Henry's Phenomenology Research Articles

Is Radical Phenomenology Too Radical? Paradoxes of Michel Henry's Phenomenology of Life

Is Radical Phenomenology Too Radical? Paradoxes of Michel Henry's Phenomenology of Life

Is Radical Phenomenology Too Radical? Paradoxes of Michel Henry's Phenomenology of Life

Is Radical Phenomenology Too Radical? Paradoxes of Michel Henry's Phenomenology of Life

From the "metaphysics of the individual" to the critique of society: on the practical significance of Michel Henry's phenomenology of life.

This essay explores the practical significance of Michel Henry’s “material phenomenology.” Commencing with an exposition of his most basic philosophical intuition, i.e., his insight that transcendental affectivity is the primordial mode of revelation of our selfhood, the essay then brings to light how this intuition also establishes our relation to both the world and others. Animated by a radical form of the phenomenological reduction, Henry’s material phenomenology brackets the exterior world in a bid to reach the concrete interior transcendental experience at the base of all exteriority. The essay argues that this “counter reduction,” designed as a practical orientation to the world, suspends all traditional parameters of onto(theo)logical individuation in order to rethink subjectivity in terms of its transcendental corporeality, i.e., in terms of the invisible display of “affective flesh.” The development of this “metaphysics of the individual” anchors his “practical philosophy” as he developed it—under shifting accents—throughout his oeuvre. In particular, the essay brings into focus Henry’s reflections on modernity, the industry of mass culture and their “barbaric” movements. The essay briefly puts these cultural and political areas of Henry’s of thinking into contact with his late “theological turn,” i.e., his Christological account of Life and the (inter)subjective self-realization to which it gives rise.

La fonction quasi-performative de la Phénoménologie de la vie et son enjeu éthique

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.

BLACK HOLES AND REVELATIONS: MICHEL HENRY AND JEAN‐LUC MARION ON THE AESTHETICS OF THE INVISIBLE

AbstractThis essay examines how Michel Henry's and Jean‐Luc Marion's continuation of phenomenology's turn to the invisible relates to painting, aesthetics, and theology. First, it discusses Henry and Marion's redefinition of phenomenality. Second, it explores Henry's “Kandinskian” description of abstract painting as expressing “Life.” Third, it explicates Marion's “Rothkoian” rehabilitation of the idol and renewed zeal for the icon—both phenomena exemplify “givenness.” Fourth, it unpacks my thesis: Henry's phenomenology, theologically applied, exercises an inadequate Kantian apophasis, characterized by a sublime sacrifice of the imagination; although Marion's work sometimes evidences a similar tendency, its prevailing momentum offers theology a fully catholic scope.

Logos and Immanence in Michel Henry's Phenomenology

In this paper, I will reflect on the place of language within Michel Henry's phenomenology. I will claim that Michel Henry's position provokes an architectonic problem in his conception of phenomenology and I will discuss how he tried to solve it. At the end of the essay, I will try to clarify what I believe to be the ultimate root of that problem involving language.

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

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.

Michel Henrys Lebensphänomenologie als Hermeneutikkritik

This essay tries to show how Michel Henry's Phenomenology of Life can be understood as a valuable criticism of hermeneutical philosophy and especially of hermeneutical phenomenology in the manner Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricœur had conceptualized it. Using Michel Henry's concept of phenomenological distance, it will be shown here that on the basis of every hermeneutics there lies the classical topos of the auctorial intention that was once gained by the interpretation of texts and is simply ontologized by hermeneutical philosophers. What follows from such a perspective is that human life seems to be ontologically separated form itself, against which Michel Henry tries to show that each life can only be humane, both in relation to itself as well as to others, if it affects itself without any distance.

Michel Henry et la critique du politique

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 which pervades the axiological implications of Henry's work. Because is always referring to a culture of life, it allows connecting life and its immanent reality with ethical/political questions.

La connaissance absolue et l’essence de la vérité chez MaLa provenance de la chair: le souci henryen de la contingencetre Eckhart et Michel Henry

This study approaches the question of absolute knowledge in its mystical and phenomenological essence. Henry's phenomenology of life, by seeking the truth in its living donation, rejoins the source of phenomenality in an invisible way. This truth which vivifies our interiority is, in its depth, a divine revelation. When we let us receive ourselves in the invisible truth of God, we are this same truth that we feel immediately in our living flesh.

Approaches to (Quasi)Theology Via Appresentation

AbstractWhat demands must be met for phenomenology to be the rigorous science Husserl projected? Janicaud complains that some French phenomenologists, while pretending to observe these demands, play fast and loose with them when they apply phenomenology to matters of theology: Derrida, Marion, and Levinas; methodological phenomenology and Henry's phenomenology of the Christian Way. Derrida's deconstructions of the oppositions of immanence and transcendence and of the factual and the transcendental suggest that the rift between him and Henry is not as deep as it must at first seem. Analogical appresentation is a motive of the theological turn.

A critical and phenomenological genealogy of the question of the real in Western economics and management

PurposeThis paper aims to answer the following question: where does our capacity for epoche, for decentration, for suspending representations come from? This question is an important one if we accept, as phenomenology does, that this is how we can find the meaning of our life and our actions.Design/methodology/approachIn order to answer this question the paper undertakes a critical genealogy of what those in the Western world consider to be the real, stressing how much Western thought overestimates the reality of what can be seen, measured, and calculated, and underestimates the experience of interiority by silencing the real dynamic of development of each person's lives.FindingsFollowing on from Michel Henry's phenomenology the paper shows how epoche, decentring is precisely about paying attention to this very real dynamic of development of life with others. Suspending for a while the representations and calculations and allowing people to be guided by such dynamic is therefore totally justified. Moreover, because it is fully embodied, this dynamic gives us the power and strength to engage in reasonable and responsible action. Two experiences recounted by managers illustrate this point.Originality/valueThe paper shows that phenomenological epoche is not about speculation, it is not idealism, but a totally realistic, practicable choice.

Michel Henry's Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience and Husserlian Intentionality

In Voir l’invisible Michel Henry applies his philosophy of autoaffection (which is both inspired by, and critical of, Husserl) to the realm of aesthetics. Henry claims that autoaffection, as non‐objective experience, is essential not only to self‐experience, but also to the experience of objects and their qualities. Intentionality tempts us to experience objects merely from the ‘outside’, but aesthetic experience returns us to the inner life of objects as a lived experience. On the basis of an examination of Henry’s aesthetic theory in the light of Husserl’s analysis of our experience of visible objects, I conclude that revisions are required in both Husserl’s and Henry’s approaches: Husserl’s noema must be considered to be a lived‐through experience, and non‐objective lived‐through experience must be recognized as primordial evidence; Henry’s claim that intentionality makes unreal all that it objectifies must be replaced by a recognition of the interdependence between autoaffection and heteroaffection.