Michel Henry is a Philosophe and a Romancier French born the January 10th 1922 with Haiphong (Vietnam) and deceased the July 3rd 2002 with Albi (France).

Life and work of Michel Henry

Biography

Michel Henry lived in Vietnam until the 7 years age; whereas it had only seventeen days, it lost there his father ordering in the navy, because of an car accident. The weather settled then in France with his mother and was her studies in Paris. As of June 1943, it engages in the Resistance where it joined the maquis of the High Jura under the name of code of Kant, and will have to go down again of the mountain to achieve its missions in Lyon occupied by German and squared by the Nazis, an experiment of the clandestinity which deeply will mark its philosophy.

At the conclusion of the war, it passes the aggregation of philosophy, then is devoted to the preparation of a thesis under the direction of J. Hyppolite, J. Wahl, P. Ricoeur, F. Alquié and H. Gouhier. It then writes starting from this thesis its first book: Philosophy and phenomenology of the body and finish it in 1950. Then it is devoted to its first great work which will be published in 1963, the gasoline of the demonstration .

Michel Henry was, as from 1960, professor of philosophy to the Université of Montpellier. The subject of its philosophy is alive subjectivity, i.e. the real life of the alive individuals.

Its novel the love the closed eyes obtained the Renaudot price in 1976.

A phenomenology of the life

The work of Michel Henry is founded on the Phénoménologie, which is the science of the phenomenon. Its reflection leads it to the inversion of the phenomenology of Husserl, which knows like phenomenon only to appear it world, i.e. the externality. Michel Henry opposes to this design phenomenality a radical phenomenology of the life.

Michel Henry defines the life from a phenomenologic point of view as what has faculty and the capacity “to feel and to test oneself in any point of its being”. For him, the life is primarily force and affect, it is essentially invisible, it consists of a pure test of oneself which oscillates permanently between the suffering and the joy, it is an always started again passage of the suffering to the joy. The thought is for him only one way of life because it is not the thought which gives us access to the life, but it is the life which makes it possible the thought to reach oneself.

The life does not see outside, it never appears in the externality of the world. The life feels and tests itself in its invisible interiority and its radical immanence. In the world we never see the life itself, but only of the living beings or the living organisms, we cannot see the life in them. Just as it is impossible to see the heart of others with our eyes or to see it at the end of our scalpel.

The life is not its own base, us did not bring ourselves and by our own means under the condition of alive, the life is given to us permanently without we not having nothing to do there. No one never gave itself the life. We undergo the life in a radical passivity, we are reduced to support it at every moment as what we did not want, it is this radical passivity of the life which is the base and the cause of the suffering., In same time, the simple fact of living, of living being and to feel oneself rather than not to be nothing and not to exist is already the greatest joy and largest of happinesses. The suffering and the joy belong to the gasoline of the life, they are the two fundamental emotional tonalities of its demonstration and its pathetic car-revelation.

For Michel Henry, the life is not a substance universal, blind man, impersonal and abstracted, it is necessarily the personal life and concrete of an alive individual, it carries in it a Ipséité which is consubstantial for him and which indicates the fact of being oneself, the fact of being one Oneself. That it is about the personal life and finished men, or personal life and infinite of God.

Additional details on this phenomenologic design of the life can be found in the articles on the life and the Philosophie of the life.

A theory of subjectivity

Whereas the question of being it took again importance in France in the posterity of Heidegger, and that the question of the subject was started again, Michel Henry combined these contributions to produce his philosophical system. The concept of life is the base, principle indéductible , and thus gasoline of any truth according to Henry. The life, would escape thus essentially from very put remotely, all Transcendance, confusing in the unit of a test the speculative power of a principle and the material presence of an experiment.

The life through its multiple demonstrations focuses all the concerns of the thought of Henry. Phenomenology would reach its limits thus, since the texture itself of phenomenal unceasingly returns us to the effectivity of the life, that it requires as condition. It is the direction of the title of the principal work of Michel Henry, the gasoline of the demonstration : the world is spread only in front of one subject, which discovers this space of externality only because it is initially in relation of passivity with regard to itself, like alive.

