Michel Henry has renewed our understanding of life as immanent affectivity: life cannot be reduced to what can be made visible; it is – as immanent and as affectivity – radically invisible. However, if life (la vie) is radically immanent, the living (le vivant ) has nonetheless to relate to the world: it has to exist . But, since existence requires and includes intentional components, human reality – being both living and existing – implies that immanence and intentionality be related (...) to one another, even though they are conceived at the same time as radically distinct modes of appearing in Henry’s phenomenology of life. Following this line of thought, we are faced with at least two questions: First, what reality does immanent appearing have for us as existing and intentional beings? And second, from an ethical point of view, what does Henry’s opposition of “barbarism” and “second birth” mean in terms of existence? As will be shown, it follows from the standpoint of radical phenomenology itself that immanent affectivity has reality for us only insofar as it finds its expression or translation in the realm of the intentionally visible and that, with regard to ethics, both “barbarism” and its overcoming in “second birth” are effective only insofar as they are mediated through representations. Henry’s critique of representation and intentionality needs therefore to be revised, especially in the field of practical philosophy, where the essential role played by intentionality has to be acknowledged even by radical phenomenology. (shrink)

Individual identity and the multiplicity of cultural factors that “influence” the individual obviously raise the question of who we are as persons. But it is equally obvious that such individual reality is temporal, thereby constituting individual history. The latter seems to be like a Heraclitean flux where change is the only constant. In other words, since we never cease to change—even imperceptibly—shouldn’t we conclude that we never remain identical to ourselves in such a process of becoming? To use a concept (...) put forward by Ricœur, Idem-Identity, as stable and substantial sameness, appears to be an illusion, as we are the history of our actions and experiences, a history that continues to shape... (shrink)

Michel Henry’s phenomenology of life or radical phenomenology understands life as immanent and transcendental affectivity. From this point of view, ethics can be characterized as the ethics of affectivity, the central stake of which lies in the recognition of life. However, the question is to what extent a philosophical discourse can be held on a reality that, being immanent, is principally inaccessible for intentionality and how such discourse is in fact possible. As radical phenomenology relies on certainty opposed to evidence, (...) it can be shown that both the possibility and the practical effectiveness of its discourse are ultimately rooted in life’s self-revelation. Henry’s works may then be understood as mediation towards the recognition of life, especially through the concepts of quasi-performativity and translation. (shrink)

Radical phenomenology is nonintentional phenomenology, and it opposes what Michel Henry has designated since The Essence of Manifestation "onto-phenomenological monism,"1 according to which appearing is always ecstatic, that is, transcendent. Contrary to monism, radical phenomenology maintains a dualism of appearing: underlying the intentionally given, life reveals itself in pure immanence. Nonetheless, this living self-affection can never appear to intentionality, although the second is grounded in the first: they are two modes of appearing that are essentially different. While the very essence (...) of appearing or manifestation lies in immanent self-affection, intentional appearing is derived from and second to .. (shrink)

Does Michel Henry’s Phenomenology of life include an ethical and political dimension? It appears that the writings about Marx already include such aspects, especially in reference to the problem of social determinism. More generally, however, our attention must be focused on what Henry calls the transcendental genesis of politics which accounts for the lack of autonomy of the political field, just like in the case of economics. Politics may then be analyzed against that background, for instance in the writings on (...) totalitarianism and democracy. The frame given by transcendental genesis is also tied to the fundamental opposition between barbarism and culture which pervades the axiological implications of Henry’s work. Because culture is always referring to a “culture of life,” it allows connecting life and its immanent reality with ethical/political questions. (shrink)

“We accept the original theoretical path opened by Michel Henry, which consists in considering the body from the point of view of the flesh and, hence, of life. But, precisely, the question is to know what is the meaning of life that is attested through the phenomenon of the flesh.”1 Such is Renaud Barbaras’s starting point in La vie lacunaire, one of his most recent contributions to a phenomenology of life and to the debate with Michel Henry’s concept of life (...) as immanent auto-affection.2 The support given to Henry’s pioneering path, however, seems to contrast with the prospect of developing a phenomenology of life radically opposed to that of Henry, a prospect mentioned already in Desire and Distance and... (shrink)

Comment une phénoménologie de la vie doit-elle penser le monde? La phénoménologie de Michel Henry se constitue dans et par la thèse de l’acosmisme de la vie : la vie doit se penser comme hors monde et, du point de vue phénoménologique, elle représente un mode d’apparaître spécifique qui doit être distingué de l’apparaître ek-statique. Le rapport correspondant semble donc être avant tout un rapport d’exclusion parce que l’apparaître propre à la vie n’est pas dépendant de l’apparaître du monde...

If the phenomenological movement is irreducibly tied to Husserl’s groundbreaking lifework, it has, like all philosophical currents, outer boundaries. At one end of the spectrum, Fichte’s Berlin lectures in 1804 represent not only the most accomplished and systematic version of his theory of knowing, or Wissenschaftslehre; they also contain what Fichte himself designated as Phänomenologie or as theory of appearing, Erscheinungslehre. At the other end, as one of the most prominent and challenging outcomes of contemporary phenomenology, we find Henry’s radical (...) phenomenology, a phenomenology of life continuously developed from 1963 to 2002, from the Essence of Manifestation to Incarnation and Words of Christ.1 But .. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Both Fichte's 1804 Wissenschaftslehre and Henry's radical phenomenology conceive of the absolute as life. At the same time, both have to deal with a contradiction that seems to follow inevitably from the limitations they impose on thought and intentionality: Since the latter are intrinsically incapable of apprehending life as absolute and immanent, how is radical phenomenology, and how is the Wissenschaftslehre, even possible? The article takes this difficulty as the start to a possible comparison between Fichte and Henry. But, (...) as will be seen, Henry's claim about the existence of a nonintentional mode of appearing is not shared by Fichte. (shrink)