Indeed, givenness alone indicates that the phenomenon ensures, in a single gesture, both its visibility and the full right of that visibility, both its appearance and the reason for that appearance. Nevertheless, it still remains to be verified whether the "principle of all principles" in point of fact ensures a right to appear for all phenomena, whether it indeed opens for them an absolutely unconditioned possibility-or whether it renders them possible still only under some condition. Now, it happens that the principle of giving intuition does not authorize the absolutely unconditioned appearance, and thus the freedom of the phenomenon that gives itself on the basis of itself. To be sure, this is not because intuition as such limits phenomenality, but because it remains framed, as intuition, by two conditions of possibility, conditions that themselves are not intuitive but are nevertheless assigned to every phenomenon. The second and third traits of the "principle of all principles" contradict the first one, as conditions and limits-as a condition and a limit-contradict the claim to absolute possibility opened by the giving intuition.
Let us first consider a second trait of the "principle": it justifies every phenomenon, "but also only [aber auch nur] within the limits in which" that phenomenon is given. This restriction attests to a twofold finitude of the giving instance-of intuition. First, a factual restriction: intuition admits "limits" (Schranken). These limits, in whatever way one understands them (since Husserl hardly makes them clear here), indicate that not everything is capable of being given perfectly; right away, intuition is characterized by scarcity, obeys a logic of shortage, and is stigmatized by an indelible insufficiency; we will have to ask ourselves about the motivation, the status and the presuppositions of this factual shortcoming. But-secondly-this restriction can already be authorized by a de jure limitation: any intuition, in order to give within certain factual "limits," must first be inscribed by right within the limits (Grenze) of a horizon; likewise, no intentional aim of an object, signification, or essence can operate outside of a horizon. Husserl indicates this point through an argument that is all the stronger insofar as it is paradoxical. Considering what he nevertheless names "the limitlessness [Grenzenlosigleit] that is presented by the immanent intuitions when going from an already fixed lived-experience to new lived-experiences that form its horizon, from the fixing of these livedexperiences to the fixing of their horizon; and so on," he admits that any lived-experience is continually referred to new, as yet unknown lived-experiences, and therefore to a horizon of novelties that are irreducible because continually renewed. But precisely, this irrepressible novelty of the flux of consciousness remains, by right, always comprehended within a horizon, even if these new lived-experiences are not yet given: "a lived-experience that has become an Object of an Ego's look and that therefore has the mode of being looked at, has for its horizon lived-experiences that are not looked at" (Danach hat ein Erlebnis, das zum Objekt eines Ichblickes geworden ist, also den Modus des Erblickes hat. seinen Horizont nichterblickter Erlebnisse).7 The horizon, or, according to its etymology, delimitation, exerts itself over experience even where there are only lived-experiences that are not looked at, that is, where experience has not taken place. The outside of experience is not equivalent to the experience of the outside, because the horizon in advance seizes the outside, the non-experienced, the not looked at. One cannot escape here the feeling of a fundamental ambiguity. With this horizon, is it a question of what is not looked at as not looked at, a question of the simple recognition that all lived-experience is grasped in the flux of consciousness, and is therefore oriented in advance toward other lived-experiences that are yet to arise? Or is it not rather a question of the treatment, in advance, of the non-lived-experiences that are not looked at as the subjects of a horizon, and therefore a question of the inclusion within a limit-be it that of the flux of consciousness-of anything that is not looked at, a question of the a priori inscription of the possible within a horizon? Thus we must ask whether the "principle of all principles" does not presuppose at least one condition for givenness: the very horizon of any givenness. Does not the second trait of the "principle of all principles" that of any horizon at all contradict the absoluteness of intuitive givenness?
The third trait of the "principle of all principles" has to do with the fact that intuition gives what appears only by giving it "to us." There is nothing trivial or redundant about this expression; it betrays a classic ambiguity of the Ideen: the givenness of the phenomenon on the basis of itself to an "I" can at every instant veer toward a constitution of the phenomenon through and on the basis of the "I." Even if one does not overestimate this constant threat, one must at least admit that givenness, precisely because it keeps its originary and justifying function, can give and justify nothing except before the tribunal of the "I"; transcendental or not, the phenomenological "I" remains the beneficiary, and therefore the witness and even the judge, of the given appearance; it falls to the "I" to measure what does and does not give itself intuitively, within what limits, according to what horizon, following what intention, essence and signification. Even if it shows itself on the basis of itself, the phenomenon can do so only by allowing itself to be lead back, and therefore reduced, to the "I." Moreover, the originary primacy of the "I" maintains an essential relation with the placement of any phenomenon within the limits of a horizon. Indeed, "every now of a lived-experience has a horizon of lived-experiences-which also have precisely the originary form of the `now,' and which as such produce an originary horizon [Originaritatshorizont] of the pure I, its total originary now of consciousness."8 In this way the "principle of all principles" still presupposes that all givenness must accept the "I" as its "now." The requirement of a horizon is but one with that of the reduction: in each case it is a matter of leading phenomenological givenness back to the "I.".But, that being the case, if every phenomenon is defined by its very reducibility to the "I," must we not exclude straightaway the general possibility of an absolute, autonomous-in short, irreducible-phenomenon? By the same token, is not all irreducible possibility decidedly jeopardized?
"The principle of all principles," through originarily giving intuition, undoubtedly frees the phenomena from the duty of rendering a sufficient reason for their appearance. But it thinks that givenness itself only on the basis of two determinations that threaten its originary character-the horizon and the reduction. Phenomenology would thus condemn itself to missing almost immediately what the giving intuition nevertheless indicates to it as its own goal: to free the possibility of appearing [I'apparaitre] as such. We should stress that it is obviously not a question here of envisaging a phenomenology without any "I" or horizon, for clearly, it would then be phenomenology itself that would become impossible. On the contrary, it is a question of taking seriously the claim that, since the "principle of all principles," "higher than actuality stands possibility,"9 and of envisaging this possibility radically. Let us define it provisionally: what would occur, as concerns phenomenality, if an intuitive givenness were accomplished that was absolutely unconditioned (without the limits of a horizon) and absolutely irreducible (to a constituting "I")? Can we not envisage a type of phenomenon that would reverse the condition of a horizon (by surpassing it, instead of being inscribed within it) and that would reverse the reduction (by leading the "I" back to itself, instead of being reduced to the "I")? To declare this hypothesis impossible straightaway, without resorting to intuition, would immediately betray a phenomenological contradiction. Consequently, we will here assume the hypothesis of such a phenomenon, at least in the capacity of an imaginary variation allowing us to test a movement to the limit in the determination of any phenomenality and allowing us to experience anew what possibility means-or gives. Some limits remain, in principle, irrefutable and undoubtedly indispensable. But this does not mean that what contradicts them cannot for all that, paradoxically, be constituted as a phenomenon. Quite on the contrary, certain phenomena could by playing on the limits of phenomenality-not only appear at those limits, but appear there all the more. Within this hypothesis, the question of a phenomenology of religion would no doubt be posed in new terms, as much for religion as for phenomenology.
III
We are justified in evoking the possibility of an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon, that is, a phenomenon par excellence, only inasmuch as such a possibility truly opens itself. We therefore have to establish that this possibility cannot be reduced to an illusion of possibility, through a movement to the limit that would exceed nothing other than the conditions of possibility of phenomenality in general. In short, we have to establish that an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon, with neither delimiting horizon nor constituting "I," offers a true possibility and does not amount to "telling stories." To arrive at this guarantee, we will proceed first indirectly by examining the common definition of the phenomenon, since there is a definition as much in metaphysics according to Kant as in phenomenology according to Husserl; we will then attempt to specify whether that definition-which, moreover, subjects every phenomenon to a horizon of appearance and a constituting "I'=is justified by an opening of phenomenality, or whether it does not rather confirm its essential closure. In other words, it will be a matter of specifying the ground of the limitation that is brought upon the phenomenon by its common definition, in order to indicate exactly what possibility would, by contrast, remain open to an unconditional and irreducible acceptation of phenomenality.
All along the path of his thinking, Husserl will maintain a definition of the phenomenon that is determined by its fundamental duality: "The word 'phenomenon' is ambiguous [doppelsinnig] in virtue of the essential correlation between appearance and that which appears [Erscheinen und Erscheinenden]."' o This correlation is organized according to several different but interlinked couples-intention/intuition, signification/fulfillment, noesis/noema, etc.-and thus only better establishes the phenomenon as what appears as a correlate of appearance [apparition]. This is indeed why the highest manifestation of any phenomenon whatever, that is, the highest phenomenality possible, is achieved with the perfect adequation between these two terms: the subjective appearing [I'apparaitre subjectif] is equivalent to that which objectively appears [I'apparaissant objectif]. "And so also, eo ipso, the ideal of every fulfillment, and therefore of a significative fulfillment, is sketched for us; the intellectus is in this case the thought-intention, the intention of meaning. And the adaequatio is realized when the object meant is in the strict sense given in our intuition, and given precisely as it is thought and named. No thought-intention could fail of its fulfillment, of its last fulfillment, in fact, in so far as the fulfilling medium of intuition has itself lost all implication of unsatisfied intention."11 It is certainly important to stress the persistence here, in a territory that is nevertheless phenomenological, of the most metaphysical definition of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus. But it is even more important to stress the fact that adequation defines not only the truth, but above all "the ideal of ultimate fulfillment."l2 This limit case of perception is equivalent to what Husserl, in a Cartesian fashion, names evidence. More precisely, the objective truth is achieved subjectively through evidence, considered as the experience of the adequation made by consciousness. Now, this ideal of evidence, which is supposed to designate the maximum and the extreme of any ambition to truth, nevertheless claims, with a very strange modesty, only an "adequation," a simple equality. The paradigm of ideal equality weighs so heavily that Husserl does not hesitate to repeat it in no less than four figures: a) "the full agreement between the meant and the given as such [Ubereinstimmung zwischen Gemeintem und Gegebenem]"; b) "the idea of the absolute adequation [Adaquation]" between the ideal essence and the empirically contingent act of evidence; c) the "ideal fulfillment for an intention"; d) and finally "the truth as rightness [Rechtigheit] of our intention."13 What is surprising, however, resides not so much in this insistent repetition as in the fact that the adequation it so explicitly seeks remains nonetheless a pure and simple ideal: "The ideal of an ultimate fulfillment," "that ideally fulfilled perception," an "idea of absolute adequation as such."14 Now, how can we not understand these two terms in a Kantian manner where the ideal is the object of the idea? Consequently, since the idea remains a concept of reason such that its object can never be given through the senses, the ideal as such (as object of the idea) will never be given. 15 Thus, if adequation, which produces evidence subjectively, still constitutes an "ideal" for Husserl, we would have to conclude that it is never, or at least rarely, realized. And with it, truth is rarefied or made inaccessible. Why, therefore, does adequate evidence most often remain a limit case, or even an excluded case? Why does the equality between noesis and noema, essence and fulfillment, intention and intuition, seem inaccessible-or almost-at the very moment when it is invested with the dignity of truth? Why does Husserl compromise the return to the things themselves by modifying evidence and truth with ideality?
Answer: because the equality that Husserl maintains de jure between intuition and intention remains for him in fact untenable. Intention (almost) always (partially) lacks intuition, just as meaning [signification] almost always lacks fulfillment. In other words, intention and meaning surpass intuition and fulfillment. "A surplus in meaning [ein Uberschuss in der Bedeutung] remains, a form that finds nothing in the phenomenon itself to confirm it," because in principle "the realm of meaning is much wider than that of intuition."16 Intuition remains essentially lacking, impoverished, needy, indigent. The adequation between intention and intuition thus becomes a simple limit case, an ideal that is usually evoked by default. One could not argue against this by putting forward the fact that evidence is regularly achieved in mathematics and formal logic; for this fact, far from denying the failure of evidence, confirms it. Indeed, the ideal of adequation is realized precisely only in those domains where the intention of meaning, in order to be fulfilled in a phenomenon, requires only a pure or formal intuition (space in mathematics), or even no intuition (empty tautology in logic); mathematics and formal logic offer, precisely, only an ideal object-that is, strictly speaking, an object that does not have to give itself in order to appear; in short, a minute or zero-degree of phenomenality; evidence is adequately achieved because it requires only an impoverished or empty intuition. Adequation is realized so easily here only because it is a matter of phenomena without any (or with weak) intuitive requirements. 7 There would be good reason, moreover, to wonder about the privilege that is so often granted by theories of knowledge (from Plato to Descartes, from Kant to Husserl) to logical and mathematical phenomena: they are erected as models of all the others, while they are distinguished therefrom by their shortage of intuition, the poverty of their givenness, even the unreality of their objects. It is not self-evident that this marginal poverty could serve as a paradigm for phenomenality as a whole, nor that the certitude it ensures would be worth the phenomenological price one pays for it. Whatever the case may be, if the ideal of evidence is realized only for intuitively impoverished phenomena, when it is, on the contrary, a matter of plenary phenomena, that is, of the appearance of the "things themselves" to be given intuitively, adequation becomes an ideal in the strict sense; that is, an event not (entirely) given, due to a (minimally, partial) failure of intuition. The equality required by right between intuition and intention is lacking-for lack of intuition. The senses deceive, not at all through a provisional or accidental deception, but through an inescapable weakness: even an indefinite sum of intuited outlines will never fill intention with the least real object. When it is a question of a thing, the intentional object always exceeds its intuitive givenness. Its presence remains to be completed by appresentation. 18 What keeps phenomenology from allowing phenomena to appear without reserve, therefore, is, to begin with, the fundamental deficit of intuition that it ascribes to them-with neither recourse nor appeal. But the phenomenological "breakthrough" postulates this shortage of intuition only as a result of metaphysical decisions-in short, Husserl here suffers the consequences of decisions made by Kant.
For it is Kant first who, always defining the truth by adaequatio,19 inferred therefrom the parallel between intuition and the concept, which are supposed to play a tangentially equal role in the production of objectivity. "Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. It is, therefore, just as necessary to make our concepts sensible (that is, to add the object to them in intuition), as to make our intuitions intelligible (that is, to bring them under concepts). These two powers or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing."2 In principle, the phenomenon, and therefore the real object, appears in the strict measure that the intuition and the concept not only are synthesized, but also are balanced in that synthesis. Adaequatio-and therefore the truth-would thus rest on the equality of the concept with the intuition. However, Kant himself does not hesitate to disqualify this parallelism; for, if the concept corresponds to the intuition, it nevertheless radically depends on it. Indeed, if the concept thinks, it limits itself in this way to rendering intelligible, after the fact and by derivation, what intuition for its part, principially and originarily, alone can give: "Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind. .. Through the first [receptivity] an object is given [gegeben] to us, through the second the object is thought"; "There are two conditions under which alone the knowledge of an object is possible, first, intuition, through which it is given, though only as phenomenon [nur als Erscheinung gegeben wird]; secondly, the concept, through which an object is thought corresponding to this intuition."21 To be sure, the intuition remains empty, but blindness is worth more here than vacuity: for even blinded, the intuition remains one that gives, whereas the concept, even if it alone can allow to be seen what would first be given to it, remains as such perfectly empty, and therefore just as well incapable of seeing anything at all. Intuition without the concept, even though still blind, nevertheless already gives matter to an object; whereas the concept without intuition, although not blind, nevertheless no longer sees anything, since nothing has yet been given to it to be seen. In the realm of the phenomenon, the concept is not king, but rather intuition: before an object is seen and in order to be seen, its appearance must be given; even if it does not see what it gives, intuition alone enjoys the privilege of giving: "the object cannot be given to a concept otherwise than in intuition [nicht anders gegeben werden, als in der Anschauung]"; for "the category is a simple function of thought, through which no object is given to me, and by which alone what can be given in intuition is thought [nur was in der Anschauunggegeben werden mag]"; or again: "intuitions in general, through which objects can be given to us [uns Gegenstande gegeben werden konnen], constitute the field, the whole object, of possible experience."22 Thus, intuition does not offer a simple parallel or complement to the concept; it ensures the concept's condition of possibility-its possibility itself: "intuitions in general, through which objects can be given to us [gegeben werden konnen], constitute the field or whole object of possible experience [moglicher Erfahrung]."22 The phenomenon is thought through the concept; but in order to be thought, it must first be given; and it is given only through intuition. The intuitive mise en scene conditions conceptual objectivation. Inasmuch as alone and anteriorly giving, intuition breaks in its own favor its parallelism with the concept. Henceforth, the scope of intuition establishes that of phenomenal givenness. Phenomenality is indexed according to intuition.
Now, through a stunning tactical reversal, Kant stresses this privilege of intuition only in order better to stigmatize its weakness. For if intuition alone gives objects, there falls to human finitude only an intuition that is itself equally finite, in this case sensible. Consequently, all the eventual objects that would necessitate an intellectual intuition are excluded from the possibility of appearing. Phenomenality remains limited by the defect of what renders it partially possible-intuition. What gives (intuition inasmuch as sensible) is but of a piece with what is lacking (intuition inasmuch as intellectual). Intuition determines phenomenality as much by what it refuses to it as by what it gives to it. "Thought is the act which relates given intuition [gegebene Anschauung] to an object. If the mode of this intuition is not in any way given [auf keinerlei Weise gegeben], then the object is merely transcendental and the concept of understanding has only transcendental employment."23 To think is more than to know the objects given by (sensible) intuition; it is to think all those objects that no (intellectual) intuition will ever give, to measure the immense cenotaph of phenomena that never appeared and never will appear, in short to presume intuition's absence from possible phenomena. For intuition, which alone gives, essentially lacks. What gives is lacking. A paradox follows: henceforth, the more phenomena give themselves in sensibility, the more also grows the silent number of all the phenomena that cannot and need not claim to give themselves in sensibility. The more intuition gives according to the sensible, the more evident becomes its failure to let what is possibly phenomenal appear-a phenomenality that is henceforth held as impossible. The limitation of intuition to the sensible indirectly shows, as much as the directly given phenomena, the shadow of all those that it cannot let appear. The finitude of intuition is attested to with the permanence-which Kant admits is "necessary"of the idea. The idea, even though, or rather because it is a "rational concept to which no corresponding object can be given in the senses [in den Sinnen]," remains nevertheless visable24 if not visible in all the sensible appearances from which it is excluded. "Absent from every bouquet," the flower of thought, according to the "glory of long desire,"25 calls for sensible flowers and survives them; likewise the idea, in letting itself be aimed at outside the conditions established for phenomenality, marks that much more the limits thereof. In the quasi phantom-like mode of a non-object, the idea attests to the limits of an intuition that was not able to give the idea. It is therefore by not being sensible that the idea proves the failure of sensible intuition-in it and in general.
The phenomenon is characterized by its lack of intuition, which gives it only by limiting it. Kant confirms that intuition is operative only under the rule of limitation, of lack and of necessity, in short of nothingness [neant], by undertaking to define reciprocally the four senses of nothingness starting from intuition. Everything happens as if it were with intuition first, and with intuition considered as essentially lacking, failing, and limited, that nothingness in all its dimensions could be defined. The list of the four senses of nothingness amounts in effect to a review of four modes of intuition's failure. ) Nothingness can be taken as ens rationis. This is defined as "the object of a concept to which there corresponds no intuition that might be given [keine anzugebende Anschauung]." Intuition first produces nothingness in being unable to give any intuition corresponding to a being of reason; its limitation to the sensible finally induces a first nothingness. 2) Nothingness can be taken as nihil privativum. This is defined as "the concept of the lack of an object," that is, as a double lack of intuition; first as a concept, and therefore as what by definition lacks intuition; and then as the concept representing the very lack of intuition, which alone gives an object; a double lack of intuition produces a second nothingness. 3) Nothingness can be taken as nihil imaginativum. This sense is paradoxically significant: in principle, imagined nothingness would have to distance itself from nothingness, since here a minimum of intuition (precisely, the imagined) would have to give a minimum of being. But Kant does not grant even this positivity to the intuition, admitting only a "simple form of intuition" and reducing it to an "empty intuition." It should be noted that "empty" elsewhere returns to the concept, and that intuition does not even have any more right here to its "blind" solitude-since it is true that here the form of intuition is likened to the empty form of the concept. The form of intuition is reduced to a third nothingness. 4) Finally, nothingness can be taken as nihil negativum. As an "empty object without concept," it would seem to be defined by the failure in it of the concept and not of intuition; likewise, as "the object of a concept that contradicts itself," it would seem to admit of a purely logical explanation, and not an intuitive one. But, strangely, such is not the case, since Kant puts forward an example-a twosided rectilinear figure-which can be conceived only in space, and therefore in intuition. Moreover, as he specified earlier, "there is no contradiction in the concept of a figure that is enclosed between two straight lines, since the concepts of two figures and of their meeting contain no negation of a figure; the impossibility does not arise from the concept in itself, but in connection with its construction in space."26 The concept is lacking because the object contradicts itself; but this contradiction is not logical; it results from the contradiction of the conditions of experience-here from the requirements of construction in space; it is therefore a matter of a contradiction according to intuition, and thus according to the finitude of that intuition.-Nothingness is expressed in many ways, as is Being elsewhere, but that polysemy is organized entirely on the basis of different absences of finite and sensible intuition. Intuition's failure characterizes it fairly essentially, so that nothingness might itself be inflected in its voids.
We were asking: how is the phenomenon defined when phenomenology and metaphysics delimit it within a horizon and according to an "I"? Its definition as conditioned and reducible is well accomplished through a de-finition: the phenomena are given by an intuition, but that intuition remains finite, either as sensible (Kant), or as most often lacking or ideal (Husserl). Phenomena suffer from a deficit of intuition, and thus from a shortage of givenness. This radical lack has nothing accidental about it, but results from a phenomenological necessity. In order that any phenomenon might be inscribed within a horizon (and there find its condition of possibility), it is necessary that that horizon be delimited (it is its definition), and therefore that the phenomenon remain finite. In order for a phenomenon to be reduced to an obviously finite "I" who constitutes it, the phenomenon must be reduced to the status of finite objectivity. In both cases, the finitude of the horizon and of the "I" is indicated by the finitude of the intuition itself. The phenomena are characterized by the finitude of givenness in them, so as to be able to enter into a constituting horizon and to be led back to an "I." But, conversely, one could also conclude from this equivalence of the determinations that unconditioned and irreducible phenomena would become possible only if a non-finite intuition ensured their givenness. But can a non-finite intuition even be envisaged?
IV
The impossibility of an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon thus results directly from the determination of the phenomenon in general by the (at least potential) failure of intuition in it. Every phenomenon would appear as lacking intuition and as marked by this lack to the point of having to rely on the condition of a horizon and on the reduction towards an "I." There would be no phenomenon except that which is essentially impoverished in intuition, a phenomenon with a reduced givenness.
Having arrived at this point, we can pose the question of a strictly inverse hypothesis: in certain cases still to be defined, must we not oppose to the restricted possibility of phenomenality a phenomenality that is in the end absolutely possible? To the phenomenon that is supposed to be impoverished in intuition can we not oppose a phenomenon that is saturated with intuition? To the phenomenon that is most often characterized by a defect of intuition, and therefore by a deception of the intentional aim and, in particular instances, by the equality between intuition and intention, why would there not correspond the possibility of a phenomenon in which intuition would give more, indeed immeasurably more, than intention ever would have intended or foreseen?
