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Taste and See:

A Phenomenological Reading of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Carole L. Baker

Duke University

“Two look at the world around them. One thinks of oil or gold or another human being

and puts a value on it or him or her. Another looks at the world and sees news of God’s presence

calling…And these two ways of seeing come to make all the difference…”1

Opening Remarks

What follows is a modest exercise prompted by initial readings of two compelling

thinkers. The first, Gerard Manley Hopkins, is lauded as one of—if not the—preeminent

Victorian poets. But he was more than a poet and the growing scholarship attending to his

oeuvre, which even now awaits comprehensive publication, suggests his work as a philosopher

and theologian must be paid equal attention. Indeed, increasingly those attempting to comment

on his poetry find that doing so necessitates in the very least a cursory knowledge of the

theological context from which Hopkins wrote.

The second thinker is the contemporary philosopher Jean-Luc Marion. Marion’s

phenomenology of givenness not only provides a corrective to modern metaphysics within

philosophy, but it also provides an opening for contemporary theological reflection that has been

beholden to the metaphysical presumptions Marion has laid bare. Drawing on his

phenomenological predecessors, Marion’s Being Given: A Phenomenology of Givenness treats

the shortcomings of their philosophies in order to push the more promising aspects to their

proper ends.

1 Paul Mariani, Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life (New York: Penguin, 2008), 4-5.

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It is not insignificant that both thinkers are Catholic intellectuals. It is essential to read

Hopkins as such as his writing (poetry and prose) draws explicitly on his theological formation

and convictions. And although he is a philosopher, Marion is unapologetically a Catholic

philosopher unwilling to capitulate to modern philosophical prejudices that unreasonably insist

questions concerning God do not belong to philosophy. Indeed Marion sees such insistence as

not only unreasonable but unphilosophical as it preemptively precludes lines of reasoning and in

so doing undermines the task of philosophical inquiry. Philosophy needn’t entertain questions

concerning God, but it cannot de facto preclude such questions and still remain philosophy.

Moreover, although Marion’s work is properly philosophical and therefore not essentially

indebted to theological commitments, it is nonetheless the case that Marion himself recognizes

and anticipates (even gestures towards) openings and implications within his philosophy for

further theological reflection.2 Therefore it is not presumptuous, though perhaps still speculative,

to read Hopkins through Marion and visa versa. And so it is the modest aim of this paper to

suggest that Hopkins’s work may be best understood from within —or at least alongside—

Marion’s phenomenology of givenness. Conversely, it may be that while Marion’s philosophy is

well-suited for gaining further traction in understanding Hopkins, Hopkins may also help to press

Marion at the very places he’s left open for theological reflection. But that is a topic for a

different paper.

I will begin this exercise by sketching the conceptual landscape of Hopkins’s thought as

it is largely determined by key terms he coined and used within both his poetry and prose. This

2 I am well aware of the tumultuous debates concerning Marion’s relation to theology. This paper will not deal with

those debates and so I have chosen to refrain from further remarks on the topic. For those unfamiliar with the

debates, and Marion’s own stance on the distinction between philosophy and theology, see Thomas A. Carlson’s

very helpful Introduction to The Idol and Distance: Five Studies by Jean-Luc Marion, translated by Thomas A.

Carlson (Fordham University Press, 2001).

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initial move will come as little surprise to anyone familiar with scholarship on Hopkins as so

much of that scholarship entails yet another attempt to define what Hopkins meant by the terms

instress and inscape. And yet there is no clear vanquisher that has silenced the others and so it’s

unlikely that we will see fewer attempts anytime soon. I do not see myself as entering into this

same discussion as my concern is not to provide a final definition for these terms; rather I hope

to resituate the terms so that they might escape the ghetto of ambiguity and become freed within

a new conceptual horizon. Rather than making an argument for the best definition, my argument

will pertain to the field(s) of meaning in which the terms can have more play. If I’m successful,

the result will be that the terms will eventually enter into more common usage rather than being

confined solely to Hopkinsian hermeneutics. For I can only surmise Hopkins’s use of the terms,

along with his own occasional attempts to define them, indicates he had no intention of creating

a private language. Rather just as his sprung rhythm was a natural outgrowth of his aesthetic

convictions of which he hoped to persuade others (or at least his friend Robert Bridges), so these

terms should be understood as part of an attempt to further reflection– aesthetic, philosophical,

and theological. But in order to accomplish this objective it is first necessary to offer a brief

discussion of the terms and their conceptual landscape, which is now as much a construction of

subsequent scholarship as Hopkins’s own thought.

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod…

Interpreters may disagree on the precise definition of Hopkins’s key terms instress and

inscape, but there are none who deny there is an essential relation between the two concepts. To

suggest otherwise would be not only to misunderstand one or the other concept, but both of

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them.3 The terms have been elusive largely because of the various instances in which Hopkins

used them. However, it should be noted that, unlike instress, inscape is not a term that appears in

Hopkins’s poetry but only in his journals and letters. It is a term with a wide berth. It is used to

describe objects, singular and plural (groupings); particulars and generalities (abstractions);

things transient and things stable. Finally, the term is used as both a noun and a verb: “Note that

a slender race of fine flue cloud inscaped in continuous eyebrow curves hitched on the

Weisshorn Peak as it passed.”4 Bernadette Ward remarks:

The crux of the difficulty of understanding inscape is the way that the word is not limited

in reference either exclusively to particular things or exclusively to general ideas. It exists

neither entirely in the observed object—although it “governs the behavior” of that

object—nor in the observer—although not everyone can see it and sometimes a single

object’s inscape “multiplies” in the mind of its discoverer. Hopkins cherishes abstract

general laws as assiduously as he does the riotous variety of things existing in matter

rather than thought.5

In his more recent analysis of the term Dennis Sobolev concurs with Ward’s assessment but goes

on to argue that Hopkins’s own definition of the term ought to be decisive for interpreters. There

are two places in which Hopkins provides an explanation of his use of the term. In a letter to his

friend Robert Bridges, Hopkins he defines the term as “design, pattern.” And in a letter to

Coventry Patmore he says it refers to “species or individually-distinctive beauty of style.”

