Michel Henry: Nothing

“Because our flesh is nothing but what, feeling itself, suffering itself, sustaining itself and bearing itself and so enjoying from itself according to always reborning impressions, is able, for this reason, to feel the body which is exterior to it, to touch it as well as being touched by it. What the exterior body, the lifeless body of the material universe, is by principle incapable.”

Michel Henry

Michel Henry, Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair, éd. du Seuil, 2000, p. 8
Books on Religion and Christianity, Incarnation: A philosophy of Flesh (2000)
Original: (fr) Car notre chair n'est rien d'autre que cela qui, s'éprouvant, se souffrant, se subissant et se supportant soi-même et ainsi jouissant de soi selon des impressions toujours renaissantes, se trouve, pour cette raison, susceptible de sentir le corps qui lui est extérieur, de le toucher aussi bien que d'être touché par lui. Cela donc dont le corps extérieur, le corps inerte de l'univers matériel, est par principe incapable.

Universe , Suffering , Feeling

“When what feels nothing and doesn't feel oneself, has no desire and no love, is put at the principle of the organization of the world, it's the time of madness that comes, because madness has all lost except reason.”

Michel Henry

Michel Henry, Du communisme au capitalisme, éd. Odile Jacob, 1990, p. 220
Books on Economy and Politics, From Communism to Capitalism (1990)
Original: (fr) Quand ce qui ne sent rien et ne se sent pas soi-même, n'a ni désir ni amour, est mis au principe de l'organisation du monde, c'est le temps de la folie qui vient, car la folie a tout perdu sauf la raison.

Time , Making love , World , Love

“Because practice is subjective, theory which is always the theory of an object, can't access to the reality of this practice, what it is in itself, but only represent it, in such a way that this representation lets out of itself the real being of practice, the effectivity of the doing. Theory does nothing.”

Michel Henry

Michel Henry, Marx I. une philosophie de la réalité, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Nrf », 1976, p. 353
Books on Economy and Politics, Marx. A Philosophy of Human Being (1976)
Original: (fr) Parce que la pratique est subjective, la théorie qui est toujours la théorie d’un objet, ne peut atteindre la réalité de cette pratique, ce qu’elle est en elle-même, sa subjectivité précisément, mais seulement se la représenter, de telle manière que cette représentation laisse hors d’elle l’être réel de la pratique, l’effectivité du faire. La théorie ne fait rien.

Way , Reality

“But joy has nothing about which it may be joyful. Far to come after the coming of being and to marvel in front of it, joy is consubstantial with being, joy founds it and forms it.”

Michel Henry

Original: (fr) Mais la joie n'a rien au sujet de quoi elle puisse être joyeuse. Loin de venir après la venue de l'être et de s'émerveiller devant lui, elle lui est consubstantielle, le fonde et le constitue.
Source: Michel Henry, L'Essence de la manifestation, 1963, t. 2, § 70, p. 831
Source: Books on Phenomenology of Life, The Essence of Manifestation (1963)

Joy

“The power of the feeling is the gathering which edifies, the being seized by oneself, its blazing up, its fulguration, is the becoming of the being, the triumphant sudden appearance of the revelation. What becomes of, in the triumph of this sudden appearance, in the fulguration of the presence, in the Parousia and, lastly, when there is something instead of nothing, that’s the joy.”

Michel Henry

Original: (fr) La puissance du sentiment est le rassemblement édificateur, l’être saisi par soi, son embrasement, sa fulguration, est le devenir de l’être, le surgissement triomphant de la révélation. Ce qui advient, dans le triomphe de ce surgissement, dans la fulguration de la présence, dans la Parousie et, enfin, quand il y a quelque chose plutôt que rien, c’est la joie.
Source: Michel Henry, L'Essence de la manifestation, 1963, t. 2, § 70, p. 831
Source: Books on Phenomenology of Life, The Essence of Manifestation (1963)

Joy , Appearance , Feeling

“Life is given in its own way, in a completely unique way, even though this singular mode of givenness is universal. Life is given in such a way that what it gives is given to itself and that what it gives to itself is never separated from it, not in the least. In this way, what life gives is itself. Life is self-givenness in a radical and rigorous sense, in the sense that it is both life that gives and life that is given. Because it is life that gives, we can only have a share of this gift in life. No road leads to life except life itself. [...] Life is absolute subjectivity inasmuch as it experiences itself and is nothing other than that experience. It is the pure fact of experiencing itself immediately and without any distance. This is what constitutes the essence of every possible community. Again, what is shared in common is not some thing; instead, it is this original givenness as self-givenness. It is the internal experience that brings to life everything that is and makes what is alive in this experience become alive in and through it alone.”

Michel Henry

Source: Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 120
Source: Books on Phenomenology and Life, Material Phenomenology (1990)

Communication , Universe , Self-confidence , Way

“Material phenomenology is able to designate this invisible phenomenological substance. It is not a nothing but rather an affect, or put otherwise, it is what makes every affect, ultimately every affection, and every thing possible. The phenomenological substance that material phenomenology has in view is the pathetic immediacy in which life experiences itself. Life is itself nothing other than this pathetic embrace and, in this way, is phenomenality itself according to the how of its original phenomenalization. Life is thus not a something, like the object of biology, but the principle of every thing. It is a phenomenological life in the radical sense where life defines the essence of pure phenomenality and accordingly of being insofar as being is coextensive with the phenomenon and founded on it. For what could I know that could not appear ?”

Michel Henry

Source: Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 2-3
Source: Books on Phenomenology and Life, Material Phenomenology (1990)

Appearance , Way , Sense , Life

“Experiencing oneself as Life does is to enjoy oneself [jouir de soi]. Enjoyment does not presuppose any differences similar to those in which the world is born: it is homogeneous phenomenological material, a monolithic affective body whose phenomenality is affectivity as such. The self-revelation of Life is not a formal structure that can be conceived on the basis of “outside oneself” and in terms of its own structures, since these are bypassed, overcome while being maintained in this very bypassing. The self-revelation of life is its enjoyment, the primordial self-enjoyment that defines the essence of Living and thus of God himself. According to Christianity, God is Love. Love is nothing other than the self-revelation of God understood as in its pathetic phenomenological essence, specifically, the self-enjoyment of absolute Life. This is why the Love of God is the infinite love in which he eternally loves himself, and the revelation of God is none other than this Love.”

Michel Henry

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 30

Love , Life , God , World

“Where is a self-revelation of this sort achieved? In Life, as its essence, since Life is nothing other than that which reveals itself – not something that might have an added property of self-revealing, but the very fact of self-revealing, self-revelation as such. Everywhere that something like a self-revelation is produced there is Life. Everywhere there is Life, this self-revelation is produced. If, then, the Revelation of God is a self-revelation that owes nothing to the truth of the world, and if we ask where such a self-revelation is achieved, the answer is unequivocal: in Life and in Life alone. Therefore we are in the presence of the first fundamental equation of Christianity: God is Life – he is the essence of Life, or if one prefers, the essence of Life is God. Saying this we already know what God is, but we do not know it through the effect of some knowledge or learning – we do not know it through thought, against the background of the truth of the world. Rather we know it, and we can know it, only in and through Life itself. We can know the essence of God only in God. But this observation is premature.”

Michel Henry

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 27-28

Knowledge , Life , God , Learning

“Language has become the universal evil. And we can certainly see why. What characterizes any word is its difference from the thing – the fact that, taken in itself, in its own reality, language contains nothing of the reality of the thing, none of its properties. This difference from the thing explains its indifference to the thing. Since a word has nothing in itself that is identical or similar to what is in the thing, it could as well be united with any other thing whatever. One could use the same name for two different things or else attribute several names to the same thing. But because, in and of itself, the word contains nothing that is real and ignores everything about that reality, it could just as well bring reality back to itself, identify with it, define it, in such a way that everything the word says becomes reality, and pretends to stand for it. Emerging from its own powerlessness, the power of language suddenly becomes frightening, shaking up reality, twisting it up in its frenzy.”

Michel Henry

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 9

Indifference , Reality , Universe , Evil