This is not a matter of a gratuitous or arbitrary hypothesis. First, because in a certain way it falls to Kant-nevertheless the thinker of the intuitive shortage of the common phenomenon- to have envisaged and defined what we are calling a saturated phenomenon. There is nothing surprising in that. Indeed, if the "rational idea can never become a cognition because it contains a concept (of the supersensible) for which no adequate intuition can ever be given"-a phenomenon that is not only impoverished in, but deprived of, intuition-it nevertheless offers only one of the two faces of the idea, which is defined in general as the representation of an object according to a principle, such that it nonetheless can never become the cognition thereof. Thus to the rational idea-a representation according to the understanding-there corresponds the "aesthetic idea"-a representation according to intuition-that itself can never become a cognition, but for an opposite reason: "because it is an intuition (of the imagination) for which no adequate [adaquat] concept can ever be found."27 Inadequacy always threatens phenomenality (or better, suspends it); but it is no longer a matter of the non-adequation of the (lacking) intuition that leaves a (given) concept empty; it is a matter, conversely, of a failure of the (lacking) concept that leaves the (overabundantly given) intuition blind. Henceforth, it is the concept that is lacking, no longer intuition. Kant stresses this unambiguously: in the case of the aesthetic idea, the "representation of the imagination furnishes much to think [viel zu denken veranlasst], but to which no determinate thought, or concept, can be adequate [adaquat sein kann]." The excess of intuition over any concept also prohibits "that any language ever reach it completely and render it intelligible,"28 in short, allow an object to be seen in it. It is important to insist here particularly on this: this failure to produce the object does not result here from a shortage of givenness (as for the ideas of reason), but indeed from an excess of intuition, and thus from an excess of givenness that "furnishes much to think." There is an excess of givenness, and not simply of intuition, since, according to Kant (and, for the main part, Husserl), it is intuition that gives. Kant formulates this excess with a rare term: the aesthetic idea remains an "inexposable [inexponible] representation of the imagination." We can understand this in the following way: because it gives "much," the aesthetic idea gives more than any concept can expose; to expose here amounts to arranging (ordering) the intuitive given according to rules; the impossibility of this conceptual arrangement issues from the fact that the intuitive overabundance is no longer exposed within rules, whatever they may be, but overwhelms them; intuition is no longer exposed within the concept, but saturates it and renders it overexposed-invisible, not by lack, but by excess of light. The fact that this very excess should prohibit the aesthetic idea from organizing its intuition within the limits.of a concept, and therefore from giving a defined object to be seen, nevertheless does not disqualify it phenomenologically, since when recognized in this way for what it is, this "inexposable representation" operates according to its "free play."29 The difficulty consists simply in attempting to comprehend (and not only to repeat) what phenomenological possibility is put into operation when the excess of giving intuition thus begins to play freely.
The path to follow from here on now opens more clearly before us. We must develop as far as possible the uncommon phenomenological possibility glimpsed by Kant himself. In other words, we must attempt to describe the characteristics of a phenomenon that, contrary to most phenomena which are impoverished in intuition and defined by the ideal adequation of intuition to intention, would be characterized by an excess of intuition, and thus of givenness, over the intention, the concept and the aim. Such a phenomenon will doubtless no longer allow the constitution of an object, at least in the Kantian sense. But it is not self-evident that objectivity should have all the authority in fixing phenomenology's norm. The hypothesis of a phenomenon saturated with intuition can certainly be warranted by its outline in Kant, but above all it must command our attention because it designates a possibility of the phenomenon in general. And in phenomenology, the least possibility is binding.
V
We will outline the description of the saturated phenomenon following the guiding thread of the categories of the understanding established by Kant. But, in order to do justice to the excess of intuition over the concept, we will use them in a negative mode. The saturated phenomenon in fact exceeds the categories and the principles of the understanding-it will therefore be invisable according to quantity, unbearable according to quality, absolute according to relation, and incapable of being looked at [irregardable] according to modality.
First, the saturated phenomenon cannot be aimed at. This impossibility stems from its essentially unforeseeable character. To be sure, its giving intuition ensures it a quantity, but such that it cannot be foreseen. This determination is better clarified by inverting the function of the axioms of intuition. According to Kant, quantity (the magnitudes of extension) is declined through a composition of the whole on the basis of its parts; this "successive synthesis" allows one to compose the representation of the whole according to the representation of the sum of the parts; indeed, the magnitude of a quantum has the property of implying nothing more than the summation of the quanta that make it up through addition. From this homogeneity follows another property: a quantified phenomenon is "foreseen in advance [schon . . . angeschaut] as an aggregate (a sum of parts given in advance) [vorher gegebener]."30 Such a phenomenon is literally foreseen on the basis of the finite number of its parts and of the magnitude of each one among them. Now, these are precisely the properties that become impossible when a saturated phenomenon is at issue. Indeed, since the intuition that gives it is not limited, its excess can be neither divided nor put together again by virtue of a homogenous magnitude and finite parts. It could not be measured on the basis of its parts, since the saturating intuition surpasses the sum of these parts by continually adding to it. Such a phenomenon, which is always exceeded by the intuition that saturates it, would rather have to be called incommensurable, not measurable (immense), unmeasured [demesure]. This lack of measure [demesure], furthermore, does not always or initially operate through the enormity of an unlimited quantity. It is marked more often by the impossibility of applying a successive synthesis to it, a synthesis allowing one to foresee an aggregate on the basis of the sum of its parts. Since the saturated phenomenon exceeds any summation of its parts-which, moreover, often cannot be counted-we must forsake the successive synthesis in favor of what we will call an instantaneous synthesis, the representation of which precedes and goes beyond that of possible components, rather than resulting from them according to foresight.
We find a privileged example of this with amazement. According to Descartes, this passion strikes us even before we know the thing, or rather precisely because we know it only partially: "One can perceive of the object only the first side that has presented itself, and consequently one cannot acquire a more particular knowledge of it."31 The "object" delivers to us only a single "side" (we could also say Abschatung) and immediately imposes itself on us with such a force that we are overwhelmed by what shows itself, eventually to the point of fascination. And yet the "successive synthesis" was suspended as early as its first term. This, then, is because another synthesis has been achieved, a synthesis that is instantaneous and irreducible to the sum of possible parts. Any phenomenon that produces amazement imposes itself upon the gaze in the very measure (or more precisely, in the very lack of measure) that it does not result from any foreseeable summation of partial quantities. Indeed, it amazes because it arises without any common measure with the phenomena that precede it, without announcing it or explaining it-for, according to Spinoza, "nullam cum reliquis habet connexionem."32 Thus, for at least two phenomenological reasons, the saturated phenomenon may not be foreseen on the basis of the parts that would compose it through summation. First, because intuition, which continually saturates the phenomenon, prohibits distinguishing and summing up a finite number of finite parts, thus annulling any possibility of foreseeing the phenomenon. Next, because the saturated phenomenon most often imposes itself thanks to amazement, where it is precisely the non-enumeration and the non-summation of the parts, and thus the unforeseeability, that accomplish all intuitive givenness.
Secondly, the saturated phenomenon cannot be borne. According to Kant, quality (intensive magnitude) allows intuition to give a degree of reality to the object by limiting it, eventually as far as negation: every phenomenon will have to admit a degree of intuition and that is what perception can anticipate. The foresight at work in extensive magnitude is found again in intensive magnitude. Nevertheless, an essential difference separates them: foresight no longer operates in a successive synthesis of the homogeneous, but in a perception of the heterogeneous-each degree is marked by a break with the preceding one, and therefore by an absolutely singular novelty. Since he privileges the case of the impoverished phenomenon, Kant analyses this heterogeneity only on the basis of the simplest cases-the first degrees starting from zero, imperceptible perceptions, etc. But in the case of a saturated phenomenon, intuition gives reality without any limitation (or, to be sure, negation). It reaches an intensive magnitude without (common) measure, such that, starting from a certain degree, the intensity of the real intuition exceeds all the anticipations of perception. In face of that excess, perception not only can no longer anticipate what it is going to receive from intuition, but above all it can no longer bear the degree of intuition. For intuition, which is supposed to be "blind" in the realm of impoverished phenomena, proves to be, in a truly radical phenomenology, much rather blinding. The intensive magnitude of the intuition that gives the saturated phenomenon is unbearable for the gaze, just as this gaze could not foresee that intuition's extensive magnitude.
Bedazzlement characterizes what the gaze cannot bear. Not bearing does not amount to not seeing; for one must first perceive, if not see, in order to experience this incapacity to bear. It is in fact a question of something visible that our gaze cannot bear; this visible something is experienced as unbearable to the gaze because it weighs too much upon that gaze; the glory of the visible weighs, and it weighs too much. What weighs here is not unhappiness, nor pain nor lack, but indeed glory, joy, excess: "Oh/ Triumph!/ What Glory! What human heart would be strong enough to bear/ That?"33 Intuition gives too intensely for the gaze to be able truly to see what already it can no longer receive, nor even confront. This blinding indeed concerns the intensity of the intuition and it alone, as is indicated by cases of blinding in face of spectacles where the intuition remains quantitatively ordinary, even weak, but of an intensity that is out of the ordinary: Oedipus blinds himself for having seen his transgression, and therefore we have a quasi moral intensity of intuition; and He whom no one can see without dying blinds first by his holiness, even if his coming is announced in a simple breath of wind. Because the saturated phenomenon, due to the excess of intuition in it, cannot be borne by any gaze that would measure up to it ("objectively"), it is perceived ("subjectively") by the gaze only in the negative mode of an impossible perception, the mode of bedazzlement.-Plato described this perfectly in connection with the prisoner of the Cave: "let one untie him and force him suddenly to turn around [ ] . . . and to lift his gaze toward the light [npos ava , he would suffer in doing all that, and, because of the bedazzlements, he would not have the strength to see face on [8a TaS that of which previously he saw the shadows." It is indeed a question of "suffering" in seeing the full light, and of fleeing it by turning away toward "the things that one can look at [ Ka8 ]"What keeps one from seeing are precisely the "eyes filled with splendor."34 Moreover, this bedazzlement is just as valid for intelligible intuition as it is for sensible intuition. First, because the myth of the Cave, in the final analysis, concerns the epistemological obstacles to intelligibility, of which the sensible montage explicitly offers one figure; next, because the idea of the Good also and above all offers itself as "difficult to see" (dy6s ), certainly not by defect, since it presents "the most visible of beings," but indeed by excess because "the soul is incapable of seeing anything . . . saturated by an extremely brilliant bedazzlement [uro rai]"35 What in all these cases prohibits one from seeing is the sensible or intelligible light's excess of intensity.
Bedazzlement thus becomes a characteristic-universalizable to any form of intuition-of an intuitive intensity that goes beyond the degree that a gaze can sustain. This is not a question of some exceptional case, which we would merely mention as a matter of interest along with the impoverished phenomenon, itself thought to be more frequent and thus more or less normative. On the contrary, it is a question of an essential determination of the phenomenon, which is rendered almost inevitable for two reasons. 1) The Kantian description of intensive magnitudes, in other respects so original and true, nevertheless maintains a resounding silence concerning the most characteristic notion of intensive magnitude-the maximum. For even if it can undoubtedly not be defined objectively, there is always a subjective maximum, the threshold of tolerance. Bedazzlement begins when perception passes beyond its subjective maximum. The description of intensive magnitudes would necessarily and with priority have to take into consideration their highest degrees, and therefore the subjective maximum (or maximums) that the bedazzlements signal. 2) As previously with unforeseeability, so bedazzlement designates a type of intuitive givenness that is not only less rare than it would seem to a hasty examination, but above all, that is decisive for a real recognition of finitude. Finitude is experienced (and proved)36 not so much through the shortage of the given before our gaze, as above all because this gaze sometimes no longer measures the amplitude of the givenness. Or rather, measuring itself against that givenness, the gaze experiences it, sometimes in the suffering of an essential passivity, as having no measure with itself. Finitude is experienced as much through excess as through lack-indeed, more through excess than through lack.
VI
Neither visable according to quantity, nor bearable according to quality, a saturated phenomenon would be absolute according to relation as well; that is, it would shy away from any analogy of experience.
Kant defines the principle of such analogies as follows: "Experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions." Now, simple apprehension by empirical intuition cannot ensure this necessary connection; on the contrary, the connection will have to produce itself at once through concepts and in time: "Since time cannot itself be perceived, the determination of the existence of objects in time can be made only through their connection in time in general, and therefore only through concepts that connect them in general." This connection connects according to three operations: inherence of accident in substance, causality between effect and cause, community between several substances. But Kant establishes them only by bringing three presuppositions into play. It is thus the possible questioning of these that will again define the saturated phenomenon.
First presupposition: in all occurrences, a phenomenon can manifest itself only by respecting the unity of experience, that is, by taking place in the tightest possible network of ties of inherence, the tightest possible network of ties of inherence, causality and community, which assign to the phenomenon, in a hollow, so to speak, a site and a function. It is a matter here ofa strict obligation: "This entire manifold must be unified [vereinigt werden soll]," "An analogy of experience is, therefore, only a rule according to which the unity of experience must arise from perceptions [entspringen soll]."37 For Kant, a phenomenon appears, therefore, only in a site that is predefined by a system of coordinates, a system that is itself governed by the principle of the unity of experience. Now it is here that another question creeps in: must every phenomenon without exception respect the unity of experience? Can one legitimately rule out the possibility that a phenomenon might impose itself on perception without one, for all that, being able to assign to it either a substance in which to dwell as an accident, or a cause from which it results as an effect, or even less an interactive commercium in which to be relativized? Further, it is not self-evident that the phenomena that really arise-as opposed to the phenomena that are impoverished in intuition, or even deprived entirely of intuition-can right from the first and most often be perceived according to such analogies of perception; it could be, quite the reverse, that they occur without being inscribed, at least at first, in the relational network that ensures experience its unity, and that they matter precisely because one cannot assign them any substratum, any cause, or any communion. To be sure, after a bit of analysis, most can be led back, at least approximately, to the analogies of perception. But those, not at all so rare, that do not lend themselves to this henceforth assume the character and the dignity of an event-that is, an event or a phenomenon that is unforeseeable (on the basis of the past), not exhaustively comprehensible (on the basis of the present), nor reproducible (on the basis of the future); in short, absolute, unique, occurring. We will thus call it a pure event. We are here taking that which has the character of event in its individual dimension as much as its collective dimension. Consequently, the analogies of experience can concern only a fringe of phenomenality-the phenomenality typical of the objects constituted by the sciences, a phenomenality that is impoverished in intuition, foreseeable, exhaustively. knowable, reproducible-while other layers-and historical phenomena first of all-would be excepted.
The second presupposition concerns the very elaboration of the procedure that allows one to ensure the (at once temporal and conceptual) necessity and thus the unity of experience. Kant presupposes that this unity must always be achieved through recourse to an analogy. For "all the empirical determinations of time must [mussen] stand under the rules of the general determination of time, and the analogies of experience . . . must [mussen] be rules of this kind." In short, it is up to the analogies of experience and to them alone actually to exercise the regulation of experience by necessity, and thus to ensure its unity. Now, at the precise moment of defining these analogies, Kant himself recognizes the fragility of their phenomenological power: indeed, in mathematics, analogy remains quantitative, such that through calculation it gives itself the fourth term and truly constructs it; in this way the equality of the two relations of magnitude is "always constitutive" of the object and actually maintains it in a unified experience. But, Kant specifies, "in philosophy, on the contrary, analogy is not the equality of two quantitative relations but of two qualitative relations; and from three given members we can obtain a priori knowledge only of the relation to a fourth, not of the fourth member itself. . . . An analogy of experience therefore will be a rule according to which the unity of experience. . . must arise from [entspringen soil] perceptions, and it will be valid as the principle of objects (phenomena) in a manner that is not constitutive but only regulative."38 To put it plainly, when it is a question of what we have called impoverished phenomena (here mathematical), intuition (here, the pure intuition of space) is not such that it could saturate the phenomenon and contradict in it the unity and the pre-established necessity of experience; in this case, the analogy remains quantitative and constitutive. In short, there is analogy of experience provided that the phenomenon remains impoverished. But as soon as the simple movement to physics (not even to speak of a saturated phenomenon) occurs, analogy can no longer regulate anything, except qualitatively: if A is the cause of effect B, then D will be in the position (quality) of effect with respect to C, without it being possible to identify what D is or will be, and without it being possible to construct it (by lack of pure intuition) or to constitute it. Kant's predicament culminates with the strange employment, within the analytic of principles, of principles whose usage remains purely "regulative"-which can be understood in only one sense: the analogies of experience do not really constitute their objects, but express subjective needs of the understanding.
Let us suppose, for the moment, that the analogies of perception, thus reduced to a simple regulative usage, must treat a saturated phenomenon: the latter already exceeds the categories of quantity (unforeseeable) and quality (unbearable); it gives itself already as a pure event. Consequently, how could an analogy--especially one that is simply regulative-assign to the phenomenon-especially necessarily and a priori-a point whose coordinates would be established by the relations of inherence, causality, and community? This phenomenon would escape all relations because it would not maintain any common measure with these terms; it would be freed from them, as from any a priori determination of experience that would eventually claim to impose itself on the phenomenon. In this we will speak of an absolute phenomenon: untied from any analogy with any object of experience whatsoever.
This being the case, the third Kantian presupposition becomes questionable. The unity of experience is developed on the basis of time, since it is a matter of"the synthetic unity of all phenomena according to their relation in time."39 Thus, Kant posits the first to do so no doub-not only time as the ultimate horizon of phenomena, but moreover that no appearance can dawn without a horizon that receives it and that it rejects at the same time. This signifies that before any phenomenal breakthrough toward visibility, the horizon first awaited in advance. And it signifies that every phenomenon, in appearing, is in fact limited to actualizing a portion of the horizon, which otherwise would remain transparent. A current question concerns the identity of this horizon (time, Being, the good, etc.). This should not, however, mask another question that is simpler, albeit harder: could certain phenomena exceed every horizon? We should specify that it is not a matter of dispensing with a horizon in general-which would undoubtedly prohibit all manifestation but of freeing oneself from the delimiting anteriority proper to every horizon, an anteriority that is such as to be unable not to enter into conflict with a phenomenon's claim to absoluteness. Let us assume a saturated phenomenon that has just gained its absolute character by freeing itself from the analogies with experience-what horizon can it recognize? On the one hand, the excess of intuition saturates this phenomenon so as to make it exceed the frame of ordinary experience. On the other hand, a horizon, by its very definition, defines and is defined; through its movement to the limit, the saturated phenomenon can manage to saturate its horizon. There is nothing strange about this hypothesis-even in strict philosophy where, with Spinoza, for example, the unique substance, absorbing all the determinations and all the individuals corresponding thereto, manages to overwhelm with its infinitely saturated presence (infinitis attributis infinitis modis) the horizon of Cartesian metaphysics, by leaving therein no more free space for the finite (absolute and universal necessity). Such saturation of a horizon by a single saturated phenomenon presents a danger that could not be overestimated, since it is born from the experience-and from the absolutely real, in no way illusory, experience-of totality, with neither door nor window, with neither other [autre] nor others [autrui]. But this danger results less from the saturated phenomenon itself than, strangely, from the misapprehension of it. Indeed, when it arises, it is most often treated as if it were only a common law phenomenon or a impoverished phenomenon. In fact, the saturated phenomenon maintains its absoluteness and, at the same time, dissolves its danger, when one recognizes it without confusing it with other phenomena, and therefore when one allows it to operate on several horizons at once. Since there are spaces with n+l dimensions (whose properties saturate the imagination), there are phenomena with n+l horizons. One of the best examples of such an arrangement is furnished by the doctrine of the transcendentals: the irreducible plurality of ens, verum, bonum, and pulchrum allows one to decline the saturated phenomenon from the first Principle in perfectly autonomous registers, where it gives itself to be seen, each time, only according to one perspective, which is total as well as partial; their convertibility indicates that the saturation persists, but that it is distributed within several concurrent horizons. Or rather the saturation increases because each perspective, already saturated in itself, is blurred a second time by the interferences in it of other saturated perspectives.40 The plurality of horizons therefore allows as much that one might respect the absoluteness of the saturated phenomenon (which no horizon could delimit or precede), as that one might render it tolerable through a multiplication of the dimensions of its reception.
There remains nevertheless one last thinkable, although extreme, relation between the saturated phenomenon and its horizon(s): that no horizon nor any combination of horizons tolerate the absoluteness of the phenomenon precisely because it gives itself as absolute; that is, as free from any analogy with common law phenomena and from any predetermination by a network of relations, with neither precedent nor antecedent within the already seen (the foreseen). In short, a phenomenon saturated to the point that the world could not accept it. Having come among its own, they did not recognize it-having come into phenomenality, the absolutely saturated phenomenon could find no room there for its display. But this opening denial, and thus this disfiguration, still remains a manifestation.
Thus, in giving itself absolutely, the saturated phenomenon gives itself also as absolute-free from any analogy with the experience that is already seen, objectivized, and comprehended. It frees itself therefrom because it depends on no horizon. On the contrary, the saturated phenomenon either simply saturates the horizon, or it multiplies the horizon in order to saturate it that much more, or it exceeds the horizon and finds itself cast out from it. But this very disfiguration remains a manifestation. In every case, it does not depend on that condition of possibility par excellence-a horizon, whatever it may be. We will therefore call this phenomenon unconditioned.
VII
Neither visable according to quantity, nor bearable according to quality, absolute according to relation-that is, unconditioned by the horizon-the saturated phenomenon finally gives itself as incapable of being looked at according to modality.
The categories of modality are distinguished from all the others, Kant insists, in that they .determine neither the objects themselves, nor their mutual relations, but simply "their relation to thought in general," in that they "express only the relation to the power of knowing ," "nothing other than the action of the power of knowing."41 In fact, between the objects of experience and the power of knowing, it is not only a question of a simple relation, but of the fact that they "agree." This agreement determines the possibility of phenomena to be (and therefore also their actuality and necessity) in the measure of their suitability to the "I" for and through whom the experience takes place. "The postulate of the possibility of things requires [fordert] therefore that their concept agree [zusammenstimme] with the formal conditions of an experience in general."42 The phenomenon is possible in the strict measure that it agrees with the formal conditions of experience, thus with the power of knowing that fixes its attention on them, and therefore finally with the transcendental "I" itself. The possibility of the phenomenon depends on its reduction to the "1."
This being the case, we can envisage a reversal of Kant's assertion and ask: what would occur phenomenologically if a phenomenon.did not "agree" with or "correspond" to the power of knowing of the "I"? The Kantian answer leaves hardly any doubt: this phenomenon quite simply would not appear; or better, there would not be any phenomenon at all, but an object-less perceptive aberration. If this answer remains meaningful for an impoverished or common law phenomenon, does it still hold for a saturated phenomenon? In fact, the situation in this case becomes much different. In face of saturation, the "I" most certainly experiences the disagreement between the at least potential phenomenon and the subjective conditions of its experience; consequently, the "I" cannot constitute an object therein. But this failure to objectivize in no way implies that absolutely nothing appears here: intuitive saturation, precisely inasmuch as it is invisible, intolerable, and absolute (unconditioned), imposes itself in the capacity of a phenomenon that is exceptional by excess, not by defect. The saturated phenomenon refuses to let itself be looked at as an object, precisely because it appears with a multiple and indescribable excess that suspends any effort at constitution. To define the saturated phenomenon as a non-objective or, more exactly, non-objectivizable object, in no way indicates a refuge in the irrational or the arbitrary; this definition refers to one of its distinctive properties: although exemplarily visible, it nevertheless cannot be looked at. We here take "to look at"-regarder-literally: re-garder exactly reproduces in-tueri and must therefore be understood on the basis of tueri, garder but in the sense of "to keep an eye on. . .," "to keep half an eye on. . .," "to have (to keep) in sight. . ." Regarder therefore implies being able to keep the visible that is seen under the control of the one who is seeing and, consequently, a voyeur. And it is certainly not by chance that Descartes entrusts the intuitus with maintaining in evidence what the ego reduces to the status of objectum. To define the saturated phenomenon as incapable of being looked at [irregardable] amounts to envisaging the possibility where a phenomenon would impose itself with such a surfeit of intuition that it could neither be reduced to the conditions of experience, and thus to the "I" who sets them, nor, all the same, forgo appearing.
Under what figure would it appear then? It appears in spite of and in disagreement with the conditions of possibility of experience-by imposing an impossible experience (if not already an experience of the impossible). Of the saturated phenomenon there would be only a counter-experience. Confronted with the saturated phenomenon, the "I" cannot not see it, but neither can it look at it as its object. It has the eye to see it, but not to look after it [pour le garder]. What, then, does this eye without a look [cet oeil sans regard] actually see? It sees the overabundance of intuitive givenness, not, however, as such, but as blurred by the overly short lens, the overly restricted aperture, the overly narrow frame that receives it--or rather, that no longer accommodates it. The eye apperceives not so much the appearance of the saturated phenomenon as the blur, the fog, and the overexposure that it imposes on its normal conditions of experience. The eye sees not so much another spectacle as its own naked impotence to constitute anything at all. It sees nothing distinctly, but clearly experiences its impotence before the unmeasuredness of the visible, and thus above all a perturbation of the visible, the noise of a poorly received message, the obfuscation of finitude. Through sight, it receives a pure givenness, precisely because it no longer discerns any objectivizable given therein.
Let us call this phenomenological extremity a paradox. The paradox not only suspends the phenomenon's relation of subjection to the "l," it inverts that relation. Far from being able to constitute this phenomenon, the "I" experiences itself as constituted by it. It is constituted and no longer constituting because it no longer has at its disposal any dominant point of view over the intuition that overwhelms It; in space, the saturated phenomenon engulfs it with its intuitive flood; in time, it precedes it through an interpellation that is always already there. The "I" loses its anteriority and finds itself, so to speak, deprived [destitue] of the duties of constitution, and thus itself constituted: a "me" rather than an "I." It is clear that on the basis of the saturated phenomenon we meet here with what we have thematized elsewhere under the name of the subject on its last appeal the interloque.43 When the "I" finds itself, instead of the constituting "I" that it remained in face of common law phenomena, constituted by a saturated phenomenon, it can identify itself as such only by admitting the precedence of such a phenomenon over itself. This reversal leaves it interloque, essentially surprised by the more original event that detaches it from itself.
Thus, the phenomenon is no longer reduced to the "I" that would look at it. Incapable of being looked at, it proves irreducible. There is no drift or turn here, even "theological," but, on the contrary, an accounting for the fact that in certain cases of givenness the excess of intuition may no longer satisfy the conditions of ordinary experience; and that the pure event that occurs cannot be constituted as an object and leaves the durable trace of its opening only in the "I/me" that finds itself, almost in spite of itself, constituted by what it receives. The constituting subject is succeeded by the constituted witness. As a constituted witness, the subject remains the worker of truth, but no longer its producer.
VIII
In order to introduce the concept of the saturated phenomenon into phenomenology, we have just described it as invisable (unforeseeable) according to quantity, unbearable according to quality, but also unconditioned (absolved from any horizon) according to relation, and irreducible to the "I" (incapable of being looked at) according to modality. These four characteristics imply the term for term reversal of all the rubrics under which Kant classifies the principles and thus the phenomena that these determine. However, in relation to Husserl, these new characteristics are organized in a more complex way; the first two-the invisable and the unbearable-offer no difficulty de jure for the "principle of all principles," for what intuition gives can quantitatively and qualitatively exceed the scope of the gaze; it is sufficient that intuition actually give it. The case is not the same for the last two characteristics: the "principle of all principles" presupposes the horizon and the constituting "I" as two unquestioned presuppositions of anything that would be constituted in general as a phenomenon; but the saturated phenomenon, inasmuch as it is unconditioned by a horizon and irreducible to an "I," makes a claim to a possibility that is freed from these two conditions; it therefore contradicts and exceeds the "principle of all principles." Husserl, who nonetheless surpassed the Kantian metaphysics of the phenomenon, must himself be surpassed in order to reach the possibility of the saturated phenomenon. Even and especially with the "principle of all principles," Husserl maintains a twofold reserve toward possibility. Nevertheless, this reserve of Husserl toward possibility can prove to be a reserve of phenomenology itself-which still maintains a reserve of possibility, in order itself to be surpassed toward a possibility without reserve. Because it gives itself without condition or restraint, the saturated phenomenon offers the paradigm of the phenomenon without reserve. Thus, in the guiding thread of the saturated phenomenon, phenomenology finds its ultimate possibility: not only the possibility that surpasses actuality, but the possibility that surpasses the very conditions of possibility, the possibility of unconditioned possibility-in other words, the possibility of the impossible, the saturated phenomenon.
The saturated phenomenon must not be understood as a limit case, an exceptional, vaguely irrational-in short, a "mystical" case of phenomenality. It indicates on the contrary the coherent and conceptual completion of the most operative definition of the phenomenon: it alone truly appears as itself, of itself and starting from itself,44 since it alone appears without the limits of a horizon and without the reduction to an "I." We will therefore call this appearance that is purely of itself and starting from itself, this phenomenon that does not subject its possibility to any preliminary determination, a revelation. And-we insist on this here it is purely and simply a matter of the phenomenon taken in its fullest meaning.
Moreover, the history of philosophy has a long-standing knowledge of such saturated phenomena. One could go so far as to maintain that none of the decisive metaphysicians has avoided the description of one or more saturated phenomena, even at the price of a head-on contradiction of his own presuppositions. Among many fairly obvious examples, let us simply call to mind Descartes and Kant.
a) Descartes, who everywhere else reduces the phenomenon to the idea and the idea to the object, nevertheless thinks the idea of infinity as a saturated phenomenon. According to quantity, the idea of infinity is not obtained by summation or successive synthesis, but tota simul; thus, the gaze (intueri) becomes the surprise of admiration (admirari).45 According to quality, it admits no finite degree, but a maximum: maxime clara et distincta, maxime vera.46 According to relation, it maintains no analogy with any idea at all: nihil univoce; indeed, it exceeds every horizon since it remains incomprehensible, capable only of being touched by thought: attingam quomodolibet cogitatione. According to modality, far from letting itself be led back to a constituting "l," it comprehends the "I" without letting itself be comprehended by it: non tam capere quam a ipsa capi,48 such that perhaps even the ego could also be interpreted at times as one who is called [un interpelle]. But furthermore, would it not suffice to translate "idea of infinity" word for word by "saturated phenomenon" in order to establish our conclusion?
b) Kant furnishes an example of the saturated phenomenon that is all the more significant insofar as it does not concern, as does Descartes', rational theology; in fact, it is a question of the sublime. We relied above on the "aesthetic idea" to challenge the principle of the shortage of intuition and to introduce the possibility of a saturation. In fact, already with the doctrine of the sublime we are dealing with a saturated phenomenon. Indeed, according to quantity, the sublime has neither form nor order, since it is great "beyond all comparison," absolutely and not comparatively (absolute, schlechthin, bloss).49 According to quality, it contradicts taste as a "negative pleasure" and it provokes a "feeling of inadequacy," a feeling of "monstrosity."50 According to relation, it very clearly escapes any analogy and any horizon since it literally represents "unlimitedness" (Unbegrenzheit).51 According to modality, finally, far from agreeing with our power of knowing, "it can seem [erscheinen mag] in its form to contradict the purpose [zweckwidrig] of our faculty of judgment"; the relation of our faculty of judgment to the phenomenon is therefore reversed, to the point that it is the phenomenon that hereafter "looks at" the "I" "in respect."52 The Kantian sublime would thus permit us to widen the field of application for the concept of the saturated phenomenon.
From here on, we can recapitulate. Phenomena can be classified, according to their increasing intuitive content, in three fundamental domains. a) The phenomena that are deprived of intuition or impoverished in intuitions: formal languages (endowed with categorial intuition by Husserl), mathematical idealities (whose pure intuition is established by Kant). b) The common law phenomena, whose signification (aimed at by intention) can ideally receive an adequate intuitive fulfillment, but that, right at the start and most of the time, do not reach such fulfillment. In these first two domains, the constitution of objects is rendered possible precisely because the shortage of intuition authorizes comprehension, foresight, and reproduction. c) There remain, finally, the saturated phenomena, which an excess of intuition shields from objective constitution. Conveniently, we can distinguish two types. ) First, pure historical events: by definition non-repeatable, they occur most often without having been foreseen; since through a surfeit of intuitive given they escape objectivation, their intelligibility excludes comprehension and demands that one move on to hermeneutics;53 intuitive saturation surpasses a single horizon and imposes multiple hermeneutics within several horizons; finally, the pure historical event not only occurs to its witness without the latter comprehending it (the non-constituting "I"), but itself, in return, comprehends the "I" (the constituted "I"): the "I" is comprehended on the basis of the event that occurs to it in the very measure that the "I" itself does not comprehend the event. Pure events offer a type of saturated phenomenon that is historical and thus communal and in principle communicable. 2) Such is not always the case for the second type, the phenomena of revelation. Let me repeat that by revelation I here intend a strictly phenomenological concept: an appearance that is purely of itself and starting from itself, which does not subject its possibility to any preliminary determination. Such revealed phenomena occur principally in three domains. First the picture as a spectacle that, due to excess of intuition, cannot be constituted but still can be looked at (the idol). Next, a particular face that I love, which has become invisible not only because it dazzles me, but above all because in it I want to look and can look only at its invisible gaze weighing on mine (the icon). Finally, theophany, where the surfeit of intuition leads to the paradox that an invisible gaze visibly envisages me and loves me. And it is here that the question of the possibility of a phenomenology of religion would be posed in terms that are not new (for it is only a matter of pushing the phenomenological intention to its end), but simple.
In every case, recognizing the saturated phenomena comes down to thinking seriously aliquid quo majus cogitari nequit-seriously, which means as a final possibility of phenomenology.54 ,55
The saturated phenomenonWhat comes into the world without troubling merits neither consideration nor patience. Rene Char I
The field of religion could simply be defined as what philosophy excludes or, in the best case, subjugates. Such a constant antagonism cannot be reduced to any given ideological opposition or any given anecdotal prejudice. In fact, it rests upon perfectly reasonable ground: the "philosophy of religion," if there were one, would have to describe, produce, and constitute phenomena, it would then find itself confronted with a disastrous alternative: either it would be a question of phenomena that are objectively definable but lose their religious specificity, or it would be a question of phenomena that are specifically religious but cannot be described objectively. A phenomenon that is religious in the strict sense-belonging to the domain of a "philosophy of religion" distinct from the sociology, the history, and the psychology of religion-would have to render visible what nevertheless could not be objectivized. The religious phenomenon thus amounts to an impossible phenomenon, or at least it marks the limit starting from which the phenomenon is in general no longer possible. Thus, the religious phenomenon poses the question of the general possibility of the phenomenon, more than of the possibility of religion.
Once this boundary is acknowledged, there nevertheless remain several ways of understanding it. Religion could not strike the possibility of the phenomenon in general with impossibility if the very possibility of the phenomenon were not defined: when does it become impossible to speak of a phenomenon, and according to what criteria of phenomenality? But the possibility of the phenomenon-and therefore the possibility of declaring a phenomenon impossible, that is, invisible--could not in its turn be determined without also establishing the terms of possibility taken in itself. By subjecting the phenomenon to the jurisdiction of possibility, philosophy in fact brings fully to light its own definition of bare possibility. The question concerning the possibility of the phenomenon implies the question of the phenomenon of possibility. Or better, when the rational scope of a philosophy is measured according to the extent of what it renders possible, that scope will be measured also according to the extent of what it renders visible-according to the possibility of phenomenality in it. According to whether it is accepted or rejected, the religious phenomenon would thus become a privileged index of the possibility of phenomenality.
To start out, I will rely on Kant. In Kant, the metaphysical definition of possibility is stated as follows: "That which agrees with the formal conditions of experience, that is, with the conditions of intuition and of concepts, is possible [mit den formalen Bedingungen der Erfahrung . . . uberkommt]." What is surprising here has to do with the intimate tie Kant establishes between possibility and phenomenality: possibility results explicitly from the conditions of experience; among those conditions is intuition, which indicates that experience takes the form of a phenomenality-that experience has a form ("formal conditions") precisely because it experiences sensible forms of appearance. Here, therefore, possibility depends on phenomenality. Would it be necessary to conclude from this that the phenomenon imposes its possibility, instead of being subject to the conditions thereof? Not at all, because the possible does not agree with the object of experience but with its "formal conditions": possibility does not follow from the phenomenon, but from the conditions set for any phenomenon. A formal requirement therefore is imposed on possibility, just as Kant indicates a little bit later: "The postulate of the possibility of things requires (fordert) that the concept of things should agree with the formal conditions of an experience in general." The access of the phenomenon to its own manifestation must submit to the requirement of possibility; but possibility itself depends on the "formal conditions of experience"; how then, in the last instance, are these "formal conditions" established that determine phenomenality and possibility together? Kant indicates this indirectly, but unambiguously, by underlining straightaway that "the categories of modality. . . express only the relation of the concept to the power of knowing."i The formal conditions of knowledge are directly joined here with the power of knowing. This means that intuition and the concept determine in advance the possibility of appearing for any phenomenon. The possibility and therefore also and especially the impossibility-of a phenomenon is ordered to the measure of the "power of knowing," that is, concretely, the measure of the play of intuition and of the concept within a finite mind. Any phenomenon is possible that grants itself to the finitude of the power of knowing and its requirements.
In this way Kant merely confirms a decision already made by Leibniz. To be sure, the one thinks phenomenal possibility starting from a finite mind, while the other thinks it starting from an infinite (or indefinite) mind; but both lead to the same conditional possibility of the phenomenon. Indeed, metaphysics obeys the "Great Principle . . . which holds that nothing is done without sufficient reason, that is, that nothing happens without it being possible for the one who sufficiently knows things to give a Reason that suffices to determine why it is so and not otherwise."2 Thus, nothing "is done," nothing "happens," in short, nothing appears, without the attestation that it is "possible"; this possibility, in turn, is equivalent to the possibility of knowing the sufficient reason for such an appearance. As for Kant, for Leibniz the right to appear-the possibility of a phenomenon depends on the power of knowing that implements the sufficiency of reason, which, whatever it might be, precedes what it renders possible. As the "power of knowing" will establish the conditions of possibility, sufficient reason already suffices to render possible that which, without it, would have remained impossible. This dependence is indicated with particular clarity in the case of the sensible. To be sure, "sensible things" appear and deserve the name of"phenomena," but they owe that name to another "reason," a reason that is different from their very appearance, and that alone suffices to qualify that appearance as a phenomenon: "The truth of sensible things consisted only in the relation of the phenomena, which had to have its reason."3 When Leibniz opposes, among the beings that he recognizes as permanent (creatura permanens absoluta), full being (unum per se, ens plenum; substantia; modif catio) to the diminished being that he likens to the phenomenon (unum per aggregationem; semiens, phaenomenon), one should not commit the error of imagining that the phenomenon would be ranked as half a being or a half-being only because it would suffer from an insufficiency of reason. On the contrary, it is precisely because it enjoys a perfectly sufficient reason that the phenomenon regresses to the rank of half a being; it is precisely as "phaenomena bene fundata"4 that the phenomena admit their being grounded, and therefore conditioned by a reason that alone is sufficient and that they themselves do not suffice to ensure. If reason can ground the phenomena, this is so first because it must save them; but reason would not have to do this if one did not first admit that, left to themselves, these phenomena would be lost. For appearance actually to appear does not suffice to justify its possibility; it must still resort to reason, which-while itself not having to appear-alone renders possible the brute actuality of the appearance, because it renders the possibility of that appearance intelligible. The phenomenon attests its lack of reason when and because it receives that reason; for it appears only under condition, as a conditional phenomenon-under the condition of what does not appear. In a metaphysical system, the possibility of appearing never belongs to what appears, nor phenomenality to the phenomenon.
II
It is this aporia that phenomenology escapes all at once in opposing to the principle of sufficient reason, the "principle of all principles," and thus in surpassing conditional phenomenality through a phenomenality without condition. The "principle of all principles" posits that "every originarily giving intuition (Anschauung) is a source of right for cognition, that everything that offers itself to us originarily in 'intuition' (Intuition) is to be taken quite simply as it gives itself out to be, but also only within the limits in which it is given there."5 There can be no question here of determining the decisive importance of this principle, nor its function within the whole of the other principles of phenomenology.6 It will suffice here to underscore some of its essential traits.
According to the first essential trait, intuition no longer intervenes simply as a de facto source of the phenomenon, a source that ensures its brute actuality without yet grounding it in reason, but as a source of right, justificatory of itself. Intuition is itself attested through itself, without the background of a reason that is yet to be given. In this way the phenomenon, according to Husserl, corresponds in advance to the phenomenon according to Heidegger-that which shows itself on the basis of itself. To put it plainly: on the basis of itself as a pure and perfect appearance of itself, and not on the basis of another than itself that would not appear (a reason). Intuition is sufficient for the phenomenon to justify its right to appear, without any other reason: far from having to give a sufficient reason, it suffices for the phenomenon to give itself through intuition according to a principle of sufficient intuition. But intuition becomes sufficient only inasmuch as it operates without any background, originarily, as Husserl says; now, it operates originarily, without any presupposition, only inasmuch as it furnishes the originary data, inasmuch, therefore, as it gives itself originarily. Intuition is justified by right on the basis of itself only by making a claim to an unconditioned origin. It cannot justify this claim without going so far as to mime the sufficient reason to be rendered (reddendae rationis), that is, by rendering itself, by giving itself in person. Indeed, givenness alone indicates that the phenomenon ensures, in a single gesture, both its visibility and the full right of that visibility, both its appearance and the reason for that appearance. Nevertheless, it still remains to be verified whether the "principle of all principles" in point of fact ensures a right to appear for all phenomena, whether it indeed opens for them an absolutely unconditioned possibility-or whether it renders them possible still only under some condition. Now, it happens that the principle of giving intuition does not authorize the absolutely unconditioned appearance, and thus the freedom of the phenomenon that gives itself on the basis of itself. To be sure, this is not because intuition as such limits phenomenality, but because it remains framed, as intuition, by two conditions of possibility, conditions that themselves are not intuitive but are nevertheless assigned to every phenomenon. The second and third traits of the "principle of all principles" contradict the first one, as conditions and limits-as a condition and a limit-contradict the claim to absolute possibility opened by the giving intuition.
Let us first consider a second trait of the "principle": it justifies every phenomenon, "but also only [aber auch nur] within the limits in which" that phenomenon is given. This restriction attests to a twofold finitude of the giving instance-of intuition. First, a factual restriction: intuition admits "limits" (Schranken). These limits, in whatever way one understands them (since Husserl hardly makes them clear here), indicate that not everything is capable of being given perfectly; right away, intuition is characterized by scarcity, obeys a logic of shortage, and is stigmatized by an indelible insufficiency; we will have to ask ourselves about the motivation, the status and the presuppositions of this factual shortcoming. But-secondly-this restriction can already be authorized by a de jure limitation: any intuition, in order to give within certain factual "limits," must first be inscribed by right within the limits (Grenze) of a horizon; likewise, no intentional aim of an object, signification, or essence can operate outside of a horizon. Husserl indicates this point through an argument that is all the stronger insofar as it is paradoxical. Considering what he nevertheless names "the limitlessness [Grenzenlosigleit] that is presented by the immanent intuitions when going from an already fixed lived-experience to new lived-experiences that form its horizon, from the fixing of these livedexperiences to the fixing of their horizon; and so on," he admits that any lived-experience is continually referred to new, as yet unknown lived-experiences, and therefore to a horizon of novelties that are irreducible because continually renewed. But precisely, this irrepressible novelty of the flux of consciousness remains, by right, always comprehended within a horizon, even if these new lived-experiences are not yet given: "a lived-experience that has become an Object of an Ego's look and that therefore has the mode of being looked at, has for its horizon lived-experiences that are not looked at" (Danach hat ein Erlebnis, das zum Objekt eines Ichblickes geworden ist, also den Modus des Erblickes hat. seinen Horizont nichterblickter Erlebnisse).7 The horizon, or, according to its etymology, delimitation, exerts itself over experience even where there are only lived-experiences that are not looked at, that is, where experience has not taken place. The outside of experience is not equivalent to the experience of the outside, because the horizon in advance seizes the outside, the non-experienced, the not looked at. One cannot escape here the feeling of a fundamental ambiguity. With this horizon, is it a question of what is not looked at as not looked at, a question of the simple recognition that all lived-experience is grasped in the flux of consciousness, and is therefore oriented in advance toward other lived-experiences that are yet to arise? Or is it not rather a question of the treatment, in advance, of the non-lived-experiences that are not looked at as the subjects of a horizon, and therefore a question of the inclusion within a limit-be it that of the flux of consciousness-of anything that is not looked at, a question of the a priori inscription of the possible within a horizon? Thus we must ask whether the "principle of all principles" does not presuppose at least one condition for givenness: the very horizon of any givenness. Does not the second trait of the "principle of all principles" that of any horizon at all contradict the absoluteness of intuitive givenness?
The third trait of the "principle of all principles" has to do with the fact that intuition gives what appears only by giving it "to us." There is nothing trivial or redundant about this expression; it betrays a classic ambiguity of the Ideen: the givenness of the phenomenon on the basis of itself to an "I" can at every instant veer toward a constitution of the phenomenon through and on the basis of the "I." Even if one does not overestimate this constant threat, one must at least admit that givenness, precisely because it keeps its originary and justifying function, can give and justify nothing except before the tribunal of the "I"; transcendental or not, the phenomenological "I" remains the beneficiary, and therefore the witness and even the judge, of the given appearance; it falls to the "I" to measure what does and does not give itself intuitively, within what limits, according to what horizon, following what intention, essence and signification. Even if it shows itself on the basis of itself, the phenomenon can do so only by allowing itself to be lead back, and therefore reduced, to the "I." Moreover, the originary primacy of the "I" maintains an essential relation with the placement of any phenomenon within the limits of a horizon. Indeed, "every now of a lived-experience has a horizon of lived-experiences-which also have precisely the originary form of the `now,' and which as such produce an originary horizon [Originaritatshorizont] of the pure I, its total originary now of consciousness."8 In this way the "principle of all principles" still presupposes that all givenness must accept the "I" as its "now." The requirement of a horizon is but one with that of the reduction: in each case it is a matter of leading phenomenological givenness back to the "I.".But, that being the case, if every phenomenon is defined by its very reducibility to the "I," must we not exclude straightaway the general possibility of an absolute, autonomous-in short, irreducible-phenomenon? By the same token, is not all irreducible possibility decidedly jeopardized?
"The principle of all principles," through originarily giving intuition, undoubtedly frees the phenomena from the duty of rendering a sufficient reason for their appearance. But it thinks that givenness itself only on the basis of two determinations that threaten its originary character-the horizon and the reduction. Phenomenology would thus condemn itself to missing almost immediately what the giving intuition nevertheless indicates to it as its own goal: to free the possibility of appearing [I'apparaitre] as such. We should stress that it is obviously not a question here of envisaging a phenomenology without any "I" or horizon, for clearly, it would then be phenomenology itself that would become impossible. On the contrary, it is a question of taking seriously the claim that, since the "principle of all principles," "higher than actuality stands possibility,"9 and of envisaging this possibility radically. Let us define it provisionally: what would occur, as concerns phenomenality, if an intuitive givenness were accomplished that was absolutely unconditioned (without the limits of a horizon) and absolutely irreducible (to a constituting "I")? Can we not envisage a type of phenomenon that would reverse the condition of a horizon (by surpassing it, instead of being inscribed within it) and that would reverse the reduction (by leading the "I" back to itself, instead of being reduced to the "I")? To declare this hypothesis impossible straightaway, without resorting to intuition, would immediately betray a phenomenological contradiction. Consequently, we will here assume the hypothesis of such a phenomenon, at least in the capacity of an imaginary variation allowing us to test a movement to the limit in the determination of any phenomenality and allowing us to experience anew what possibility means-or gives. Some limits remain, in principle, irrefutable and undoubtedly indispensable. But this does not mean that what contradicts them cannot for all that, paradoxically, be constituted as a phenomenon. Quite on the contrary, certain phenomena could by playing on the limits of phenomenality-not only appear at those limits, but appear there all the more. Within this hypothesis, the question of a phenomenology of religion would no doubt be posed in new terms, as much for religion as for phenomenology.
III
We are justified in evoking the possibility of an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon, that is, a phenomenon par excellence, only inasmuch as such a possibility truly opens itself. We therefore have to establish that this possibility cannot be reduced to an illusion of possibility, through a movement to the limit that would exceed nothing other than the conditions of possibility of phenomenality in general. In short, we have to establish that an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon, with neither delimiting horizon nor constituting "I," offers a true possibility and does not amount to "telling stories." To arrive at this guarantee, we will proceed first indirectly by examining the common definition of the phenomenon, since there is a definition as much in metaphysics according to Kant as in phenomenology according to Husserl; we will then attempt to specify whether that definition-which, moreover, subjects every phenomenon to a horizon of appearance and a constituting "I'=is justified by an opening of phenomenality, or whether it does not rather confirm its essential closure. In other words, it will be a matter of specifying the ground of the limitation that is brought upon the phenomenon by its common definition, in order to indicate exactly what possibility would, by contrast, remain open to an unconditional and irreducible acceptation of phenomenality.
All along the path of his thinking, Husserl will maintain a definition of the phenomenon that is determined by its fundamental duality: "The word 'phenomenon' is ambiguous [doppelsinnig] in virtue of the essential correlation between appearance and that which appears [Erscheinen und Erscheinenden]."' o This correlation is organized according to several different but interlinked couples-intention/intuition, signification/fulfillment, noesis/noema, etc.-and thus only better establishes the phenomenon as what appears as a correlate of appearance [apparition]. This is indeed why the highest manifestation of any phenomenon whatever, that is, the highest phenomenality possible, is achieved with the perfect adequation between these two terms: the subjective appearing [I'apparaitre subjectif] is equivalent to that which objectively appears [I'apparaissant objectif]. "And so also, eo ipso, the ideal of every fulfillment, and therefore of a significative fulfillment, is sketched for us; the intellectus is in this case the thought-intention, the intention of meaning. And the adaequatio is realized when the object meant is in the strict sense given in our intuition, and given precisely as it is thought and named. No thought-intention could fail of its fulfillment, of its last fulfillment, in fact, in so far as the fulfilling medium of intuition has itself lost all implication of unsatisfied intention."11 It is certainly important to stress the persistence here, in a territory that is nevertheless phenomenological, of the most metaphysical definition of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus. But it is even more important to stress the fact that adequation defines not only the truth, but above all "the ideal of ultimate fulfillment."l2 This limit case of perception is equivalent to what Husserl, in a Cartesian fashion, names evidence. More precisely, the objective truth is achieved subjectively through evidence, considered as the experience of the adequation made by consciousness. Now, this ideal of evidence, which is supposed to designate the maximum and the extreme of any ambition to truth, nevertheless claims, with a very strange modesty, only an "adequation," a simple equality. The paradigm of ideal equality weighs so heavily that Husserl does not hesitate to repeat it in no less than four figures: a) "the full agreement between the meant and the given as such [Ubereinstimmung zwischen Gemeintem und Gegebenem]"; b) "the idea of the absolute adequation [Adaquation]" between the ideal essence and the empirically contingent act of evidence; c) the "ideal fulfillment for an intention"; d) and finally "the truth as rightness [Rechtigheit] of our intention."13 What is surprising, however, resides not so much in this insistent repetition as in the fact that the adequation it so explicitly seeks remains nonetheless a pure and simple ideal: "The ideal of an ultimate fulfillment," "that ideally fulfilled perception," an "idea of absolute adequation as such."14 Now, how can we not understand these two terms in a Kantian manner where the ideal is the object of the idea? Consequently, since the idea remains a concept of reason such that its object can never be given through the senses, the ideal as such (as object of the idea) will never be given. 15 Thus, if adequation, which produces evidence subjectively, still constitutes an "ideal" for Husserl, we would have to conclude that it is never, or at least rarely, realized. And with it, truth is rarefied or made inaccessible. Why, therefore, does adequate evidence most often remain a limit case, or even an excluded case? Why does the equality between noesis and noema, essence and fulfillment, intention and intuition, seem inaccessible-or almost-at the very moment when it is invested with the dignity of truth? Why does Husserl compromise the return to the things themselves by modifying evidence and truth with ideality?
Answer: because the equality that Husserl maintains de jure between intuition and intention remains for him in fact untenable. Intention (almost) always (partially) lacks intuition, just as meaning [signification] almost always lacks fulfillment. In other words, intention and meaning surpass intuition and fulfillment. "A surplus in meaning [ein Uberschuss in der Bedeutung] remains, a form that finds nothing in the phenomenon itself to confirm it," because in principle "the realm of meaning is much wider than that of intuition."16 Intuition remains essentially lacking, impoverished, needy, indigent. The adequation between intention and intuition thus becomes a simple limit case, an ideal that is usually evoked by default. One could not argue against this by putting forward the fact that evidence is regularly achieved in mathematics and formal logic; for this fact, far from denying the failure of evidence, confirms it. Indeed, the ideal of adequation is realized precisely only in those domains where the intention of meaning, in order to be fulfilled in a phenomenon, requires only a pure or formal intuition (space in mathematics), or even no intuition (empty tautology in logic); mathematics and formal logic offer, precisely, only an ideal object-that is, strictly speaking, an object that does not have to give itself in order to appear; in short, a minute or zero-degree of phenomenality; evidence is adequately achieved because it requires only an impoverished or empty intuition. Adequation is realized so easily here only because it is a matter of phenomena without any (or with weak) intuitive requirements. 7 There would be good reason, moreover, to wonder about the privilege that is so often granted by theories of knowledge (from Plato to Descartes, from Kant to Husserl) to logical and mathematical phenomena: they are erected as models of all the others, while they are distinguished therefrom by their shortage of intuition, the poverty of their givenness, even the unreality of their objects. It is not self-evident that this marginal poverty could serve as a paradigm for phenomenality as a whole, nor that the certitude it ensures would be worth the phenomenological price one pays for it. Whatever the case may be, if the ideal of evidence is realized only for intuitively impoverished phenomena, when it is, on the contrary, a matter of plenary phenomena, that is, of the appearance of the "things themselves" to be given intuitively, adequation becomes an ideal in the strict sense; that is, an event not (entirely) given, due to a (minimally, partial) failure of intuition. The equality required by right between intuition and intention is lacking-for lack of intuition. The senses deceive, not at all through a provisional or accidental deception, but through an inescapable weakness: even an indefinite sum of intuited outlines will never fill intention with the least real object. When it is a question of a thing, the intentional object always exceeds its intuitive givenness. Its presence remains to be completed by appresentation. 18 What keeps phenomenology from allowing phenomena to appear without reserve, therefore, is, to begin with, the fundamental deficit of intuition that it ascribes to them-with neither recourse nor appeal. But the phenomenological "breakthrough" postulates this shortage of intuition only as a result of metaphysical decisions-in short, Husserl here suffers the consequences of decisions made by Kant.
For it is Kant first who, always defining the truth by adaequatio,19 inferred therefrom the parallel between intuition and the concept, which are supposed to play a tangentially equal role in the production of objectivity. "Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. It is, therefore, just as necessary to make our concepts sensible (that is, to add the object to them in intuition), as to make our intuitions intelligible (that is, to bring them under concepts). These two powers or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing."2 In principle, the phenomenon, and therefore the real object, appears in the strict measure that the intuition and the concept not only are synthesized, but also are balanced in that synthesis. Adaequatio-and therefore the truth-would thus rest on the equality of the concept with the intuition. However, Kant himself does not hesitate to disqualify this parallelism; for, if the concept corresponds to the intuition, it nevertheless radically depends on it. Indeed, if the concept thinks, it limits itself in this way to rendering intelligible, after the fact and by derivation, what intuition for its part, principially and originarily, alone can give: "Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind. .. Through the first [receptivity] an object is given [gegeben] to us, through the second the object is thought"; "There are two conditions under which alone the knowledge of an object is possible, first, intuition, through which it is given, though only as phenomenon [nur als Erscheinung gegeben wird]; secondly, the concept, through which an object is thought corresponding to this intuition."21 To be sure, the intuition remains empty, but blindness is worth more here than vacuity: for even blinded, the intuition remains one that gives, whereas the concept, even if it alone can allow to be seen what would first be given to it, remains as such perfectly empty, and therefore just as well incapable of seeing anything at all. Intuition without the concept, even though still blind, nevertheless already gives matter to an object; whereas the concept without intuition, although not blind, nevertheless no longer sees anything, since nothing has yet been given to it to be seen. In the realm of the phenomenon, the concept is not king, but rather intuition: before an object is seen and in order to be seen, its appearance must be given; even if it does not see what it gives, intuition alone enjoys the privilege of giving: "the object cannot be given to a concept otherwise than in intuition [nicht anders gegeben werden, als in der Anschauung]"; for "the category is a simple function of thought, through which no object is given to me, and by which alone what can be given in intuition is thought [nur was in der Anschauunggegeben werden mag]"; or again: "intuitions in general, through which objects can be given to us [uns Gegenstande gegeben werden konnen], constitute the field, the whole object, of possible experience."22 Thus, intuition does not offer a simple parallel or complement to the concept; it ensures the concept's condition of possibility-its possibility itself: "intuitions in general, through which objects can be given to us [gegeben werden konnen], constitute the field or whole object of possible experience [moglicher Erfahrung]."22 The phenomenon is thought through the concept; but in order to be thought, it must first be given; and it is given only through intuition. The intuitive mise en scene conditions conceptual objectivation. Inasmuch as alone and anteriorly giving, intuition breaks in its own favor its parallelism with the concept. Henceforth, the scope of intuition establishes that of phenomenal givenness. Phenomenality is indexed according to intuition.
Now, through a stunning tactical reversal, Kant stresses this privilege of intuition only in order better to stigmatize its weakness. For if intuition alone gives objects, there falls to human finitude only an intuition that is itself equally finite, in this case sensible. Consequently, all the eventual objects that would necessitate an intellectual intuition are excluded from the possibility of appearing. Phenomenality remains limited by the defect of what renders it partially possible-intuition. What gives (intuition inasmuch as sensible) is but of a piece with what is lacking (intuition inasmuch as intellectual). Intuition determines phenomenality as much by what it refuses to it as by what it gives to it. "Thought is the act which relates given intuition [gegebene Anschauung] to an object. If the mode of this intuition is not in any way given [auf keinerlei Weise gegeben], then the object is merely transcendental and the concept of understanding has only transcendental employment."23 To think is more than to know the objects given by (sensible) intuition; it is to think all those objects that no (intellectual) intuition will ever give, to measure the immense cenotaph of phenomena that never appeared and never will appear, in short to presume intuition's absence from possible phenomena. For intuition, which alone gives, essentially lacks. What gives is lacking. A paradox follows: henceforth, the more phenomena give themselves in sensibility, the more also grows the silent number of all the phenomena that cannot and need not claim to give themselves in sensibility. The more intuition gives according to the sensible, the more evident becomes its failure to let what is possibly phenomenal appear-a phenomenality that is henceforth held as impossible. The limitation of intuition to the sensible indirectly shows, as much as the directly given phenomena, the shadow of all those that it cannot let appear. The finitude of intuition is attested to with the permanence-which Kant admits is "necessary"of the idea. The idea, even though, or rather because it is a "rational concept to which no corresponding object can be given in the senses [in den Sinnen]," remains nevertheless visable24 if not visible in all the sensible appearances from which it is excluded. "Absent from every bouquet," the flower of thought, according to the "glory of long desire,"25 calls for sensible flowers and survives them; likewise the idea, in letting itself be aimed at outside the conditions established for phenomenality, marks that much more the limits thereof. In the quasi phantom-like mode of a non-object, the idea attests to the limits of an intuition that was not able to give the idea. It is therefore by not being sensible that the idea proves the failure of sensible intuition-in it and in general.
The phenomenon is characterized by its lack of intuition, which gives it only by limiting it. Kant confirms that intuition is operative only under the rule of limitation, of lack and of necessity, in short of nothingness [neant], by undertaking to define reciprocally the four senses of nothingness starting from intuition. Everything happens as if it were with intuition first, and with intuition considered as essentially lacking, failing, and limited, that nothingness in all its dimensions could be defined. The list of the four senses of nothingness amounts in effect to a review of four modes of intuition's failure. ) Nothingness can be taken as ens rationis. This is defined as "the object of a concept to which there corresponds no intuition that might be given [keine anzugebende Anschauung]." Intuition first produces nothingness in being unable to give any intuition corresponding to a being of reason; its limitation to the sensible finally induces a first nothingness. 2) Nothingness can be taken as nihil privativum. This is defined as "the concept of the lack of an object," that is, as a double lack of intuition; first as a concept, and therefore as what by definition lacks intuition; and then as the concept representing the very lack of intuition, which alone gives an object; a double lack of intuition produces a second nothingness. 3) Nothingness can be taken as nihil imaginativum. This sense is paradoxically significant: in principle, imagined nothingness would have to distance itself from nothingness, since here a minimum of intuition (precisely, the imagined) would have to give a minimum of being. But Kant does not grant even this positivity to the intuition, admitting only a "simple form of intuition" and reducing it to an "empty intuition." It should be noted that "empty" elsewhere returns to the concept, and that intuition does not even have any more right here to its "blind" solitude-since it is true that here the form of intuition is likened to the empty form of the concept. The form of intuition is reduced to a third nothingness. 4) Finally, nothingness can be taken as nihil negativum. As an "empty object without concept," it would seem to be defined by the failure in it of the concept and not of intuition; likewise, as "the object of a concept that contradicts itself," it would seem to admit of a purely logical explanation, and not an intuitive one. But, strangely, such is not the case, since Kant puts forward an example-a twosided rectilinear figure-which can be conceived only in space, and therefore in intuition. Moreover, as he specified earlier, "there is no contradiction in the concept of a figure that is enclosed between two straight lines, since the concepts of two figures and of their meeting contain no negation of a figure; the impossibility does not arise from the concept in itself, but in connection with its construction in space."26 The concept is lacking because the object contradicts itself; but this contradiction is not logical; it results from the contradiction of the conditions of experience-here from the requirements of construction in space; it is therefore a matter of a contradiction according to intuition, and thus according to the finitude of that intuition.-Nothingness is expressed in many ways, as is Being elsewhere, but that polysemy is organized entirely on the basis of different absences of finite and sensible intuition. Intuition's failure characterizes it fairly essentially, so that nothingness might itself be inflected in its voids.
We were asking: how is the phenomenon defined when phenomenology and metaphysics delimit it within a horizon and according to an "I"? Its definition as conditioned and reducible is well accomplished through a de-finition: the phenomena are given by an intuition, but that intuition remains finite, either as sensible (Kant), or as most often lacking or ideal (Husserl). Phenomena suffer from a deficit of intuition, and thus from a shortage of givenness. This radical lack has nothing accidental about it, but results from a phenomenological necessity. In order that any phenomenon might be inscribed within a horizon (and there find its condition of possibility), it is necessary that that horizon be delimited (it is its definition), and therefore that the phenomenon remain finite. In order for a phenomenon to be reduced to an obviously finite "I" who constitutes it, the phenomenon must be reduced to the status of finite objectivity. In both cases, the finitude of the horizon and of the "I" is indicated by the finitude of the intuition itself. The phenomena are characterized by the finitude of givenness in them, so as to be able to enter into a constituting horizon and to be led back to an "I." But, conversely, one could also conclude from this equivalence of the determinations that unconditioned and irreducible phenomena would become possible only if a non-finite intuition ensured their givenness. But can a non-finite intuition even be envisaged?
IV
The impossibility of an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon thus results directly from the determination of the phenomenon in general by the (at least potential) failure of intuition in it. Every phenomenon would appear as lacking intuition and as marked by this lack to the point of having to rely on the condition of a horizon and on the reduction towards an "I." There would be no phenomenon except that which is essentially impoverished in intuition, a phenomenon with a reduced givenness.
Having arrived at this point, we can pose the question of a strictly inverse hypothesis: in certain cases still to be defined, must we not oppose to the restricted possibility of phenomenality a phenomenality that is in the end absolutely possible? To the phenomenon that is supposed to be impoverished in intuition can we not oppose a phenomenon that is saturated with intuition? To the phenomenon that is most often characterized by a defect of intuition, and therefore by a deception of the intentional aim and, in particular instances, by the equality between intuition and intention, why would there not correspond the possibility of a phenomenon in which intuition would give more, indeed immeasurably more, than intention ever would have intended or foreseen?
This is not a matter of a gratuitous or arbitrary hypothesis. First, because in a certain way it falls to Kant-nevertheless the thinker of the intuitive shortage of the common phenomenon- to have envisaged and defined what we are calling a saturated phenomenon. There is nothing surprising in that. Indeed, if the "rational idea can never become a cognition because it contains a concept (of the supersensible) for which no adequate intuition can ever be given"-a phenomenon that is not only impoverished in, but deprived of, intuition-it nevertheless offers only one of the two faces of the idea, which is defined in general as the representation of an object according to a principle, such that it nonetheless can never become the cognition thereof. Thus to the rational idea-a representation according to the understanding-there corresponds the "aesthetic idea"-a representation according to intuition-that itself can never become a cognition, but for an opposite reason: "because it is an intuition (of the imagination) for which no adequate [adaquat] concept can ever be found."27 Inadequacy always threatens phenomenality (or better, suspends it); but it is no longer a matter of the non-adequation of the (lacking) intuition that leaves a (given) concept empty; it is a matter, conversely, of a failure of the (lacking) concept that leaves the (overabundantly given) intuition blind. Henceforth, it is the concept that is lacking, no longer intuition. Kant stresses this unambiguously: in the case of the aesthetic idea, the "representation of the imagination furnishes much to think [viel zu denken veranlasst], but to which no determinate thought, or concept, can be adequate [adaquat sein kann]." The excess of intuition over any concept also prohibits "that any language ever reach it completely and render it intelligible,"28 in short, allow an object to be seen in it. It is important to insist here particularly on this: this failure to produce the object does not result here from a shortage of givenness (as for the ideas of reason), but indeed from an excess of intuition, and thus from an excess of givenness that "furnishes much to think." There is an excess of givenness, and not simply of intuition, since, according to Kant (and, for the main part, Husserl), it is intuition that gives. Kant formulates this excess with a rare term: the aesthetic idea remains an "inexposable [inexponible] representation of the imagination." We can understand this in the following way: because it gives "much," the aesthetic idea gives more than any concept can expose; to expose here amounts to arranging (ordering) the intuitive given according to rules; the impossibility of this conceptual arrangement issues from the fact that the intuitive overabundance is no longer exposed within rules, whatever they may be, but overwhelms them; intuition is no longer exposed within the concept, but saturates it and renders it overexposed-invisible, not by lack, but by excess of light. The fact that this very excess should prohibit the aesthetic idea from organizing its intuition within the limits.of a concept, and therefore from giving a defined object to be seen, nevertheless does not disqualify it phenomenologically, since when recognized in this way for what it is, this "inexposable representation" operates according to its "free play."29 The difficulty consists simply in attempting to comprehend (and not only to repeat) what phenomenological possibility is put into operation when the excess of giving intuition thus begins to play freely.
The path to follow from here on now opens more clearly before us. We must develop as far as possible the uncommon phenomenological possibility glimpsed by Kant himself. In other words, we must attempt to describe the characteristics of a phenomenon that, contrary to most phenomena which are impoverished in intuition and defined by the ideal adequation of intuition to intention, would be characterized by an excess of intuition, and thus of givenness, over the intention, the concept and the aim. Such a phenomenon will doubtless no longer allow the constitution of an object, at least in the Kantian sense. But it is not self-evident that objectivity should have all the authority in fixing phenomenology's norm. The hypothesis of a phenomenon saturated with intuition can certainly be warranted by its outline in Kant, but above all it must command our attention because it designates a possibility of the phenomenon in general. And in phenomenology, the least possibility is binding.
V
We will outline the description of the saturated phenomenon following the guiding thread of the categories of the understanding established by Kant. But, in order to do justice to the excess of intuition over the concept, we will use them in a negative mode. The saturated phenomenon in fact exceeds the categories and the principles of the understanding-it will therefore be invisable according to quantity, unbearable according to quality, absolute according to relation, and incapable of being looked at [irregardable] according to modality.
First, the saturated phenomenon cannot be aimed at. This impossibility stems from its essentially unforeseeable character. To be sure, its giving intuition ensures it a quantity, but such that it cannot be foreseen. This determination is better clarified by inverting the function of the axioms of intuition. According to Kant, quantity (the magnitudes of extension) is declined through a composition of the whole on the basis of its parts; this "successive synthesis" allows one to compose the representation of the whole according to the representation of the sum of the parts; indeed, the magnitude of a quantum has the property of implying nothing more than the summation of the quanta that make it up through addition. From this homogeneity follows another property: a quantified phenomenon is "foreseen in advance [schon . . . angeschaut] as an aggregate (a sum of parts given in advance) [vorher gegebener]."30 Such a phenomenon is literally foreseen on the basis of the finite number of its parts and of the magnitude of each one among them. Now, these are precisely the properties that become impossible when a saturated phenomenon is at issue. Indeed, since the intuition that gives it is not limited, its excess can be neither divided nor put together again by virtue of a homogenous magnitude and finite parts. It could not be measured on the basis of its parts, since the saturating intuition surpasses the sum of these parts by continually adding to it. Such a phenomenon, which is always exceeded by the intuition that saturates it, would rather have to be called incommensurable, not measurable (immense), unmeasured [demesure]. This lack of measure [demesure], furthermore, does not always or initially operate through the enormity of an unlimited quantity. It is marked more often by the impossibility of applying a successive synthesis to it, a synthesis allowing one to foresee an aggregate on the basis of the sum of its parts. Since the saturated phenomenon exceeds any summation of its parts-which, moreover, often cannot be counted-we must forsake the successive synthesis in favor of what we will call an instantaneous synthesis, the representation of which precedes and goes beyond that of possible components, rather than resulting from them according to foresight.
