Henry 2003 Phenomenology and Life

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Phenomenology of lifeMichel Henry

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introduction

nick hanlon

Michel Henry taught philosophy for many yearsat the Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier III.His published work includes several novels(L’Amour les yeux fermés was awarded the PrixRenaudot in 1976), an analysis of Maine deBiran (1965), a two-volume study of Marx(1976), a book on the conceptual origins ofpsychoanalysis (1985), a book on Kandinsky(1988) and several books on Christianity (from1996). His nine hundred page magnum opus,The Essence of Manifestation, was publishedin two volumes in 1963. Henry died in July2002.

Henry is a phenomenologist first and fore-most, and, in keeping with Husserl’s teaching,his point of departure is the way things appear toand are experienced by the living subject. At thebeginning of The Essence of ManifestationHenry describes his project as concerned withthe meaning of the being of the self. This themeremains with him in one way or anotherthroughout his work, as he attempts a reconcep-tualisation of the subject and its position in rela-tion to phenomena in such a way as to overcomeevery variant of Cartesian dualism. In oppositionto a broadly Cartesian or Kantian perspective,Henry conceives of manifestation in terms of thefundamental unity of subject and object: mani-festation is an immanent relation of subject and“life.” (Unlike Husserl, Henry distinguishes theterm “life” with its existential associations ofengagement and intensity from the more easilyobjectified or neutralised term “world.”) In TheEssence of Manifestation Henry proposes anontology in which the subject is the absolutefoundation of being, such that the experience of

self is the very essence of the “Absolute.” Aswith Heidegger’s presentation of being asgrounded in the (self-)interrogation of Dasein,Henry’s subject is originary and primordial, but,rather more insistently than in Heidegger’sconception of things, Henry’s subject lives indynamic reciprocity with the phenomena of life.The subject perceives such phenomena throughreceptive sensibility affected by mood, i.e.through “affectivity.” In particular, Henryexplores the experience of anguish in dialoguewith Kierkegaard and the implications of moodentailed in Heidegger’s key term Befindlichkeit(situatedness). In Henry’s account being is thusnot only “immanent” (i.e. immanent within theexperience of one’s self) but also experiencedthrough affectivity, which is the essence of “ipse-

michel henry

translated by nick hanlon

PHENOMENOLOGY OFLIFE

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/03/020097-14 © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd and the Editors of AngelakiDOI: 10.1080/0969725032000162602

A N G E L A K Ijournal of the theoretical humanitiesvolume 8 number 2 august 2003

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ity,” the indivisible identity of that which affectsand that which is affected.

Henry reiterates the primacy of such livingself-affection when he turns his attention to Marxand Freud. Against both the classical Marxistand Althusserian emphasis on the “pseudo-scien-tific” claims of dialectical materialism, Henry’sMarx: A Philosophy of Human Reality (1976)is concerned with the fundamental conditions ofhuman individuality, subjectivity and productiv-ity. Henry reads Marx as a philosopher of livinglabour or creative praxis, of praxis considered, inboth its existential intensity and complex socialcontext, as the sole basis for all genuine value.Consequently, he downplays abstract conceptslike productive forces or social class as merelyderivative of “the subjective element of individ-ual praxis, which alone founds value andaccounts for the capitalist system,”1 just as itinspires the quest for a communal socialism.

In The Genealogy of Psychoanalysis (1985)Henry again distinguishes living affectivity fromits alienation in lifeless representation, as hecharts the slow historical emergence, fromDescartes to Freud, of the concept of the uncon-scious. In so far as this concept confirms the“radical immanence of auto-affection” (as it does,up to a point, in the affirmations ofSchopenhauer and Nietzsche), it makes an essen-tial contribution to an ontology of life. To thedegree that psychoanalysis realises that “psyche’sessence does not reside in the world’s visiblebecoming or in what is ob-jected,” so then ithelps us to understand, among other things,anxiety as “the anxiety of life’s inability to escapeitself,” or drive as “the principle of all activity.”2

On the other hand, in so far as the unconsciouscontinues to be analysed in terms of representa-tion or motivation (as it generally is, according toHenry, in Freudian psychoanalysis), i.e. in so faras the unconscious is reduced to a process thatmerely (albeit obscurely) registers and cathectscertain objects and experiences of the world, sothen it remains fully compatible with the funda-mental operation of consciousness itself: theshowing or seeing of that which appears in theworld. This concept of the unconscious arises atthe same time “and as the exact consequence” asthat of consciousness in the broadly Cartesian

sense,3 and it contributes to the same disastrousresult: the dilution of living thought within theanaemic confines of representation.

Nowhere does Henry’s lifelong distinction oflife from world assume more dramatic form thanin his first explicitly theological book, I Am theTruth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity(1996). Christ figures here as nothing less thanthe original Living, the original instance of aneternal self-affecting and self-revealing Lifeforever independent of the world. Genuine lifeis “not possible in the world; living is possibleonly outside the world, where another Truthreigns”4 – the other-worldly truth of Christianity.Christ is the Absolute in whom all living beingsdwell, in so far as they are themselves incapableof accounting for their self-affection, whichremains irreducible to any process that appearsor evolves in the world, and thus irreducible toany philosophy of consciousness, no less than toany would-be “science” of life. In this, as in allof Henry’s works, the primacy of affectivitymanifests itself in and through the process ofself-experiencing [s’éprouver soi-même], itselfgrounded in a sufficient (or divine) Self thatexperiences itself as the living of eternal self-revelation. Interest in such self-experience alsoimplies, as you might expect, recognition of theprimordial importance of the body, which haslikewise remained one of Henry’s most consistentconcerns (from his first book Philosophy andPhenomenology of the Body (1965) to his lastwork Incarnation: une philosophie de la chair(2000)).

