Abstract
Material phenomenology, phenomenology of the invisible, of Life, and of the flesh: these are four expressions that can well seal the philosophy of Michel Henry — work in which originality emerges from the continuous confrontation with the foundational texts of phenomenology, in particular with those by Husserl, to whom our author does not stop going back. And this is because, if Husserl’s motto of “going to the things themselves” can be intended as the inextinguishable Utopia of drawing out the phenomena in their authentic and genuine giving, it is true that the possibility of thinking about the originality of their donation in the same advent of the things never ceases to stimulate interrogatives and provocations.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
M. Henry, L’essence de la manifestation (Paris: Puf, 1963, 19872 (=EM)); the quotations referred to are from the second edition.
Henry, Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps. Essai sur l’ontologie biranienne (Paris: Puf, 1965, 19872 (=PC)); the quotations referred to are from remember the second edition.
Near the philosophical start we the literary one. Henry is an author of novels, some of which were awarded the critics. The first one, Le jeune officier, appeared in 1954 c/o the publisher Gallimard, preceding for some years the publishing of his first two philosophical works.
Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle et langage, in A. David, J. Greisch (eds.), Michel Henry, l’épreuve de la Vie, Paris: éd. du Cerf, 2001, pp. 15–37; the quotation is at p. 15. On the matter of the phenomenological method see Phénoménologie matérielle (Paris: Puf, 1990), pp. 61–135.
Phénoménologie matérielle et langage, in A. David, J. Greisch (eds.), Michel Henry, l’épreuve de la Vie, Paris: éd. du Cerf, 2001, pp. 15–37 Ibid.
M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1927), § 7.
E. Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie (Haag: Nijhoff, 1958), p. 11.
Cfr. F. Khosrokhavar, Michel Henry ou l’interiorite radicale, in Michel Henry, l’epreuve de la Vie, pp. 57–77; the quotation is at p. 57.
Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 6.
Cfr. J.-L. Marion, Étant donné. Essai d’une phénoménologie de la donation, Paris: Puf, 1998, pp. 90 following.
Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie, p. 30.
Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie, p. 31.
Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 64.
Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 71.
Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie, p. 35.
Ibid.
Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 76.
Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 207.
Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 207.
Ibid.
Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 308; italics is by the author.
E. Husserl, Ideen zur einen reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie I (= Ideen I) (Haag: Nijhoff, 1950).
Husserl, Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie III (= Ideen III) (Haag: Nijhoff, Haag 1952), § 13, p. 76.
Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge (Haag: Nijhoff, 1963), p. 58.
Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen, p. 61.
Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 5.
Ibid.
Henry, Incarnation, Seuil, Paris, 2000, p. 54.
Ibid.
Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 110.
Henry, Généalogie de la psychanalyse (Paris: Puf, 1985), p. 20. Commenting on this passage, X. Tilliette points out that “l’impression de tautologie et de pléonasme est erronée, elle émane d’une lecture paresseuse …. La forme répétitive n’est nullement gratuite, sans elle l’idée mal agrippée s’échapperait. Mais ce genre de formules est devenu moins fréquent après L’essence de la manifestation où le combat avec l’écriture s’acharnait,” Tilliette, “Michel Henry: la philosophie de la vie,” Philosophie, 15 (1987), pp. 3–20; the quotation is at p. 4. We chose to write such a judgement here as it is clear to explain the language used by Henry. We will see how just about life the writing seems to groove in sterile tautology. It is in reality an attempt at creating language which is not ekstatic for the purpose of saying that in the history of Western thought we have never been able to really grasp: the appearing in itself of the apparent, the phenomenalising of the phenomenality.
Henry, Généalogie de la psychanalyse, p. 21.
Ibid. The interest of the actual French phenomenology is for Descartes not only testified by these passages by Henry. It is suitable to recall also the famous trilogy by Marion dedicated to the French philosopher: Sur l’ontologie grise de Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1975); Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes (Paris: Puf, 1981); Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes (Paris: Puf, 1986), where a careful philological and theorically sharp reading of Descartes texts is proposed.
Renatus des Cartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, édité par G. Rodis-Lewis (Paris: Vrin, 1978), p. 29.
Renatus des Cartes, Meditatione de prima philosophia, p. 30.
Henry, Généalogie de la psychanalyse, p. 28.
Henry, Généalogie de la psychanalyse, p. 35.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 110.
