Michel Henry (; ; 10 January 1922 – 3 July 2002) was a French philosopher, phenomenologist and novelist. He wrote four novels and numerous philosophical works. He also lectured at universities in France, Belgium, the United States, and Japan.
Biography
Michel Henry was born in Haiphong, French Indochina (now Vietnam), and he lived in French Indochina until he was seven years old. Following the death of his father, who was an officer in the French Navy, he and his mother settled in metropolitan France. While studying in Paris, he discovered a true passion for philosophy, which he decided to make his profession—he enrolled at the École Normale Supérieure, at the time part of the University of Paris. From June 1943, he was fully engaged with the French Resistance, joining the maquis of the Haut Jura under the code name of Kant. He often had to come down from the mountains in order to accomplish missions in Nazi-occupied Lyon, an experience of clandestinity that deeply marked his philosophy.Jean-Marie Brohm et Jean Leclercq, Michel Henry, éd. l'Age d'Homme, Les dossiers H, 2009 (pp. 12–15)
At the end of the war he took the final part of the philosophy examination at the university, following which he wrote a doctoral thesis at the University of Paris in 1963"Biographie" on the official site of Michel Henry. (but eventually published in 1973), titled L'essence de la manifestation (The Essence of Manifestation), under the direction of Jean Wahl. Other academic advisors included Paul Ricœur, Ferdinand Alquié, and Henri Gouhier.Alan D. Schrift (2006), Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes And Thinkers, Blackwell Publishing, pp. 136–137. His first book, on the Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, was completed in 1950. His first significant published work was on The Essence of Manifestation, to which he devoted long years of necessary research in order to surmount the main deficiency of all intellectualist philosophy, the ignorance of life as experienced.Jean-Marie Brohm et Jean Leclercq, Michel Henry, éd. l'Age d'Homme, Les dossiers H, 2009 (pp. 21–26)
From 1960, Michel Henry was a professor of philosophy at the University of Montpellier, where he patiently perfected his work, keeping himself away from philosophical fashions and far from dominant ideologies.Jean-Marie Brohm et Jean Leclercq, Michel Henry, éd. l’Age d’Homme, Les dossiers H, 2009 (pp. 27–50)Paul Audi, Michel Henry, Les belles lettres, 2006, p. 22: « Michel Henry fait partie de ces très rares philosophes qui, dans la seconde moitié du siècle dernier, se sont frayé leurs voies propres à l'écart des modes contemporaines. » He died in Albi, France, at the age of eighty.
The sole subject of his philosophy is living subjectivity, which is to say the real life of living individuals. This subject is found in all his work and ensures its deep unity in spite of the diversity of themes he tackled.Jean-Marie Brohm et Jean Leclercq, Michel Henry, éd. l’Age d’Homme, Les dossiers H, 2009 (pp. 5–6) It has been suggested that he proposed the most profound theory of subjectivity in the Twentieth Century.
Philosophy
A phenomenology of life
The work of Michel Henry is based on Phenomenology, which is the study of the phenomenon. The English/German/Latinate word "phenomenon" comes from the Greek "phainomenon" which means "that which shows itself by coming into the light".I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity (§ 1, p. 14) The everyday understanding of phenomenon as appearance is only possible as a negative derivation of this authentic sense of Greek self-showing. The object of phenomenology is not however something that appears, such as a particular thing or phenomena, but the act of appearing itself.Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair (§ 1, p. 35) Henry's thought led him to a reversal of Husserlian phenomenology, which acknowledges as phenomenon only that which appears in the world, or exteriority. Henry counterposed this conception of phenomenality with a radical phenomenology of life.Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair (§ 1–15, pp. 35–132)
Henry defines life from a phenomenological point of view as what possesses the faculty and the power "to feel and to experience oneself in each point of its being".See for example La barbarie (§ 1, p. 15) For Henry, life is essentially force and affect; it is essentially invisible; it consists in a pure experience of itself which perpetually oscillates between suffering and joy; thought is for him only a mode of life, because it is not 'thought which gives access to life, but life that allows thought to reach itself'.Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair (§ 15, p. 129)
According to Henry, life can never be seen from the exterior, as it never appears in the exteriority of the world. Life feels itself and experiences itself in its invisible interiority and in its radical immanence. In the world, we never see life itself, but only living beings or living organisms; we cannot see life in them.I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity (§ 3, pp. 33–47) In the same way, it is impossible to see another person's soul with the eyes or to perceive it at the end of a scalpel.