Sobolev draws out what is common in the two definitions and states “‘Inscape’ means ‘organized

form’ in the full generality of this term; and its exact, narrower meaning is specified only by its

3 There are, however, instances of mistaken terminological identity as when scholars over-emphasize the relation

between the two concepts and insist that they are interchangeable. Eoghan Walls makes this mistake in his essay “A

Flaw in the Science of Transcendence: Hopkins and Husserl on ‘Thisness.’” It is hard to say whether his avoiding

any in-depth discussion of the terms’ meanings is to his credit or detriment. His argument is more general than

specific to be sure, and so it does not hang on this missed opportunity. But his summarizing appeal to attend to

language itself isn’t served well by his own laxity. 4 Hopkins, The Journals and Papers of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Humphrey House and Graham Storey (London:

Oxford University Press, 1959), 181. 5 Bernadette Waterman Ward, World as Word: Philosophical Theology in Gerard Manley Hopkins (Washington,

D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2002), 161. Quotations from Hopkins, Journals and Papers, 211.

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actual application.”6 He supports this claim by displaying how the definition provides just

enough structure and elasticity to apply to the various occurrences of the term in Hopkins’s

writings.

Both Ward and Sobolev, like most commentators, draw attention to the important

connection between Hopkins and the philosophy of John Duns Scotus. In his journal entry of

August 3, 1872, Hopkins provides the catalyst for what has produced much scholarly speculation

about the degree of resonance Hopkins’s concept of inscape has with Scotus’s thought.

At this time I had first begun to get hold of the copy of Scotus on the Sentences in the

Baddley Library and was flush with a new stroke of enthusiasm. It may come to nothing

or it may be a mercy of God. But just when I took in any inscape of the sky or sea I

thought of Scotus.7

In light of this entry many have attributed Hopkins’s elation to Scotus’s concept of haecceitas,

which signifies the individuation of objects in Scotist philosophy. Sometimes translated

“thisness” haecceitas was initially accepted as the proper correlative to Hopkins’s inscape as it

allowed for an emphasis on the particularity of objects that undoubtedly Hopkins celebrates. His

poems are replete with exhilaration brought on by the particularities he observes so reverently,

those dappled things…

Glory be to God for dappled things―

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow,

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pierced–fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;

6 Dennis Sobolev, The Split World of Gerard Manley Hopkins: An Essay in Semiotic Phenomenology (Washington

D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 35. 7 Hopkins, Journals and Papers, 221.

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He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:

Práise hím.8

But both Ward and Sobolev reject this correlation. Sobolev does so by showing that it simply

does not allow for those instances when inscape refers to something more general as when

Hopkins states inscape is “what I above all aim at in poetry.”9 In other words, haecceitas simply

does not fit a number of instances in which the term is used―not to mention its inadequacy for

instances when inscape is used as a verb.

Sobolev admittedly treats Hopkins principally as a poet and thus his study does not rely

too heavily on the philosophical and theological genealogy of the term. For him it is important to

refute wrong interpretations, but only insofar as they might lead one to misread Hopkins’s

poetry. Ward, on the other hand, is concerned to treat Hopkins as a philosophical theologian and

therefore does not move so quickly away from an explicit correlation to Scotus’s thought. Rather

she argues it is Scotus’s concept of formalitates that corresponds “nearly exactly” to Hopkins’s

inscape.

Scotus acknowledges that a shaping imagination molds the experiences recorded by

anyone’s senses, and yet affirms that people do know the world outside themselves. The

mind organizes experiences not by fictions but by what Scotus calls formalitates, aspects

of a thing perceived that are separable realities and yet do not violate the unity that makes

the entity a single thing. Being real, formalitates are independent of individual perceivers,

but they require for their existence the possibility of a perceiving intellect. No two people

perceive the same things; we therefore must trust, and not demand the single vision that is

impossible for wayfarers with separate bodies.10

8 Hopkins, “Pied Beauty” from Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works, edited by Catherine Phillips (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2002), 132-133. 9 Hopkins, Letters to Bridges 53 (Feb. 15, 1979). Again, that inscape is used to describe his poetry but does not show

up within his poetry speaks to its use in this case as a more general, guiding concept for his work as a poet. 10

Ward, 162.

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It would take too much time to delve more fully into the larger range of Scotus’s terms and

distinctions. But that isn’t necessary in order to find Ward’s emphasis on formalitates as the

closer conceptual link between Scotism and Hopkins’s inscape compelling.

Just prior to the journal entry of August 3 in which we find the first mention of Scotus,

we encounter what initially reads as a non sequitur. On July 19, 1872 Hopkins expresses a

concern in the midst of yet another typical and rather mundane description:

Stepped into a barn of ours, a great shadowy barn, where the hay had been stacked on

either side, and looking at the great rudely arched timberframes―principals(?) and tie-

beams, which make them look like bold big As with the cross-bar high up―I thought

how sadly beauty of inscape was unknown and buried away from simple people and yet

how near at hand it was if they had eyes to see it and it could be called out everywhere

again.11

My reason for drawing attention to this passage that occurs just prior to the note on Scotus is not

to suggest the two belong to the same continuous thought. They obviously do not. However, I

propose that it may be worth considering the two together. That is, Hopkins’s initial excitement

over Scotus may be more properly linked to the concern expressed in Hopkins experiencing yet

another inscape: “I thought how sadly the beauty of inscape was unknown and buried away from

simple people and yet how near at hand if they had eyes to see it and could be called out

everywhere again…” Might it be that Hopkins’s later “new stroke of enthusiasm” stems from

this deep concern, we might even call it a pastoral concern, that there are those “simple people”

who seem ill-equipped to recognize the “beauty of inscape” that Hopkins encounters almost

ceaselessly in the world? If this was a very real concern, and we have no reason to doubt it was,

then Hopkins’s relief brought on by being introduced to Scotus could hardly have been set-off by

the rather simple and sole affirmation that his inscape was present in Scotus’s haeccitas. Rather

it’s more likely that what he had begun to discover in Scotus was not merely an

11

Hopkins, Journals, 221.

