FROM THE OPTICAL EXCESS TO THE CAPTIVE GAZE: THE PICTORICAL IMAGE AS “SATURED VISIBLE” IN JEAN-LUC MARION’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF IDOL

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show the way in which Jean-Luc Marion´s hermeneutics of the idol (that is, his phenomenology of pictorial image) involves a step forward in the consideration of phenomenological theory of intuition. The concepts of “admiration”, “pause of the gaze” or “exhibition of the unseen” accomplish, in this sense, the role of showing how a painting manages to appear as a visible element in whose interior the event of the absolute apotheosis of visión takes place. This supreme degree of the gaze implies an “aesthetical” questioning of metaphysical theories about artistic phenomenon and, at the same time, a development of the first husserlian positions in reference to the constitution of the phenomenomenically given object.