Henry's philosophy goes on to aver that we undergo life in a radical passivity, we are reduced to bear it permanently as what we have not wanted, and that this radical passivity of life is the foundation and the cause of suffering.The Essence of Manifestation (§ 53)La barbarie (§ 4, pp. 126–128) No-one has ever given himself life. At the same time, the simple fact of living, of being alive and of feeling oneself instead of being nothing and of not existing is already the highest joy and the greatest happiness. Suffering and joy belong to the essence of life, they are the two fundamental affective tonalities of its manifestation and of its "pathetic" self-revelation (from the French word pathétique which means capable of feeling something like suffering or joy).The Essence of Manifestation (§ 70)
For Henry, life is not a universal, blind, impersonal and abstract substance, it is necessarily the personal and concrete life of a living individual, it carries in it a consubstantial Ipseity which refers to the fact of being itself, to the fact of being a Self.Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair (Introduction, p. 29) This life is the personal and finite life of men, or the personal and infinite life of God. For Michel Henry, human life is indeed a finite life, because it is marked by a fundamental lack which manifests itself in particular in suffering, in dissatisfaction or in desire.Michel Henry, C'est moi la Vérité, éd. du Seuil, 1996, Michel Henry, Paroles du Christ, éd. du Seuil, 2002,
A theory of subjectivity
While the question of being regained importance in France in the posterity of Heidegger, and that the question of the subject was revived, Michel Henry has combined the most living contributions of philosophy to produce what remains today the last complete philosophical system.Philippe Grosos, Questions de système. Etudes sur les métaphysiques de la présence à soi, éd. l’Age d’Homme, 2007, chapter entitled « Michel Henry ou le dernier système », .Philippe Grosos, Revue Les études philosophiques (numéro 2 de avril - juin 1998), article entitled « Michel Henry ou le dernier système », p. 197-218. Life or "absolute phenomenological life" is the base or the foundation of this philosophical system, it is its radical presupposition and its "undeductible" principle, and so the essence or the foundation of all truth according to Michel Henry. Life escapes by principle and according to him to any "distanciation", to any transcendence, merging in the unity of a feeling (épreuve in French) the speculative power of a principle and the material presence of an experience.
Being bullied or denied, returning its forces against itself,Michel Henry, La barbarie, éd. Grasset, 1987, . or on the opposite deploying itself freely as in the art, in the love or in the work,Michel Henry, Voir l’invisible, éd. François Bourin, 1988, .Michel Henry, La barbarie, éd. Grasset, 1987, . life through its multiple manifestations focalizes all the concerns of Michel Henry's thought. So phenomenology reaches according to Michel Henry its limits, as the "texture" of phenomenality itself and its simple manifestation refers constantly to the inner reality and to the effectivity of life, which it requires as a condition of possibility. This is the meaning of the title of the main work of Michel Henry, The essence of manifestation: the world appears behind a subject, who discovers this space of exteriority only because he is firstly in passive relation with himself, as being living.Michel Henry, L'essence de la manifestation, PUF, 1963, voir § 53, p. 585-598 et § 70, p. 860-861.
But it is important to be precise and even to underline that for Michel Henry, the human is an incarnated being, he is not reduced to a “pure spirit who surveys the world” or to a “disincarnate subject, like the Kantian spectator of the Paralogisms”.Michel Henry, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, ed. Nijhoff, 1975, p. 7. And that for him, the subjectivity is identical with the body, which doesn't reduce at all to an external and objective body as it appears into the world, but which is on the opposite and in reality a subjective and living bodyMichel Henry, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, ed. Nijhoff, 1975, p. 8-10 and § II (p. 52-76). which reveals itself permanently from the interior through the movement and sensingMichel Henry, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, ed. Nijhoff, 1975, § III (p. 77-107). and by which we can act on the external world.Michel Henry, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, ed. Nijhoff, 1975, p. 52-53.Antoine Vidalin, La Parole de la Vie, éd. Parole et Silence, 2006, p. 51-55.
Two modes of manifestation
Two modes of manifestation of phenomena exist, according to Henry, which are two ways of appearing: "exteriority", which is the mode of manifestation of the visible world, and phenomenological "interiority", which is the mode of manifestation of invisible life.See for example the conclusion of L'Essence de la manifestation, PUF, 1963 (§ 70, p. 860) Our bodies, for instance, are in life given to us from the inside, which allows us, for example, to move our hands, and it also appears to us from the outside like any other object that we can see in the world.Michel Henry, Voir l’invisible, éd. François Bourin, 1988 (pp. 14–18)
The "invisible", here, does not correspond to that which is too small to be seen with the naked eye, or to radiation to which the eye is not sensitive, but rather to life, which is forever invisible because it is radically immanent and never appears in the exteriority of the world. No one has ever seen a force, a thought or a feeling appear in the world in their inner reality; no one has ever found them by digging into the ground.Michel Henry, Incarnation, éd. du Seuil, 2000 (Introduction, p. 27)
Some of his assertions seem paradoxical and difficult to understand at first glance, not only because they are taken out of context, but above all because our habits of thought make us reduce everything to its visible appearance in the world instead of trying to attain its invisible reality in life. It is this separation between visible appearance and invisible reality which allows the dissimulation of our real feelings and which grounds the possibility of sham and hypocrisy, which are forms of lies.Michel Henry, C'est moi la Vérité, éd. du Seuil, 1996 (p. 16, pp. 218–222 and p. 301)
The absolute Truth of Life