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acknowledgement of particularity but more importantly it was an entire system of thought that

more truly resonated with his sense that the ‘beauty of inscape’ was intended to be accessible

even to the simplest of minds.12

Ward’s insistence on Scotus’s formalitas as the more accurate

conceptual correlation to Hopkins’s inscape supports such a reading. Thus Ward’s succinct

summation of the difference between Scotus’s haeccitas and formalitas is extremely helpful and,

I think, rings true to the sentiment expressed in Hopkins’s journal entries once read together:

It is not unreasonable to associate inscape with haecceitas. Both concepts touch on the

special concern with particularity that Hopkins and Scotus shared. However,

misunderstandings arise from confusing the two. Haecceitas reifies the uniqueness of

each individual thing; inscape grounds in the reality of a thing each of the many ways of

understanding it. Though critics most often have identified inscape as Scotus’s

haecceitas, in its characteristics of multiplicity and intelligibility, inscape corresponds far

more closely to Scotus’s epistemological term formalitas.13

Those who insist on haeccitas as the correlate to inscape and do so based on the single journal

passage of August 3 have settled for an overly simplistic reading. Rather he may be read as here

describing a newly gained insight into a matter that had disturbed him, or, put more strongly, the

concern expressed days before was something of an epistemological crisis to which Scotus

appeared to offer a solution. As an epistemological term formalitates ultimately does more work

and corresponds better to how Hopkins actually experiences inscape and the world. Moreover,

because the concept resists the “demand for a single vision” it resonates with the epistemological

thought of his mentor John Henry Newman whose theories of intellectual assent and the illative

sense, like Scotus’s formalitas, propose a more positive reading than some of their

contemporaries of the role of perception and apprehension and how these inform the individual’s

12

I will not speculate as to what Hopkins may have meant by his use of “simple” in this instance. Suffice it to say,

simple here means a state or condition that forestalls one’s ability to perceive inscape. 13

Ward, 187. See Ward’s own footnote #97 for a more extensive defense of her argument, which includes fuller

textual support from Scotus’s writings.

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reasoning faculty.14

This is not the place to tease out the additional potential resonances between

Newman and these other thinkers (Hopkins and Scotus), but is important to introduce him as

another major influence on Hopkins.

A subsequent observation that is no less significant, although less happy, is that

Hopkins’s enthusiasm for Scotus’s thought did not “come to nothing” but rather it determined his

course with the Jesuits, which proved to be disappointing—if not tragic. His insistence on

reading Aquinas through Scotus led to his failing his seminary exams, which kept him from more

promising prospects within the order. Mariani’s biography includes this sad assessment:

“As a theologian,” his fellow Jesuits who knew him then and later assert, “his undoubted

brilliance was dimmed by a somewhat obstinate love of Scotist doctrine, in which he

traced the influence of Platonist philosophy.” And it was this idiosyncrasy which “got

him into difficulties with his Jesuit preceptors who followed [the more scientific model

of] Aquinas and Aristotle. The strain of controversy added to bad health… [and] marred

his early years.”15

Perhaps it was unwise to press his preceptors in his final exams, but that he did so suggests

Hopkins’s philosophical convictions involved more than a shallow devotion to Scotus based on

the resonance between their single terms ― or even a single shared aspect in their thought.

As Ward deftly displays, Hopkins’s inscape and Scotus’s formalitas may be best

understood as epistemological terms.16

But in order for Ward to maintain this assertion she must

show how their epistemologies are made intelligible within a larger philosophical system. And

14 Newman’s epistemology as worked out in his An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent was well known to

Hopkins. Newman’s theory of assent states that apprehension and conscience are central to the individual’s

reasoning faculty, what he calls the illative sense. For Newman the individual’s certitude of feeling can be trusted in

spite of a lack of philosophical certainty. One can see how this would resonate, for Hopkins, with Scotus’s

formalitas. Both allow―even privilege―the individual’s apprehension, perception, and conscience for natural

reasoning, including reasoning about God. 15

Mariani, 182. 16

“Hopkins’s concept of ‘inscape’ had roots in Newman’s Romantic epistemology, though Hopkins’s encounter

with Duns Scotus deepened this insight,” Ward, 122.

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this leads me to briefly introduce the second key term, instress, which Hopkins clearly

understood in relation to inscape, though it is not always clear how the two are related.

Hopkins identifies instress as “…choice as when in English we say ‘because I choose’

which means no more (and with precision does mean)/ I instress my will to so-and-so.” But this

definition seems too narrow as it pertains only to the self whereas his own use of the term

suggests instress means more than action of the will. Like inscape, instress appears to have a

wide range of meaning. Logically this would make sense if the two terms are closely related.

Again, Ward proves helpful for gaining insight into the meaning of the term. Ultimately, I will

argue, she is limited by reading Hopkins within a more straightforward metaphysical framework

as opposed to a phenomenological one. I will have to draw on the work of Jean-Luc Marion to

support this claim. But first I must briefly attend to Ward’s careful and illuminating treatment of

the term.

The strength of Ward’s analysis is in her attention to the relation between Hopkins’s

instress and the Scholastic use of intention. Hopkins uses instress, like inscape, as both a noun

and a verb. When used as a noun, again, like inscape, instress is identified with a depth of

perception; it is felt.

Not out of his bliss

Springs the stress felt

Nor first from heaven (and few know this)

Swings the stroke dealt―

Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver,

That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt―

But it rides time like riding a river

(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss.)17

This similarity may explain those instances when inscape and instress are conflated by

some commentators. But in its active sense it becomes clear that the two terms are distinct.

17

The Wreck of the Deutschland, sixth stanza.

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I kiss my hand

To the stars, lovely-asunder

Starlight, wafting him out of it; and

Glow, glory in thunder;

Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west:

Since, though he is under the world’s splendor and wonder,

His mystery must be instressed, stressed;

For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.18

Ward suggests the multiple uses of instress do not reveal an inconsistency in Hopkins’s concept,

as was suggested by Christopher Devlin. Rather Hopkins’s use of the term is consistent with the

range of meanings attributed to the Scholastic term Hopkins was likely drawing on, i.e., intentio.