Tilliette points out very cleverly that “L’essence de la manifestation faisait fond plutôt sur l’être. La quête ardente, difficile, de la subjectivité ultime de l’ Ego avait lieu en termes ontologiques” (Tilliette, op. cit., p. 5). It is not a mutation of terminology or of interests but since 1966, as we hope has emerged in this path, the formulation of the being, the essence was thought in terms of self-position, of motility that is because it shows and doesn ‘t show because it is. Such essence couldn’t be other than Life, after such premises, a guest that was waited for in the whole duration of the research by the French phenomenologist.
In a remark of the first version of the text Phénoménologie hylétique et phénoménologie matérielle (today in Phénoménologie matérielle, pp. 13–59, but appearing originally in Philosophie, 15 (1987), the edition to which we will refer), Henry explains the starting l’intentio of his studying: “Je tente de répondre ici à l’une de questions qui m’ont été transmises par la rédaction de Philosophie: ‘Comment la phénoménologie matérielle qui intitule votre projet se distingue-t-elle de ce que Husserl nomme la phénoménologie hylétique?’“ ( Henry, Phénoménologie hylétique et phénoménologie matérielle, p. 55.
Husserl, Ideen I, pp. 207–213. Reading these passages Angela Ales Bello pointed out how such a sentence, “possa essere messa in crisi … dallo studio degli Erlebnisse, presenti nelle culture ‘altre’ rispetto a quella occidentale, sia quelle arcaiche che contemporanee, che possono essere definiti ‘elementari.’ Infatti, utilizzando il rapporto noetica-hyletica, si può constatare che il momento hyletico, da intendersi come noema di una noetica non egocentrata — al contrario di ciò che accade nella mentalità occidentale in cui la noetica è egocentrata — e quindi Impersonale in quanto vissuto collettivamente, ha una funzione ‘attrattiva’ straordinaria” (A. Ales Bello, “L’incarnazione nella prospettiva delta hyletica fenomenologica,” in Archivio di Filosofia, LXVII [1999], pp. 105–113, p. 106). The aim of Ales Bello is to propose two different ways of intending the hyle, that is to say a “connesso con la visione occidentale, quella che è definibile come categoriale, fondata essenzialmente su un processo di obiettivazione e di idealizzazione anche se la materia si delinea non solo come qualcosa di spazialmente esteso, passivo, inerte, ma come energia vitale … e l’altro da intendersi come noema di una noesi non egocentrata, cioè come nucleo strettamente connesso con un’intenzionalità che consente la manifestatività stessa della noesi” (Ales bello, op. cit., p. 109).
Henry, Incarnation, pp. 70–71.
Henry, Incarnation, pp. 83–84.
Henry, Incarnation, pp. 89–90.
The problem is well outlined by François-David Sebbah in the text Naître à la Vie, naître à soi-mêeme. À propos de la notion de naissance chez Michel Henry in Michel Henry l’épreuve de la vie, pp. 95–116, re-taken in Sebbah, L’épreuve de la limite. Derrida, Henry, Levinas et la phénoménologie (Paris: Bibliothèque du Collèque Internationale de Philosophie, 2001), pp. 189–210.
In this sense neither the focusing (that Sebbah cares not to omit) that every life is “indis-sociabile dell’ événement du Premier Vivant” ( Sebbah, op. cit., p. 109) according to the spirit of phenomenology proposed in C’est moi la vérité, is subtracted to this problem, concerning the flesh of phenomenon; a phenomenality that, enriched by a thought that in its advent catches in itself the reverse of its flesh and the contiguity of the appearance of the phenomenon, it can’t long subtract — itself again to the idea of spaciality. The great risk that we see is that it is implied a dis-knowledge of the real “other” of every happening. Birth and world are an example: the total immanence that explains the flesh of the phenomenality, how does it lead to think the “other” of the birth that not only happens for the self-affection a priori but it is also given a posteriori? And the world, that cannot be the ekstatic horizon of the Givenness of the phenomenon, shouldn’t be even recuperated as spaciality at the same time of the advent of phenomenality?
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2004 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Canullo, C. (2004). Ekstasy of the World/Immanence of Life Michel Henry, Reader of Husserl. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Does the World Exist?. Analecta Husserliana, vol 79. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0047-5_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0047-5_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-3988-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-0047-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive