Touching from a Distance. In Search of the Self in Henry and Kierkegaard

Abstract

In elaborating his phenomenological project, Michel Henry refers to Soren Kierkegaard. After a brief survey of Henry's phenomenology of the self, we will inquire whether this appropriation is accurate. It will be argued that Kierkegaard's dialectics of existence can operate as a therapy or corrective in order to save Henry's project of a radical immanent and passive self. If not, it suffers from incoherence both from a phenomenological as well as from a theological perspective. Each self-consciousness, even in its most extreme affective states, cannot dispose itself of reflective remnants. On the contrary, it is precisely Kierkegaard's proposition that reflection intensifies pathos. What appears as most near and dear to us, be it God, self or life, always touches from a distance.