One meaning of the term corresponds to an act of the will, similar to the contemporary

understanding of the word intend. When I intend something I am seeking after a particular end,

as in, “I intended to wake up at 6:00 a.m. today.” Thus to intend is to perform some action in the

will. Another use of the term is epistemological and in this sense it could mean either “mental

attention to the thing itself as the object of its knowing” or “mental attention to and representing

an object as it exists in the mind.”19

Already we can see how Hopkins’s instress resonates with

the Scholastic intentio. But there is more. The correlate to intentio is another Scholastic term that

seems to get us even closer to Hopkins’s instress. The verb form intendere not only means “to

intend” but, in light of its Latin root, it could also mean “to stretch toward.” The more one

becomes acquainted with Hopkins’s use of instress, therefore, the more one will likely concur

with Ward’s assessment that, “Hopkins, a poet, holds the whole semantic field in his mind,

playing over its territory, which lies between the knower and the object known.”20

18

The Wreck of the Deutschland, fifth stanza. 19

Ward, 201. Here Ward is utilizing Bernard Wuellner’s Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy. These two uses of the

epistemological category correspond to the Scholastic designation of “first” and “second” intention. 20

Ward, 201-202.

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But doesn’t this suggest that instress and inscape are exchangeable terms? They both

seem to rely equally on the observer and the object observed. How are they to be distinguished?

Ward suggests the crucial distinction is found in the locus of each, “The primary locus of instress

is the will, though it reposes in the object; just as inscape is fundamentally a latency in the object

itself, yet is only realized in the intellect…[I]nstress is to the will what inscape is to the

intellect.”21

For Ward, as a matter concerning the will, instress therefore belongs ultimately to

moral reflection. It is how the morally formed will allows one to recognize and affirm inscapes

whereas “distraction hinders instress” and keeps one from perceiving inscapes. Other scholars

have emphasized those instances in which Hopkins speaks of the instress of things―or even

feelings, “And what is this running instress, so independent of at least the immediate scape of a

thing, which unmistakably distinguishes and individualizes things? Not imposed outwards from

the mind as for instance by melancholy or strong feeling; I easily distinguish that instress.”22

And

in light of these instances they attribute Hopkins’s concept of instress to a perception of

Being/being or universality. But Ward insists that Hopkins’s instress is not to be understood as

Being/being as this would make him susceptible, she believes, to monism.23

Instead, rather than

capitulating to the possibly unorthodox metaphysics suggested by interpreting instress as being,

Ward suggests the resolution is in upholding a distinction between instress and its root stress.

She asserts,

To the extent that instress is more than just an intensification of stress, we might do well

to distinguish stress from instress by saying that stress inheres in the object and instress in

the subject. Stress could be equated with the intrinsic intelligibility of being, that is, with

transcendental truth, which is coextensive with being but not identical with it, since they

differ intensively. If we recall that truth refers to being as it is considered in relation to

the intellect, we can see that stress is still related to the perceiving subject, even as it

21

Ward, 202. 22

Hopkins, Journals and Papers, 215. 23

Ward, 206.

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informs the object. By instress the will binds itself to the object in the relation of

perceiver to the thing recognized.24

It is an admirable attempt to resolve what may appear to be uncomfortable tensions in Hopkins’s

thought. However, in my assessment, Ward’s insistence on locating instress in the will, and

doing so by making a clear-cut distinction from stress, which she relegates to the object, appears

to stem from her own desire to make Hopkins fit not only within orthodox theology but also

orthodox metaphysics. But to do this undermines her earlier assessment concerning Hopkins’s

indebtedness to Scotus, who himself did not escape the charge of monism. In a sense, Ward’s

attempt to save Hopkins from being charged of unorthodox leanings ultimately reenacts his

seminary examiners’ assessment that his philosophical and theological ideas were implausible or,

worse, heretical. In both cases the unfortunate result is that Hopkins’s most potentially fruitful

ideas remain in quarantine, waiting to be released by those who would dare to let them loose and

view them anew against the backdrop of another horizon.25

Surveying the Fold: Marion and the Grammar of Givenness

I am not the first to suggest that Hopkins’s work has phenomenological leanings. So far

as I can tell, however, most of those who have made suggestions along these lines have done so

by focusing on his poetry and in particular his development of sprung rhythm, a technique that

clearly recognizes and celebrates the phenomenology of language. 26

As mentioned previously,

24

Ward, 206. 25

For example, in the fifth stanza of “The Wreck of the Deutschland” quoted above, it would be difficult to read the

final two lines according to Ward’s distinction. It is not at all clear, at least to me, that “instressed” belongs to the

speaker and is not an act belonging to “His mystery.” Nor is it clear that the two terms displayed together ought to

necessarily belong to different subjects, as though one belongs to “His mystery” and the other to the “I” of the final

line. All of which is to say, Ward’s assessment is compelling but ultimately not convincing insofar as it’s too neat. 26

The theologian and poet Kevin Hart has recently shared a forthcoming article entitled, “For the Life was

Manifested” in which he offers an illuminating account of Hopkins’s “Hurrahing in Harvest” from the perspective of

what he calls “phenomenological theology.” Hart is the only scholar I’m presently aware of who has identified and

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Denis Sobolev is a fine example of a scholar who wants to take seriously Hopkins’s commitment

to the phenomenology of language. But even Sobolev frames his analysis, at least

methodologically, according to the modern metaphysical presumptions that shape most readers

of Hopkins. It is not that such a reading is unwarranted. Hopkins was clearly aware not only of

metaphysical discourse generally but also of the potential dangers of shifts happening within that

discourse.27

His notes on Greek philosophy can be used to show he also worked within the given

metaphysical categories. However, it may be worth asking whether Hopkins’s preference for

Scotus was partly a preference for the latent phenomenology in Scotus’s thought which, again,

may have been what was ultimately rejected as monism by those who failed to recognize that

Scotus was himself pressing against the traditional metaphysical categories he, and everyone else

with him, had inherited. Copleston offers a more charitable reading that, while admitting to

Scotus’s vulnerability to critics, ultimately leaves room for debate as to whether his critics were

uncharitable or simply unable to see the significant innovations in his thought.

It is indeed interesting, if not altogether profitable, to wonder on what lines the thought of

John Scotus would have evolved, had he lived at a later and richer period of philosophical

development…[W]hile it is, of course, a mistake to interpret the system of John Scotus in

terms of a much later philosophy, itself conditioned by the previous development of

thought and the historical circumstances of the time, for example, the Hegelian system,

one is not thereby debarred from endeavouring to discern the peculiar characteristics of

John’s thought, which, to a certain degree, altered the meaning of the ideas and categories

borrowed from previous writers.28

begun to work out Hopkins’s theology from the perspective of phenomenology. When I first contacted him to

inquire of others who may have drawn a connection between Marion and Hopkins he responded, “Oddly enough, I

was the one who suggested to Jean-Luc that the saturated phenomenon was already in Hopkins! (He later read

Hopkins and agreed!)” 27

See “The Probable Future of Metaphysics,” in Journals and Papers, 118-121. 28

Frederick Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy, Volume II, Mediaeval Philosophy Augustine to Scotus,

(Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1960), 112-113. Others have more recently taken up the debates

concerning Scotus and potential resonances with phenomenological theology. For example, see “Duns Scotus’

Univocity: Applied to the Debate on Phenomenological Theology” by Guus H. Labooy in International Journal for

Philosophy of Religion (2014) 76: 53-73 and “The Metaphysics of Duns Scotus and Onto-theology” by Michael

Wiitala in Philosophy Today, 53, Supplement, (2009). I offer these two titles not by way of endorsing the arguments

therein but only to indicate there is still lively discussion about these issues.

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I offer these remarks by way of introducing what I intuit to be resonances between Scotus’s

philosophical theology and the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion. I say “intuit” because I am

unprepared to substantiate the claim that it is the phenomenological leanings of Scotus that

Hopkins found so attractive. And yet I hope to show that Hopkins’s convictions, which are

expressed not only by his use of instress and inscape, indicate that it is indeed a

phenomenological horizon―rather than a bifurcated metaphysic29

―that corresponds best to how

Hopkins came to understand the incarnation of the Word and thus the sacred reality that is the

world. In other words, rather than reading Hopkins as so many do as a metaphysical poet of

transcendence, I shall argue that Hopkins was above all a poet and celebrant of immanence. And

I will use Marion’s phenomenology of givenness to support this claim.

Before offering a brief description of Marion’s grammar of givenness it is important to

note what Marion takes to be some of the crucial differences between metaphysics and the

phenomenology of givenness. Phenomenology, for Marion, insists on the privilege of givenness.

That is to say, whatever exists exists as given. The following “essential rule” is axiomatic for

phenomenology:

[N]othing intervenes for or against us that is not first given, here and now. Being,

appearing, effecting, or affecting become possible and thinkable only if they happen,

before each and every specification of their respective venues, first as pure givenness.

Every fact, every problem, and every consciousness begins with immediate givens, with

the immediacy of a given. Nothing arises that is not given.30

29

By “bifurcated metaphysic” I simply mean the bifurcation that results from the metaphysical separation of essence

and existence. Concerning metaphysical “possibility” Marion writes, “Possibility here means a thorough

intelligibility, a sufficient foreseeability, and a calculation―to reach actuality, all that is lacking is the transition to

production. In this way, we come upon the metaphysical definition of existence as a mere complement of essence,”

172. 30

Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky,

(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 54; emphasis mine.

16

In order to maintain this rule it is, therefore, essential that philosophical reflection not fall back

on what Marion calls the metaphysica specialis, which means “nothing other than a rationality

that is ‘supported by any fundamental principle of the justification of the real’”―a formula

which he contends “has no other aim than to devalue givenness to the rank of a principle or a

ground come from the world-behind-the-scenes for the purpose of ‘justifying’ the ‘real’ (the

given).”31

The problem Marion is identifying with metaphysics may be stated simply:

metaphysics will always reduce what is “real,” i.e., the given, to a matter of cause and effect.

This kind of metaphysical reduction misleads perception by “assigning in advance conditions of

possibility to the given.”32

Guided by the a priori assumption that all that is is the result of cause

and effect, the given will always be limited to two particular modes of manifestation: objectness

or beingness. The problem with such a metaphysic is that it refuses to allow givenness its own

horizon, to operate according to its own criteria, and thereby implies that the given borrows its

phenomenality from its objectness or beingness. In the absence of its own horizon, givenness

will always necessitate something prior―a cause―and therefore it will unavoidably be reduced

to effectivity. Phenomenology, by contrast, is concerned to let the phenomenon exist on its own

terms, within its own horizon, and be freed for a fuller range of manifestations and meanings.

This cannot happen with metaphysics because, again, the principle will always precede and

determine the phenomenon. Marion revisits and reiterates this central argument at various points

throughout his text. And it is important that he does so as we are so deeply beholden to the

metaphysical framework he is attempting to dismantle. That said, it should be noted that Marion

31

Marion, 73. 32

Marion, 38.

17

does not altogether dismiss Being and objectness, he simply shows how these are only

intelligible in light of the privilege of givenness.33

There are far too many terms at play in Marion’s text and so I will have to be modest in

my selection, keeping in mind the larger aim of situating Hopkins within Marion’s

phenomenological discourse. As stated previously, those who read Hopkins metaphysically do so

according to a metaphysic of transcendence. But the economy of transcendence produced by this

metaphysic runs counter to the economy of givenness which is essentially, and not just

characteristically, an economy of immanence. It is this contrast between transcendence and

immanence that will guide our brief survey of Marion’s phenomenology of givenness.

We have already established the “essential rule” that all that is is given. It follows that

that which is given gives itself according to givenness. At the opening of Book I Marion offers

this helpful clarification:

It is not so much the case that givenness belongs to phenomenology as it is that

phenomenology falls entirely under the jurisdiction of givenness. That is, givenness does

not provide phenomenology merely with one concept among others, or even the

privileged act by which it can become itself; rather, it opens the entire field of

phenomenality for it.34

Givenness, therefore, is to be understood in light of the “field of phenomenality” it opens which

Marion will later call the fold.