Above all, self-experience involves sufferingand pathos which is coexistent with joy. Theexperience of suffering is ontologically primor-dial; it enables (through contrast and reciprocity)the experience of joy and constantly mediatesour experience of self and phenomena. In section70 of The Essence of Manifestation Henry citesthe Christian slogan “Happy are those whosuffer,”5 a phrase to which he returns at the endof the present article. The phrase not only indi-cates the persistence of Henry’s philosophicalpreoccupations but summarises in a singleformula the way his ontology integrates theprimacy of affectivity and corporeality, the co-constituency of suffering and joy, the self-reflex-

phenomenology of life

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ive character of life, just as it points towards theneed for a reappraisal of Christian and, in partic-ular, of Johannine thinking. It is no accident thatthe conclusion of Henry’s last book is entitled“Beyond Phenomenology and Theology: TheJohannine Archi-Intelligibility.”

notes

1 Henry, Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality 14.

2 Henry, The Genealogy of Psychoanalysis 285, 7,298.

3 Ibid. 2.

4 Henry, I Am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy ofChristianity 30.

5 Henry, The Essence of Manifestation 671.

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michel henry

The phenomenology of life lies within theambit of that great current of philosophical

thinking which originated in Germany at the endof the nineteenth century with Edmund Husserland that, via major thinkers such as MartinHeidegger and Max Scheler, continued through-out the whole of the twentieth century. It stillremains very much alive today, notably inFrance.1 I would like to show in which ways thephenomenology of life is a tributary of thismovement of thought which is one of the mostimportant in our culture, and in what ways itdiverges from it.

The originality of phenomenology must beunderstood on the basis of the objective it hasassigned itself. Whilst the other sciences studyspecific phenomena – physical, chemical, biolog-ical, juridical, social, economic, etc. – phenome-nology explores what allows a phenomenon to bea phenomenon. Phenomenology investigatespure phenomenality as such. One can confervarious names upon this pure phenomenality:pure manifestation, showing, unveiling, uncover-ing, appearing, revelation, or even a more tradi-tional word: truth. As soon as the object ofphenomenology is understood in its differencefrom the object of other sciences, a furtherdistinction seems to impose itself: that of thephenomenon considered on the one hand in itsparticular content, and on the other hand in itsphenomenality. Such is the distinction betweenthat which shows itself, that which appears, andthe fact of appearing, pure appearing as such. Itis this difference that Heidegger formulates inhis own way in paragraph 44 of Being and Timewhen he distinguishes truth in a secondary senseas that which is true, that which is unveiled,from, at a deeper level, the unveiling as such as“the most original phenomenon of truth [dasursprünglichste Phänomen der Wahrheit].”2

Another primary intuition of phenomenologyis that appearing is more essential than being; itis only because it appears that a thing is able tobe. To express this with Husserl, using a formula

borrowed from the Marburg School (which Imodify slightly): “Something is inasmuch as itappears [Autant d’apparaître, autant d’être].” Icarry this precedence of phenomenology overontology one step further by saying that it is onlyif the appearing appears in itself and as such thatsomething, whatever it may be, can in turnappear, can show itself to us.

Despite these various points, however, thephenomenological presupposition of phenome-nology still remains wholly indeterminate. Theprinciples of phenomenology tell us that “some-thing is inasmuch as it appears” and they urge usto go, to quote the famous slogan, “straight tothe things themselves [zu den Sachen selbst].”But the meaning of these principles remainsobscure, so long as we lack a clear definition ofwhat is meant by the fact of appearing, by theconcrete phenomenological mode according towhich this pure appearing appears (i.e. the purephenomenological matter, so to speak, in whichphenomenality as such phenomenalises itself).Now, if one directs this question towards thefounding texts of phenomenology one noticesthat behind the phenomenological indeterminacyof the principles of phenomenology, and owingto this same indeterminacy, a certain conceptionof phenomenality slips in, the very conceptionwhich initially presents itself to ordinary thoughtand which constitutes at the same time the oldestand least critical prejudice of traditional philoso-phy. This is the conception of phenomenalitythat is derived from the perception of objects inthe world, which is to say, in the final reckoning,the appearing of the world itself.

The reader may not easily accept the idea thatthe founder of phenomenology, EdmundHusserl, confronted with the explicit question of“how” objects are given (Gegenstände im Wie –“objects in the how”),3 answers: via the appear-ing of the world. Doesn’t Husserl, in keepingwith tradition, instead refer the principle ofphenomenality to consciousness and thus to atype of “interiority”? However, we should notforget the essential definition of consciousness asintentionality. Understood as intentional,consciousness is nothing other than the move-ment through which it throws itself outside; its“substance” exhausts itself in this coming


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outside which produces phenomenality. The actof revealing in such a coming outside, in a settingat a distance, is what constitutes showing [faire-voir]. The possibility of vision resides in thissetting at a distance of that which is placed infront of the seeing, and is thereby seen by it.Such is the phenomenological definition of theobject: that which, placed in front, is renderedvisible in this way. Appearing is here the appear-ing of the object in a double sense: in the sensethat that which appears is the object, and also inthe sense that since that which appears is theobject, so then the mode of appearing at issuehere is the mode of appearing peculiar to theobject and that which renders it visible, i.e. thissetting at a distance in which arises the visibilityof all that which is susceptible of becoming visi-ble for us.

