“So my flesh is not only the principle of the constitution of my objective body, it hides in it its invisible substance. Such is the strange condition of this object that we call a body : it doesn’t consist at all in the visible appearance to which we have always reduced it ; precisely in its reality it is invisible. Nobody has ever seen a man, but nobody has ever seen his body either, if by "body" we understand his real body.”

— Michel Henry

Michel Henry, Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair, éd. du Seuil, 2000, p. 221
Books on Religion and Christianity, Incarnation: A philosophy of Flesh (2000)
Original: (fr) Ma chair n’est donc pas seulement le principe de la constitution de mon corps objectif, elle cache en elle sa substance invisible. Telle est l’étrange condition de cet objet que nous appelons un corps : il ne consiste nullement en ces espèces visibles auxquelles on le réduit depuis toujours ; en sa réalité précisément il est invisible. Personne n’a jamais vu un homme, mais personne n’a jamais vu non plus son corps, si du moins par « corps » on entend son corps réel.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "So my flesh is not only the principle of the constitution of my objective body, it hides in it its invisible substance.…" by Michel Henry?

Michel Henry 45

French writer 1922–2002

Related quotes

“When we speak, in gestures or signs, we fashion a real object in the world; the gesture is seen, the words and the song are heard. The arts are simply a kind of writing, which, in one way or another, fixes words or gestures, and gives body to the invisible.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

Introduction
The Gods (1934)

“Saying that what we call our “selves” consist only of our bodies and that reason, soul, and love arise only from the body, is like saying that what we call our body is equivalent to the food that feeds the body. It is true that my body is only made up of digested food and that my body would not exist without food, but my body is not the same as food. Food is what the body needs for life, but it is not the body itself. The same thing is true of my soul. It is true that without my body there would not be that which I call my soul, but my soul is not my body. The soul may need the body, but the body is not the soul.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Path of Life (1909), p. 12

“We ought to cherish the body. Our body's substance is not from an evil principle, as the Manicheans imagine, but from God. And therefore, we ought to cherish the body by the friendship of love, by which we love God.”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

II–II, q. 25, art. 5
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

“I'm not a body with a soul, I'm a soul that has a visible part called the body.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

“God can do anything. He has all power in the palm of His Hand. My Body, like all other bodies, is a temporary habitation; but, My Power is eternal, all-pervasive, ever-dominant.”

Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru

Christmas Day Discourse, Bombay 1970. page 136, US ed. of Kasturi's Sathyam Sivam Sundaram Vol 3.

“Within the physical body every human being has a subtle body made up of invisible structures and energies (kundalini, nadis, and chakras); and within the subtle is the causal body out of which the subtle and physical bodies are formed.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Source: Ashtanga Yoga Primer, 1981, p.11

“He has the wisdom of an old man, but his body is at its prime”

Aeschylus (-525–-456 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Source: Seven Against Thebes (467 BC), line 622 (tr. Herbert Weir Smyth)

“God is the most noble of beings. Now it is impossible for a body to be the most noble of beings; for a body must be either animate or inanimate; and an animate body is manifestly nobler than any inanimate body. But an animate body is not animate precisely as body; otherwise all bodies would be animate. Therefore its animation depends upon some other thing, as our body depends for its animation on the soul. Hence that by which a body becomes animated must be nobler than the body. Therefore it is impossible that God should be a body.”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

I, q. 3
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

“Not bodies produce sensations, but element-complexes (sensation-complexes) constitute the bodies. When the physicist considers the bodies as the permanent reality, the `elements' as the transient appearance, he does not realise that all `bodies' are only mental symbols for element-complexes”

Ernst Mach (1838–1916) Austrian physicist and university educator

sensation-complexes
Source: 20th century, The Analysis of Sensations (1902), p. 23, as quoted in Lenin as Philosopher: A Critical Examination of the Philosophical Basis of Leninism (1948) by Anton Pannekoek, p. 33

“Christ Himself has said: “They are no longer two, but they are one flesh” (Matt. 19:6). Is it strange then, if they are one flesh, that they should have one tongue and should say the same words, since they are one flesh, Head and body? Let us therefore hear them as one. But let us listen to the Head speaking as Head, and to the body speaking as the body. We do not separate the two realities, but two different dignities; for the Head saves, and the body is saved.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

Source: On the Mystical Body of Christ, pp. 419-420

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Michel Henry 45

Related quotes

Related topics