Phenomenological life (Michel Henry)

The philosopher Michel Henry defines life from a phenomenological point of view as that which possesses the faculty and the power "of feeling and experiencing oneself in each point of its being".Michel Henry, La Barbarie, éd. Grasset, 1987, pp. 15, 23 et 80

For Michel Henry, life is essentially subjective force and affectivityMichel Henry, Voir l’invisible, éd. François Bourin, 1988, cover page — it consists of a pure subjective experience of oneself which perpetually oscillates between suffering and joy.Michel Henry, La Barbarie, éd. Grasset, 1987, p. 122Paul Audi : Michel Henry : Une trajectoire philosophique, Les Belles Lettres, 2006, p. 109 : "Ainsi, en dépit de sa simplicité, et à cause de son caractère dynamique (force) et pathétique (affect), le "vivre" est affectivité (jouissance et souffrance), mais il est aussi pulsion, désir, volonté, agir (praxis), pensée (représentation)". A "subjective force" is not an impersonal, blind and insensitive force like the objective forces we meet in nature, but a living and sensible force experienced from within and resulting from an inner desire and a subjective effort of the will to satisfy it.Michel Henry, Voir l’invisible, éd. François Bourin, 1988, pp. 211-212Michel Henry, C'est moi la Vérité, éd. du Seuil, 1996, pp. 138 et 218

Starting from this phenomenological approach to life, in Incarnation, a Philosophy of FleshMichel Henry, Incarnation, éd. du Seuil, 2000, pp. 8-9. Michel Henry establishes a radical opposition between the living flesh endowed with sensibility and the material body, which is in principle insensible.

The word "phenomenological" refers to phenomenology, which is the study of phenomena and a philosophical method which fundamentally concerns the study of phenomena as they appear.Michel Henry, Incarnation, éd. du Seuil, 2000, p. 35 What Henry calls "absolute phenomenological life" is the subjective life of individuals reduced to its pure inner manifestation, as we perpetually live it and feel it.Michel Henry, La Barbarie, éd. Grasset, 1987, pp. 15-16Michel Henry, C'est moi la Vérité, éd. du Seuil, 1996, pp. 46-70 It is life as it reveals itself and appears inwardly, its self-revelation: life is both what reveals and what is revealed.Michel Henry, C'est moi la Vérité, éd. du Seuil, 1996, pp. 39-40

Life is by nature invisible because it never appears in the exteriority of a look; it reveals itself in itself without gap or distance.Paul Audi : Michel Henry : Une trajectoire philosophique, Les Belles Lettres, 2006, p. 164 : "[...] ce qui est invisible ne cesse jamais, en raison de son invisibilité, de se manifester, bien que son apparence, qui est bien réelle, n'appartienne pas à l'ordre de la visibilité. Elle est, cette apparence, de l'ordre de l'affectivité. Car un sentiment ne se voit pas, mais se manifeste, et il se manifeste en se laissant éprouver, mieux encore : en s'éprouvant soi-même". The fact of seeing does in effect presuppose the existence of a distance and of a separation between what is seen and the one who sees, between the object that is perceived and the subject who perceives it.Michel Henry, L’Essence de la manifestation, PUF, 1963 (§ 50-51, pp. 549-571). A feeling, for example, can never be seen from the exterior, it never appears in the "horizon of visibility" of the world; it feels itself and experiences itself from within in the radical immanence of life.Paul Audi : Michel Henry : Une trajectoire philosophique, Les Belles Lettres, 2006, p. 175 : "[...] de ce qui se trouve donné au regard, à la sensibilité, à la perception, la philosophie se doit de remonter au fondement de la donation, un fondement qui, lui, ne saurait être donné comme quelque chose d'extérieur, qui n'est pas même visible, puisqu'il relève de la vie subjective absolue, dont le caractère d'essence est d'être tout à la fois pathétique et dynamique -- c'est-à-dire immanent". Love cannot see itself, any more than hatred; feelings are felt in the secrecy of our hearts, where no look can penetrate.Michel Henry, L’Essence de la manifestation, PUF, 1963 (§ 62-63, pp. 692-714).

Life is constituted of sensitivity and affectivity — it is the unity of their manifestation, affectivity being however the essence of sensibility (as Henry shows in The Essence of Manifestation) which means that every sensation is affective by nature.Michel Henry, L’Essence de la manifestation, PUF, 1963 (§ 54, p. 602). Phenomenological life is the foundation of all our subjective experiences (like the subjective experience of a sorrow, of seeing a color or the pleasure of drinking fresh water in summer) and of each of our subjective powers (the subjective power of moving the hand or the eyes, for example).Michel Henry, Incarnation, éd. du Seuil, 2000, pp. 7-8.

This phenomenological definition of life is founded, then, in the concrete subjective experience we have of life in our own existence. It thus corresponds to human life.Paul Audi : Michel Henry : Une trajectoire philosophique, Les Belles Lettres, 2006, pp. 30-31. In I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, Michel Henry writes about the other forms of life studied by biology and from which Heidegger derives his own philosophical conception of life:Michel Henry, C'est moi la Vérité, éd. du Seuil, 1996, pp. 46-70 "Is it not paradoxical for anyone who wants to know what life is to go and ask protozoa or, in the best case, honeybees? As if our only relation with life was a wholly external and fragile relation with beings about whom we know nothing – or so very little! As if we ourselves were not living beings!"Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity (§ 3, p. 47)

This definition, however, fails to include living organisms that cannot experience themselves, such as plant life — unless one can find evidence of the existence of a certain kind of sensibility in them, as Professor A. Tronchet appears to suggest in his book La sensibilité des plantes (Plant Sensibility): "The protoplasm of plant cells, like that of animal cells, is endowed with irritability, i.e. a particular form of sensibility, thanks to which it is capable of being affected by excitations originating externally or internally".A. Tronchet, La sensibilité des plantes, Masson, 1977, p. 1.

For Michel Henry, what scientists call “biological life” is only a visible appearance or the projection in the external world of the true life, whose inner or affective reality resides into the “absolute phenomenological life”, that’s to say in the pure and inner feeling that the living does constantly of his own life, in the suffering and the joy he constantly feels in himself.Michel Henry, I am the Truth: Toward a philosophy of Christianity, Stanford University Press, 2002, p. 34-44.

{{reflist}}

• Michael O'Sullivan (Author) : Michel Henry: Incarnation, Barbarism and Belief: An Introduction to the Work of Michel Henry (Peter Lang Pub Inc, 2006) (Paperback)
• Michel Henry (Author), Girard J. Etzkorn (Translator) : The Essence of Manifestation (The Hague : Nijhoff, 1973)
• Michel Henry (Author), Susan Emanuel (Translator) : I Am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity (Cultural Memory in the Present, Stanford University Press, 2002) (Paperback)
• Michel Henry (Author) : Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky (Continuum, 2009)
• Michel Henry (Author) : Barbarism (Continuum, 2012)
• Michel Henry (Author) : Words of Christ (Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012)
• Michel Henry (Author) : Incarnation: A Philosophy of Flesh (Northwestern University Press, 2015)

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Category:Phenomenology

Category:Philosophy of life