At this point a further question cannot beavoided: how does the intentionality which showsor makes visible every thing reveal itself to itself?Could it be by directing a new intentionalityupon itself? If so, can phenomenology avoid thebitter destiny of that classical philosophy ofconsciousness which finds itself bound in anendless regression, obliged to place a secondconsciousness behind the knowing consciousness(in our case a second intentionality behind theone that we are attempting to wrest from obscu-rity)? Or else does a mode of revelation existother than the showing of intentionality, inwhich phenomenality would no longer be that ofthe outside? Phenomenology has no answer tothis question. Thus a crisis of extreme gravitytakes form in it which soon leads to aporia. Thevery possibility of phenomenality becomes prob-lematic if the principle of phenomenality escapesits grasp. As we know, Husserl could onlydescribe as “anonymous” that self which in thefinal instance is constitutive of the way thingsappear. It is with Heidegger that the appearingof the world is taken to its highest degree of elab-oration. From section 7 of Being and Time thephenomenon is understood in the Greek sense –phainomenon, from the root pha, phos, whichsignifies light, so that appearing signifies cominginto the light or into clarity, i.e. “that inside ofwhich something can become visible or manifestin itself.” The world is this ek-static horizon of

visibilisation inside of which every thing canbecome visible, and the second part of Beingand Time declares explicitly that this “horizon”concerns exteriority, the “outside of self” assuch. The world is identified here with tempo-rality, and temporality is nothing other than “theoriginary ‘outside of self’ in and for itself[Zeitlichkeit ist das ursprüngliche ‘Außer-sich’an und für sich selbst].”4

There are three decisive traits that charac-terise the appearing of the world. Their briefenumeration will serve as an introduction to thephenomenology of life itself, whose first thesiswill be that no life can appear in the appearingof the world.

1. In so far as the appearing of the worldconsists in the “outside of self,” in the comingoutside of an Outside, so all that shows itself init, shows itself outside, as exterior, as other, asdifferent. Exterior because the structure inwhich it shows itself is that of exteriority; otherbecause this ek-static structure is that of aprimordial alterity (all that which is outside ofme is other than me, all that which is outside ofself is other than self); different because this Ek-stasis is identically a Difference, the operationwhich, opening up the divide of a distance,renders different everything to which thissetting at a distance allows to appear – in thehorizon of the world. Such an appearing turnsaway from itself with such a violence, it throwsoutside with such force (being itself nothingother than this originary expulsion of anOutside), that everything to which it givesappearance can never be anything other, effec-tively, than exterior in the dreadful sense ofsomething which, placed outside, chased as itwere from its true Residence, from its originalHomeland, deprived of its ownmost possessions,finds itself from that point abandoned, withoutsupport, lost – prey to this abandonment fromwhich Heidegger needed to deliver man once hehad made of him, as “being-in-the-world,” abeing of this world and nothing more.

2. The appearing which unveils in theDifference of the world does not just renderdifferent all that which unveils itself in that fash-ion, it is in principle totally indifferent to it, itneither loves it nor desires it, and having no

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affinity with it, it does not protect it in any way.As far as this appearing is concerned, it doesn’tmatter whether that which appears is a darken-ing sky or the equality of a circle’s radii, a nanny-goat or a hydroplane, an image or a real thing, oreven the formula that might contain the secret ofthe universe. Like the light of which Scripturespeaks, which shines on the just as well as on theunjust, the appearing of the world illuminateseverything that it illuminates in a terrifyingneutrality, without distinguishing between thingsor persons. There are victims and torturers, char-itable acts and genocides, rules and exceptions,and exactions, and wind, water, earth, and allthis stands before us in the same way, in this ulti-mate manner of being which we express when wesay “This is,” “There is.”

3. However, this indifference of the appearingof the world to that which it unveils in theDifference, which makes everything of it exceptthat which a Father is for his Son, a brother forhis brothers, a friend for his friends (a friendwho knows everything that his friend knows, abrother who knows everything that his brothersknow, and first and foremost the first amongthem: the First Born Son) – this indifference, weshould say, hides a more radical destitution. Theappearing of the world is not only indifferent toeverything it unveils, it is incapable of conferringexistence upon it. It is without doubt this inca-pacity of the appearing of the world to takeaccount of that which unveils itself in it whichexplains its indifference towards it. Indifferenceand neutrality here mean powerlessness, fromwhich they are derived. Heidegger, who firstthought the concept of the world in its originaryphenomenological signification as pure appear-ing, was quite aware of both this indifference(the anguish in which everything becomes indif-ferent) and this powerlessness. The unveilingunveils, uncovers, “opens,” but does not create[macht nicht, öffnet]. This is how the ontologi-cal destitution of the appearing of the worldreveals itself, as itself incapable of setting outreality.

Now this ontological destitution of the appear-ing of the world does not result from a peculiarlyHeideggerian thesis: one finds it already inKant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Kant under-

stood what is at stake in the question of theworld as phenomenological. This is why theCritique consists of an extremely rigorousdescription of the phenomenological structure ofthe world. The world is co-constituted through apriori forms of pure intuition, the intuition ofspace and of time, as well as through the cate-gories of the understanding. “Forms of pureintuition” means pure ways of showing [faire-voir], considered in themselves, independently ofthe particular and contingent content (which isdesignated as “empirical”) of that which theyshow on any given occasion. “A priori” meansthat these pure ways of showing precede allactual experience. Considered in terms moregeneral than those of their specific characteristics(substance, causality, reciprocal action), the cate-gories of understanding have the same funda-mental phenomenological signification, that ofbelonging to showing and of rendering showingpossible by assuring its unity. Now, the phenom-enological structure of this unifying power is thesame as that of the pure intuitions, it is a show-ing which consists in the fact of placing outside[poser dehors] that which becomes visible in thisway. According to Kant’s decisive affirmation,the forms of intuition and the categories ofunderstanding are both representations. Torepresent in this sense is expressed in German asvor-stellen, which signifies very precisely “toplace in front” [poser devant]. Now, what isimportant for us in all this, the recurrent thesisof the Critique, is that the phenomenologicalformation of the world in the conjoined andcoherent action of these diverse “showings” isforever incapable, by itself, of setting out [poser]the reality which constitutes the concrete contentof this world – in order to gain access to this real-ity, Kant was forced to have recourse to sensa-tion.