The given is not emancipated from givenness and cannot be. It leads back to it because it

comes from it, bears its mark, or rather is identified with it. Every given manifests

givenness because the progress of its event unfolds it. Givenness opens as the fold of the

given: the gift given insofar as it gives itself in terms of its own event. Givenness

unfolding itself articulates the gift given…along the progress of its advent…35

33

“[F]or the phenomenon in the mode of object or being can appear only by finding itself more originally given.

Objectness and beingness could thus be thought as mere variations, legitimate but limited, quite exactly as horizons,

which are outlined by and against the background of givenness,” Marion, 38-39. 34

Marion, 27. 35

Marion, 65; emphasis mine.

18

In this short yet dense excerpt we have three of Marion’s four central terms: givenness, the gift

and the given. The remaining one, i.e., the gifted, we will reach soon. We have already touched

on givenness. Next, the gift is what is articulated in the unfolding of givenness. There is

something of a movement here which is described above as the “progress of its [the gift’s]

advent.” And this movement has one direction, towards appearing. The appearance of the gift

insofar as it gives itself attests to its own givenness. This insistence on the gift’s self-giving is an

aspect of Heidegger’s phenomenology that Marion affirms and translates into his own thought as

the “bracketing” of transcendence.36

In order for the gift to be pure gift it must bracket the givee,

the giver, and the exchange itself. Without such withdrawal/bracketing, givenness becomes

susceptible once again to the metaphysical reduction whereby the gift becomes an object of

economic exchange―a product of giving and receiving. That is to say, the gift is predetermined

by its causality. By contrast, in the economy of givenness the gift has no motive; it simply

appears and must do so freely―without cause. This free appearing/manifestation is what Marion

means by pure immanence, “The gift will now manifest itself of itself, without depending on an

efficient cause (giver) or final cause (give).”37

This manifestation of pure immanence occurs as

the gift arises to the axis of visibility. Only when it does this can the gift be seen/received by

those who align themselves so as to discover it in its manifestation.

This last observation concerning the pure immanence of the gift leads us to our third

term, the given. Books III and IV are both dedicated to the given. The first, Book III, attends to its

“determinations” while Book IV attends to its “degrees.” I will have to conflate the two in order

36

In his discussion of Heidegger Marion observes, “[H]ow are we to understand the claim that ‘Being withdraws’

essentially? According to givenness; for the gift alone has it as proper to it to withdraw itself at the very moment it

brings and leaves, gives and abandons [donne et abandonne] its given…” 35. 37

Marion, 115.

19

to press forward and draw out the anticipated connections between Marion’s phenomenology and

Hopkins’s theology. What we have established thus far amounts to the recognition that givenness

privileges the natural attitude because what gives itself appears as itself; there is no behind-the-

scenes that will further disclose the gift. Thus what is given is always given immanently. The

axis of visibility allows for the given to “take form starting from itself” and appear to me. The

process by which the phenomenon appears and is imposed upon me is what Marion calls

anamorphosis and it has implications for both the phenomenon and the one receiving it.

The phenomenon crosses the distance that leads it (ana-) to assume form (-morphōsis),

according to an immanent axis, which in each case summons an I/me, according to

diverse modalities (arrival, happening, imposing), to a precise phenomenological

point.This being brought into line aligns me in a direction rigorously determined by the

anamorphosis of the phenomenon, in no wise by the subject’s choice, but which in

contrast submits the subject to its appearing. If I do not exactly at the point designated by

the anamorphosis of the phenomenon, I simply will not see it―at least as such, as it is

given.38

I must stop here briefly to point out that here, once again, is a crucial moment wherein the

tensions between metaphysics and phenomenology reside. The very fact that the phenomenon

gives itself to be seen, for metaphysics, suggests a contingency that must always be extrinsic to

the phenomenon itself. Here the phenomenon is limited by its relation to the I, and therefore it is

the I that constitutes the phenomenon. It ceases to give itself freely. Phenomenologically the

contingency of the phenomenon is originally intrinsic which simply means that it gives itself to

appearance according to its own unpredictability and, again, without motive. In other words, the

given does not appear in order to be known by me. And from this observation two things follow:

1) the given is always experienced first―prior to being known; 2) the given is always marked by

possibility. Together these essential characteristics are named facticity.

38

Marion, 131.

20

To appear always demands, for the phenomenon in general, finally coming to the fact of

arising and arising in fact. What is the import of this fact? What arrives to me in fact can

be known de facto only once it has already arisen, arrived. For, what arrives in fact is not

produced by effect, nor as an effect. Let this be noted: the effect presupposes, by

terminological rigor, one or several causes or reasons that precede it and permit it to be

seen in advance; the fact, on the other hand, precisely insofar as it arises in fact, annuls

the legitimacy of asking for its cause.39

Thus the phenomenology of givenness does not attempt to bridge the metaphysical gap produced

by transcendence. Rather it denies the gap in favor of the fold whereby all that is given is

received not in spite of its contingency but because of it. What appears to be transcendent

(Being, God, universals) turns out to be givenness in excess. This last remark may be best

explained by turning to Marion’s description of the degrees of phenomenality.

If all phenomena give themselves freely then they do not give uniformly. Nor do they

give according to their relation to the I, which would suggest that the I (rationality) constitutes

and delimits the phenomenon. Therefore, Marion argues contra Kant, the possibility of

phenomena that exceed intuition must be real, otherwise what is given would eventually be

forced to conform to preconceptions and, consequently, reduced to objectness. Marion calls these

givens that exceed intuition saturated phenomena which are contrasted to poor/common

phenomenon. Stated as succinctly as possible: saturated phenomena are paradoxical while

poor/common phenomenon are non-paradoxical. The difference between the two is best

understood as an inversion of manifestation and givenness.

For (a) poor and (b) common-law phenomena, intention and the concept foresee intuition,

make up for its shortage, and set limits for givenness; on the other hand, for the (c)

saturated phenomena, or paradoxes, intuition surpasses the intention, is deployed without

concept and lets givenness come before all limitation and every horizon. In this case,

phenomenality is calibrated first in terms of givenness, such that the phenomenon no

39

Marion, 140.