We find a privileged example of this with amazement. According to Descartes, this passion strikes us even before we know the thing, or rather precisely because we know it only partially: "One can perceive of the object only the first side that has presented itself, and consequently one cannot acquire a more particular knowledge of it."31 The "object" delivers to us only a single "side" (we could also say Abschatung) and immediately imposes itself on us with such a force that we are overwhelmed by what shows itself, eventually to the point of fascination. And yet the "successive synthesis" was suspended as early as its first term. This, then, is because another synthesis has been achieved, a synthesis that is instantaneous and irreducible to the sum of possible parts. Any phenomenon that produces amazement imposes itself upon the gaze in the very measure (or more precisely, in the very lack of measure) that it does not result from any foreseeable summation of partial quantities. Indeed, it amazes because it arises without any common measure with the phenomena that precede it, without announcing it or explaining it-for, according to Spinoza, "nullam cum reliquis habet connexionem."32 Thus, for at least two phenomenological reasons, the saturated phenomenon may not be foreseen on the basis of the parts that would compose it through summation. First, because intuition, which continually saturates the phenomenon, prohibits distinguishing and summing up a finite number of finite parts, thus annulling any possibility of foreseeing the phenomenon. Next, because the saturated phenomenon most often imposes itself thanks to amazement, where it is precisely the non-enumeration and the non-summation of the parts, and thus the unforeseeability, that accomplish all intuitive givenness.
Secondly, the saturated phenomenon cannot be borne. According to Kant, quality (intensive magnitude) allows intuition to give a degree of reality to the object by limiting it, eventually as far as negation: every phenomenon will have to admit a degree of intuition and that is what perception can anticipate. The foresight at work in extensive magnitude is found again in intensive magnitude. Nevertheless, an essential difference separates them: foresight no longer operates in a successive synthesis of the homogeneous, but in a perception of the heterogeneous-each degree is marked by a break with the preceding one, and therefore by an absolutely singular novelty. Since he privileges the case of the impoverished phenomenon, Kant analyses this heterogeneity only on the basis of the simplest cases-the first degrees starting from zero, imperceptible perceptions, etc. But in the case of a saturated phenomenon, intuition gives reality without any limitation (or, to be sure, negation). It reaches an intensive magnitude without (common) measure, such that, starting from a certain degree, the intensity of the real intuition exceeds all the anticipations of perception. In face of that excess, perception not only can no longer anticipate what it is going to receive from intuition, but above all it can no longer bear the degree of intuition. For intuition, which is supposed to be "blind" in the realm of impoverished phenomena, proves to be, in a truly radical phenomenology, much rather blinding. The intensive magnitude of the intuition that gives the saturated phenomenon is unbearable for the gaze, just as this gaze could not foresee that intuition's extensive magnitude.
Bedazzlement characterizes what the gaze cannot bear. Not bearing does not amount to not seeing; for one must first perceive, if not see, in order to experience this incapacity to bear. It is in fact a question of something visible that our gaze cannot bear; this visible something is experienced as unbearable to the gaze because it weighs too much upon that gaze; the glory of the visible weighs, and it weighs too much. What weighs here is not unhappiness, nor pain nor lack, but indeed glory, joy, excess: "Oh/ Triumph!/ What Glory! What human heart would be strong enough to bear/ That?"33 Intuition gives too intensely for the gaze to be able truly to see what already it can no longer receive, nor even confront. This blinding indeed concerns the intensity of the intuition and it alone, as is indicated by cases of blinding in face of spectacles where the intuition remains quantitatively ordinary, even weak, but of an intensity that is out of the ordinary: Oedipus blinds himself for having seen his transgression, and therefore we have a quasi moral intensity of intuition; and He whom no one can see without dying blinds first by his holiness, even if his coming is announced in a simple breath of wind. Because the saturated phenomenon, due to the excess of intuition in it, cannot be borne by any gaze that would measure up to it ("objectively"), it is perceived ("subjectively") by the gaze only in the negative mode of an impossible perception, the mode of bedazzlement.-Plato described this perfectly in connection with the prisoner of the Cave: "let one untie him and force him suddenly to turn around [ ] . . . and to lift his gaze toward the light [npos ava , he would suffer in doing all that, and, because of the bedazzlements, he would not have the strength to see face on [8a TaS that of which previously he saw the shadows." It is indeed a question of "suffering" in seeing the full light, and of fleeing it by turning away toward "the things that one can look at [ Ka8 ]"What keeps one from seeing are precisely the "eyes filled with splendor."34 Moreover, this bedazzlement is just as valid for intelligible intuition as it is for sensible intuition. First, because the myth of the Cave, in the final analysis, concerns the epistemological obstacles to intelligibility, of which the sensible montage explicitly offers one figure; next, because the idea of the Good also and above all offers itself as "difficult to see" (dy6s ), certainly not by defect, since it presents "the most visible of beings," but indeed by excess because "the soul is incapable of seeing anything . . . saturated by an extremely brilliant bedazzlement [uro rai]"35 What in all these cases prohibits one from seeing is the sensible or intelligible light's excess of intensity.
Bedazzlement thus becomes a characteristic-universalizable to any form of intuition-of an intuitive intensity that goes beyond the degree that a gaze can sustain. This is not a question of some exceptional case, which we would merely mention as a matter of interest along with the impoverished phenomenon, itself thought to be more frequent and thus more or less normative. On the contrary, it is a question of an essential determination of the phenomenon, which is rendered almost inevitable for two reasons. 1) The Kantian description of intensive magnitudes, in other respects so original and true, nevertheless maintains a resounding silence concerning the most characteristic notion of intensive magnitude-the maximum. For even if it can undoubtedly not be defined objectively, there is always a subjective maximum, the threshold of tolerance. Bedazzlement begins when perception passes beyond its subjective maximum. The description of intensive magnitudes would necessarily and with priority have to take into consideration their highest degrees, and therefore the subjective maximum (or maximums) that the bedazzlements signal. 2) As previously with unforeseeability, so bedazzlement designates a type of intuitive givenness that is not only less rare than it would seem to a hasty examination, but above all, that is decisive for a real recognition of finitude. Finitude is experienced (and proved)36 not so much through the shortage of the given before our gaze, as above all because this gaze sometimes no longer measures the amplitude of the givenness. Or rather, measuring itself against that givenness, the gaze experiences it, sometimes in the suffering of an essential passivity, as having no measure with itself. Finitude is experienced as much through excess as through lack-indeed, more through excess than through lack.
VI
Neither visable according to quantity, nor bearable according to quality, a saturated phenomenon would be absolute according to relation as well; that is, it would shy away from any analogy of experience.
Kant defines the principle of such analogies as follows: "Experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions." Now, simple apprehension by empirical intuition cannot ensure this necessary connection; on the contrary, the connection will have to produce itself at once through concepts and in time: "Since time cannot itself be perceived, the determination of the existence of objects in time can be made only through their connection in time in general, and therefore only through concepts that connect them in general." This connection connects according to three operations: inherence of accident in substance, causality between effect and cause, community between several substances. But Kant establishes them only by bringing three presuppositions into play. It is thus the possible questioning of these that will again define the saturated phenomenon.
First presupposition: in all occurrences, a phenomenon can manifest itself only by respecting the unity of experience, that is, by taking place in the tightest possible network of ties of inherence, the tightest possible network of ties of inherence, causality and community, which assign to the phenomenon, in a hollow, so to speak, a site and a function. It is a matter here ofa strict obligation: "This entire manifold must be unified [vereinigt werden soll]," "An analogy of experience is, therefore, only a rule according to which the unity of experience must arise from perceptions [entspringen soll]."37 For Kant, a phenomenon appears, therefore, only in a site that is predefined by a system of coordinates, a system that is itself governed by the principle of the unity of experience. Now it is here that another question creeps in: must every phenomenon without exception respect the unity of experience? Can one legitimately rule out the possibility that a phenomenon might impose itself on perception without one, for all that, being able to assign to it either a substance in which to dwell as an accident, or a cause from which it results as an effect, or even less an interactive commercium in which to be relativized? Further, it is not self-evident that the phenomena that really arise-as opposed to the phenomena that are impoverished in intuition, or even deprived entirely of intuition-can right from the first and most often be perceived according to such analogies of perception; it could be, quite the reverse, that they occur without being inscribed, at least at first, in the relational network that ensures experience its unity, and that they matter precisely because one cannot assign them any substratum, any cause, or any communion. To be sure, after a bit of analysis, most can be led back, at least approximately, to the analogies of perception. But those, not at all so rare, that do not lend themselves to this henceforth assume the character and the dignity of an event-that is, an event or a phenomenon that is unforeseeable (on the basis of the past), not exhaustively comprehensible (on the basis of the present), nor reproducible (on the basis of the future); in short, absolute, unique, occurring. We will thus call it a pure event. We are here taking that which has the character of event in its individual dimension as much as its collective dimension. Consequently, the analogies of experience can concern only a fringe of phenomenality-the phenomenality typical of the objects constituted by the sciences, a phenomenality that is impoverished in intuition, foreseeable, exhaustively. knowable, reproducible-while other layers-and historical phenomena first of all-would be excepted.
The second presupposition concerns the very elaboration of the procedure that allows one to ensure the (at once temporal and conceptual) necessity and thus the unity of experience. Kant presupposes that this unity must always be achieved through recourse to an analogy. For "all the empirical determinations of time must [mussen] stand under the rules of the general determination of time, and the analogies of experience . . . must [mussen] be rules of this kind." In short, it is up to the analogies of experience and to them alone actually to exercise the regulation of experience by necessity, and thus to ensure its unity. Now, at the precise moment of defining these analogies, Kant himself recognizes the fragility of their phenomenological power: indeed, in mathematics, analogy remains quantitative, such that through calculation it gives itself the fourth term and truly constructs it; in this way the equality of the two relations of magnitude is "always constitutive" of the object and actually maintains it in a unified experience. But, Kant specifies, "in philosophy, on the contrary, analogy is not the equality of two quantitative relations but of two qualitative relations; and from three given members we can obtain a priori knowledge only of the relation to a fourth, not of the fourth member itself. . . . An analogy of experience therefore will be a rule according to which the unity of experience. . . must arise from [entspringen soil] perceptions, and it will be valid as the principle of objects (phenomena) in a manner that is not constitutive but only regulative."38 To put it plainly, when it is a question of what we have called impoverished phenomena (here mathematical), intuition (here, the pure intuition of space) is not such that it could saturate the phenomenon and contradict in it the unity and the pre-established necessity of experience; in this case, the analogy remains quantitative and constitutive. In short, there is analogy of experience provided that the phenomenon remains impoverished. But as soon as the simple movement to physics (not even to speak of a saturated phenomenon) occurs, analogy can no longer regulate anything, except qualitatively: if A is the cause of effect B, then D will be in the position (quality) of effect with respect to C, without it being possible to identify what D is or will be, and without it being possible to construct it (by lack of pure intuition) or to constitute it. Kant's predicament culminates with the strange employment, within the analytic of principles, of principles whose usage remains purely "regulative"-which can be understood in only one sense: the analogies of experience do not really constitute their objects, but express subjective needs of the understanding.
Let us suppose, for the moment, that the analogies of perception, thus reduced to a simple regulative usage, must treat a saturated phenomenon: the latter already exceeds the categories of quantity (unforeseeable) and quality (unbearable); it gives itself already as a pure event. Consequently, how could an analogy--especially one that is simply regulative-assign to the phenomenon-especially necessarily and a priori-a point whose coordinates would be established by the relations of inherence, causality, and community? This phenomenon would escape all relations because it would not maintain any common measure with these terms; it would be freed from them, as from any a priori determination of experience that would eventually claim to impose itself on the phenomenon. In this we will speak of an absolute phenomenon: untied from any analogy with any object of experience whatsoever.
This being the case, the third Kantian presupposition becomes questionable. The unity of experience is developed on the basis of time, since it is a matter of"the synthetic unity of all phenomena according to their relation in time."39 Thus, Kant posits the first to do so no doub-not only time as the ultimate horizon of phenomena, but moreover that no appearance can dawn without a horizon that receives it and that it rejects at the same time. This signifies that before any phenomenal breakthrough toward visibility, the horizon first awaited in advance. And it signifies that every phenomenon, in appearing, is in fact limited to actualizing a portion of the horizon, which otherwise would remain transparent. A current question concerns the identity of this horizon (time, Being, the good, etc.). This should not, however, mask another question that is simpler, albeit harder: could certain phenomena exceed every horizon? We should specify that it is not a matter of dispensing with a horizon in general-which would undoubtedly prohibit all manifestation but of freeing oneself from the delimiting anteriority proper to every horizon, an anteriority that is such as to be unable not to enter into conflict with a phenomenon's claim to absoluteness. Let us assume a saturated phenomenon that has just gained its absolute character by freeing itself from the analogies with experience-what horizon can it recognize? On the one hand, the excess of intuition saturates this phenomenon so as to make it exceed the frame of ordinary experience. On the other hand, a horizon, by its very definition, defines and is defined; through its movement to the limit, the saturated phenomenon can manage to saturate its horizon. There is nothing strange about this hypothesis-even in strict philosophy where, with Spinoza, for example, the unique substance, absorbing all the determinations and all the individuals corresponding thereto, manages to overwhelm with its infinitely saturated presence (infinitis attributis infinitis modis) the horizon of Cartesian metaphysics, by leaving therein no more free space for the finite (absolute and universal necessity). Such saturation of a horizon by a single saturated phenomenon presents a danger that could not be overestimated, since it is born from the experience-and from the absolutely real, in no way illusory, experience-of totality, with neither door nor window, with neither other [autre] nor others [autrui]. But this danger results less from the saturated phenomenon itself than, strangely, from the misapprehension of it. Indeed, when it arises, it is most often treated as if it were only a common law phenomenon or a impoverished phenomenon. In fact, the saturated phenomenon maintains its absoluteness and, at the same time, dissolves its danger, when one recognizes it without confusing it with other phenomena, and therefore when one allows it to operate on several horizons at once. Since there are spaces with n+l dimensions (whose properties saturate the imagination), there are phenomena with n+l horizons. One of the best examples of such an arrangement is furnished by the doctrine of the transcendentals: the irreducible plurality of ens, verum, bonum, and pulchrum allows one to decline the saturated phenomenon from the first Principle in perfectly autonomous registers, where it gives itself to be seen, each time, only according to one perspective, which is total as well as partial; their convertibility indicates that the saturation persists, but that it is distributed within several concurrent horizons. Or rather the saturation increases because each perspective, already saturated in itself, is blurred a second time by the interferences in it of other saturated perspectives.40 The plurality of horizons therefore allows as much that one might respect the absoluteness of the saturated phenomenon (which no horizon could delimit or precede), as that one might render it tolerable through a multiplication of the dimensions of its reception.
There remains nevertheless one last thinkable, although extreme, relation between the saturated phenomenon and its horizon(s): that no horizon nor any combination of horizons tolerate the absoluteness of the phenomenon precisely because it gives itself as absolute; that is, as free from any analogy with common law phenomena and from any predetermination by a network of relations, with neither precedent nor antecedent within the already seen (the foreseen). In short, a phenomenon saturated to the point that the world could not accept it. Having come among its own, they did not recognize it-having come into phenomenality, the absolutely saturated phenomenon could find no room there for its display. But this opening denial, and thus this disfiguration, still remains a manifestation.
Thus, in giving itself absolutely, the saturated phenomenon gives itself also as absolute-free from any analogy with the experience that is already seen, objectivized, and comprehended. It frees itself therefrom because it depends on no horizon. On the contrary, the saturated phenomenon either simply saturates the horizon, or it multiplies the horizon in order to saturate it that much more, or it exceeds the horizon and finds itself cast out from it. But this very disfiguration remains a manifestation. In every case, it does not depend on that condition of possibility par excellence-a horizon, whatever it may be. We will therefore call this phenomenon unconditioned.
VII
Neither visable according to quantity, nor bearable according to quality, absolute according to relation-that is, unconditioned by the horizon-the saturated phenomenon finally gives itself as incapable of being looked at according to modality.
The categories of modality are distinguished from all the others, Kant insists, in that they .determine neither the objects themselves, nor their mutual relations, but simply "their relation to thought in general," in that they "express only the relation to the power of knowing ," "nothing other than the action of the power of knowing."41 In fact, between the objects of experience and the power of knowing, it is not only a question of a simple relation, but of the fact that they "agree." This agreement determines the possibility of phenomena to be (and therefore also their actuality and necessity) in the measure of their suitability to the "I" for and through whom the experience takes place. "The postulate of the possibility of things requires [fordert] therefore that their concept agree [zusammenstimme] with the formal conditions of an experience in general."42 The phenomenon is possible in the strict measure that it agrees with the formal conditions of experience, thus with the power of knowing that fixes its attention on them, and therefore finally with the transcendental "I" itself. The possibility of the phenomenon depends on its reduction to the "1."
This being the case, we can envisage a reversal of Kant's assertion and ask: what would occur phenomenologically if a phenomenon.did not "agree" with or "correspond" to the power of knowing of the "I"? The Kantian answer leaves hardly any doubt: this phenomenon quite simply would not appear; or better, there would not be any phenomenon at all, but an object-less perceptive aberration. If this answer remains meaningful for an impoverished or common law phenomenon, does it still hold for a saturated phenomenon? In fact, the situation in this case becomes much different. In face of saturation, the "I" most certainly experiences the disagreement between the at least potential phenomenon and the subjective conditions of its experience; consequently, the "I" cannot constitute an object therein. But this failure to objectivize in no way implies that absolutely nothing appears here: intuitive saturation, precisely inasmuch as it is invisible, intolerable, and absolute (unconditioned), imposes itself in the capacity of a phenomenon that is exceptional by excess, not by defect. The saturated phenomenon refuses to let itself be looked at as an object, precisely because it appears with a multiple and indescribable excess that suspends any effort at constitution. To define the saturated phenomenon as a non-objective or, more exactly, non-objectivizable object, in no way indicates a refuge in the irrational or the arbitrary; this definition refers to one of its distinctive properties: although exemplarily visible, it nevertheless cannot be looked at. We here take "to look at"-regarder-literally: re-garder exactly reproduces in-tueri and must therefore be understood on the basis of tueri, garder but in the sense of "to keep an eye on. . .," "to keep half an eye on. . .," "to have (to keep) in sight. . ." Regarder therefore implies being able to keep the visible that is seen under the control of the one who is seeing and, consequently, a voyeur. And it is certainly not by chance that Descartes entrusts the intuitus with maintaining in evidence what the ego reduces to the status of objectum. To define the saturated phenomenon as incapable of being looked at [irregardable] amounts to envisaging the possibility where a phenomenon would impose itself with such a surfeit of intuition that it could neither be reduced to the conditions of experience, and thus to the "I" who sets them, nor, all the same, forgo appearing.
Under what figure would it appear then? It appears in spite of and in disagreement with the conditions of possibility of experience-by imposing an impossible experience (if not already an experience of the impossible). Of the saturated phenomenon there would be only a counter-experience. Confronted with the saturated phenomenon, the "I" cannot not see it, but neither can it look at it as its object. It has the eye to see it, but not to look after it [pour le garder]. What, then, does this eye without a look [cet oeil sans regard] actually see? It sees the overabundance of intuitive givenness, not, however, as such, but as blurred by the overly short lens, the overly restricted aperture, the overly narrow frame that receives it--or rather, that no longer accommodates it. The eye apperceives not so much the appearance of the saturated phenomenon as the blur, the fog, and the overexposure that it imposes on its normal conditions of experience. The eye sees not so much another spectacle as its own naked impotence to constitute anything at all. It sees nothing distinctly, but clearly experiences its impotence before the unmeasuredness of the visible, and thus above all a perturbation of the visible, the noise of a poorly received message, the obfuscation of finitude. Through sight, it receives a pure givenness, precisely because it no longer discerns any objectivizable given therein.
Let us call this phenomenological extremity a paradox. The paradox not only suspends the phenomenon's relation of subjection to the "l," it inverts that relation. Far from being able to constitute this phenomenon, the "I" experiences itself as constituted by it. It is constituted and no longer constituting because it no longer has at its disposal any dominant point of view over the intuition that overwhelms It; in space, the saturated phenomenon engulfs it with its intuitive flood; in time, it precedes it through an interpellation that is always already there. The "I" loses its anteriority and finds itself, so to speak, deprived [destitue] of the duties of constitution, and thus itself constituted: a "me" rather than an "I." It is clear that on the basis of the saturated phenomenon we meet here with what we have thematized elsewhere under the name of the subject on its last appeal the interloque.43 When the "I" finds itself, instead of the constituting "I" that it remained in face of common law phenomena, constituted by a saturated phenomenon, it can identify itself as such only by admitting the precedence of such a phenomenon over itself. This reversal leaves it interloque, essentially surprised by the more original event that detaches it from itself.
Thus, the phenomenon is no longer reduced to the "I" that would look at it. Incapable of being looked at, it proves irreducible. There is no drift or turn here, even "theological," but, on the contrary, an accounting for the fact that in certain cases of givenness the excess of intuition may no longer satisfy the conditions of ordinary experience; and that the pure event that occurs cannot be constituted as an object and leaves the durable trace of its opening only in the "I/me" that finds itself, almost in spite of itself, constituted by what it receives. The constituting subject is succeeded by the constituted witness. As a constituted witness, the subject remains the worker of truth, but no longer its producer.
VIII
In order to introduce the concept of the saturated phenomenon into phenomenology, we have just described it as invisable (unforeseeable) according to quantity, unbearable according to quality, but also unconditioned (absolved from any horizon) according to relation, and irreducible to the "I" (incapable of being looked at) according to modality. These four characteristics imply the term for term reversal of all the rubrics under which Kant classifies the principles and thus the phenomena that these determine. However, in relation to Husserl, these new characteristics are organized in a more complex way; the first two-the invisable and the unbearable-offer no difficulty de jure for the "principle of all principles," for what intuition gives can quantitatively and qualitatively exceed the scope of the gaze; it is sufficient that intuition actually give it. The case is not the same for the last two characteristics: the "principle of all principles" presupposes the horizon and the constituting "I" as two unquestioned presuppositions of anything that would be constituted in general as a phenomenon; but the saturated phenomenon, inasmuch as it is unconditioned by a horizon and irreducible to an "I," makes a claim to a possibility that is freed from these two conditions; it therefore contradicts and exceeds the "principle of all principles." Husserl, who nonetheless surpassed the Kantian metaphysics of the phenomenon, must himself be surpassed in order to reach the possibility of the saturated phenomenon. Even and especially with the "principle of all principles," Husserl maintains a twofold reserve toward possibility. Nevertheless, this reserve of Husserl toward possibility can prove to be a reserve of phenomenology itself-which still maintains a reserve of possibility, in order itself to be surpassed toward a possibility without reserve. Because it gives itself without condition or restraint, the saturated phenomenon offers the paradigm of the phenomenon without reserve. Thus, in the guiding thread of the saturated phenomenon, phenomenology finds its ultimate possibility: not only the possibility that surpasses actuality, but the possibility that surpasses the very conditions of possibility, the possibility of unconditioned possibility-in other words, the possibility of the impossible, the saturated phenomenon.