But the appeal to sensation which can alonegive access to reality hides within it an appeal tolife, that is, to a radically different mode ofappearing. Life is phenomenological through andthrough. It is neither a being [étant] nor a modeof being [être] of a being. This is not the lifeabout which biology speaks. To tell the truth,modern biology no longer speaks about life.Since the Galilean revolution its object has


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narrowed to material processes compatible withthose studied by physics. As François Jacobexpresses it: “In today’s laboratories one nolonger enquires about life.”5

The only life which exists is transcendentalphenomenological life, the life which defines theoriginary mode of pure phenomenality to whichhenceforth, for the sake of clarity, we will reservethe name revelation. The revelation peculiar tolife stands opposed point by point to the appear-ing of the world. Whereas the world unveils inthe “outside of self,” being only the “outside ofself” as such, such that everything which itunveils is exterior, other, different, the first deci-sive trait of the revelation of life is that, becauseit carries no divide or gap within it and neverdiffers from itself, it only ever reveals itself. Lifereveals itself. Life is an auto-revelation. Auto-revelation, when it concerns life, thus means twothings. On the one hand it is life which accom-plishes the work of revelation, it is everythingexcept a thing. On the other hand what it revealsis itself. Thus the opposition between that whichappears and pure appearing, which had alreadybeen present in classical thought and which wasthen brought to the fore by phenomenology,disappears in the case of life. The revelation oflife and that which reveals itself in it are as one.

Everywhere where there is life we encounterthis extraordinary situation, which is discerniblein each modality of life, even in the most humbleof impressions. Take, for example, an experienceof pain. Because in ordinary apprehension a painis at first taken as a “physical pain,” one attrib-uted to part of the objective body, let us practiceon it that reduction which retains only its painfulcharacter, the “painful as such,” the purely affec-tive element of suffering. This “pure” suffering“reveals itself to itself,” which means that suffer-ing alone allows us to know what suffering is, andthat what is revealed in this revelation, which isthe fact of suffering, is indeed precisely suffer-ing. In this modality of our life the “outside ofself” of the world might well be absent – a factindicated by the lack of any divide that mightseparate suffering from itself, such that, drivenback against itself, overwhelmed by its ownweight, it is incapable of instituting any form ofstepping-back from itself, a dimension of flight

thanks to which it might be possible for it toescape from itself and from that which wasoppressive about its being. In the absence of anydivide within suffering, the possibility of turningone’s gaze upon it is ruled out. No one has everseen their suffering, their anguish, or their joy.Suffering, like every modality of life, is invisible.

Invisible does not designate a dimension ofunreality or illusion, some fantastical otherworld, but exactly the opposite. We have seenthat it is the appearing of the world which,throwing every thing outside of itself, at thesame time denudes it of its reality, reducing it toa series of exterior appearances into which it isimpossible to penetrate because they have no“interior,” each merely referring you to anotherone which is just as empty and devoid of contentas itself, in this game of indefinite referrals whichis the world. We have seen that, according toHeidegger, the appearing of the world is inca-pable of creating that which unveils itself in it.By contrast, each of the modalities of life is areality – one that is abrupt, immediate, incon-testable, insuperable. But as soon as I try to seethis reality, it disappears. I am certainly able toform the image of my suffering, re-present it tomyself, yet the fact remains that the reality ofsuffering never exists outside of itself. In the re-presentation of suffering I am only in the pres-ence of a noematic unreality, of the signification“suffering.” It is only when all distance is abol-ished, when suffering experiences itself as puresuffering and joy as pure enjoying, that we aredealing with actual suffering, that revelation andreality are as one.

This brings us to the third characteristicwhich opposes the revelation of life to theappearing of the world. Whereas the latter differsfrom every thing that it causes to show itself, insuch a way that it is totally indifferent to everysuch thing, life, on the contrary, keeps within itthat which it reveals, it resides inside, in everyliving being, as that which causes it to live andnever leaves it for as long as it lives. This then isa new relationship, foreign to the world, peculiarand interior to life; we must now consider initself the hitherto unthought relation between lifeand the living being, without which we canunderstand nothing of this living being that we

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are. Foreign to the world, acosmic, invisible, therelation of life to living being is a relation ofabsolute immanence. How could one conceive ofa living being that did not carry life within it?But the question equally arises of knowing whythere is a living being in life: why is no life possi-ble that might be anonymous, impersonal,foreign to every individuality?

Now, no more than the question of imma-nence, the question of the relation of life to theliving being is not a metaphysical one, an objectof speculative constructions or of indefinitedebates. It is a matter for phenomenology andmore particularly for a phenomenology of life, ofwhich it becomes the central question. It is alsoan originary question. It obliges us to go back toan absolute life, to the Life spoken of by John.

