It has long been noticed that there is a similarity between how the mind knows the world and how the physical world appears. For those in the Idealist camp this similarity is because our minds reflect the mind-like structures of reality. But modern physical sciences are based on the total rejection of any subjective interference with "objective" knowledge. And so those in the Realist camp base knowing about the Universe on the purification of observations from any taint of subjective or perspectival bias, in which a sort of direct knowing of reality is sought in an "a" equals "a" identification of the Universe as it is in-itself. And these scientific materialists just take the miracle that the mind corresponds to reality in such as way as to know anything about it as a given.

But the mystical knowing of Jean-Luc Marion's "Saturated Phenomenon" involves putting the unknowable in relation to the knowable to produce a kind of knowing about what can't be known that he calls "Counter-Experience." Counter-Experience is the experience that is given by the failure to know. The failure to know in Marion's Counter-Experience is not because too little information has been given but rather because too much affect has been given to the intuition for the intention to reduce to conceptual or phenomenal objects. The gratuity of this givenness reflects the ultimate gratuity that gives whatever appears to the intention, which is the ground of both what can be known about the Universe and what can't. The unknowable ground of whatever there is, is the gratuity of the love that proceeds even God, which is the love that Marion calls "God without being."

The excess of God's Love precedes Him, and this gratuitous love shows itself as the beyond of the intention, or of what proceeded any possible knowledge, as Counter-Experience. This too-much-givenness then becomes the gift of endless opportunities for interpretations, which are endless opportunities to consider the gratuity that proceeded both being and the knowing of being. The first gift is the appearance of what can't be determined, the second gift is the ingression of this indeterminate excess into the intention via Interpretation. Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics outlined how what can't be determined must be interpreted. Ricoeur showed how the failure to know gave raise to communities of interpretation, in which God's indeterminate love becomes not only the basis for an indeterminate creation but also the basis for communities of interpretation of the too-much-givenness of being.

Baddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio: jamesreeves.co