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This chapter synthesizes findings from previous sections on Derrida and Marion's differing conclusions on the gift and desire, then contextualizes those differences within the two thinker's respective positions of deconstruction and phenomenology. The consequences of these distinctions bear weight on these respective methodologies or styles. For Derrida, desire runs counter to any presuppositionless grasp of things, and deconstruction is found in the intuitive disruptions of différance, the "giver" of expression. "The sign" functions independent from "intentional acts" that are tooled according to the will of the one performing the reduction. Yet for Marion the performance of bracketing and the active suspension of constitutive phenomena entail that desire actively becomes passive and receptive. This is quite distinct from Husserlian intentionality in that both givenness and desire are given their own registers or ratio, and therefore need not flow from any cognitive directedness upon things. For Marion there are "negative certainties" that provide types of assurance independent from the control of economy, possibility, or the noetic, mental activities of perceiving. The gift and desire (which are constituted by a unique "lacking") can be thought as types of such certainties.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-27942-8_9

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