Absolute life is life which has the power tobring itself into life. Life “is” not, it happensand does not cease happening. This coming oflife is its eternal reaching into itself, the processor trial [le procès] in which it gives itself toitself, crushes itself against itself, experiencesitself [s’éprouve soi-même] and delights in itself,thus constantly producing its own essence, as faras this consists in this testing experience[épreuve] and delight in itself.6 Now, no experi-ence produces itself as experience or trial ofitself if it does not generate in its very accom-plishment the Ipseity whereby it is able to expe-rience itself and delight in itself. As long as weare not speaking of the concept of life but of areal life, a phenomenologically actual life, thenthe Ipseity in which this real life comes intoitself in experiencing itself is also one that isphenomenologically actual, it is a real Self, theFirst Living Self in which, experiencing itself,Life reveals itself to itself – its Word. Thus theprocess of Life’s auto-generation is accomplishedas the process of its auto-revelation, in such away that the auto-revelation does not come atthe end of this process but belongs to it and isconsubstantial with it like an immanent condi-tion of its effectuation. “In the beginning wasthe Word.” There is no life without a livingbeing, like this Self that all life carries in it in sofar as it is this experience of self of which we arespeaking. But equally there is no Self withoutthis Life in which every Self is given in itself,

in such a way that outside of life no Self ispossible.

However: doesn’t this analysis of absolute lifedistance us from the phenomenology which seeksto confine itself to the concrete phenomena thatwe live through, does it not throw us back intospeculation, if not into dogma or belief? Haven’twe yielded to the “theological turn of Frenchphenomenology”7 denounced by DominiqueJanicaud?

And yet are we not, we too, living beings?Living beings in the sense of a life which experi-ences itself, and not just a complex set of mate-rial processes which know nothing of themselves.Living beings which are themselves also livingSelves. This strange analogy between the internalprocess of absolute life experiencing itself in theSelf of the First Living Being and our own liferevealing itself to itself in this singular Self thateach of us is forever becomes less extraordinarythan it seems at first sight if we first of all estab-lish the distinction between them.

Our life is a finite life incapable of bringingitself into self. The Self that this life carries in itis itself a finite Self. As Husserl says in a manu-script of the 1930s: “I am not only for myself,but I am me [Ich bin nicht nur für mich, aber Ichbin Ich].” I am not only for myself, i.e. this indi-vidual appearing in the world, a thing amongthings, a man among men, who represents itselfconstantly to itself, always in a state of care foritself, who only busies itself with things and withothers with a view to itself. In order to relateeverything to oneself, one must first of all be thisSelf to whom everything is related, one must beable to say Ich bin Ich. But the point is that thisIch bin Ich is not at all originary. I am indeedmyself, but I am not brought to myself in thisme that I am. I am given to myself, but it is notme myself who gives me to me. A Self such asthat of man, a living transcendental Self – sucha Self is only ever to be found in the “Word oflife” of the first letter of John, whom Pauldescribed as “a First Born among many broth-ers” (Romans 8: 28–30). For we too are born ofabsolute Life. To be born does not mean to comeinto the world. Things appear for an instant inthe light of the world before disappearing into it.Things are not “born.” Birth concerns only


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living beings. And for these living beings, to beborn means to come to be as one of these tran-scendental living Selves that each of us is. It issolely because we have first come into life thatwe are then able to come into the world.

In this way the nature of our transcendentalbirth becomes clear. How do we come into life?We come into life in so far as life comes in itself[vient en soi] and in the same way that life comesin itself. It is because absolute life comes intoitself while experiencing itself in the ipseity ofthe First Living Self which is its Word that everyman given to himself in the ipseity of this lifecomes into himself as a transcendental livingSelf. It is for this reason that every life, everytranscendental phenomenological life, is markedat its heart with a radical and insurmountableindividuality.

Here we should make an historical observationwhich is laden with repercussions for our time.Life has been notably absent from the Westernphilosophy inherited from Greece, which definesman through thought. When at the beginning ofthe nineteenth century life makes, withSchopenhauer, its great return to the Europeanscene, it is a life stripped of individuality, anony-mous, impersonal, savage, which will establish itsrule not only over philosophy but over culture asa whole, conferring upon it its tragic and absurdcharacter, clearing the way to brutal force, toviolence, to nihilism.

The phenomenology of life is thus confrontedwith one last question. We said that in everyliving being life comes to pass as a Self whichbelongs to every life and to every determinationof life. Thus there is no suffering which might benobody’s suffering. Because God is Life, onemust effectively say with Meister Eckhart: “Godengenders himself as myself [Dieu s’engendrecomme moi-même]”8 – an abyssal affirmationwhich suffices to dismiss all the various “crisesof subject” of contemporary nihilism. However,since the latter not only conceives of life asanonymous but also as unconscious, so then,taken in once again by the Greek phainomenonwhich reserves manifestation to the light of exte-riority, modernity proves incapable of graspingthe invisible in its proper phenomenological posi-tivity.

What does this phenomenological positivityconsist in? Consider suffering once more. Wesaid that suffering reveals suffering, but thisproposition must be corrected. The auto-revela-tion of suffering which is accomplished in suffer-ing cannot be the fact of suffering considered inits particular content, if it is true that it isaccomplished just as well in joy, boredom,anguish or effort. It is in its affectivity in realitythat anguish is revealed to itself, in this patheticauto-impressionality which constitutes the fleshof this suffering as of every other modality oflife.9 This is the reason why these are all affec-tive modalities. There is here, according to theinspired intuition of Maine de Biran, a “feelingof effort” such that it is only in the trouble ofthis effort or in its satisfaction that any form ofaction is possible, not as an objective displace-ment which is itself unconscious, but as an “ICan” experiencing itself, in and through itsaffectivity. Thus affectivity does not designateany particular sphere of our life, it penetratesand founds as a last resort the entire domain ofaction, of “work” and thus of economic phenom-ena, which consequently cannot be separatedfrom the realm of human existence, as it isbelieved possible to do today.