The saturated phenomenon must not be understood as a limit case, an exceptional, vaguely irrational-in short, a "mystical" case of phenomenality. It indicates on the contrary the coherent and conceptual completion of the most operative definition of the phenomenon: it alone truly appears as itself, of itself and starting from itself,44 since it alone appears without the limits of a horizon and without the reduction to an "I." We will therefore call this appearance that is purely of itself and starting from itself, this phenomenon that does not subject its possibility to any preliminary determination, a revelation. And-we insist on this here it is purely and simply a matter of the phenomenon taken in its fullest meaning.
Moreover, the history of philosophy has a long-standing knowledge of such saturated phenomena. One could go so far as to maintain that none of the decisive metaphysicians has avoided the description of one or more saturated phenomena, even at the price of a head-on contradiction of his own presuppositions. Among many fairly obvious examples, let us simply call to mind Descartes and Kant.
a) Descartes, who everywhere else reduces the phenomenon to the idea and the idea to the object, nevertheless thinks the idea of infinity as a saturated phenomenon. According to quantity, the idea of infinity is not obtained by summation or successive synthesis, but tota simul; thus, the gaze (intueri) becomes the surprise of admiration (admirari).45 According to quality, it admits no finite degree, but a maximum: maxime clara et distincta, maxime vera.46 According to relation, it maintains no analogy with any idea at all: nihil univoce; indeed, it exceeds every horizon since it remains incomprehensible, capable only of being touched by thought: attingam quomodolibet cogitatione. According to modality, far from letting itself be led back to a constituting "l," it comprehends the "I" without letting itself be comprehended by it: non tam capere quam a ipsa capi,48 such that perhaps even the ego could also be interpreted at times as one who is called [un interpelle]. But furthermore, would it not suffice to translate "idea of infinity" word for word by "saturated phenomenon" in order to establish our conclusion?
b) Kant furnishes an example of the saturated phenomenon that is all the more significant insofar as it does not concern, as does Descartes', rational theology; in fact, it is a question of the sublime. We relied above on the "aesthetic idea" to challenge the principle of the shortage of intuition and to introduce the possibility of a saturation. In fact, already with the doctrine of the sublime we are dealing with a saturated phenomenon. Indeed, according to quantity, the sublime has neither form nor order, since it is great "beyond all comparison," absolutely and not comparatively (absolute, schlechthin, bloss).49 According to quality, it contradicts taste as a "negative pleasure" and it provokes a "feeling of inadequacy," a feeling of "monstrosity."50 According to relation, it very clearly escapes any analogy and any horizon since it literally represents "unlimitedness" (Unbegrenzheit).51 According to modality, finally, far from agreeing with our power of knowing, "it can seem [erscheinen mag] in its form to contradict the purpose [zweckwidrig] of our faculty of judgment"; the relation of our faculty of judgment to the phenomenon is therefore reversed, to the point that it is the phenomenon that hereafter "looks at" the "I" "in respect."52 The Kantian sublime would thus permit us to widen the field of application for the concept of the saturated phenomenon.
From here on, we can recapitulate. Phenomena can be classified, according to their increasing intuitive content, in three fundamental domains. a) The phenomena that are deprived of intuition or impoverished in intuitions: formal languages (endowed with categorial intuition by Husserl), mathematical idealities (whose pure intuition is established by Kant). b) The common law phenomena, whose signification (aimed at by intention) can ideally receive an adequate intuitive fulfillment, but that, right at the start and most of the time, do not reach such fulfillment. In these first two domains, the constitution of objects is rendered possible precisely because the shortage of intuition authorizes comprehension, foresight, and reproduction. c) There remain, finally, the saturated phenomena, which an excess of intuition shields from objective constitution. Conveniently, we can distinguish two types. ) First, pure historical events: by definition non-repeatable, they occur most often without having been foreseen; since through a surfeit of intuitive given they escape objectivation, their intelligibility excludes comprehension and demands that one move on to hermeneutics;53 intuitive saturation surpasses a single horizon and imposes multiple hermeneutics within several horizons; finally, the pure historical event not only occurs to its witness without the latter comprehending it (the non-constituting "I"), but itself, in return, comprehends the "I" (the constituted "I"): the "I" is comprehended on the basis of the event that occurs to it in the very measure that the "I" itself does not comprehend the event. Pure events offer a type of saturated phenomenon that is historical and thus communal and in principle communicable. 2) Such is not always the case for the second type, the phenomena of revelation. Let me repeat that by revelation I here intend a strictly phenomenological concept: an appearance that is purely of itself and starting from itself, which does not subject its possibility to any preliminary determination. Such revealed phenomena occur principally in three domains. First the picture as a spectacle that, due to excess of intuition, cannot be constituted but still can be looked at (the idol). Next, a particular face that I love, which has become invisible not only because it dazzles me, but above all because in it I want to look and can look only at its invisible gaze weighing on mine (the icon). Finally, theophany, where the surfeit of intuition leads to the paradox that an invisible gaze visibly envisages me and loves me. And it is here that the question of the possibility of a phenomenology of religion would be posed in terms that are not new (for it is only a matter of pushing the phenomenological intention to its end), but simple.
In every case, recognizing the saturated phenomena comes down to thinking seriously aliquid quo majus cogitari nequit-seriously, which means as a final possibility of phenomenology.54 ,55
The saturated phenomenonWhat comes into the world without troubling merits neither consideration nor patience. Rene Char I
The field of religion could simply be defined as what philosophy excludes or, in the best case, subjugates. Such a constant antagonism cannot be reduced to any given ideological opposition or any given anecdotal prejudice. In fact, it rests upon perfectly reasonable ground: the "philosophy of religion," if there were one, would have to describe, produce, and constitute phenomena, it would then find itself confronted with a disastrous alternative: either it would be a question of phenomena that are objectively definable but lose their religious specificity, or it would be a question of phenomena that are specifically religious but cannot be described objectively. A phenomenon that is religious in the strict sense-belonging to the domain of a "philosophy of religion" distinct from the sociology, the history, and the psychology of religion-would have to render visible what nevertheless could not be objectivized. The religious phenomenon thus amounts to an impossible phenomenon, or at least it marks the limit starting from which the phenomenon is in general no longer possible. Thus, the religious phenomenon poses the question of the general possibility of the phenomenon, more than of the possibility of religion.
Once this boundary is acknowledged, there nevertheless remain several ways of understanding it. Religion could not strike the possibility of the phenomenon in general with impossibility if the very possibility of the phenomenon were not defined: when does it become impossible to speak of a phenomenon, and according to what criteria of phenomenality? But the possibility of the phenomenon-and therefore the possibility of declaring a phenomenon impossible, that is, invisible--could not in its turn be determined without also establishing the terms of possibility taken in itself. By subjecting the phenomenon to the jurisdiction of possibility, philosophy in fact brings fully to light its own definition of bare possibility. The question concerning the possibility of the phenomenon implies the question of the phenomenon of possibility. Or better, when the rational scope of a philosophy is measured according to the extent of what it renders possible, that scope will be measured also according to the extent of what it renders visible-according to the possibility of phenomenality in it. According to whether it is accepted or rejected, the religious phenomenon would thus become a privileged index of the possibility of phenomenality.
To start out, I will rely on Kant. In Kant, the metaphysical definition of possibility is stated as follows: "That which agrees with the formal conditions of experience, that is, with the conditions of intuition and of concepts, is possible [mit den formalen Bedingungen der Erfahrung . . . uberkommt]." What is surprising here has to do with the intimate tie Kant establishes between possibility and phenomenality: possibility results explicitly from the conditions of experience; among those conditions is intuition, which indicates that experience takes the form of a phenomenality-that experience has a form ("formal conditions") precisely because it experiences sensible forms of appearance. Here, therefore, possibility depends on phenomenality. Would it be necessary to conclude from this that the phenomenon imposes its possibility, instead of being subject to the conditions thereof? Not at all, because the possible does not agree with the object of experience but with its "formal conditions": possibility does not follow from the phenomenon, but from the conditions set for any phenomenon. A formal requirement therefore is imposed on possibility, just as Kant indicates a little bit later: "The postulate of the possibility of things requires (fordert) that the concept of things should agree with the formal conditions of an experience in general." The access of the phenomenon to its own manifestation must submit to the requirement of possibility; but possibility itself depends on the "formal conditions of experience"; how then, in the last instance, are these "formal conditions" established that determine phenomenality and possibility together? Kant indicates this indirectly, but unambiguously, by underlining straightaway that "the categories of modality. . . express only the relation of the concept to the power of knowing."i The formal conditions of knowledge are directly joined here with the power of knowing. This means that intuition and the concept determine in advance the possibility of appearing for any phenomenon. The possibility and therefore also and especially the impossibility-of a phenomenon is ordered to the measure of the "power of knowing," that is, concretely, the measure of the play of intuition and of the concept within a finite mind. Any phenomenon is possible that grants itself to the finitude of the power of knowing and its requirements.
In this way Kant merely confirms a decision already made by Leibniz. To be sure, the one thinks phenomenal possibility starting from a finite mind, while the other thinks it starting from an infinite (or indefinite) mind; but both lead to the same conditional possibility of the phenomenon. Indeed, metaphysics obeys the "Great Principle . . . which holds that nothing is done without sufficient reason, that is, that nothing happens without it being possible for the one who sufficiently knows things to give a Reason that suffices to determine why it is so and not otherwise."2 Thus, nothing "is done," nothing "happens," in short, nothing appears, without the attestation that it is "possible"; this possibility, in turn, is equivalent to the possibility of knowing the sufficient reason for such an appearance. As for Kant, for Leibniz the right to appear-the possibility of a phenomenon depends on the power of knowing that implements the sufficiency of reason, which, whatever it might be, precedes what it renders possible. As the "power of knowing" will establish the conditions of possibility, sufficient reason already suffices to render possible that which, without it, would have remained impossible. This dependence is indicated with particular clarity in the case of the sensible. To be sure, "sensible things" appear and deserve the name of"phenomena," but they owe that name to another "reason," a reason that is different from their very appearance, and that alone suffices to qualify that appearance as a phenomenon: "The truth of sensible things consisted only in the relation of the phenomena, which had to have its reason."3 When Leibniz opposes, among the beings that he recognizes as permanent (creatura permanens absoluta), full being (unum per se, ens plenum; substantia; modif catio) to the diminished being that he likens to the phenomenon (unum per aggregationem; semiens, phaenomenon), one should not commit the error of imagining that the phenomenon would be ranked as half a being or a half-being only because it would suffer from an insufficiency of reason. On the contrary, it is precisely because it enjoys a perfectly sufficient reason that the phenomenon regresses to the rank of half a being; it is precisely as "phaenomena bene fundata"4 that the phenomena admit their being grounded, and therefore conditioned by a reason that alone is sufficient and that they themselves do not suffice to ensure. If reason can ground the phenomena, this is so first because it must save them; but reason would not have to do this if one did not first admit that, left to themselves, these phenomena would be lost. For appearance actually to appear does not suffice to justify its possibility; it must still resort to reason, which-while itself not having to appear-alone renders possible the brute actuality of the appearance, because it renders the possibility of that appearance intelligible. The phenomenon attests its lack of reason when and because it receives that reason; for it appears only under condition, as a conditional phenomenon-under the condition of what does not appear. In a metaphysical system, the possibility of appearing never belongs to what appears, nor phenomenality to the phenomenon.
II
It is this aporia that phenomenology escapes all at once in opposing to the principle of sufficient reason, the "principle of all principles," and thus in surpassing conditional phenomenality through a phenomenality without condition. The "principle of all principles" posits that "every originarily giving intuition (Anschauung) is a source of right for cognition, that everything that offers itself to us originarily in 'intuition' (Intuition) is to be taken quite simply as it gives itself out to be, but also only within the limits in which it is given there."5 There can be no question here of determining the decisive importance of this principle, nor its function within the whole of the other principles of phenomenology.6 It will suffice here to underscore some of its essential traits.
According to the first essential trait, intuition no longer intervenes simply as a de facto source of the phenomenon, a source that ensures its brute actuality without yet grounding it in reason, but as a source of right, justificatory of itself. Intuition is itself attested through itself, without the background of a reason that is yet to be given. In this way the phenomenon, according to Husserl, corresponds in advance to the phenomenon according to Heidegger-that which shows itself on the basis of itself. To put it plainly: on the basis of itself as a pure and perfect appearance of itself, and not on the basis of another than itself that would not appear (a reason). Intuition is sufficient for the phenomenon to justify its right to appear, without any other reason: far from having to give a sufficient reason, it suffices for the phenomenon to give itself through intuition according to a principle of sufficient intuition. But intuition becomes sufficient only inasmuch as it operates without any background, originarily, as Husserl says; now, it operates originarily, without any presupposition, only inasmuch as it furnishes the originary data, inasmuch, therefore, as it gives itself originarily. Intuition is justified by right on the basis of itself only by making a claim to an unconditioned origin. It cannot justify this claim without going so far as to mime the sufficient reason to be rendered (reddendae rationis), that is, by rendering itself, by giving itself in person. Indeed, givenness alone indicates that the phenomenon ensures, in a single gesture, both its visibility and the full right of that visibility, both its appearance and the reason for that appearance. Nevertheless, it still remains to be verified whether the "principle of all principles" in point of fact ensures a right to appear for all phenomena, whether it indeed opens for them an absolutely unconditioned possibility-or whether it renders them possible still only under some condition. Now, it happens that the principle of giving intuition does not authorize the absolutely unconditioned appearance, and thus the freedom of the phenomenon that gives itself on the basis of itself. To be sure, this is not because intuition as such limits phenomenality, but because it remains framed, as intuition, by two conditions of possibility, conditions that themselves are not intuitive but are nevertheless assigned to every phenomenon. The second and third traits of the "principle of all principles" contradict the first one, as conditions and limits-as a condition and a limit-contradict the claim to absolute possibility opened by the giving intuition.
Let us first consider a second trait of the "principle": it justifies every phenomenon, "but also only [aber auch nur] within the limits in which" that phenomenon is given. This restriction attests to a twofold finitude of the giving instance-of intuition. First, a factual restriction: intuition admits "limits" (Schranken). These limits, in whatever way one understands them (since Husserl hardly makes them clear here), indicate that not everything is capable of being given perfectly; right away, intuition is characterized by scarcity, obeys a logic of shortage, and is stigmatized by an indelible insufficiency; we will have to ask ourselves about the motivation, the status and the presuppositions of this factual shortcoming. But-secondly-this restriction can already be authorized by a de jure limitation: any intuition, in order to give within certain factual "limits," must first be inscribed by right within the limits (Grenze) of a horizon; likewise, no intentional aim of an object, signification, or essence can operate outside of a horizon. Husserl indicates this point through an argument that is all the stronger insofar as it is paradoxical. Considering what he nevertheless names "the limitlessness [Grenzenlosigleit] that is presented by the immanent intuitions when going from an already fixed lived-experience to new lived-experiences that form its horizon, from the fixing of these livedexperiences to the fixing of their horizon; and so on," he admits that any lived-experience is continually referred to new, as yet unknown lived-experiences, and therefore to a horizon of novelties that are irreducible because continually renewed. But precisely, this irrepressible novelty of the flux of consciousness remains, by right, always comprehended within a horizon, even if these new lived-experiences are not yet given: "a lived-experience that has become an Object of an Ego's look and that therefore has the mode of being looked at, has for its horizon lived-experiences that are not looked at" (Danach hat ein Erlebnis, das zum Objekt eines Ichblickes geworden ist, also den Modus des Erblickes hat. seinen Horizont nichterblickter Erlebnisse).7 The horizon, or, according to its etymology, delimitation, exerts itself over experience even where there are only lived-experiences that are not looked at, that is, where experience has not taken place. The outside of experience is not equivalent to the experience of the outside, because the horizon in advance seizes the outside, the non-experienced, the not looked at. One cannot escape here the feeling of a fundamental ambiguity. With this horizon, is it a question of what is not looked at as not looked at, a question of the simple recognition that all lived-experience is grasped in the flux of consciousness, and is therefore oriented in advance toward other lived-experiences that are yet to arise? Or is it not rather a question of the treatment, in advance, of the non-lived-experiences that are not looked at as the subjects of a horizon, and therefore a question of the inclusion within a limit-be it that of the flux of consciousness-of anything that is not looked at, a question of the a priori inscription of the possible within a horizon? Thus we must ask whether the "principle of all principles" does not presuppose at least one condition for givenness: the very horizon of any givenness. Does not the second trait of the "principle of all principles" that of any horizon at all contradict the absoluteness of intuitive givenness?
The third trait of the "principle of all principles" has to do with the fact that intuition gives what appears only by giving it "to us." There is nothing trivial or redundant about this expression; it betrays a classic ambiguity of the Ideen: the givenness of the phenomenon on the basis of itself to an "I" can at every instant veer toward a constitution of the phenomenon through and on the basis of the "I." Even if one does not overestimate this constant threat, one must at least admit that givenness, precisely because it keeps its originary and justifying function, can give and justify nothing except before the tribunal of the "I"; transcendental or not, the phenomenological "I" remains the beneficiary, and therefore the witness and even the judge, of the given appearance; it falls to the "I" to measure what does and does not give itself intuitively, within what limits, according to what horizon, following what intention, essence and signification. Even if it shows itself on the basis of itself, the phenomenon can do so only by allowing itself to be lead back, and therefore reduced, to the "I." Moreover, the originary primacy of the "I" maintains an essential relation with the placement of any phenomenon within the limits of a horizon. Indeed, "every now of a lived-experience has a horizon of lived-experiences-which also have precisely the originary form of the `now,' and which as such produce an originary horizon [Originaritatshorizont] of the pure I, its total originary now of consciousness."8 In this way the "principle of all principles" still presupposes that all givenness must accept the "I" as its "now." The requirement of a horizon is but one with that of the reduction: in each case it is a matter of leading phenomenological givenness back to the "I.".But, that being the case, if every phenomenon is defined by its very reducibility to the "I," must we not exclude straightaway the general possibility of an absolute, autonomous-in short, irreducible-phenomenon? By the same token, is not all irreducible possibility decidedly jeopardized?
"The principle of all principles," through originarily giving intuition, undoubtedly frees the phenomena from the duty of rendering a sufficient reason for their appearance. But it thinks that givenness itself only on the basis of two determinations that threaten its originary character-the horizon and the reduction. Phenomenology would thus condemn itself to missing almost immediately what the giving intuition nevertheless indicates to it as its own goal: to free the possibility of appearing [I'apparaitre] as such. We should stress that it is obviously not a question here of envisaging a phenomenology without any "I" or horizon, for clearly, it would then be phenomenology itself that would become impossible. On the contrary, it is a question of taking seriously the claim that, since the "principle of all principles," "higher than actuality stands possibility,"9 and of envisaging this possibility radically. Let us define it provisionally: what would occur, as concerns phenomenality, if an intuitive givenness were accomplished that was absolutely unconditioned (without the limits of a horizon) and absolutely irreducible (to a constituting "I")? Can we not envisage a type of phenomenon that would reverse the condition of a horizon (by surpassing it, instead of being inscribed within it) and that would reverse the reduction (by leading the "I" back to itself, instead of being reduced to the "I")? To declare this hypothesis impossible straightaway, without resorting to intuition, would immediately betray a phenomenological contradiction. Consequently, we will here assume the hypothesis of such a phenomenon, at least in the capacity of an imaginary variation allowing us to test a movement to the limit in the determination of any phenomenality and allowing us to experience anew what possibility means-or gives. Some limits remain, in principle, irrefutable and undoubtedly indispensable. But this does not mean that what contradicts them cannot for all that, paradoxically, be constituted as a phenomenon. Quite on the contrary, certain phenomena could by playing on the limits of phenomenality-not only appear at those limits, but appear there all the more. Within this hypothesis, the question of a phenomenology of religion would no doubt be posed in new terms, as much for religion as for phenomenology.
III
We are justified in evoking the possibility of an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon, that is, a phenomenon par excellence, only inasmuch as such a possibility truly opens itself. We therefore have to establish that this possibility cannot be reduced to an illusion of possibility, through a movement to the limit that would exceed nothing other than the conditions of possibility of phenomenality in general. In short, we have to establish that an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon, with neither delimiting horizon nor constituting "I," offers a true possibility and does not amount to "telling stories." To arrive at this guarantee, we will proceed first indirectly by examining the common definition of the phenomenon, since there is a definition as much in metaphysics according to Kant as in phenomenology according to Husserl; we will then attempt to specify whether that definition-which, moreover, subjects every phenomenon to a horizon of appearance and a constituting "I'=is justified by an opening of phenomenality, or whether it does not rather confirm its essential closure. In other words, it will be a matter of specifying the ground of the limitation that is brought upon the phenomenon by its common definition, in order to indicate exactly what possibility would, by contrast, remain open to an unconditional and irreducible acceptation of phenomenality.
All along the path of his thinking, Husserl will maintain a definition of the phenomenon that is determined by its fundamental duality: "The word 'phenomenon' is ambiguous [doppelsinnig] in virtue of the essential correlation between appearance and that which appears [Erscheinen und Erscheinenden]."' o This correlation is organized according to several different but interlinked couples-intention/intuition, signification/fulfillment, noesis/noema, etc.-and thus only better establishes the phenomenon as what appears as a correlate of appearance [apparition]. This is indeed why the highest manifestation of any phenomenon whatever, that is, the highest phenomenality possible, is achieved with the perfect adequation between these two terms: the subjective appearing [I'apparaitre subjectif] is equivalent to that which objectively appears [I'apparaissant objectif]. "And so also, eo ipso, the ideal of every fulfillment, and therefore of a significative fulfillment, is sketched for us; the intellectus is in this case the thought-intention, the intention of meaning. And the adaequatio is realized when the object meant is in the strict sense given in our intuition, and given precisely as it is thought and named. No thought-intention could fail of its fulfillment, of its last fulfillment, in fact, in so far as the fulfilling medium of intuition has itself lost all implication of unsatisfied intention."11 It is certainly important to stress the persistence here, in a territory that is nevertheless phenomenological, of the most metaphysical definition of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus. But it is even more important to stress the fact that adequation defines not only the truth, but above all "the ideal of ultimate fulfillment."l2 This limit case of perception is equivalent to what Husserl, in a Cartesian fashion, names evidence. More precisely, the objective truth is achieved subjectively through evidence, considered as the experience of the adequation made by consciousness. Now, this ideal of evidence, which is supposed to designate the maximum and the extreme of any ambition to truth, nevertheless claims, with a very strange modesty, only an "adequation," a simple equality. The paradigm of ideal equality weighs so heavily that Husserl does not hesitate to repeat it in no less than four figures: a) "the full agreement between the meant and the given as such [Ubereinstimmung zwischen Gemeintem und Gegebenem]"; b) "the idea of the absolute adequation [Adaquation]" between the ideal essence and the empirically contingent act of evidence; c) the "ideal fulfillment for an intention"; d) and finally "the truth as rightness [Rechtigheit] of our intention."13 What is surprising, however, resides not so much in this insistent repetition as in the fact that the adequation it so explicitly seeks remains nonetheless a pure and simple ideal: "The ideal of an ultimate fulfillment," "that ideally fulfilled perception," an "idea of absolute adequation as such."14 Now, how can we not understand these two terms in a Kantian manner where the ideal is the object of the idea? Consequently, since the idea remains a concept of reason such that its object can never be given through the senses, the ideal as such (as object of the idea) will never be given. 15 Thus, if adequation, which produces evidence subjectively, still constitutes an "ideal" for Husserl, we would have to conclude that it is never, or at least rarely, realized. And with it, truth is rarefied or made inaccessible. Why, therefore, does adequate evidence most often remain a limit case, or even an excluded case? Why does the equality between noesis and noema, essence and fulfillment, intention and intuition, seem inaccessible-or almost-at the very moment when it is invested with the dignity of truth? Why does Husserl compromise the return to the things themselves by modifying evidence and truth with ideality?
Answer: because the equality that Husserl maintains de jure between intuition and intention remains for him in fact untenable. Intention (almost) always (partially) lacks intuition, just as meaning [signification] almost always lacks fulfillment. In other words, intention and meaning surpass intuition and fulfillment. "A surplus in meaning [ein Uberschuss in der Bedeutung] remains, a form that finds nothing in the phenomenon itself to confirm it," because in principle "the realm of meaning is much wider than that of intuition."16 Intuition remains essentially lacking, impoverished, needy, indigent. The adequation between intention and intuition thus becomes a simple limit case, an ideal that is usually evoked by default. One could not argue against this by putting forward the fact that evidence is regularly achieved in mathematics and formal logic; for this fact, far from denying the failure of evidence, confirms it. Indeed, the ideal of adequation is realized precisely only in those domains where the intention of meaning, in order to be fulfilled in a phenomenon, requires only a pure or formal intuition (space in mathematics), or even no intuition (empty tautology in logic); mathematics and formal logic offer, precisely, only an ideal object-that is, strictly speaking, an object that does not have to give itself in order to appear; in short, a minute or zero-degree of phenomenality; evidence is adequately achieved because it requires only an impoverished or empty intuition. Adequation is realized so easily here only because it is a matter of phenomena without any (or with weak) intuitive requirements. 7 There would be good reason, moreover, to wonder about the privilege that is so often granted by theories of knowledge (from Plato to Descartes, from Kant to Husserl) to logical and mathematical phenomena: they are erected as models of all the others, while they are distinguished therefrom by their shortage of intuition, the poverty of their givenness, even the unreality of their objects. It is not self-evident that this marginal poverty could serve as a paradigm for phenomenality as a whole, nor that the certitude it ensures would be worth the phenomenological price one pays for it. Whatever the case may be, if the ideal of evidence is realized only for intuitively impoverished phenomena, when it is, on the contrary, a matter of plenary phenomena, that is, of the appearance of the "things themselves" to be given intuitively, adequation becomes an ideal in the strict sense; that is, an event not (entirely) given, due to a (minimally, partial) failure of intuition. The equality required by right between intuition and intention is lacking-for lack of intuition. The senses deceive, not at all through a provisional or accidental deception, but through an inescapable weakness: even an indefinite sum of intuited outlines will never fill intention with the least real object. When it is a question of a thing, the intentional object always exceeds its intuitive givenness. Its presence remains to be completed by appresentation. 18 What keeps phenomenology from allowing phenomena to appear without reserve, therefore, is, to begin with, the fundamental deficit of intuition that it ascribes to them-with neither recourse nor appeal. But the phenomenological "breakthrough" postulates this shortage of intuition only as a result of metaphysical decisions-in short, Husserl here suffers the consequences of decisions made by Kant.
For it is Kant first who, always defining the truth by adaequatio,19 inferred therefrom the parallel between intuition and the concept, which are supposed to play a tangentially equal role in the production of objectivity. "Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. It is, therefore, just as necessary to make our concepts sensible (that is, to add the object to them in intuition), as to make our intuitions intelligible (that is, to bring them under concepts). These two powers or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing."2 In principle, the phenomenon, and therefore the real object, appears in the strict measure that the intuition and the concept not only are synthesized, but also are balanced in that synthesis. Adaequatio-and therefore the truth-would thus rest on the equality of the concept with the intuition. However, Kant himself does not hesitate to disqualify this parallelism; for, if the concept corresponds to the intuition, it nevertheless radically depends on it. Indeed, if the concept thinks, it limits itself in this way to rendering intelligible, after the fact and by derivation, what intuition for its part, principially and originarily, alone can give: "Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind. .. Through the first [receptivity] an object is given [gegeben] to us, through the second the object is thought"; "There are two conditions under which alone the knowledge of an object is possible, first, intuition, through which it is given, though only as phenomenon [nur als Erscheinung gegeben wird]; secondly, the concept, through which an object is thought corresponding to this intuition."21 To be sure, the intuition remains empty, but blindness is worth more here than vacuity: for even blinded, the intuition remains one that gives, whereas the concept, even if it alone can allow to be seen what would first be given to it, remains as such perfectly empty, and therefore just as well incapable of seeing anything at all. Intuition without the concept, even though still blind, nevertheless already gives matter to an object; whereas the concept without intuition, although not blind, nevertheless no longer sees anything, since nothing has yet been given to it to be seen. In the realm of the phenomenon, the concept is not king, but rather intuition: before an object is seen and in order to be seen, its appearance must be given; even if it does not see what it gives, intuition alone enjoys the privilege of giving: "the object cannot be given to a concept otherwise than in intuition [nicht anders gegeben werden, als in der Anschauung]"; for "the category is a simple function of thought, through which no object is given to me, and by which alone what can be given in intuition is thought [nur was in der Anschauunggegeben werden mag]"; or again: "intuitions in general, through which objects can be given to us [uns Gegenstande gegeben werden konnen], constitute the field, the whole object, of possible experience."22 Thus, intuition does not offer a simple parallel or complement to the concept; it ensures the concept's condition of possibility-its possibility itself: "intuitions in general, through which objects can be given to us [gegeben werden konnen], constitute the field or whole object of possible experience [moglicher Erfahrung]."22 The phenomenon is thought through the concept; but in order to be thought, it must first be given; and it is given only through intuition. The intuitive mise en scene conditions conceptual objectivation. Inasmuch as alone and anteriorly giving, intuition breaks in its own favor its parallelism with the concept. Henceforth, the scope of intuition establishes that of phenomenal givenness. Phenomenality is indexed according to intuition.
Now, through a stunning tactical reversal, Kant stresses this privilege of intuition only in order better to stigmatize its weakness. For if intuition alone gives objects, there falls to human finitude only an intuition that is itself equally finite, in this case sensible. Consequently, all the eventual objects that would necessitate an intellectual intuition are excluded from the possibility of appearing. Phenomenality remains limited by the defect of what renders it partially possible-intuition. What gives (intuition inasmuch as sensible) is but of a piece with what is lacking (intuition inasmuch as intellectual). Intuition determines phenomenality as much by what it refuses to it as by what it gives to it. "Thought is the act which relates given intuition [gegebene Anschauung] to an object. If the mode of this intuition is not in any way given [auf keinerlei Weise gegeben], then the object is merely transcendental and the concept of understanding has only transcendental employment."23 To think is more than to know the objects given by (sensible) intuition; it is to think all those objects that no (intellectual) intuition will ever give, to measure the immense cenotaph of phenomena that never appeared and never will appear, in short to presume intuition's absence from possible phenomena. For intuition, which alone gives, essentially lacks. What gives is lacking. A paradox follows: henceforth, the more phenomena give themselves in sensibility, the more also grows the silent number of all the phenomena that cannot and need not claim to give themselves in sensibility. The more intuition gives according to the sensible, the more evident becomes its failure to let what is possibly phenomenal appear-a phenomenality that is henceforth held as impossible. The limitation of intuition to the sensible indirectly shows, as much as the directly given phenomena, the shadow of all those that it cannot let appear. The finitude of intuition is attested to with the permanence-which Kant admits is "necessary"of the idea. The idea, even though, or rather because it is a "rational concept to which no corresponding object can be given in the senses [in den Sinnen]," remains nevertheless visable24 if not visible in all the sensible appearances from which it is excluded. "Absent from every bouquet," the flower of thought, according to the "glory of long desire,"25 calls for sensible flowers and survives them; likewise the idea, in letting itself be aimed at outside the conditions established for phenomenality, marks that much more the limits thereof. In the quasi phantom-like mode of a non-object, the idea attests to the limits of an intuition that was not able to give the idea. It is therefore by not being sensible that the idea proves the failure of sensible intuition-in it and in general.
The phenomenon is characterized by its lack of intuition, which gives it only by limiting it. Kant confirms that intuition is operative only under the rule of limitation, of lack and of necessity, in short of nothingness [neant], by undertaking to define reciprocally the four senses of nothingness starting from intuition. Everything happens as if it were with intuition first, and with intuition considered as essentially lacking, failing, and limited, that nothingness in all its dimensions could be defined. The list of the four senses of nothingness amounts in effect to a review of four modes of intuition's failure. ) Nothingness can be taken as ens rationis. This is defined as "the object of a concept to which there corresponds no intuition that might be given [keine anzugebende Anschauung]." Intuition first produces nothingness in being unable to give any intuition corresponding to a being of reason; its limitation to the sensible finally induces a first nothingness. 2) Nothingness can be taken as nihil privativum. This is defined as "the concept of the lack of an object," that is, as a double lack of intuition; first as a concept, and therefore as what by definition lacks intuition; and then as the concept representing the very lack of intuition, which alone gives an object; a double lack of intuition produces a second nothingness. 3) Nothingness can be taken as nihil imaginativum. This sense is paradoxically significant: in principle, imagined nothingness would have to distance itself from nothingness, since here a minimum of intuition (precisely, the imagined) would have to give a minimum of being. But Kant does not grant even this positivity to the intuition, admitting only a "simple form of intuition" and reducing it to an "empty intuition." It should be noted that "empty" elsewhere returns to the concept, and that intuition does not even have any more right here to its "blind" solitude-since it is true that here the form of intuition is likened to the empty form of the concept. The form of intuition is reduced to a third nothingness. 4) Finally, nothingness can be taken as nihil negativum. As an "empty object without concept," it would seem to be defined by the failure in it of the concept and not of intuition; likewise, as "the object of a concept that contradicts itself," it would seem to admit of a purely logical explanation, and not an intuitive one. But, strangely, such is not the case, since Kant puts forward an example-a twosided rectilinear figure-which can be conceived only in space, and therefore in intuition. Moreover, as he specified earlier, "there is no contradiction in the concept of a figure that is enclosed between two straight lines, since the concepts of two figures and of their meeting contain no negation of a figure; the impossibility does not arise from the concept in itself, but in connection with its construction in space."26 The concept is lacking because the object contradicts itself; but this contradiction is not logical; it results from the contradiction of the conditions of experience-here from the requirements of construction in space; it is therefore a matter of a contradiction according to intuition, and thus according to the finitude of that intuition.-Nothingness is expressed in many ways, as is Being elsewhere, but that polysemy is organized entirely on the basis of different absences of finite and sensible intuition. Intuition's failure characterizes it fairly essentially, so that nothingness might itself be inflected in its voids.
We were asking: how is the phenomenon defined when phenomenology and metaphysics delimit it within a horizon and according to an "I"? Its definition as conditioned and reducible is well accomplished through a de-finition: the phenomena are given by an intuition, but that intuition remains finite, either as sensible (Kant), or as most often lacking or ideal (Husserl). Phenomena suffer from a deficit of intuition, and thus from a shortage of givenness. This radical lack has nothing accidental about it, but results from a phenomenological necessity. In order that any phenomenon might be inscribed within a horizon (and there find its condition of possibility), it is necessary that that horizon be delimited (it is its definition), and therefore that the phenomenon remain finite. In order for a phenomenon to be reduced to an obviously finite "I" who constitutes it, the phenomenon must be reduced to the status of finite objectivity. In both cases, the finitude of the horizon and of the "I" is indicated by the finitude of the intuition itself. The phenomena are characterized by the finitude of givenness in them, so as to be able to enter into a constituting horizon and to be led back to an "I." But, conversely, one could also conclude from this equivalence of the determinations that unconditioned and irreducible phenomena would become possible only if a non-finite intuition ensured their givenness. But can a non-finite intuition even be envisaged?
IV
The impossibility of an unconditioned and irreducible phenomenon thus results directly from the determination of the phenomenon in general by the (at least potential) failure of intuition in it. Every phenomenon would appear as lacking intuition and as marked by this lack to the point of having to rely on the condition of a horizon and on the reduction towards an "I." There would be no phenomenon except that which is essentially impoverished in intuition, a phenomenon with a reduced givenness.
Having arrived at this point, we can pose the question of a strictly inverse hypothesis: in certain cases still to be defined, must we not oppose to the restricted possibility of phenomenality a phenomenality that is in the end absolutely possible? To the phenomenon that is supposed to be impoverished in intuition can we not oppose a phenomenon that is saturated with intuition? To the phenomenon that is most often characterized by a defect of intuition, and therefore by a deception of the intentional aim and, in particular instances, by the equality between intuition and intention, why would there not correspond the possibility of a phenomenon in which intuition would give more, indeed immeasurably more, than intention ever would have intended or foreseen?
This is not a matter of a gratuitous or arbitrary hypothesis. First, because in a certain way it falls to Kant-nevertheless the thinker of the intuitive shortage of the common phenomenon- to have envisaged and defined what we are calling a saturated phenomenon. There is nothing surprising in that. Indeed, if the "rational idea can never become a cognition because it contains a concept (of the supersensible) for which no adequate intuition can ever be given"-a phenomenon that is not only impoverished in, but deprived of, intuition-it nevertheless offers only one of the two faces of the idea, which is defined in general as the representation of an object according to a principle, such that it nonetheless can never become the cognition thereof. Thus to the rational idea-a representation according to the understanding-there corresponds the "aesthetic idea"-a representation according to intuition-that itself can never become a cognition, but for an opposite reason: "because it is an intuition (of the imagination) for which no adequate [adaquat] concept can ever be found."27 Inadequacy always threatens phenomenality (or better, suspends it); but it is no longer a matter of the non-adequation of the (lacking) intuition that leaves a (given) concept empty; it is a matter, conversely, of a failure of the (lacking) concept that leaves the (overabundantly given) intuition blind. Henceforth, it is the concept that is lacking, no longer intuition. Kant stresses this unambiguously: in the case of the aesthetic idea, the "representation of the imagination furnishes much to think [viel zu denken veranlasst], but to which no determinate thought, or concept, can be adequate [adaquat sein kann]." The excess of intuition over any concept also prohibits "that any language ever reach it completely and render it intelligible,"28 in short, allow an object to be seen in it. It is important to insist here particularly on this: this failure to produce the object does not result here from a shortage of givenness (as for the ideas of reason), but indeed from an excess of intuition, and thus from an excess of givenness that "furnishes much to think." There is an excess of givenness, and not simply of intuition, since, according to Kant (and, for the main part, Husserl), it is intuition that gives. Kant formulates this excess with a rare term: the aesthetic idea remains an "inexposable [inexponible] representation of the imagination." We can understand this in the following way: because it gives "much," the aesthetic idea gives more than any concept can expose; to expose here amounts to arranging (ordering) the intuitive given according to rules; the impossibility of this conceptual arrangement issues from the fact that the intuitive overabundance is no longer exposed within rules, whatever they may be, but overwhelms them; intuition is no longer exposed within the concept, but saturates it and renders it overexposed-invisible, not by lack, but by excess of light. The fact that this very excess should prohibit the aesthetic idea from organizing its intuition within the limits.of a concept, and therefore from giving a defined object to be seen, nevertheless does not disqualify it phenomenologically, since when recognized in this way for what it is, this "inexposable representation" operates according to its "free play."29 The difficulty consists simply in attempting to comprehend (and not only to repeat) what phenomenological possibility is put into operation when the excess of giving intuition thus begins to play freely.
The path to follow from here on now opens more clearly before us. We must develop as far as possible the uncommon phenomenological possibility glimpsed by Kant himself. In other words, we must attempt to describe the characteristics of a phenomenon that, contrary to most phenomena which are impoverished in intuition and defined by the ideal adequation of intuition to intention, would be characterized by an excess of intuition, and thus of givenness, over the intention, the concept and the aim. Such a phenomenon will doubtless no longer allow the constitution of an object, at least in the Kantian sense. But it is not self-evident that objectivity should have all the authority in fixing phenomenology's norm. The hypothesis of a phenomenon saturated with intuition can certainly be warranted by its outline in Kant, but above all it must command our attention because it designates a possibility of the phenomenon in general. And in phenomenology, the least possibility is binding.
V
We will outline the description of the saturated phenomenon following the guiding thread of the categories of the understanding established by Kant. But, in order to do justice to the excess of intuition over the concept, we will use them in a negative mode. The saturated phenomenon in fact exceeds the categories and the principles of the understanding-it will therefore be invisable according to quantity, unbearable according to quality, absolute according to relation, and incapable of being looked at [irregardable] according to modality.
First, the saturated phenomenon cannot be aimed at. This impossibility stems from its essentially unforeseeable character. To be sure, its giving intuition ensures it a quantity, but such that it cannot be foreseen. This determination is better clarified by inverting the function of the axioms of intuition. According to Kant, quantity (the magnitudes of extension) is declined through a composition of the whole on the basis of its parts; this "successive synthesis" allows one to compose the representation of the whole according to the representation of the sum of the parts; indeed, the magnitude of a quantum has the property of implying nothing more than the summation of the quanta that make it up through addition. From this homogeneity follows another property: a quantified phenomenon is "foreseen in advance [schon . . . angeschaut] as an aggregate (a sum of parts given in advance) [vorher gegebener]."30 Such a phenomenon is literally foreseen on the basis of the finite number of its parts and of the magnitude of each one among them. Now, these are precisely the properties that become impossible when a saturated phenomenon is at issue. Indeed, since the intuition that gives it is not limited, its excess can be neither divided nor put together again by virtue of a homogenous magnitude and finite parts. It could not be measured on the basis of its parts, since the saturating intuition surpasses the sum of these parts by continually adding to it. Such a phenomenon, which is always exceeded by the intuition that saturates it, would rather have to be called incommensurable, not measurable (immense), unmeasured [demesure]. This lack of measure [demesure], furthermore, does not always or initially operate through the enormity of an unlimited quantity. It is marked more often by the impossibility of applying a successive synthesis to it, a synthesis allowing one to foresee an aggregate on the basis of the sum of its parts. Since the saturated phenomenon exceeds any summation of its parts-which, moreover, often cannot be counted-we must forsake the successive synthesis in favor of what we will call an instantaneous synthesis, the representation of which precedes and goes beyond that of possible components, rather than resulting from them according to foresight.
We find a privileged example of this with amazement. According to Descartes, this passion strikes us even before we know the thing, or rather precisely because we know it only partially: "One can perceive of the object only the first side that has presented itself, and consequently one cannot acquire a more particular knowledge of it."31 The "object" delivers to us only a single "side" (we could also say Abschatung) and immediately imposes itself on us with such a force that we are overwhelmed by what shows itself, eventually to the point of fascination. And yet the "successive synthesis" was suspended as early as its first term. This, then, is because another synthesis has been achieved, a synthesis that is instantaneous and irreducible to the sum of possible parts. Any phenomenon that produces amazement imposes itself upon the gaze in the very measure (or more precisely, in the very lack of measure) that it does not result from any foreseeable summation of partial quantities. Indeed, it amazes because it arises without any common measure with the phenomena that precede it, without announcing it or explaining it-for, according to Spinoza, "nullam cum reliquis habet connexionem."32 Thus, for at least two phenomenological reasons, the saturated phenomenon may not be foreseen on the basis of the parts that would compose it through summation. First, because intuition, which continually saturates the phenomenon, prohibits distinguishing and summing up a finite number of finite parts, thus annulling any possibility of foreseeing the phenomenon. Next, because the saturated phenomenon most often imposes itself thanks to amazement, where it is precisely the non-enumeration and the non-summation of the parts, and thus the unforeseeability, that accomplish all intuitive givenness.
Secondly, the saturated phenomenon cannot be borne. According to Kant, quality (intensive magnitude) allows intuition to give a degree of reality to the object by limiting it, eventually as far as negation: every phenomenon will have to admit a degree of intuition and that is what perception can anticipate. The foresight at work in extensive magnitude is found again in intensive magnitude. Nevertheless, an essential difference separates them: foresight no longer operates in a successive synthesis of the homogeneous, but in a perception of the heterogeneous-each degree is marked by a break with the preceding one, and therefore by an absolutely singular novelty. Since he privileges the case of the impoverished phenomenon, Kant analyses this heterogeneity only on the basis of the simplest cases-the first degrees starting from zero, imperceptible perceptions, etc. But in the case of a saturated phenomenon, intuition gives reality without any limitation (or, to be sure, negation). It reaches an intensive magnitude without (common) measure, such that, starting from a certain degree, the intensity of the real intuition exceeds all the anticipations of perception. In face of that excess, perception not only can no longer anticipate what it is going to receive from intuition, but above all it can no longer bear the degree of intuition. For intuition, which is supposed to be "blind" in the realm of impoverished phenomena, proves to be, in a truly radical phenomenology, much rather blinding. The intensive magnitude of the intuition that gives the saturated phenomenon is unbearable for the gaze, just as this gaze could not foresee that intuition's extensive magnitude.
Bedazzlement characterizes what the gaze cannot bear. Not bearing does not amount to not seeing; for one must first perceive, if not see, in order to experience this incapacity to bear. It is in fact a question of something visible that our gaze cannot bear; this visible something is experienced as unbearable to the gaze because it weighs too much upon that gaze; the glory of the visible weighs, and it weighs too much. What weighs here is not unhappiness, nor pain nor lack, but indeed glory, joy, excess: "Oh/ Triumph!/ What Glory! What human heart would be strong enough to bear/ That?"33 Intuition gives too intensely for the gaze to be able truly to see what already it can no longer receive, nor even confront. This blinding indeed concerns the intensity of the intuition and it alone, as is indicated by cases of blinding in face of spectacles where the intuition remains quantitatively ordinary, even weak, but of an intensity that is out of the ordinary: Oedipus blinds himself for having seen his transgression, and therefore we have a quasi moral intensity of intuition; and He whom no one can see without dying blinds first by his holiness, even if his coming is announced in a simple breath of wind. Because the saturated phenomenon, due to the excess of intuition in it, cannot be borne by any gaze that would measure up to it ("objectively"), it is perceived ("subjectively") by the gaze only in the negative mode of an impossible perception, the mode of bedazzlement.-Plato described this perfectly in connection with the prisoner of the Cave: "let one untie him and force him suddenly to turn around [ ] . . . and to lift his gaze toward the light [npos ava , he would suffer in doing all that, and, because of the bedazzlements, he would not have the strength to see face on [8a TaS that of which previously he saw the shadows." It is indeed a question of "suffering" in seeing the full light, and of fleeing it by turning away toward "the things that one can look at [ Ka8 ]"What keeps one from seeing are precisely the "eyes filled with splendor."34 Moreover, this bedazzlement is just as valid for intelligible intuition as it is for sensible intuition. First, because the myth of the Cave, in the final analysis, concerns the epistemological obstacles to intelligibility, of which the sensible montage explicitly offers one figure; next, because the idea of the Good also and above all offers itself as "difficult to see" (dy6s ), certainly not by defect, since it presents "the most visible of beings," but indeed by excess because "the soul is incapable of seeing anything . . . saturated by an extremely brilliant bedazzlement [uro rai]"35 What in all these cases prohibits one from seeing is the sensible or intelligible light's excess of intensity.
Bedazzlement thus becomes a characteristic-universalizable to any form of intuition-of an intuitive intensity that goes beyond the degree that a gaze can sustain. This is not a question of some exceptional case, which we would merely mention as a matter of interest along with the impoverished phenomenon, itself thought to be more frequent and thus more or less normative. On the contrary, it is a question of an essential determination of the phenomenon, which is rendered almost inevitable for two reasons. 1) The Kantian description of intensive magnitudes, in other respects so original and true, nevertheless maintains a resounding silence concerning the most characteristic notion of intensive magnitude-the maximum. For even if it can undoubtedly not be defined objectively, there is always a subjective maximum, the threshold of tolerance. Bedazzlement begins when perception passes beyond its subjective maximum. The description of intensive magnitudes would necessarily and with priority have to take into consideration their highest degrees, and therefore the subjective maximum (or maximums) that the bedazzlements signal. 2) As previously with unforeseeability, so bedazzlement designates a type of intuitive givenness that is not only less rare than it would seem to a hasty examination, but above all, that is decisive for a real recognition of finitude. Finitude is experienced (and proved)36 not so much through the shortage of the given before our gaze, as above all because this gaze sometimes no longer measures the amplitude of the givenness. Or rather, measuring itself against that givenness, the gaze experiences it, sometimes in the suffering of an essential passivity, as having no measure with itself. Finitude is experienced as much through excess as through lack-indeed, more through excess than through lack.
VI
Neither visable according to quantity, nor bearable according to quality, a saturated phenomenon would be absolute according to relation as well; that is, it would shy away from any analogy of experience.
Kant defines the principle of such analogies as follows: "Experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions." Now, simple apprehension by empirical intuition cannot ensure this necessary connection; on the contrary, the connection will have to produce itself at once through concepts and in time: "Since time cannot itself be perceived, the determination of the existence of objects in time can be made only through their connection in time in general, and therefore only through concepts that connect them in general." This connection connects according to three operations: inherence of accident in substance, causality between effect and cause, community between several substances. But Kant establishes them only by bringing three presuppositions into play. It is thus the possible questioning of these that will again define the saturated phenomenon.
First presupposition: in all occurrences, a phenomenon can manifest itself only by respecting the unity of experience, that is, by taking place in the tightest possible network of ties of inherence, the tightest possible network of ties of inherence, causality and community, which assign to the phenomenon, in a hollow, so to speak, a site and a function. It is a matter here ofa strict obligation: "This entire manifold must be unified [vereinigt werden soll]," "An analogy of experience is, therefore, only a rule according to which the unity of experience must arise from perceptions [entspringen soll]."37 For Kant, a phenomenon appears, therefore, only in a site that is predefined by a system of coordinates, a system that is itself governed by the principle of the unity of experience. Now it is here that another question creeps in: must every phenomenon without exception respect the unity of experience? Can one legitimately rule out the possibility that a phenomenon might impose itself on perception without one, for all that, being able to assign to it either a substance in which to dwell as an accident, or a cause from which it results as an effect, or even less an interactive commercium in which to be relativized? Further, it is not self-evident that the phenomena that really arise-as opposed to the phenomena that are impoverished in intuition, or even deprived entirely of intuition-can right from the first and most often be perceived according to such analogies of perception; it could be, quite the reverse, that they occur without being inscribed, at least at first, in the relational network that ensures experience its unity, and that they matter precisely because one cannot assign them any substratum, any cause, or any communion. To be sure, after a bit of analysis, most can be led back, at least approximately, to the analogies of perception. But those, not at all so rare, that do not lend themselves to this henceforth assume the character and the dignity of an event-that is, an event or a phenomenon that is unforeseeable (on the basis of the past), not exhaustively comprehensible (on the basis of the present), nor reproducible (on the basis of the future); in short, absolute, unique, occurring. We will thus call it a pure event. We are here taking that which has the character of event in its individual dimension as much as its collective dimension. Consequently, the analogies of experience can concern only a fringe of phenomenality-the phenomenality typical of the objects constituted by the sciences, a phenomenality that is impoverished in intuition, foreseeable, exhaustively. knowable, reproducible-while other layers-and historical phenomena first of all-would be excepted.
The second presupposition concerns the very elaboration of the procedure that allows one to ensure the (at once temporal and conceptual) necessity and thus the unity of experience. Kant presupposes that this unity must always be achieved through recourse to an analogy. For "all the empirical determinations of time must [mussen] stand under the rules of the general determination of time, and the analogies of experience . . . must [mussen] be rules of this kind." In short, it is up to the analogies of experience and to them alone actually to exercise the regulation of experience by necessity, and thus to ensure its unity. Now, at the precise moment of defining these analogies, Kant himself recognizes the fragility of their phenomenological power: indeed, in mathematics, analogy remains quantitative, such that through calculation it gives itself the fourth term and truly constructs it; in this way the equality of the two relations of magnitude is "always constitutive" of the object and actually maintains it in a unified experience. But, Kant specifies, "in philosophy, on the contrary, analogy is not the equality of two quantitative relations but of two qualitative relations; and from three given members we can obtain a priori knowledge only of the relation to a fourth, not of the fourth member itself. . . . An analogy of experience therefore will be a rule according to which the unity of experience. . . must arise from [entspringen soil] perceptions, and it will be valid as the principle of objects (phenomena) in a manner that is not constitutive but only regulative."38 To put it plainly, when it is a question of what we have called impoverished phenomena (here mathematical), intuition (here, the pure intuition of space) is not such that it could saturate the phenomenon and contradict in it the unity and the pre-established necessity of experience; in this case, the analogy remains quantitative and constitutive. In short, there is analogy of experience provided that the phenomenon remains impoverished. But as soon as the simple movement to physics (not even to speak of a saturated phenomenon) occurs, analogy can no longer regulate anything, except qualitatively: if A is the cause of effect B, then D will be in the position (quality) of effect with respect to C, without it being possible to identify what D is or will be, and without it being possible to construct it (by lack of pure intuition) or to constitute it. Kant's predicament culminates with the strange employment, within the analytic of principles, of principles whose usage remains purely "regulative"-which can be understood in only one sense: the analogies of experience do not really constitute their objects, but express subjective needs of the understanding.
Let us suppose, for the moment, that the analogies of perception, thus reduced to a simple regulative usage, must treat a saturated phenomenon: the latter already exceeds the categories of quantity (unforeseeable) and quality (unbearable); it gives itself already as a pure event. Consequently, how could an analogy--especially one that is simply regulative-assign to the phenomenon-especially necessarily and a priori-a point whose coordinates would be established by the relations of inherence, causality, and community? This phenomenon would escape all relations because it would not maintain any common measure with these terms; it would be freed from them, as from any a priori determination of experience that would eventually claim to impose itself on the phenomenon. In this we will speak of an absolute phenomenon: untied from any analogy with any object of experience whatsoever.
This being the case, the third Kantian presupposition becomes questionable. The unity of experience is developed on the basis of time, since it is a matter of"the synthetic unity of all phenomena according to their relation in time."39 Thus, Kant posits the first to do so no doub-not only time as the ultimate horizon of phenomena, but moreover that no appearance can dawn without a horizon that receives it and that it rejects at the same time. This signifies that before any phenomenal breakthrough toward visibility, the horizon first awaited in advance. And it signifies that every phenomenon, in appearing, is in fact limited to actualizing a portion of the horizon, which otherwise would remain transparent. A current question concerns the identity of this horizon (time, Being, the good, etc.). This should not, however, mask another question that is simpler, albeit harder: could certain phenomena exceed every horizon? We should specify that it is not a matter of dispensing with a horizon in general-which would undoubtedly prohibit all manifestation but of freeing oneself from the delimiting anteriority proper to every horizon, an anteriority that is such as to be unable not to enter into conflict with a phenomenon's claim to absoluteness. Let us assume a saturated phenomenon that has just gained its absolute character by freeing itself from the analogies with experience-what horizon can it recognize? On the one hand, the excess of intuition saturates this phenomenon so as to make it exceed the frame of ordinary experience. On the other hand, a horizon, by its very definition, defines and is defined; through its movement to the limit, the saturated phenomenon can manage to saturate its horizon. There is nothing strange about this hypothesis-even in strict philosophy where, with Spinoza, for example, the unique substance, absorbing all the determinations and all the individuals corresponding thereto, manages to overwhelm with its infinitely saturated presence (infinitis attributis infinitis modis) the horizon of Cartesian metaphysics, by leaving therein no more free space for the finite (absolute and universal necessity). Such saturation of a horizon by a single saturated phenomenon presents a danger that could not be overestimated, since it is born from the experience-and from the absolutely real, in no way illusory, experience-of totality, with neither door nor window, with neither other [autre] nor others [autrui]. But this danger results less from the saturated phenomenon itself than, strangely, from the misapprehension of it. Indeed, when it arises, it is most often treated as if it were only a common law phenomenon or a impoverished phenomenon. In fact, the saturated phenomenon maintains its absoluteness and, at the same time, dissolves its danger, when one recognizes it without confusing it with other phenomena, and therefore when one allows it to operate on several horizons at once. Since there are spaces with n+l dimensions (whose properties saturate the imagination), there are phenomena with n+l horizons. One of the best examples of such an arrangement is furnished by the doctrine of the transcendentals: the irreducible plurality of ens, verum, bonum, and pulchrum allows one to decline the saturated phenomenon from the first Principle in perfectly autonomous registers, where it gives itself to be seen, each time, only according to one perspective, which is total as well as partial; their convertibility indicates that the saturation persists, but that it is distributed within several concurrent horizons. Or rather the saturation increases because each perspective, already saturated in itself, is blurred a second time by the interferences in it of other saturated perspectives.40 The plurality of horizons therefore allows as much that one might respect the absoluteness of the saturated phenomenon (which no horizon could delimit or precede), as that one might render it tolerable through a multiplication of the dimensions of its reception.
There remains nevertheless one last thinkable, although extreme, relation between the saturated phenomenon and its horizon(s): that no horizon nor any combination of horizons tolerate the absoluteness of the phenomenon precisely because it gives itself as absolute; that is, as free from any analogy with common law phenomena and from any predetermination by a network of relations, with neither precedent nor antecedent within the already seen (the foreseen). In short, a phenomenon saturated to the point that the world could not accept it. Having come among its own, they did not recognize it-having come into phenomenality, the absolutely saturated phenomenon could find no room there for its display. But this opening denial, and thus this disfiguration, still remains a manifestation.
Thus, in giving itself absolutely, the saturated phenomenon gives itself also as absolute-free from any analogy with the experience that is already seen, objectivized, and comprehended. It frees itself therefrom because it depends on no horizon. On the contrary, the saturated phenomenon either simply saturates the horizon, or it multiplies the horizon in order to saturate it that much more, or it exceeds the horizon and finds itself cast out from it. But this very disfiguration remains a manifestation. In every case, it does not depend on that condition of possibility par excellence-a horizon, whatever it may be. We will therefore call this phenomenon unconditioned.
VII
Neither visable according to quantity, nor bearable according to quality, absolute according to relation-that is, unconditioned by the horizon-the saturated phenomenon finally gives itself as incapable of being looked at according to modality.
The categories of modality are distinguished from all the others, Kant insists, in that they .determine neither the objects themselves, nor their mutual relations, but simply "their relation to thought in general," in that they "express only the relation to the power of knowing ," "nothing other than the action of the power of knowing."41 In fact, between the objects of experience and the power of knowing, it is not only a question of a simple relation, but of the fact that they "agree." This agreement determines the possibility of phenomena to be (and therefore also their actuality and necessity) in the measure of their suitability to the "I" for and through whom the experience takes place. "The postulate of the possibility of things requires [fordert] therefore that their concept agree [zusammenstimme] with the formal conditions of an experience in general."42 The phenomenon is possible in the strict measure that it agrees with the formal conditions of experience, thus with the power of knowing that fixes its attention on them, and therefore finally with the transcendental "I" itself. The possibility of the phenomenon depends on its reduction to the "1."
This being the case, we can envisage a reversal of Kant's assertion and ask: what would occur phenomenologically if a phenomenon.did not "agree" with or "correspond" to the power of knowing of the "I"? The Kantian answer leaves hardly any doubt: this phenomenon quite simply would not appear; or better, there would not be any phenomenon at all, but an object-less perceptive aberration. If this answer remains meaningful for an impoverished or common law phenomenon, does it still hold for a saturated phenomenon? In fact, the situation in this case becomes much different. In face of saturation, the "I" most certainly experiences the disagreement between the at least potential phenomenon and the subjective conditions of its experience; consequently, the "I" cannot constitute an object therein. But this failure to objectivize in no way implies that absolutely nothing appears here: intuitive saturation, precisely inasmuch as it is invisible, intolerable, and absolute (unconditioned), imposes itself in the capacity of a phenomenon that is exceptional by excess, not by defect. The saturated phenomenon refuses to let itself be looked at as an object, precisely because it appears with a multiple and indescribable excess that suspends any effort at constitution. To define the saturated phenomenon as a non-objective or, more exactly, non-objectivizable object, in no way indicates a refuge in the irrational or the arbitrary; this definition refers to one of its distinctive properties: although exemplarily visible, it nevertheless cannot be looked at. We here take "to look at"-regarder-literally: re-garder exactly reproduces in-tueri and must therefore be understood on the basis of tueri, garder but in the sense of "to keep an eye on. . .," "to keep half an eye on. . .," "to have (to keep) in sight. . ." Regarder therefore implies being able to keep the visible that is seen under the control of the one who is seeing and, consequently, a voyeur. And it is certainly not by chance that Descartes entrusts the intuitus with maintaining in evidence what the ego reduces to the status of objectum. To define the saturated phenomenon as incapable of being looked at [irregardable] amounts to envisaging the possibility where a phenomenon would impose itself with such a surfeit of intuition that it could neither be reduced to the conditions of experience, and thus to the "I" who sets them, nor, all the same, forgo appearing.
Under what figure would it appear then? It appears in spite of and in disagreement with the conditions of possibility of experience-by imposing an impossible experience (if not already an experience of the impossible). Of the saturated phenomenon there would be only a counter-experience. Confronted with the saturated phenomenon, the "I" cannot not see it, but neither can it look at it as its object. It has the eye to see it, but not to look after it [pour le garder]. What, then, does this eye without a look [cet oeil sans regard] actually see? It sees the overabundance of intuitive givenness, not, however, as such, but as blurred by the overly short lens, the overly restricted aperture, the overly narrow frame that receives it--or rather, that no longer accommodates it. The eye apperceives not so much the appearance of the saturated phenomenon as the blur, the fog, and the overexposure that it imposes on its normal conditions of experience. The eye sees not so much another spectacle as its own naked impotence to constitute anything at all. It sees nothing distinctly, but clearly experiences its impotence before the unmeasuredness of the visible, and thus above all a perturbation of the visible, the noise of a poorly received message, the obfuscation of finitude. Through sight, it receives a pure givenness, precisely because it no longer discerns any objectivizable given therein.
Let us call this phenomenological extremity a paradox. The paradox not only suspends the phenomenon's relation of subjection to the "l," it inverts that relation. Far from being able to constitute this phenomenon, the "I" experiences itself as constituted by it. It is constituted and no longer constituting because it no longer has at its disposal any dominant point of view over the intuition that overwhelms It; in space, the saturated phenomenon engulfs it with its intuitive flood; in time, it precedes it through an interpellation that is always already there. The "I" loses its anteriority and finds itself, so to speak, deprived [destitue] of the duties of constitution, and thus itself constituted: a "me" rather than an "I." It is clear that on the basis of the saturated phenomenon we meet here with what we have thematized elsewhere under the name of the subject on its last appeal the interloque.43 When the "I" finds itself, instead of the constituting "I" that it remained in face of common law phenomena, constituted by a saturated phenomenon, it can identify itself as such only by admitting the precedence of such a phenomenon over itself. This reversal leaves it interloque, essentially surprised by the more original event that detaches it from itself.
Thus, the phenomenon is no longer reduced to the "I" that would look at it. Incapable of being looked at, it proves irreducible. There is no drift or turn here, even "theological," but, on the contrary, an accounting for the fact that in certain cases of givenness the excess of intuition may no longer satisfy the conditions of ordinary experience; and that the pure event that occurs cannot be constituted as an object and leaves the durable trace of its opening only in the "I/me" that finds itself, almost in spite of itself, constituted by what it receives. The constituting subject is succeeded by the constituted witness. As a constituted witness, the subject remains the worker of truth, but no longer its producer.
VIII
In order to introduce the concept of the saturated phenomenon into phenomenology, we have just described it as invisable (unforeseeable) according to quantity, unbearable according to quality, but also unconditioned (absolved from any horizon) according to relation, and irreducible to the "I" (incapable of being looked at) according to modality. These four characteristics imply the term for term reversal of all the rubrics under which Kant classifies the principles and thus the phenomena that these determine. However, in relation to Husserl, these new characteristics are organized in a more complex way; the first two-the invisable and the unbearable-offer no difficulty de jure for the "principle of all principles," for what intuition gives can quantitatively and qualitatively exceed the scope of the gaze; it is sufficient that intuition actually give it. The case is not the same for the last two characteristics: the "principle of all principles" presupposes the horizon and the constituting "I" as two unquestioned presuppositions of anything that would be constituted in general as a phenomenon; but the saturated phenomenon, inasmuch as it is unconditioned by a horizon and irreducible to an "I," makes a claim to a possibility that is freed from these two conditions; it therefore contradicts and exceeds the "principle of all principles." Husserl, who nonetheless surpassed the Kantian metaphysics of the phenomenon, must himself be surpassed in order to reach the possibility of the saturated phenomenon. Even and especially with the "principle of all principles," Husserl maintains a twofold reserve toward possibility. Nevertheless, this reserve of Husserl toward possibility can prove to be a reserve of phenomenology itself-which still maintains a reserve of possibility, in order itself to be surpassed toward a possibility without reserve. Because it gives itself without condition or restraint, the saturated phenomenon offers the paradigm of the phenomenon without reserve. Thus, in the guiding thread of the saturated phenomenon, phenomenology finds its ultimate possibility: not only the possibility that surpasses actuality, but the possibility that surpasses the very conditions of possibility, the possibility of unconditioned possibility-in other words, the possibility of the impossible, the saturated phenomenon.
The saturated phenomenon must not be understood as a limit case, an exceptional, vaguely irrational-in short, a "mystical" case of phenomenality. It indicates on the contrary the coherent and conceptual completion of the most operative definition of the phenomenon: it alone truly appears as itself, of itself and starting from itself,44 since it alone appears without the limits of a horizon and without the reduction to an "I." We will therefore call this appearance that is purely of itself and starting from itself, this phenomenon that does not subject its possibility to any preliminary determination, a revelation. And-we insist on this here it is purely and simply a matter of the phenomenon taken in its fullest meaning.
Moreover, the history of philosophy has a long-standing knowledge of such saturated phenomena. One could go so far as to maintain that none of the decisive metaphysicians has avoided the description of one or more saturated phenomena, even at the price of a head-on contradiction of his own presuppositions. Among many fairly obvious examples, let us simply call to mind Descartes and Kant.
a) Descartes, who everywhere else reduces the phenomenon to the idea and the idea to the object, nevertheless thinks the idea of infinity as a saturated phenomenon. According to quantity, the idea of infinity is not obtained by summation or successive synthesis, but tota simul; thus, the gaze (intueri) becomes the surprise of admiration (admirari).45 According to quality, it admits no finite degree, but a maximum: maxime clara et distincta, maxime vera.46 According to relation, it maintains no analogy with any idea at all: nihil univoce; indeed, it exceeds every horizon since it remains incomprehensible, capable only of being touched by thought: attingam quomodolibet cogitatione. According to modality, far from letting itself be led back to a constituting "l," it comprehends the "I" without letting itself be comprehended by it: non tam capere quam a ipsa capi,48 such that perhaps even the ego could also be interpreted at times as one who is called [un interpelle]. But furthermore, would it not suffice to translate "idea of infinity" word for word by "saturated phenomenon" in order to establish our conclusion?
b) Kant furnishes an example of the saturated phenomenon that is all the more significant insofar as it does not concern, as does Descartes', rational theology; in fact, it is a question of the sublime. We relied above on the "aesthetic idea" to challenge the principle of the shortage of intuition and to introduce the possibility of a saturation. In fact, already with the doctrine of the sublime we are dealing with a saturated phenomenon. Indeed, according to quantity, the sublime has neither form nor order, since it is great "beyond all comparison," absolutely and not comparatively (absolute, schlechthin, bloss).49 According to quality, it contradicts taste as a "negative pleasure" and it provokes a "feeling of inadequacy," a feeling of "monstrosity."50 According to relation, it very clearly escapes any analogy and any horizon since it literally represents "unlimitedness" (Unbegrenzheit).51 According to modality, finally, far from agreeing with our power of knowing, "it can seem [erscheinen mag] in its form to contradict the purpose [zweckwidrig] of our faculty of judgment"; the relation of our faculty of judgment to the phenomenon is therefore reversed, to the point that it is the phenomenon that hereafter "looks at" the "I" "in respect."52 The Kantian sublime would thus permit us to widen the field of application for the concept of the saturated phenomenon.
From here on, we can recapitulate. Phenomena can be classified, according to their increasing intuitive content, in three fundamental domains. a) The phenomena that are deprived of intuition or impoverished in intuitions: formal languages (endowed with categorial intuition by Husserl), mathematical idealities (whose pure intuition is established by Kant). b) The common law phenomena, whose signification (aimed at by intention) can ideally receive an adequate intuitive fulfillment, but that, right at the start and most of the time, do not reach such fulfillment. In these first two domains, the constitution of objects is rendered possible precisely because the shortage of intuition authorizes comprehension, foresight, and reproduction. c) There remain, finally, the saturated phenomena, which an excess of intuition shields from objective constitution. Conveniently, we can distinguish two types. ) First, pure historical events: by definition non-repeatable, they occur most often without having been foreseen; since through a surfeit of intuitive given they escape objectivation, their intelligibility excludes comprehension and demands that one move on to hermeneutics;53 intuitive saturation surpasses a single horizon and imposes multiple hermeneutics within several horizons; finally, the pure historical event not only occurs to its witness without the latter comprehending it (the non-constituting "I"), but itself, in return, comprehends the "I" (the constituted "I"): the "I" is comprehended on the basis of the event that occurs to it in the very measure that the "I" itself does not comprehend the event. Pure events offer a type of saturated phenomenon that is historical and thus communal and in principle communicable. 2) Such is not always the case for the second type, the phenomena of revelation. Let me repeat that by revelation I here intend a strictly phenomenological concept: an appearance that is purely of itself and starting from itself, which does not subject its possibility to any preliminary determination. Such revealed phenomena occur principally in three domains. First the picture as a spectacle that, due to excess of intuition, cannot be constituted but still can be looked at (the idol). Next, a particular face that I love, which has become invisible not only because it dazzles me, but above all because in it I want to look and can look only at its invisible gaze weighing on mine (the icon). Finally, theophany, where the surfeit of intuition leads to the paradox that an invisible gaze visibly envisages me and loves me. And it is here that the question of the possibility of a phenomenology of religion would be posed in terms that are not new (for it is only a matter of pushing the phenomenological intention to its end), but simple.
In every case, recognizing the saturated phenomena comes down to thinking seriously aliquid quo majus cogitari nequit-seriously, which means as a final possibility of phenomenology.54 ,55