Two modes of demonstration

There exists according to Michel Henry two modes of manifestation of the phenomena which are two ways of appearing: the externality which is the mode of manifestation of the visible world, and the phenomenologic interiority which is the mode of manifestation of the invisible life. Our body for example to us is given interior in the life what enables us for example to move our hand or to feel it, and it also appears to us of outside as any other object which one can see in the world.

Invisible it is the question here does not correspond to what is too small to be seen with the naked eye or radiations to which the eye is not sensitive, but to this forever invisible life because it is radically immanente and that it never appears in the externality of the world: nobody forever considering a force, a thought or a feeling in their interior reality to appear in the world.

Originality of its thought

All Western philosophy since its Greek origins recognizes according to Michel Henry only the visible world and the externality like only mode of demonstration. Western philosophy according to him would be locked up in what it calls in the gasoline of the demonstration the “monism ontological”; she would completely be unaware of the invisible interiority of the life, her radical immanence and her mode of originating revelation which is irreducible with any form of transcendence and any externality. When it is question of subjectivity or the life, those are never seized in their purity, they would be systematically brought back to the biological life, their report/ratio external with the world, or as at Husserl with an intentionality i.e. with an orientation of the conscience towards an object which is external for him.

Michel Henry rejects the Matérialisme, which admits like reality only the matter, since the manifestation of the matter in the transcendence of the world constantly presupposes the revelation of the life to itself, that it is to reach it, be able to see it or to be able to touch it. He also rejects the Idéalisme, which brings back the being to the thought and which is unable by principle of seizing reality to be it that he reduces to an unreal image, with a simple representation. For Michel Henry, the revelation of the absolute lies in affectivity and is made up by it.

Reception of its philosophy

Its thesis on the gasoline of the demonstration was accommodated cordially by the members of the jury which recognized the intellectual value and the serious one of his author, however this thesis hardly had of influence on their later work. Its work on Marx was rejected by the Marxists who were criticized hard, as by those which refused to see in Marx a philosopher and who reduced it to an ideologist responsible for the Marxism. Its book on cruelty was regarded by certain as a a little simplistic speech anti-scientist and too edge.

As for its works on Christianity, they rather seem to have disappointed certain professional theologists and exégètes catholic which was satisfied to raise and to correct what they regarded as “dogmatic errors”. Its book It is me the Truth. For a philosophy of Christianity of a lampoon in the theological turning of French phenomenology was the subject on behalf of Dominique Janicaud who sees in the immanence of the life only the assertion of a tautological interiority. Antoine Vidalin published one entitled book the word of the Life in which it advances that the phenomenology of Michel Henry allows a renewed approach of all the fields of theology.

Like says it Alain David in a article published in the philosophical Revue of France and from Abroad (number 3 from July-September 2001), the thought of Michel Henry seems too radical, it too radically changes the practices to think, its reception is done with difficulty, even if all its readers are impressed by his “power”, by “the striking effect” of a thought which “clears all on its passage”, which “causes the admiration” and which however “does not carry the conviction”. Because it is not known if one is confronted with “the violence of a prophetic word or with a pure madness”. Rolf Kühn also affirms in this same review, to explain the difficult reception of the work of Michel Henry, that “if one does not make a pact with any capacity of this world, one inevitably subjects oneself to the silence and criticisms of all the possible capacities, since one reminds any institution that its visible or apparent capacity is not, all in all that impotence , because nobody brings itself in the absolute phenomenologic life. ”

Its works were the subject of many translations, in particular in English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese. A big number of works were devoted to him, especially in French, but also in German, Spanish and Italian. Several international symposiums were also devoted to the thought of Michel Henry to Beirut, Cerisy, Namur, Prague and Paris. Michel Henry is regarded by certain as one of the contemporary philosophers most important, and its phenomenology of the life starts “to make school”. A Center of studies Michel Henry was created at the Saint-Joseph University of Beirut (Lebanon) under the direction of Professor Jad Hatem.

Some outlines of its philosophy

On the societies' problems

Michel Henry did an important work on Karl Marx, which he paradoxically regards one of the first Christian thinkers and as one of the largest philosophers of the Occident, because of importance that he grants in his thought to work living and with the alive individual in which he sees the base of economic reality. The reason for which the true thought of Marx was so badly included/understood and so badly interpreted is due to the complete ignorance of the fundamental philosophical writings of this author in the constitution of the official doctrines of the Marxism because of their very late publication, for example in 1932 only for the German ideology . This work on Marx was published in two volumes entitled respectively Marx I. a philosophy of reality and Marx II. A philosophy of the economy .

In its test on cruelty , Michel Henry wonders about the science, which is based on the idea of a universal truth and like such objective and which thus leads to the elimination of significant qualities of the world, with the elimination of the sensitivity and the life. Science is not bad as a long time in oneself as it is restricted to study nature, but it tends to exclude all the traditional forms from culture, namely art, ethics and the religion. The science delivered to itself led to the technique of which the blind processes develop themselves in a monstrous way without reference to the life.

Science is form of culture in which life denies itself and refuses any value, it is negation practical of life, which is prolonged in a theoretical negation in the form of all the ideologies which bring back any possible knowledge to that of science, namely the social sciences whose objectivity even deprives them of their object: what is worth statistics vis-a-vis the suicide, which they say despair of which it proceeds? These ideologies invaded the university and precipitate it towards its destruction by the elimination of the life of its research and its teaching. Television is the truth of the technique, it is the practice par excellence of cruelty, it reduces any event to the topicality, incoherent and unimportant facts.

This negation of the life results according to Michel Henry from the “disease from the life”, its secrecy dissatisfaction with oneself which leads it to deny itself, to flee itself to flee its anguish and its own suffering. In the modern world, we all are almost condemned as of our childhood to flee our anguish and our own life in the mediocrity of the media universe, an escape of oneself and a dissatisfaction which lead to violence, instead of resorting to the traditional forms most elaborate of the culture which allowed the going beyond of this suffering and its transformation into joy. The culture remains despite everything, but in a kind of incognito, it is dedicated to clandestinity in our company materialist which is sinking in cruelty.

Communism and capitalism are for Michel Henry only the two faces of the same death, which consists of the same negation of the life. The Marxism eliminates the individual life with the profit from universal abstractions like the company, the people, the history or the social classes. The Marxism is a form of Fascism, i.e. doctrines which proceed of the lowering of the individual of which she regards elimination as legitimate. While capitalism substitutes economic entities such as the money, the profit or the interest with the true needs for the life. Capitalism however recognizes the life like source of the value, the wages being the objective representation of real work subjective and alive. But capitalism gradually yields the place other than subjectivity by the modern technology, which replaces alive work by automated technical processes, at the same time eliminating the capacity to create value and thus the value itself: the goods are produced in abundance, but unemployment increases and the money misses constantly to buy them. These topics are developed in its book Communism with capitalism, theory of a catastrophe .

The next book which it projected to write was to be entitled the Book of Dead the and was to deal with what it called the " subjectivity clandestine". A topic which evokes the living condition in the modern world and which refers also to its engagement in Resistance and its personal experience of clandestinity.

On art and painting

Michel Henry was interested in old painting, the great traditional painting which precedes the scientistic figuration by the 18th century and 19th century, but also of abstract creations like those of the painter Wassily Kandinsky. Michel Henry devoted one entitled book Voir to him the invisible one, on Kandinsky where it describes his work in eulogistic terms. He analyzes in this work the theoretical writings of Kandinsky on art and painting in their spiritual and cultural dimension like means of increase in oneself and refinement of the sensitivity. He explores the means of painting which are the forms and the colors, he studies their effects on the interior life of that which looks at them filled with wonder while following the rigorous and almost phenomenologic analyzes that Kandinsky proposes some. He explains why any form of painting likely to move to us is actually abstract, i.e. it is not satisfied to reproduce the world, but seeks to express this invisible force and this invisible life which we are.

On Christianity

In It is me the Truth, for a philosophy of Christianity , Michel Henry confronts his phenomenology of the life with the texts founders of the Christianisme: the Life likes itself of an infinite love and does not cease being generated itself, it does not cease generating each one of us like his Son or his Daughter beloveds in these eternal of the life. The Life is not other thing only this absolute of love which the religion calls God. The command to like is not an ethical law, but the Life itself. This work also proposes a phenomenology of the Christ, who is included/understood as being the First Alive one. The alive one is simply what arrives in oneself in this pure revelation of oneself or car-revelation which is the Life. It is in the form of an effective and singular Ipseity that the Life does not cease being generated itself. It does not cease occurring in the form of one Oneself singular which étreint itself, which tests itself and which enjoys oneself, and that Michel Henry calls the First Alive one. Or the Archi-Wire since he lives the Origin and the Beginning itself, and that he is generated in the lawsuit even in which the Father generates itself.

As he says it in his last book Paroles of Christ , it is in the heart that the life speaks, in its immediate pathetic car-revelation, but this heart is blind with the Vérité, he is deaf with the word of Life, he is hard and egoistic, and it is of him that the evil comes. It is in violence of its car-revelation quiet and relentless, which carries testimony against this degenerated life and the evil which comes from it, that is held the Judgment which is identical to the arrival of each Oneself in itself and from which no one cannot escape.

In its book Incarnation, a philosophy of the flesh , Michel Henry starts by opposing the flesh alive and sensitive, such as we test it permanently interior, to the material and inert body, such as we can see it outside, similar to the other objects which one finds in the world. The flesh does not correspond at all in its terminology to the soft part of our material and objective body, in opposition to the bones for example, but so that it called in its former books our subjective body . For Michel Henry, an object does not have interiority, it is not alive, it does not feel itself and does not feel that it is touched, it does not make the subjective experiment be touched.

After having located the difficult problem of the incarnation from the historical point of view while going up at the thought for the Fathers for the Church, it makes in this work a critical second reading of the phenomenologic tradition which leads to the inversion of phenomenology. He then proposes to work out a phenomenology of the flesh which leads to the concept of originating flesh nonmade up but given in the archi-revelation of the Life, as well as a phenomenology of the Incarnation.

On the psychoanalysis

Michel Henry made a study of the historical and philosophical genesis of the psychoanalysis in the light of the phenomenology of the life in his book Généalogie of the psychoanalysis, the beginning lost , in which it shows that the concept freudienne of unconscious results from the incapacity from Freud, his founder, to think the gasoline of the life in his purity. The driven back representation is not the unconscious one, it is simply not formed: the unconscious one is only one empty representation, there does not exist, or rather the true unconscious one, it is the life itself in its pathetic reality. And it is not the repression which causes the anguish, whose existence is due to the only fact of being able, but psychic energy or the unemployed libido. As for the concept of conscience, it means simply the capacity to see, it is only one conscience of object which leads to an empty subjectivity.

Works

Philosophical works

• Gasoline of the demonstration (1963)
• Philosophy and Phénoménologie of the body (1965)
• Marx :
• I. a philosophy of reality (1976)
• II. A philosophy of the economy (1976)
• Genealogy of the psychoanalysis. The beginning lost (1985)
• Cruelty (1987)
• See the invisible one, on Kandinsky (1988)
• material Phenomenology (1990)
• Of Communism to capitalism. Theory of a catastrophe (1990)
• It is me the Truth. For a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
• Incarnation. A philosophy of the flesh (2000)
• Words of Christ (2002)

Posthumous works

• Car-donation. Talks and conferences (2002)
• the happiness of Spinoza (2003)
• Phenomenology of the life :
• Volume I. phenomenology (2003)
• Volume II. Subjectivity (2003)
• Volume III. Art and of the policy (2003)
• Volume IV. On ethics and the religion (2004)
• Talks (2005)

Literary works

• the young officer (1954)
• Love closed eyes (1976)
• the Son of the king (1981)
• the indiscreet corpse (1996)

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