In the same way, finally, there is a pathos ofthought which explains the privilege accorded byclassical philosophy to obviousness, to mattersthat seem self-evident. It is easy to recognisebehind this privileging of the self-evident thereign of the visible which dominates the devel-opment of our culture, which remains a prisonerof Greek theoria. However, the fact is thatthought, including rational thought, is only evergiven to itself in the pathetic auto-revelation oflife, and even Husserl himself, despite his effortto found phenomenological method upon thevisibility of the self-evident, had to admit that“the consciousness which judges a mathematical‘state of things’ is an impression.”10

Against Husserl, then, let us acknowledge thedecisive fact that all modalities of life, those oftheoretical and cognitive thought no less thanothers, are affective at their root, and this isbecause the phenomenological matter in whichpure phenomenality originally phenomenalisesitself is an Archi-passibility; every “self-experi-

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encing” only becomes possible through thisArchi-passibility. In John’s words, God is notonly Life, he is Love. Thus an essential connec-tion is set up between the pure fact of living andAffectivity.

If our various tonalities find their ultimatepossibility in the essence of life, it follows in thefirst instance that they can never be explainedsolely from the worldly events that we interpretas their “motives” or “causes.” We say: “amisfortune has occurred.” This signifies that anobjective event – accident, illness, bereavement –has produced a suffering to the point of beingidentified with it. Such an event, howeverdramatic it may be, can nonetheless onlyproduce a feeling of suffering in a being that issusceptible to suffering, i.e. a living beinggiven to itself in a life whose essence is Archi-passibility. Yet why should such a sentiment takeon the form of this affective tonality rather thananother? How can we fail to notice here that allthe modalities of our life are divided up accord-ing to a decisive dichotomy between modalitieslived as positive – impressions of pleasure or ofhappiness – and modalities said to be negative –impressions of pain or of sadness? As a result,our entire existence seems caught in an affectivebecoming which is not in the least bit indetermi-nate, ceaselessly oscillating between malaise andsatisfaction, suffering and joy – with neutraltonalities like boredom or indifference present-ing themselves as a sort of neutralisation of thisprimitive oscillation.

How, then, can this dichotomy be explainedif it does not result merely from the events ofthe world, if instead we are determined to locateits ultimate condition within ourselves? We havereplied to this question. In so far as the essenceof “living” is “self-experiencing [s’éprouversoi-même]” in the immanence of a pathetic auto-affection without divide or distance vis-à-visoneself, life is marked with a radical passivitytowards itself, it is a suffering of oneself or a“self-suffering,” a “self-enduring,” a passivitystronger than all freedom and whose presencewe have recognised in the most modest suffer-ing which is incapable of escaping itself, drivenback to itself in a primordial passion peculiar toevery life and to every living being. It is only

because of this primitive “suffering” whichbelongs to every “self-experiencing” as theconcrete phenomenological mode of its accom-plishment that something like a “suffering” ispossible.

In the accomplishment of this “self-suffer-ing,” however, life experiences itself, comes intoitself, augments itself with its own content,delights in itself – it is enjoyment, it is joy. It isclear that these two originary and fundamentalphenomenological tonalities, a pure “suffering”and a pure “enjoying,” root themselves a prioriin the “self-experiencing” which constitutes theessence of every conceivable life. In its turn, thedichotomy made manifest over the whole of ouraffective tonalities rests upon this divisionbetween the two fundamental phenomenologicaltonalities. But what is thereby revealed to us, atthe same time as this most profound essence oflife, is the a priori and transcendental possibilityof the passing of all our tonalities each into eachother. This continual slippage of our tonalities –whether it be a case of a continual transforma-tion or of an abrupt change, of a “leap” – is itselfalso discernible in the concrete becoming of ourquotidian existence. Such a becoming can some-times seem absurd and incomprehensible whensubjected to the vicissitudes of a contingenthistory or to the play of unconscious drives.Thus it was in the eyes of the poet Verlainewhen, casting his gaze over the whole of his pastexistence, he wrote this disillusioned line: “Oldgood fortunes, old misfortunes, like a line ofgeese … [Vieux bonheurs, vieux malheurs,comme une file d’oies …]”11

This impression appears superficial, however,once we understand that this potential modifica-tion of our multiple modalities is inscribed in anoriginary possibility of the passage each into eachother of the fundamental phenomenologicaltonalities belonging to the essence of life. Andthis is because pure suffering is the concretephenomenological mode according to which thecoming of life into itself accomplishes itself, itsembracing of itself in pure enjoying and thus thepossibility of every conceivable form of happi-ness and joy, something which in the final reck-oning is never anything other than joie de vivre,the limitless happiness of existing.


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Considered in their specific phenomenologi-cal content, suffering and joy are assuredlydifferent, in the same way as are malaise andsatisfaction, desire and gratification. It is eventhis difference, the will to substitute positivemodalities for negative modalities, which mostoften determines action, and this from its mostelementary forms (like the immediate impulse ofevery need to satisfy itself). However, despitetheir difference and sometimes their violentopposition, suffering and joy as well as theirmultiple modalisations are united in a more orig-inary identity, which is that of the co-constituentsuffering and enjoying of the essence of life andits ipseity.

In order to grasp this most originary identity,however, we must not lose sight of the finitudeof our own life, we must perceive our life in itsFoundation, i.e. no longer in that place where itseems to us that it experiences itself in a sort ofpsychological facticity always incapable of recog-nising itself, but instead where it is given to itselfin the auto-donation of absolute life, in the placeof our transcendental birth. Such was theinspired intuition of Kierkegaard when he under-stood that it is at the peak of his suffering, at thelimit of his despair, that this despair inverts itselfinto beatitude, when, as he puts it, “the selfplunges through its own transparency into thepower which established it.”12

From the Archi-passivity of absolute Lifethere further follows that most singular charac-ter of the human condition, which is being anincarnated existence. Because the latter is imme-diately interpreted as an existence in a body itrefers us back to the question of the body which,like every fundamental question, refers us in itsturn to a phenomenological foundation, that is,to a mode of appearing. Now, the mode ofappearing which presents itself here as beingevidently that of the body is the appearing of theworld, and this in two senses. On the one hand,every body, whether it be our own body or anyother body, shows itself to us in the world,taking its phenomenological properties from thephenomenological properties of the world, andfirst and foremost its very exteriority. However,this worldly body is not only “exterior,” it is abody furnished with several sensual qualities.

