THE EGO BEHIND THE PRINCIPLE OF INSUFFICIENT REASON

Approaches to the erotic reduction in Jean-Luc Marion

Santiago Andrés Bentivegna

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Introduction

From Jean-Luc Marion's responsive attempt to the questions "am I loved from
another place?" and "can I love, me first?" resolved in "The Erotic Phenomenon1", it is
in our favor to sketch superficially the arrival at the "principle of insufficient reason",
with the intention of tracing the path of the ego to its own culmination in erotic
reduction. It is important to clarify that we will take as our theoretical matrix three
paragraphs (§15, §16 and §17) that seem to us fundamental to advance in the reduction
of the lover as he divests himself of his ego.

By way of source analysis as a method, we will focus our inquiry on the chapter
"The Lover, advancing", in order to illuminate the path towards the beginning, and then
argue it and point out at the end the de-centering of the ego in front of the Other that
appears from the erotic reduction.

First of all, the position of the ego before its advance to reduction will be made
explicit, in order to understand the conditional starting point of the 'a priori' that the
lover will gradually purify, in order to reveal what was hidden under the supposed logic
of love. Secondly, already in advance, the moment of reduction of reciprocity and
security will be analyzed, in order to then formulate the principle of insufficient reason.
Finally, returning to the root, an account will be given of the path taken by the ego,
which in the end has moved out of place, remaining behind love, and even more, behind
the Other.

1
MARION, J.L., El fenómeno erótico. Seis meditaciones. 1ed, Ediciones literales, El cuenco de plata.
Trad., Silvio Mattoni. Buenos Aires, 2005. [All translations of this paper are done by me.]
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1. The ego and it lack

For Marion we must understand the position of the a priori of the ego in the passage
to erotic reduction. To do so, we evoke three fundamental points by which the ego
advances to the position of lover insofar as it sets aside a demand, which contradicts the
very logic of love and which at the same time rationally surpasses the just price of a
radical reason. The three points are: the ego's demand in the face of vanity; the ego's
waiting as a reciprocal condition; and its ignored logic at the gates of erotic reduction
and the passage to the lover.

The fundamental question in order to carry out the erotic reduction is no longer a
question of certainty, no longer an ego waiting for external security. To reach this
conclusion we must understand that love acts negatively in pursuit of a search for
security in the face of its greatest threat, vanity. 2 To the lack of security we must add a
correlate, at least hypothetical, to the question "what for? The ego, by never making
security possible as an answer, captures love as hardship, so that no real reduction takes
place. Vanity is the greatest threat to love, which produces the demand for an answer
without the risk of failure. The ego lacks what it ignores, therefore, it demands to the
extent that it ignores.3

Following Marion, "the ego expects from love only a more or less honest exchange,
a negotiated reciprocity, an acceptable compromise". 4 The ego expects from love the
security of not losing itself in it; it is the fair exchange at a reasonable price that the ego
demands. Faced with such a situation, love has nothing to do but wait for the ego to free
the lover from itself so as not to see love as a kind of 'waiting' and 'demanding' of a
security for a fair price.5

In the face of the strict reciprocity of the security of knowing that 'I am loved’ first,
only a posteriori does the ego love the one who loves it, but, according to Marion, love
does not act in this way. To risk the minimum in order to have what is 'just' is to
condition, or rather to 'adjust' love to the ego's desire, which is always the desire for its
own security of not losing itself. Functioning for oneself puts love in a situation of lack,
leaving it "under the yoke of reciprocity".6 It is in this way that love must be freed from
2
Cf., Ibid.., p. 83
3
Cf., Ibid., p. 84
4
Ibidem.
5
Cf., Ibid.
6
Ibid., p. 85
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the ego which sustains a dependence on the principle of exchange which fixes
reciprocity and which, moreover, makes it impossible to love.

So far, we know that the ego is at fault contracted within the reciprocity that
protects it from the hardship of not being, unable to love without condition, receiving as
its main answer to the question "Do you love me from another place?” 7 the imposition
of being loved a priori as a condition of the possibility of loving, meaning finally that to
love is to be loved first.8

2. Moment of reduction: reciprocity and safety

It is therefore necessary to refute reciprocity because of the impossibility of

calculating a reasonable price for the unobjectionability of the actors. Marion asserts
that changing the question that limits access to love for a more fundamental one that
does not determine a horizon will reduce the condition of reciprocity to love freely:

"How can it be conceived that loving must not come first from another place to me, but that it
can unfold freely and without serving me, except by admitting the possibility that this event
comes from me with respect to another as yet undetermined - from myself abstracted in another
place more interior in me than myself, which neither precedes nor validates any security? In
short, 'can I love first' rather than 'am I loved from another place': to behave as a lover who gives
himself, rather than as a beloved who gives as well as receives."9

The formulation of the question completely changes the condition that makes love
impossible, being in short, that, although no one loves the lover, it does not mean that
the lover does not love. It is here that the ego loses its authority in the face of love
insofar as it will never prevent love. For Marion, there is a sovereignty of the act of
loving that does not affect reciprocity, because the lover no longer has anything to lose,
not even himself: there is a complete surrender on the part of the one who loves, in
which the more one loses the more one loves. 10 As a kind of directly proportional
relation, from giving in virtue of loving insofar as it is lost. That is the effect of giving
without return, without recovery and without reciprocal obligation, so that the ego,
unfailingly, 'loses itself': "love itself is never lost, since it is effected in the very loss". 11

7
This question is what initiates the discussion about the possibility of another's love for 'me'.
8
Cf. Ibid.., p. 86.
9
Ibidem.
10
Cf., Ibid., p. 87.
11
Ibid., 87
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We understand that the less ego the more love, that is to say that the ego ceases to
be, because the fact of loving does not lose by ceasing to be, precisely "(...) to love
consists sometimes in not being (...)".12 The incommensurability of love is understood
from this point. Being is not a limit, nothing stands in the way of love if and only if
loving implies the risk of not being loved, such is love without being.13 Nor does death
condition the possibility of loving insofar as we can certainly love non-beings.14

The radicalization of the erotic reduction reaches its peak insofar as it prevents any
request for security, definitively renouncing it, completely detaching itself from the
question "do you love me from somewhere else?" 15. In Marion's words, "love in essence
must make its mourning of all security". except for one certainty that must be
mentioned: the certainty of being loved. The lover, no longer without the ego's vain
suspicion, finds in love an absolute security that is experienced in the very absence of
reciprocity.16

"I receive the assurance that I make love and I receive it only from love making itself, only with
respect to it. I receive from love what I give to it-doing it. I receive security from my dignity as a
lover."17

In short, to take the risk of loving first, that is, to make love loving love, becomes
the ultimate security that always comes from another place more intimate than itself:
love.

12
Ibidem.
13
Cf., Ibidem.
14
Cf., Ibid., p. 88.
15
Ibid., p. 89.
16
Ibid., p. 90.
17
Ibid., p. 91.
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3. Principle of insufficient reason

"Love does not reject reason, but reason itself refuses to go where the lover goes."18

After the affirmation of the lover determined to love, freed from all vein suspicion,
assuming himself as the maker of love and consenting to the nullity of conditions,
without return or loss, he comes to account for his individuality. In such a reductionist
radicalism, the lover becomes definitively himself whenever he can love first. 19

For the formulation of the principle of insufficient reason, we must show the
contradictions of the logic of love. To do so, we will take up some of the points
mentioned above.

"The price fixes the reason for the exchange and guarantees it’s just reciprocity. The price gives
reason to the economy (...) If the lover decides to love without the certainty of a return (...) he
contradicts above all the sufficient reason of the economy".20

The renunciation of reason and sufficiency in loving without reserve transgresses

the mercantilist logic of love as an economic contract, profitable and guaranteeing the
security of reciprocal love. There are no longer reasons to love, but one loves without
reason, without judgment or an a priori that justifies the act. Reason becomes insoluble
in trying to explain a love free of insurance, it can no longer do anything in the face of
love, and love simply collapses. Marion then offers three arguments by way of
justification of the principle that finally leads him to decenter the ego towards the other.
First, reciprocity in the lover can neither give nor take away reasons to love, if one loves
first; second, in loving first, there may be the possibility of not knowing whom one
loves, so much so that the meaninglessness of loving the unknown cannot be explained
rationally; third, and following the first two, the lover sees and knows to the extent that
he loves first. That is to say that the other is given insofar as he is first loved.21

4. From the Ego to the Other

18
Ibid., p. 96.
19
Cf., Ibid., p. 93.
20
Ibid., p. 95.
21
Cf., Ibid., p. 96.
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In such a way that the lover, in a certain way, 'makes the one he loves appear', as
if the other were phenomenalized to the extent that he is loved. This last statement
closes the beginning and gives way to the decentering of the ego, to give place to the
Other as a phenomenon given from the loving reduction:

"(...) loving first makes it possible to finally see that other, since he sees him as lovable and unique,
whereas otherwise he disappears in commerce and reciprocity (...) The lover, sees insofar as he
loves, discovers a phenomenon seen insofar as loved."22

Reason has nothing more to say in the face of the lover who makes the Other
visible by first loving the one he makes visible, leaving pure love as a sufficient reason
to love without sufficiency of reason. 23 This is the high point of the radicalized erotic
reduction (at least in the present text), which concludes our intention in the elaboration
of the work.

Concluding remarks
Finally, perhaps with less force, the ego is reduced before the Other who appears
from the insufficiency of reason to give a reason for love, establishing the lover as the
first maker of love and nothing more than the Other who loves.

We have seen that the reduction of reciprocity is a fundamental argument of the

principle of the insufficiency of reason, since vanity is no threat to the lover who loves
without retribution and without the security contract of a retrospective love. Thus, we
arrive at the principle of insufficient reason in which the lover, already radicalized in his
reduction, makes love and phenomenalizes the beloved, the latter appearing as Other.
Thus, the central questions are decentered from the ego towards that Other who arrives
in front of a lover who advances without conditions or hardship.

The introductory questions are not answered, for the reduction is not consummated
in this principle, but rather the erotic phenomenon is revealed more profoundly in the
flesh, in the face and in the third, which will be motives for continuing to broaden the
prism of the phenomenological reduction in the appearance of love.

22
Ibid., p. 96.
23
Cf., Ibid., p. 99.