21

longer gives itself in the measure to which it shows itself, but shows itself in the measure

(or, eventually, lack of measure) to which it gives itself.40

That which Marion calls poor phenomena are poor insofar as they need little more than the

concept itself in order to appear; they do not need more than a formal intuition. These manifest

minimally which is why, as abstractions, they enjoy the privilege of epistemological certainty.

As merely formal intuitions they are spared from being disqualified by experience. But it is for

this same reason these poor phenomena cannot be paradigmatic for all phenomena. They are

objectifiable as concepts, but as concepts they resist the phenomenological gaze. Common (or

common-law) phenomena are also objectifiable because they also operate according to a weak

intuition, though somewhat differently from the poor phenomena. Here we would place concepts

and with them the productions and re-productions of concepts. For these common phenomena

intuition is weakened because intention “keeps mastery over the manifestation.”41

This means

intuition is less at play; it is set aside until it is called upon to confirm intention. Thus these

phenomena achieve their certainty, and therefore their objectivity, through the calculations that

make them visible but also limit their givenness. Thus the common, like the poor phenomena, are

not marked by paradox. Their degree of givenness is limited by their certainty and predictability.

The final and paradigmatic class of phenomena is the saturated phenomena. For saturated

phenomena, by contrast to the prior two classes of phenomena, the intuition is now in surplus.

Rather than being led and therefore limited by the concept, intuition “subverts, therefore

precedes, every intention, which it exceeds and decenters.”42

This is why saturated phenomena

are marked by paradox, for the “visibility of appearance thus arises against the flow of the

40

Marion, 226. 41

Marion, 223. 42

Marion, 225.

22

intention.”43

Here givenness is not limited or hampered by intention, rather it is set free to be

“deployed indefinitely” precisely because of the excess of intuition. The result is an inversion of

manifestation and givenness.

For (a) poor and (b) common-law phenomena, intention and the concept foresee intuition,

make up for its shortage, and set limits for givenness; on the other hand, for the (c)

saturated phenomena, or paradoxes, intuition surpasses the intention, is deployed without

concept and lets givenness come before all limitation and every horizon. In this case,

phenomenality is calibrated first in terms of givenness, such that the phenomenon no

longer gives itself in the measure to which it shows itself, but shows itself in the measure

(or, eventually, lack of measure) to which it gives itself.44

The implications of this observation return us once again to a contrast with metaphysics. The

metaphysical reduction would necessarily make such saturated phenomena, if they were even

allowed to exist, merely exceptional. The metaphysical privilege of certainty, which is based on

the intention and concept’s preceding the manifestation, will always mean poor and common

phenomena remain normative. Marion, by contrast, argues this is antithetical to the

phenomenology of givenness which must always think of the weaker phenomena on the basis of

the saturated phenomena which are the purest manifestation of givenness.

What metaphysics rules out as an exception (the saturated phenomenon), phenomenology

here takes for its norm―every phenomenon shows itself in the measure (or lack of

measure) to which it gives itself. To be sure, not all phenomena get classified as saturated

phenomena, but all saturated phenomena accomplish the one and only paradigm of

phenomenality. Better, they alone enable it to be illustrated.45

Marion offers what he takes to be four types of the phenomenon he describes as saturated: 1) the

event; 2) the idol; 3) the flesh; 4) the icon. Rather than spending time on each I want to focus on

43

Ibid. 44

Marion, 226; emphasis mine. 45

227.

23

the final example, the icon, as it “gathers together the particular characteristics of the three

preceding types” and this will lead us back to Hopkins.

The icon operates “free from all reference to the I.”46

This is because it precedes the I and

gazes upon it, transforming the I to a me and thereby making me a witness to its own

unfolding/appearing. The icon is visible like the idol, but it is more radical in that it does not

block its givenness by insisting that I continually return to “confront its unbearable

bedazzlement.” In the case of the idol, the I is forced to stare into the mirror, so to speak, because

my intuition will never be enough to receive it in its full givenness. It insists that I look but my

gaze always returns back to me; the idol thus invites self-absorption. The icon, by contrast, also

invites my gaze but rather than being returned to me, my gaze is met by an Other. This encounter

means the icon is not reduced to a spectacle (like the idol) and I am not reduced to solipsism.

Rather the icon weighs on me in its freedom and I am reduced to witness.

Finally, we may now introduce Marion’s fourth term, the gifted. In the fold of givenness

there remains always the possibility that what is given will be received. And indeed once

received by a subject, that subject not only receives what is given but in so doing receives her

self. Thus the phenomenological self contradicts the metaphysical self, which Marion refers to as

the transcendental I. According to the metaphysical reduction, as we have seen, the given is

predetermined by abstract principles which precondition how it will be received and classified

according to being or objectness. The movement of this metaphysical reduction relies on the

transcendental I to constitute and synthesize what is given. The result, as Marion shows, is that

the transcendental I cannot think free of solipsism. The “I think” of the modern self becomes the

cause of its own existence, which is to say it forbids its self phenomenologically. By contrast, the

46

232.

24

phenomenological I only becomes a self by receiving my self. Just as the icon gazes upon me

thereby making me a witness, so does the inverted intentionality of the saturated phenomena

confront me with its call―a call that simply by responding to it renders me recipient. I receive

myself in receiving the call of givenness. And, conversely and finally, by responding to the call

the gifted makes givenness visible. Marion explains, “By admitting itself to the target of the call,

therefore by responding with the simply interrogative ‘Me?’ the gifted opens a field for

manifestation by lending itself to its reception and the retention of its impact. The gifted holds

the place of visibility for the paradox that gives itself.”47

Thus the essential immanence of phenomenology is doubled. In the fold of givenness that

which is given in “genuine” immanence is met by that which is given in “intentional” givenness.

To return to the opening pages of the book, and so to return to givenness, Marion writes,

“Appearing becomes immanent only to the extent that consciousness becomes intentionally

immanent in what itself appears…This is to say that the two sides of the phenomenon arise at

one and the same time because the two givennesses are always but one. And this is indeed the

givenness: that of transcendence in immanence.”48

Even transcendence belongs to the fold and

therefore belongs to immanence.