This means that this body which is seen,touched, heard, etc. presupposes a second body,a transcendental body which feels it, which seesit, which touches it, which hears it, etc., thanksto the powers of its different senses. In thephenomenology of the twentieth century thesepowers are understood as so many intentionali-ties, in such a way that the transcendental bodywhich constitutes the universe is an intentionalbody. It is in this second sense that our body isa body of the world, in this sense that it opensus to this world itself. The appearing uponwhich this opening to the world rests is the sameas that in which the body-object of the philo-sophical tradition shows itself to us; it remainsin both cases the “outside of self” as such. Only,as we have seen, the intentionality which causesevery thing to be seen [qui fait voir] is incapableof bringing itself into phenomenality. Theaporia upon which Husserlian phenomenologycame to founder is repeated in respect of thebody reduced to the intentional body. Each ofthese features of this transcendental body canonly give us that which it gives – seeing, touch-ing, hearing … – if it gives itself originally toitself in the giving that it accomplishes. Animmanent auto-donation of this type onlyhappens, however, in life, in its pathetic auto-revelation.

Only in this way can we overturn our concep-tion of the body: when we understand that theappearing to which it is consigned is no longerthat of the world, but precisely that of life. Andthis overturning consists precisely in the fact thatthis body which is ours differs completely fromother bodies which people the universe, it is nolonger a visible body but a flesh – an invisibleflesh. For in so far as flesh finds its phenomeno-logical foundation in life, it takes from this latterall of its phenomenological properties. It is char-acterised not only by acosmism and invisibility –which themselves suffice radically to distinguishflesh from the “body” of the philosophical tradi-tion – but also by this fact, this small fact: thatall flesh is the flesh of someone. All flesh issomeone’s, not just on account of a contingentliaison, but for this essential reason that since aSelf is implicated in every auto-revelation of life,it erects itself in all flesh at the same time as life,

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in the very event which gives life to itself – inits transcendental birth. In every respect a trib-utary of life, flesh takes from this latter its ownreality, this pure phenomenological matter ofauto-impressionality which is indistinguishablefrom that of pathetic auto-affection. Flesh isvery precisely the pure phenomenologicalmatter of every genuine (i.e. radically immanent)auto-affection, in which life experiences itselfpathetically. It is only because flesh is thephenomenological matter of auto-impressionality(which derives its possibility of auto-affectionfrom life) that it finds itself constituting the real-ity of the whole of our impressions.

Our life, however, is a finite life.Our finite life is only comprehensible on the

basis of the infinite life in which it is given toitself. Just as our Self, incapable of bringingitself into itself, refers back to the First LivingSelf, to the Word in which absolute life revealsitself to itself, so too in the same way the auto-impressionality which renders possible everyimpression and every flesh presupposes theArchi-passibility of absolute life (i.e. the origi-nary capacity to bring itself into itself in themode of a pathetic phenomenological effectua-tion). It is only in this Archi-passibility that allflesh is passible, which is to say that it is possi-ble in its turn – this flesh which is nothing otherthan that: the passibility of a finite life whichdraws its possibility from the Archi-passibility ofinfinite Life.

This is where the phenomenology of life candefend its claim that it is able to escape thedomain of philosophical tradition. Is it not capa-ble of illuminating certain decisive elements ofour culture that belong to its non-Greek source,notably Judaeo-Christian spirituality? Preciselyto the extent that all flesh is only given to itself,in the Archipassibility of life, the phenomenol-ogy of life unveils the singular link which estab-lishes itself between the two initiatorydeclarations which mark the famous Prologue ofJohn: “In the beginning was the Word,” “Andthe Word was made flesh” (John 1: 1–14). Wehave already explained the first declaration, if itis true that no life is possible which does notimply in itself the Self in which it experiencesitself. And if, coming now to the second expres-

sion, all flesh is only passible in the Archi-passi-bility of life in its Word, then the Incarnation ofthe Word ceases to seem absurd, as it seemed inthe eyes of the Greeks. On the contrary, we mustrecognise between Word and flesh much morethan an affinity – rather an identity of essencewhich is nothing other than that of absolute Life.As soon as flesh is given over to life, it ceases tobe this objective body with its strange forms,with its incomprehensible sexual determination,apt to arouse our anguish, delivered to the world,indefinitely subjected to the question “why”? Foras Meister Eckhart understood, life is withoutwhy. The flesh which carries in it the principleof its own revelation does not ask for any otherauthority to illuminate itself. When in its inno-cence each modality of our flesh experiencesitself, when suffering says suffering and joy joy,it is Life that speaks in it, and nothing has poweragainst its word.

This Archi-passibility beyond all passibilitybut present in it, immanent in all flesh as thatwhich gives it to itself, beyond all sensible orintelligible evidence, what can it be called if notan Archi-intelligibility, an Archi-gnosis whoseessence John described as the coming of absoluteLife in its Word (before it makes possible thecoming of the Word in a flesh similar to ourown)? Thus Johannine Archi-intelligibility isimplied everywhere that there is life, it reachesout even to these beings of flesh that we are,taking up in its incandescent Parousia ourderisory sufferings and our hidden wounds, as itdid the wounds of Christ on the cross. The morepurely does each of our sufferings happen withinus, the more each suffering is reduced to itself,to its phenomenological body of flesh, so themore strongly we experience in ourselves thelimitless power which gives suffering to itself.And when this suffering reaches its limit point,in despair, then, as Kierkegaard puts it, “the selfplunges through its own transparency into thepower which established it,” and the intoxicationof life submerges us. Happy arethose who suffer. In the Depthof its Night, our flesh is God.The Archignosis is the gnosis ofthe simple [la gnose dessimples].


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notes

1 “Phénoménologie de la vie” was firstdelivered as a lecture to the Munich Academyof Fine Arts, 14 November 2000. The Frenchversion of the text is available online at<http://www.philagora.net/philo-fac/henry-ph1>;Angelaki is grateful to Joseph and Joëlle Llapassetfor permission to translate it. A month before hedied in July 2002, Henry confirmed, in discussionwith Joseph and Joëlle Llapasset, his belief that thisarticle conveys the essence of his whole philo-sophical project. In the following translation I havechosen to adhere quite closely to the often denseFrench original, in particular so as to convey theeffect of Henry’s persistent use of reflexiveconstructions; readers should bear in mind themultiplicity of words used to refer to self or self-hood (soi, se, Soi, soi-même, Ipséité, ipséité). Onoccasion, when translating soi, I have italicised the“self” of “itself” (itself) to emphasise the sense ofthe reference to self in the French, which might beslightly obscured by a reading of “itself” as aprimarily reflexive construction in English.[Translator’s note.]

2 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Halle:Niemeyer, 1941) 220–21.

3 Edmund Husserl, Leçons pour une phénoménolo-gie de la conscience intime du temps (Paris: PressesUniversitaires de France, 1964) 157.

4 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit 329.

5 François Jacob, La Logique du vivant: une histoirede l’hérédité (Paris: Gallimard, 1970) 320.

6 Picking up on the second meaning of procès (i.e.“trial,” in the juridical sense), épreuve can meantrial, test, or experience of a hardship; s’éprouvermeans to feel or experience, but is also used in thesense of suffering or experiencing a hardship. Thephrase “testing experience” is meant to conveythis combination of meanings, since my renderingof s’éprouver soi-même as “experiencing itself” or“self-experiencing” otherwise loses the crucialsense of suffering or testing. [Translator’s note.]

7 Dominique Janicaud, Le Tournant théologique de laphénoménologie française (Combas: L’Eclat, 1991).

8 Meister Eckhart, “Sermon no. 6” in Traités etsermons (Paris: Aubier, 1942) 146.

9 As Susan Emanuel (the translator of Henry’s IAm the Truth) notes, Henry uses the term pathé-

tique in its etymological sense, i.e. to refer not toan object that might arouse an emotion but to theperson who undergoes that emotion, the personwho is capable of suffering or feeling something(“Note on Terminology” in Henry, I Am the Truth).[Translator’s note.]

10 Edmund Husserl, Leçons 124.

11 Paul Verlaine, “Ô vous, comme un qui boite auloin, Chagrins et Joies,” Sagesse in Oeuvrespoétiques complètes, eds. Yves-Gérard Le Dantecand Jacques Borel (Paris: Gallimard, “Pléiade,”1962) 247.

12 Søren Kierkegaard, Traité du désespoir (Paris:Gallimard, 1949) 64.

works by henry

Le Jeune Officier [novel]. Paris: Gallimard, 1954.

L’Essence de la manifestation. 1963. Paris: PressesUniversitaires de France, 1990. The Essence ofManifestation. Trans. Girard Etzkorn. The Hague:Nijhoff, 1973.

Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps: essai sur l’on-tologie biranienne. Paris: Presses Universitaires deFrance, 1965. Philosophy and Phenomenology of theBody. Trans. Girard Etzkorn. The Hague: Nijhoff,1975.

L’Amour les yeux fermés [novel]. Paris: Gallimard,1976.

Marx, 2 vols. I. Une philosophie de la réalité; II. Unephilosophie de l’économie. Paris: Gallimard, 1976.Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality. Trans.Kathleen McLaughlin; reworked and abbreviatedby Michel Henry. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983.

Le Fils du roi [novel]. Paris: Gallimard, 1981.

Généalogie de la psychanalyse: le commencementperdu. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,1985. The Genealogy of Psychoanalysis. Trans.Douglas Brick with an introduction by FrançoisRoustang. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1993.

La Barbarie. Paris: Grasset, 1987.

Voir l’invisible: sur Kandinsky. Paris: Bourin, 1988.

Du communisme au capitalisme: théorie d’une catas-trophe. Paris: Odile Jacob, 1990.

Phénoménologie matérielle. Paris: PressesUniversitaires de France, 1990.

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“The Critique of the Subject.” Who Comes afterthe Subject? Ed. Eduardo Cadava et al. London:Routledge, 1991. 157–66.

“Narrer le pathos: entretien avec Michel Henry.”Revue des Sciences Humaines 95.1 (1991): 49–65.

Le Cadavre indiscret [novel]. Paris: Albin Michel,1996.

C’est moi la vérité: pour une philosophie du christian-isme. Paris: Seuil, 1996. I Am the Truth: Toward aPhilosophy of Christianity. Trans. Susan Emanuel.Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003.

Incarnation: une philosophie de la chair. Paris: Seuil,2000.

“Phénoménologie et langage.” Michel Henry:l’épreuve de la vie. Ed. Alain David and JeanGreisch. Paris: Cerf, 2001.

Auto-donation: entretiens et conférences.Montpellier: Prétentaine, 2002.

Paroles du Christ. Paris: Seuil, 2002.


Nick HanlonPembroke CollegeCambridge CB2 1RFUKE-mail: [email protected]


Henry 2003 Phenomenology and Life

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