In this book, which remained unfinished at his death, Husserl attempts to forge a union between phenomenology and existentialism.

This book uncovers and explores the constant tension between the historical and the transcendental that lies at the heart of Michel Foucault’s work. In the process, it also assesses the philosophical foundations of his thought by examining his theoretical borrowings from Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, who each provided him with tools to critically rethink the status of the transcendental. Given Foucault’s constant focus on the (Kantian) question of the possibility for knowledge, the author argues that his philosophical itinerary can be (...) understood as a series of attempts to historicize the transcendental. In so doing, he seeks to uncover a specific level that would identify these conditions without falling either into an excess of idealism (a de-historicized, subject-centered perspective exemplified for Foucault by Husserlian phenomenology) or of materialism (which would amount to interpreting these conditions as ideological and thus as the effect of economic determination by the infrastructure). The author concludes that, although this problem does unify Foucault’s work and gives it its specifically philosophical dimension, none of the concepts successively provided (such as the e;piste;mè, the historical a priori, the regimes of truth, the games of truth, and problematizations) manages to name these conditions without falling into the pitfalls that Foucault originally denounced as characteristic of the “anthropological sleep”—various forms of confusion between the historical and the transcendental. Although Foucault’s work provides us with a highly illuminating analysis of the major problems of post-Kantian philosophies, ultimately it remains aporetic in that it also fails to overcome them. (shrink)

This article considers the possibility of articulating a renewed understanding of the principle of political idealism on the basis of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. By taking its point of departure from one of the most interesting political applications of Husserl’s phenomenological method, the ordoliberal tradition of the so-called Freiburg School of Economics, the article raises the question of the normative implications of Husserl’s eidetic method. Contrary to the “static” idealism of the ordoliberal tradition, the article proposes that the phenomenological concept of (...) political idealism ought to be understood as a fundamentally dynamic principle. As opposed to the classical understanding of political idealism as the implementation of a particular normative model—political utopianism—the phenomenological reformulation of this idea denoted a radically critical principle of self-reflection that can only be realized on the basis of perpetual renewal. In order to illustrate this point, the article considers Husserl’s distinction between two types of ideals of perfection, the absolute and the relative, and argues for their relevance for political philosophy. (shrink)

This article, published originally in French just after the 1989 release of Jean-Luc Marion’s book Reduction and Givenness, consists of a sustained critical study of the manner in which Marion advances from the basic principles of phenomenology. Henry outlines briefly three principles, “so much appearance, so much being,” “the principle of principles” of Ideas I, “to the things themselves!” before entering into a lengthy dialogue with Marion’s proposal of a fourth principle: “so much reduction, so much givenness.” Henry submits each (...) principle to critique, highlighting that they contain confusing premises. Henry is appreciative of Marion’s capacity to root the appearing of phenomena in givenness, but he ultimately finds problematic the gap between the call and response that is a fundamental structure of Marion’s fourth principle. Henry, in contrast, develops his own theme of pure givenness, expressed in the form of subjectivity he calls auto-affection, in the final pages of the article. (shrink)