With this last observation it is now time to pull back from Marion to once again consider

Hopkins―now in light of Marion’s phenomenology of givenness. In order to support my claim

that Hopkins may be best read with phenomenology it is necessary that I make a case for reading

him as a celebrant of immanence. And I would like to do so by returning to the previous

discussion of his key terms instress and inscape. Earlier I suggested that part of the difficulty

47

287. 48

Marion, 25. In this section Marion is discussing Husserl’s final and “most decisive” step of connecting

immanence to intentionality―a crucial move that would allow givenness to precede and determine phenomenology,

not the other way around.

25

scholars have had with these terms is due to the multiple and various instances in which they are

used. There is no doubt that this multiplicity is an indication of the terms’ complexity. But this

difficulty may be a result of the methodological presumption that these terms must be defined

according to traditional metaphysical categories. Such a presumption forces one to ask: do these

terms belong to ontological or epistemological description? Do they describe objects and/or

Being, or do they pertain to the intellect and will? But to read Hopkins in this way is to force an

uneasy dichotomy that limits the terms unnecessarily. The difficulty scholars have in trying to

locate the terms according to these categories suggests, it seems to me, that they may be trying to

fit a square peg into a round hole. However, viewed within the phenomenological fold of

givenness these terms may have a future beyond the artificial confinement to causality.

To suggest as I have that Hopkins’s terms inscape and instress are best understood as

terms belonging to the fold of givenness, and that Hopkins is best understood as a

poet/thinker/celebrant of immanence, is not to insist that Hopkins was a phenomenologist. For

this would imply that phenomenology is a system, a method, and such a claim would reveal that

givenness has been altogether misunderstood and, once again, forced to accommodate the

presumptions of a philosophy that privileges certainty. I therefore want to be clear in stating that

to read Hopkins phenomenologically and, more specifically, according to Marion’s

phenomenology of givenness is not so much a matter of reading against metaphysics as it is to

read according to givenness. It requires a different hermeneutic that, if maintained consistently,

will free Hopkins and his intellectual (and artistic) contribution from the too-easy, and therefore

impenetrable, characterizations that do not do him justice.

To say that these terms (and those we’ve not mentioned, e.g., pitch) belong to the fold of

givenness, moreover, means that we must resist the temptation to make explicit terminological

26

correlations between them and the terms that already belong to the grammar of givenness. In

other words, it would be wrong to simply shift the scholarly preoccupation of identifying these

terms with their correlates in Scotus to now doing so with Marion, e.g., inscape must correspond

to the contingency of the given. Again, such a move would delimit the terms preemptively,

thereby limiting their potential unnecessarily. It will not suffice to simply match up two systems

of thought in order to prove their compatibility. Rather to read Hopkins with both Scotus and

Marion is to honor his intellectual proclivities by embracing a more general (broad) indebtedness

to Scotus (which may require revisiting Scotus as well) and exploring the many possible

resonances with Marion. Rather than limiting them to explicit terminological correlation with

either thinker, then, we must give them free play within the fold which expands and contracts in

degrees and modalities depending solely on the individual phenomena and not some

preconceived schema. Already it seems to be the very intention of inscape and instress to play

widely, although not without purpose.

Taste and See: Christ as Paradoxōtaton49

In 1866 Hopkins was received into full communion with the Catholic Church by his

mentor John Henry Newman. This journey into the Catholic faith entailed some sacrifice as

Hopkins dealt with a staunch Anglicanism espoused by his family, peers, and professors. But this

sacrifice was sweetened not only by Newman’s guidance and presence, but by the sacrifice of all

sacrifices to which Hopkins submitted―the sacrifice of the Triune God in the Incarnation of

Jesus Christ. It is this profound sense of the sacrifice of God, not only from the perspective of

49

Marion, “…an ultimate variation on saturation, the paradoxōtaton, the paradox to the second degree and par

excellence, which encompasses all types of paradox,” 235.

27

Christ crucified but in the very act of incarnation, that eventually led Hopkins to the Catholic

faith. In a letter to E.H. Coleridge dated the year Hopkins was received he wrote:

It is one adorable point of the incredible condescension of the Incarnation (the greatness

of which no saint can have ever hoped to realize) that our Lord submitted not only to the

pains of life, the fasting, scourging, crucifixion etc. or the insults, as the mocking,

blindfolding, spitting etc, but also to the mean and trivial accidents of humanity. It leads

one naturally to rhetorical antithesis to think for instance that after making the world He

shd. consent to be taught carpentering, and being the eternal Reason, to be catechized in

the theology of the Rabbins.50

It is this sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, that captured

Hopkins’s imagination and led him to embrace the Catholic doctrine of Real Presence in the

sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

The great aid to belief and object of belief is the doctrine of Real Presence in the Blessed

Sacrament of the Altar. Religion without that is sombre, dangerous, illogical, with that it

is―not to speak of its grand consistency and certainty―loveable.51

It is this same presence, the Real Presence of the face of Christ (the Icon), that becomes

paradigmatic for how Hopkins experiences inscapes throughout the world. To use Marion’s logic

of saturated phenomena, all the world―and especially and because of the Blessed

Sacrament―manifests Christ’s givenness. This unique manifestation, moreover, is what Marion

calls the paradox of paradoxes, that is, the phenomenon of Revelation. As the “last possibility”

the phenomenon of Revelation belongs solely to the theo-ology of Revelation (sacra doctrina)

which necessarily resists the metaphysical reduction.

Theology, in the sense of revealed theology (sacra doctrina), is in no way to be confused

with theologia rationalis, which belongs to metaphysica specialis and arises solely from

metaphysics. Rightfully, it should be opposed to it, as the Revelation of the Wisdom of

the Word is opposed to the wisdom of the world.52

50

Hopkins, Further Letters, 19-20 (to E.H. Coleridge, January 22, 1866). 51

Hopkins, Further Letters, 17 (to E.H. Coleridge, June 1, 1864). 52

Marion, 72.

28

As the Revelation, Jesus Christ can only be known immanently and therefore unbearably. Thus,

by his mercy, He gives Himself in the Blessed Sacrament which Hopkins receives as call and,

therefore, receives his self.

In a flash, at a trumpet crash,

I am all at once what Christ is, since he is what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor postsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

Is immortal diamond.53

†

53

From That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection.