With uncommon humility, Michel Henry offered a new beginning to philosophy, a new and adequate point of departure that changes everything. Over the course of a philosophical career spanning the second half of the twentieth century, he proposed a controversial definition of phenomenality, where “phenomenality” means, or seems to mean, “Revelation” in the full theological sense of the term: the self-revelation of God. This definition of phenomenality strikes some as problematic not merely because it seems to bring phenomenology and theology (...) together in a way that many philosophers and theologians find surprising or undesirable, nor merely because it purports to show in all phenomenological rigor that revelation opens a way of access to God under the name of Life. Henry’s redefinition of phenomenality proposes further that humanity itself is at stake, for this same revelation or phenomenality antecedes each vivant, each “living being,” and bestows concrete character upon all finite life. Revelation or phenomenality, in Michel Henry’s sense of the term, arrives before and without reference to the world or its temporal horizon. Moreover, and more radically, the phenomenality of the world itself depends upon the prior work of revelation, and presupposes it constantly. (shrink)

In this paper, the Sartrean perspective on freedom is situated with respect to the fact that the price of freedom is at issue nowadays like never before. Of particular note is the way recourse is taken to what one might call a ‘commodification’ of freedom. We are not only asked to consider the value of freedom, but to do so in relative terms. In the process, therefore, the questions concerning freedom take on a different guise. On the one hand, what (...) must one give up or trade for freedom? On the other, wouldn’t one rather wish to exchange freedom in favor of a life apparently more stable, less risky, and less uncertain? Within this framework of understanding freedom, a critical question can be raised from Sartre’s perspective. Can freedom really be now less costly, now more? As if at least certain aspects of human freedom did not involve certain costs that are incurred no matter what one values, and no matter the circumstances? (shrink)

Phenomenology is a basic philosophical movement belonging to what is called “continental philosophy.” Recently, a new phenomenology has emerged in France. In the period from Levinas and Henry to Marion and Richir, it has become evident that the phenomenon as such cannot be reduced to a mere constitution by intentional consciousness; rather, it must be considered as an event of appearing that establishes itself by itself. This fundamental insight entails important consequences: on the one hand, a new concept of the (...) subject has been elaborated; on the other hand, a new approach to effective reality and objectivity has been developed. Idealism is overcome, transcendentalism is revised and reinterpreted. These changes will certainly have an impact on the destiny of continental philosophy. (shrink)

Establishes the importance of Husserl's phenomenology for Levinas's ethics.

According to Husserl, the epochè must be left incomplete. It is to be performed step by step, thus defining various layers of “reduction.” In phenomenology at least two such layers can be distinguished: the life-world reduction, and the transcendental reduction. Quantum physics was born from a particular variety of the life-world reduction: reduction to observables according to Heisenberg, and reduction to classical-like properties of experimental devices according to Bohr. But QBism has challenged this limited version of the phenomenological reduction advocated (...) by the Copenhagen interpretation. QBists claim that quantum states are “expectations about experiences of pointer readings,” rather than expectations about pointer positions. Their focus on lived experience, not just on macroscopic variables, is tantamount to performing the transcendental reduction instead of stopping at the relatively superficial layer of the life-world reduction. I will show that quantum physics indeed gives us several reasons to go the whole way down to the deepest variety of phenomenological reduction, may be even farther than the standard QBist view: not only reduction to experience, or to “pure consciousness,” but also reduction to the “living present.”. (shrink)

According to Husserl, the epochè (or suspension of judgment) must be left incomplete. It is to be performed step by step, thus defining various layers of “reduction.” In phenomenology at least two such layers can be distinguished: the life-world reduction, and the transcendental reduction. Quantum physics was born from a particular variety of the life-world reduction: reduction to observables according to Heisenberg, and reduction to classical-like properties of experimental devices according to Bohr. But QBism has challenged this limited version of (...) the phenomenological reduction advocated by the Copenhagen interpretation. QBists claim that quantum states are “expectations about experiences of pointer readings,” rather than expectations about pointer positions. Their focus on lived experience, not just on macroscopic variables, is tantamount to performing the transcendental reduction instead of stopping at the relatively superficial layer of the life-world reduction. I will show that quantum physics indeed gives us several reasons to go the whole way down to the deepest variety of phenomenological reduction, may be even farther than the standard QBist view: not only reduction to experience, or to “pure consciousness,” but also reduction to the “living present.”. (shrink)

Este artículo estudia la posibilidad de que la fenomenología haya dado el giro teológico al haber buscado en Dionisio Areopagita una salida al problema de la ontoteología. Tanto Lévinas como Henry y Marion se acercaron al proceso de la mística dionisiana para encontrar un camino , una ontología , y un encuentro con el fenómeno saturado.

In this paper I focus on a central phenomenological concept in Michel Henry’s work that has often been neglected: generation. Generation becomes an especially important conceptual key to understanding not only the relationship between God and human self but also Henry’s adoption of radical interiority and his critical standpoint with respect to much of the phenomenological tradition in which he is working. Thus in pursuing the theme of generation, I shall introduce many phenomenological-theological terms in Henry’s trilogy on Christianity as (...) well as how he understands the relationship between phenomenology and theology. In the final sections of the paper, I turn to positively defining Henry’s notion of divine generation and examine the theological implications of it in light of his confrontation and rejection of the doctrine of creation in the book of Genesis found in his book, Incarnation: une philosophie de la chair. Humans are not created but are eternally generated, a bold claim that brings Henry to the brink of a kind of interiorized pantheism or Gnostic dualism. Finally, I offer some critical comments specifically about Henry’s doctrine of generation in light of the tension between auto-affection and hetero-affection and thus how one might think after Henry in light of the basic Augustinian theological distinction between self and God and the intentionality of faith opened up by that distinction. (shrink)

Ever since The Essence of Manifestation, Michel Henry’s phenomenology developed in a close dialogue with Husserl. This confrontation led Henry, in 1995, to formulate the project of a “non-intentional phenomenology,” which would find its point of departure in a quite simple question: is intentionality—the key feature of consciousness and of lived experience as such in Husserl’s perspective—able to ground itself? Does it provide its own foundation? If not, in what could its possibility-condition be found? Henry’s gesture invites us not to (...) a purely descriptive attitude toward such intentional acts, but rather to an inquiry into their origin and their inner ground, to submit them to a transcendental interrogation in order to discover “what ultimately makes them possible.". (shrink)

Este artículo busca demostrar que, a partir de los lineamientos presentes en el capítulo II del reciente _Reprise du donné_ es posible proponer cuatro niveles de hermenéutica que nos permiten resolver algunos de los problemas de la fenomenología marioniana lúcidamente planteados por Christina Gschwandtner.

From Jean-Luc Marion’s examination of Gustave Courbet and his painting, it is shown how grief can operate as a model for the hermeneutics of love. This hermeneutics of grief, in turn, makes possible a consideration of all phenomena, and not only the human, as saturated phenomena.

Este artículo se propone evaluar la apropiación marioniana de las nociones de “ciencia rigurosa” y “filosofía primera”. Marion defiende la necesidad de la primacía de la filosofía, pero propone entenderla como una “filosofía última”. Esta lectura marioniana puede ser iluminada a partir de una comparación con la fenomenología del joven Heidegger.