MICHEL HENRY’S ONTOLOGICAL DUALISM: AN INTERPRETATION AND DEFENSE

Michel Henry was one of the leading phenomenologists of thelast fifty years. He made significant contributions to the studyof self-awareness and affectivity. Based on his reading of Mainede Biran, Henry also had a good deal to say about perception,embodiment, and action. He wrote a book on Marx that isastonishing, as much for what it asserts about Marxism (“theinterrelated set of misinterpretations that have been givenconcerning Marx”)1, as for what it insinuates about the humansciences (they stand accused of a μετάβασις είς άλλο γένος). Inlater years he developed a trenchant criticism of scientism,essayed in the philosophy of painting, and devoted several worksto Christian thought. By way of the latter, Henry became aprominent representative of the “theological turn” in Frenchphenomenology.

Though Henry’s pursuits were wide-ranging, he surely wouldhave regarded his analysis of the essence of manifestation as hismost important philosophical achievement. This is an analysis ofthe conditions on which that which is manifest, the phenomenon,is manifest. If the phenomenon is the given, this may also becalled an analysis of the “how” of givenness. According to Henry,there are two distinct modes of manifestation, two distinct waysin which the given is given. ‘Transcendence’ designates one,‘immanence’ the other. This is the distinction for which Henryargued at length in The Essence of Manifestation. This is thedistinction to which he would return time and again in subsequentworks.

This is also the distinction upon which critics have seized.In what follows, I reply to some of the most frequently voiced oftheir objections. I do so by first clarifying Henry’s ontologicaldualism. This is the view, just sketched, that there are twodistinct modes of manifestation. I then show that many objectionsto Henry’s position are based on misinterpretation. Critics veryoften take issue with Henry’s claim that immanence excludestranscendence. There is a sense in which they are right to do so.There is a sense in which immanence does not excludetranscendence. But this is not the sense in which Henry claimsthat it does. I then turn to Henry’s contention thattranscendence is founded upon immanence. Explication in this caserequires some discussion of the conceptual apparatus upon which

Henry relies: Husserl’s theory of parts. This sets the stage forconsideration of what is perhaps the most interesting objectionto ontological dualism: contra Henry, critics maintain thattranscendence and immanence are interdependent. I argue, first,that it is far from clear that Henry denies interdependence. Iargue, second, that critics have failed to establish thatinterdependence is incompatible with Henry’s analysis of theessence of manifestation.

ONTOLOGICAL DUALISM

Enzo Paci’s Phenomenological Diary includes a description of livedexperience (Erlebnis) that nicely captures the constitutivefeatures of transcendence. The entry dated October 30th, 1958,recounts an incident from a quarter-century prior. Paci had justread Cartesian Meditations for the first time, but “without sufficientunderstanding.” Looking for help, he paid a visit to the study ofhis mentor, Antonio Banfi. "Do you see this vase of flowers?”Banfi asked. “Try to say, to describe what you actually see."Paci admits having failed, back then, to see the point of theexercise. But now, many years later, he does. His descriptiongoes as follows:

. . . the surface of the vase, in the center appears to mecloser, while gradually toward the sides it is farther. Itrecedes with the modalities typical of a curve, in such away as to give me the idea of roundness, and Ican presume that such idea will be confirmed if I move andsee how it appears to me, how the vase reveals itself to me,as I keep looking at it as I move. But the vase is notsimply a form. It is a solid, it has colors. It is locatedin a certain light, in a certain chiaroscuro. If I approachit, I can touch it. The visual sensations are in a specificrelation to the tactile sensations. I can move it, and putit back in its place. It is localized relative to me. Inorder to carry out these operations I need time. Time tolook at it, time to touch it. I can interrupt this time,close my eyes and stop touching it. But if I close my eyes,something of that vision remains in me (this remainingis retention), something which I find again when I open my

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eyes. I find again what I saw, where it was: I say it doesnot move. If I find it somewhere else, I say it moved. If Imove closer, with my eyes closed, I find the vase again evenif, from the position in which I opened my eyes, I had neverseen it. This presupposes that, seen from the side oppositeto the one from which I am looking at it, and from which Ihave never looked at it before, the vase will present itselfto me in a certain way: I am waiting, I am in the time ofwaiting (in protention). It may be that the vase is not theway I thought it was. I realize then that I have not seenwhat I expected to see, that my presumption that it was in acertain way has not been confirmed. How many factors areinvolved! The ones I mentioned are just a few indeed. Inreality, what is involved is the way in which I experiencereality, my Erlebnis of the thing, the way in which the thinggives itself to me, how it gives itself to me.Phenomenology is the science of the modalities of suchgiving, is the science of the "how."2

The vase is given in horizon. That is how it is given. The centerof the vase is seen as closer than the sides, and the surface, asit approaches the sides, curves away, suggesting roundness. Butthe facing side of the vase does not, strictly speaking, showroundness. Seeing the vase as round involves taking the vase tohave features beyond those currently in view. Were the vaseround, then other sides of the vase, presently unseen, would becurved in the same manner as the facing side. Seeing the vase asround involves presumption concerning that which is presentlyconcealed. The horizon of the vase, more precisely its innerhorizon, consists of those features it is presumed to possesseven though they are not presently shown. If I see a vase asround when looking at it side-on, these horizonal aspects of thevase correspond to what I know how to do. They correspond to theexercise of my corporeal powers, movements I know how to make.The far side of the vase, presently occluded by the facing side,is the side that would exhibit the same curvature as the facingside if I were to walk around and have a look. Solidity likewisebelongs to the inner horizon of the vase. The vase is seen as asolid, three-dimensional object, rather than a colored, three-dimensional form. Seen as solid, the vase is seen as possessing afeature that would be presented by touch, as in grasping it orgiving it a nudge. It is also seen as mobile, despite the fact

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that I have not moved it. This too is something I know how to do.Picking up the vase and moving it, walking around the vase inorder to see the far side: these things take time. Presumably,the vase is an enduring object. It was there before I looked atit, and features I presently take it to possess are features itwill still possess if I exercise my powers of walking, grasping,nudging, etc. The vase is perceived as existing for a time, aduration extending beyond the time of my seeing it. The vase doesnot pop out of existence when I close my eyes. Were I to close myeyes, open them, and find the vase in a different position, Iwould see it as having moved, and thus having endured,unobserved, during the time of movement. The inner horizon of thevase, then, involves both spatial and temporal determinations.

The vase is seen to have some color, and seeing this color isseeing it as it looks in this light. This color, the “real”color, would look different under changed lighting conditions.The color of the vase is, like its shape, given in adumbrations,a “side” at a time. I may or may not be able to see the source ofthe light. The light source, in any case, belongs to the outerhorizon of the vase. The vase is perceived in the context ofother things, not all of which are presently in view. If the vasesits on a table next to a wall of the study, it is seen ascovering a part of the table’s surface and it is seen as in frontof a part of the wall that it presently blocks from view. Thatwall is seen as having an opposite side, which either delimitsthe interior of an adjacent room or forms the exterior of thewhole building. The opposite side of the wall and the exterior ofthe building likewise belong to the outer horizon of the vase.Seeing the vase thus involves presuming that both it and itssurroundings have features which are not presently shown butwhich could eventually reveal themselves in the course ofexperience.

Perception of the vase also involves what Henry calls‘phenomenological distance.’ This too is how the vase is given.

1 Michel Henry, Marx: a Philosophy of Human Reality, reworked and abbreviated byM. Henry, trans. K. McLaughlin (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1983), 1.2 Enzo Paci, Phenomeneological Diary, trans. Luigi M Bianchi, http://www.yorku.ca/lbianchi/paci/diary_ver_02.html (accessed on November 4, 2014).

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The center of the vase is closer to me than its sides. I see thewhole vase as spatially related to my body. I can approach thevase and touch it, making it maximally proximate. But no matterhow close I get to the vase in the course of perceiving it,distance in Henry’s sense remains. Perception is perception of anob-ject, of that which is placed before or in front of it.Perception is awareness of that which stands apart from thepercept itself; it is awareness of something di-stant.Phenomenological distance is not unique to perception.Imagination also involves distance; it too has an ob-ject. If Iimagine the protagonist of Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle, who Iimagine, Knausgård, stands apart from my imagining. The sameholds for intentional Erlebnisse of other kinds, such as memory orcategorial intuition. Recalling a Leon Golub exhibit, thepaintings stand apart from my recollection of them. The fact thatidentity is a reflexive relation stands apart from my thinking itso.

Paci’s description is incomplete, as he himself acknowledges.He might have added that the vase is functional. It serves todisplay flowers, and to this end might be placed on a table ordesk. Tables and desks are used with chairs, papers, pens, books,lamps, doors, and windows: equipment of the sort that makes up astudy. One knows how to deal with such things in order to proof apaper, grade an exam, or meet with a student, all for the sake ofbeing a professor or a mentor. The vase, chairs, papers, etc. areZuhanden. They belong to an equipmental whole which is itselflinked to a host of things to be done and that for-the-sake-of-which one does those things. One’s dealings with Zuhanden aretemporally structured. Already on hand, items in the study aretaken up in order to bring about whatever is appropriate forprofessors, mentors, and students.

Note that the vase is given in a horizon even if Dasein isabsorbed in coping with it rather than just staring at it. Thisis implied by the fact that the vase refers to other elements ofthe equipmental whole to which it belongs, to that which is donewith that equipment, to the persons by whom, with whom, or forwhom these things are done, and to that for-the-sake-of-whicheach of those people do those things. It is also implied by thefact that one’s dealings with the vase are temporally structured.Notice too that any coping with the vase involves

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phenomenological distance. The vase is an ob-ject, even if it isencountered as Zuhanden rather than Vorhanden. Even if one, havinglong dwelt in a study, effortlessly and transparently replenishesthe vase’s water while focused on the details of an upcominglecture, one must still walk over to the vase, reach out towardit, and pour in the water, all while taking care not to waterone’s books and papers by mistake. That over to which one walks,that toward which one reaches, that into which one pours isdifferent from one’s walking, reaching, or pouring. However longone dwells with the vase, it will always be distant, standingapart from one’s ways of coping with it.

Henry reserves the term ‘transcendent’ for that which standsapart in a horizon. A vase perceived, an author imagined, anexhibit recalled, and a fact categorially intuited are alltranscendent in this sense. Henry calls the horizon within whichthe phenomenologically distant appears ‘the milieu ofexteriority.’ That which is transcendent belongs to this milieu.‘Transcendence,’ or ‘self-surpassing,’ designates the opening upof this milieu. Since any intentional act involves this self-surpassing, all intentional Erlebnisse involve transcendence inHenry’s sense of the term.3

This raises the question of the “how” of givenness oftranscendence itself. That to which phenomenologists refer in thecourse of phenomenological analyses must itself appear. It mustbe, as Henry puts it, “phenomenologically effective.” Erlebnisse,then, must themselves appear; transcendence must itself be given.The question, pressed by Henry, is how? He answers thattranscendence cannot originally be given in the milieu ofexteriority. Transcendence is not originally transcendent.

For suppose it were. Suppose seeing the vase first appeared asthe object of a second-order Erlebnis, an act of reflection. Inthat case, seeing the vase would be given apart from reflectionupon it. If a phenomenological analysis is limited to referringto the phenomenologically effective, then this reflective Erlebnis

3 “. . . all intentionality is based on transcendence, develops ahorizon, the milieu of otherness . . . Intentional knowledge consists inthe establishment of a distance which insurmountably separates us fromthat to which it unites us” Michel Henry, “Does the Concept of ‘Soul’Mean Anything?” trans. G. Etzkorn, Philosophy Today 13 (1969): 109.

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would itself have to appear. But how? By way of a third-orderErlebnis, a reflection on reflection on seeing the vase? But howwould that third-order Erlebnis be given? Appeal to higher-orderacts leads to an infinite regress. Transcendence is not the “how”of the givenness of transcendence. There must be another mode ofmanifestation.

‘Immanence’ designates the mode of manifestation such that thegiven is neither in horizon nor distant. That which is manifestis nothing beyond or apart from its manifestation. That which isgiven and that to which it is given are one and the same.Immanence is therefore an auto-affective mode of manifestation,since that which is given is given to itself.4 Henry contendsthat Erlebnisse such as seeing a vase, imagining an author,recalling an exhibit, and categorially intuiting a fact arephenomenologically effective precisely insofar as they are auto-affective. They are, in a word, self-manifesting. The “how” ofthe givenness of transcendence is immanence.5

Auto-affection is a reflexive phenomenon; as such, it ischaracterized by what Henry calls ‘ipseity.’ That which is givenin the mode of immanence appears to itself. This means that auto-affection involves a minimal form of self-awareness. I believeHenry would grant that auto-affection does not suffice for whatis often meant by ‘the self.’ I see little reason to think thathe would contest the claim that being a self, in some senses of‘self,’ depends on symbolically mediated interaction with others,or that it has to do with culturally available, mostly inexplicitself-interpretations, or that it is inextricably bound up with anarratively structured horizon of events and personages.6 Henry’smain point is simply that auto-affection is a kind of self-awareness and that self-awareness of this kind is constitutive ofbeing a self in at least one sense of that term. He would also4 “Auto-affection is the internal structure of the essence whose property is that of receiving itself.” Michel Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, trans. G. Etzkorn (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), 236.5 “That which does not surpass itself, that which does not hurl itself outside itself but remains in itself without leaving or going out of itself is, in its essence, immanence. Immanence is the original mode according to which is accomplished the revelation of transcendence itself and hence the original essence of revelation.” Henry, The Essence ofManifestation, 227.

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contend that selfhood of this sort is primitive vis-à-vis variousother, more complex forms of selfhood. It is in virtue of thefact that movements such as standing, walking, or gesturing areself-revelatory that one of a number of gesturing bodies is myown, that actions proper to a self-interpretation are my doing,and that a sequence of events is the stuff of my life story.7

As the term suggests, auto-affection is passive. Anything I dois auto-affective in one way or another, but auto-affection isnot my doing. It happens that I am given to myself, and, short oftaking my own life, there is nothing I can do about it. TheErlebnisse that best bring out this pervasive aspect of self-awareness are experiences of suffering and need. In some cases ofsuffering, there is nothing to be done about it. Granted, I mightadopt different attitudes toward suffering. I might treatsuffering as an occasion for perseverance, as an excuse forgiving up, or even as the basis for a memoir recounting “mystruggle.” But suffering remains, and this means that I suffer. Icannot remove what is never distant. This is how I am given tomyself, and this is how I am. Needs are often contingent onchoices, projects, or self-interpretations into which one hasbeen brought up. In some cases, a need can be eliminated bychoosing otherwise, abandoning a project, or “reinventing”oneself through adoption of a radically different way of being-in-the-world. But this is not always the case. Consider needs forfood, drink, sleep, or sex. There are people who at leastsometimes prefer not to have such needs. They have them anyway.They cannot eliminate them by choosing, projecting, or Daseiningotherwise. Sometimes these needs are satisfied, but that is notthe same as making them “go away.” Need, like suffering, is neverdistant. It cannot be removed. Need might pass into satisfaction,

6 For a good discussion of several different concepts of self see Dan Zahavi, Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-person Perspective (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 99-146.7 Cf. Lillian Alweiss, “The Bifurcated Subject,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 17, no.3 (2009): 415-434. Alweiss does not seem to allow for different senses of ‘self’. Selfhood, as she understands it, depends on interaction with others. Together with the assumption that auto-affective phenomena must be non-intentional, this leads her to conclude that the Henryan self would in fact be no one.

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but that is a matter of one way in which I am given to myselfpassing into another.

The distinction between transcendence and immanence amounts toan ontological distinction. Phenomenology, as Henry understandsit, is principally ontological inquiry. It addresses ontologicalquestions, questions about the being of beings, by reference tothe conditions on which beings appear.8 Henry’s analysis hasrevealed two different sets of such conditions, two different“ontological structures.” Hence, the view that there are twodistinct modes of manifestation may be called ‘ontologicaldualism.’9

IMMANENCE EXCLUDES TRANSCENDENCE

That which is given in the mode of immanence does not, assuch, stand apart in a horizon. That which is auto-affective isnot, as such, the ob-ject of an intentional lived experience. Ifauto-affection is a kind of self-awareness, this must be a non-intentional self-awareness. Auto-affection excludes

8 “[The] theme of phemenological ontology is in no way constituted by the determined, and in a certain way material, content of any manifestation whatever, but on the contrary, deals with the ‘how’ of this manifestation and every possible manifestation in general. In a phenomenon, that which makes it something capable of appearing, regardless ofthe determinate content of this thing, is that which is in question.” Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, 39. Or, as he puts it in Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, trans. G. Etzkorn (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1975), “ina phenomenological ontology being is determined solely by the manner in which it presents itself to us” (58). 9 Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body is the one book in which he repeatedly uses the phrase ‘ontological dualism’ to name the view that there are two different modes of manifestation. He is better known for using ‘ontological monism’ to name the view that there is only one mode of manifestation: transcendence. Ontological dualism, in any case, should not be confused with ontic dualism (117). Ontic dualists hold that the set of transcendent beings includes physical and non-physical substances (or properties). Ontological dualism is not a view about partitions of the set of transcendent beings. It is, instead, a view about the conditions on which beings count as beings for us. It amounts to making a transcendental distinction.

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intentionality. Note that this is quite different from claimingthat what is auto-affective is not also intentional. The claimthat auto-affection excludes intentionality does not rule out thepossibility of auto-affective, intentional Erlebnisse. Henry doesclaim that immanence excludes transcendence,10 but this does notmean that what is given in the mode of immanence is not alsoself-surpassing. Critics, however, very often assume that itdoes. When they object to Henry’s phenomenology, it is more oftenthan not on the basis of this assumption.

Consider Bohman’s review of Marx: a Philosophy of Human Reality. Henryreads Marx as having developed an account of subjectivity that isalmost entirely without precedent in the Western philosophicaltradition. “This new subject,” Bohman writes, “engages in thatpure, non-relational activity Marx called praxis. It cannot besubsumed into an objective ontology, nor represent itself as anobject in the world. Once subjectivity is rid entirely of an‘objectivity,’ then action is seen as non-teleological, as self-generating, rather than oriented to some object.”11 Marx’s subjectis the subject of praxis. Henry conceives of praxis as auto-affective activity. Insofar as this activity is auto-affective,it is not related to any object; indeed, it is not even relatedto itself as an object. Bohman’s objection is swift in coming:“it is truly difficult to imagine any adequate description ofordinary and concrete acts of living (such as speaking, makingsomething, even eating) that is not in some way ‘objective,’mediated in a thousand ways with objectivity and sociality so asto make it ‘impure.’”12 Ordinary and concrete acts of livingbelong to a social context apart from which they are simplyunintelligible. They are oriented toward objects in a horizon,where both the objects themselves and their outer horizon aresocial in character. This leaves Henry with a dilemma: eitherpraxis is extremely rare, as with religious experience a laKierkegaard (Bohman’s example), or ordinary and concrete acts ofliving are the actions they are independently of their relationsto objects in horizon, including social context. The first horn

10 Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, 604.11 James Bohman, “A New Phenomenological Marxism: Marx: a Philosophy of Human Reality by Michel Henry,” Human Studies. 13, no.2 (1990): 166. 12 Bohman, “A New Phenomenological Marxism,” 166-7.

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leaves Henry with a concept of praxis that could not possiblymake any important contribution to social philosophy, let alone areconstructed historical materialism. The second horn is simplyabsurd.

Adler’s comparatively charitable Marx review offers the samereading of ‘praxis:’ “Henry states: practice is not intuition –neither sensing nor thinking. To act is not to unfold a horizonin which beings can become phenomenalized and ob-jects.”13 Adlerthinks that practice (which he identifies with praxis) isfundamentally different from sensing or thinking. Both of thelatter are related to that which stands apart in a horizon.Praxis is auto-affective. As auto-affective, it is not sorelated. Since praxis is action, action is unrelated to anythingtranscendent. Unlike Bohman, Adler seems untroubled by theimplications: if speaking is acting, it means nothing, or atleast nothing “out there” in the world; if making is acting, itnever has an end apart from itself; and if eating is acting, itis unrelated to food.14

Critics have viewed Henry’s accounts of embodiment, sensation,and emotion in much the same light. According to MacKinley,Henry’s phenomenology of the body compares most unfavorably withthat of Merleau-Ponty. Whereas Merleau-Ponty regarded thephenomenal body as the vehicle of being-in-the-world, Henry takesthis body to be acosmic:

13 Pierre Adler, “Neither Consciousness, nor Matter, but Living Bodily Activity,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal. 10, no. 2 (1985): 158.14 This interpretation of Henry’s ‘praxis’ is not confined to Marx reviews. Seyler, writing on the ethical implications of Henry’s philosophy, claims that it is “unclear on what grounds we could designate a purely immanent praxis as an action: does action not also and obviously imply intentional components, e.g. in the case of the runner (seeing the track unfolding in front of him, feeling his movements, evaluating the situation from a tactical point of view, etc.), and necessarily imply those components?” Frédéric Seyler, “From Life to Existence: a Reconsideration of the Question of Intentionality in MichelHenry’s Ethics,” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy - Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française, 20, no.2 (2012): 106. Selyler seems to think that running could not be an example of praxis, since running involves intentionality whereas praxis is auto-affective.

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Henry is adamant that our original and transcendentalcorporeality must be understood apart from the world becauseas soon as there is an intentional ecstasis towards theworld, all that which appears is that which is sensed. Hebelieves that the body’s power of sensing only appears assuch when there is no sensing outside ourselves, no openingto the world, no intentionality, and no sensibility.15

Henry holds that the transcendental body is an ensemble ofpowers, such as my powers to walk, grasp, nudge, or sense. Thesepowers are auto-affective. If corporeal powers are self-revelatory, then they cannot also be intentional, or so MacKinleyseems to think: “in preserving the immanence of this auto-affection, [Henry] precludes the appearance in affection ofanything other than flesh, and reduces flesh’s appearance toself-impression.”16 Thus, Henry is supposedly committed to theview that sensing, including seeing, is only self-revelatory onthe condition that it is not about anything other than itself. Ifit is ever to seem to me that I see, I should take care not tolook at anything.

Even friendly critics take a similar approach. Harding, forinstance, struggles to come up with a single clear-cut example ofauto-affection, despite the fact that Henry regards it aspervasive and inescapable. He considers the possibility thatsensing something, as in seeing a vase, might count as auto-affective, but immediately rules this out on the grounds thatseeing something is an intentional Erlebnis: “my awareness that Isee visible things . . . cannot offer us a pure auto-affectionbut only a hetero-affection wherein I feel myself seeing becauseI am seeing something.”17 Auto-affection must be most unusual andmysterious phenomenon.18

Staudigl concurs: “There is no difficulty in claiming thatHenry’s theory of the irrepressible pathos of auto-affection isdistinct from affective states like sensation, which exhibit anintentional or exterior relation to the world.”19 His point is, inpart, that auto-affection is different from being-affected by

15 Shane Mackinley, Interpreting Excess: Jean-Luc Marion, Saturated Phenomena, and Hermeneutics (New York: Fordham UP, 2010), 149.16 Mackinley, Interpreting Excess, 150.

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something exterior; it is different from a relation to anythinggiven in the milieu of exteriority. But Staudigl also seems tothink that affective states like sensation do not count as auto-affective precisely because sensation is intentional. That is whyhe goes on to take the following questions (really objections)quite seriously: “With this all too radical inquiry into theoriginary do we not become trapped in a ‘mysticism of immanence,’that remains enclosed in its own night, forever incapable ofbeing expressed and coming into the world?”; “Doesn’t thesubjectivity, whose parousia is thought here, thus embody that‘beautiful soul’ whose ‘transparent purity’ and lack of relationto the world that Hegel reproached Christianity for?”20

Rudolf Bernet takes the same tack with regard to Henry’saccount of emotion.21 In The Essence of Manifestation Henry treatsemotions such as love and hate as exemplars of auto-affection.According to Bernet, Henry “considers this auto-affection ofsubjective life as concerning a purely impressional consciousnessthat is without relation to any form of intentionality ortranscendence whatsoever.”22 This is a consciousness “whichwithdraws itself from all intentionality to feel the beatingpulse of its own life.”23 It follows that “Michel Henry, by17 Brian Harding, “Auto-affectivity and Michel Henry’s Material Phenomenology,” The Philosophical Forum (2012): 95. 18 Harding is misled by the fact that Henry does at one point characterize auto-affection as mysterious (Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology trans. S. Davidson [New York: Fordham UP, 2008], 17). It isimportant to consider the context in which Henry makes that remark. He is discussing a phenomenology (not his own) that is exclusively concerned with intentionality. From the perspective of a phenomenology that only recognizes transcendence, immanence is quite mysterious. 19 Michael Staudigl, “From the ‘Metaphysics of the Individual’ to the Critique of Society: on the Practical Significance of Michel Henry’s Phenomenology of Life.” Continental Philosophy Review 45 (2012): 345.20 Staudigl, “From the ‘Metaphysics of the Individual’ to the Critique of Society,” 349. He draws these objections from Dominique Janicaud, Phenomenology and the ‘‘Theological Turn’’: The French Debate, trans B. G. Prusak (NewYork: Fordham University Press, 2000), 79 and Bernard Waldenfels, “Antwort auf das Fremde. Grundzüge einer responsiven Phänomenologier,” in Der Anspruch des Anderen. Perspektiven Phänomenologischer Ethik, eds. B. Waldenfels and I. Därmann (Munich: Fink, 1998), 41-2.

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affirming the intensely subjective character of feelingscompletely excludes the possibility that they could still beconsidered intentional lived experiences.”24 If, having claimed tobe in love, I am asked with whom, the only right answer is “noone.”

Each of these readings rests upon on the same assumption: thatwhich is auto-affective cannot also be self-surpassing. Wherethere is an objection, this is its basis. But there are at leasttwo problems with the assumption on which the objections arebased. First, ontological dualism does not imply that immanenceexcludes transcendence in that sense. Second, Henry explicitlyand repeatedly denies that it does.

In The Essence of Manifestation, Henry asserts that “consciousness isone. There are not two consciousnesses without a bond betweenthem and of which we would not know how they can be united, orhow consciousness of the world is also, at the same time, in the unity ofthe same phenomenological event, consciousness of self.”25

Consciousness of the world and self-consciousness are notnumerically distinct. Instead, one consciousness is bothconscious of the world and self-conscious. In The Genealogy ofPsychoanalysis, he holds that subjectivity is “nothing but the self-immanence of ek-stasis.”26 ‘Ek-stasis’ refers to the opening a21 He is not the first to have done so. J. Racette got this particular ball rolling with his précis of The Essence of Manifestation and Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body. Racette, in a generally appreciative essay, expresses a few misgivings. He regrets, for instance, “that a philosophyso deeply spiritual at times seems to articulate itself in a solipsisticatmosphere. This is especially so when Henry wants to define affectivityand feeling without any reference to an object.” J. Racette, “Michel Henry’s Philosophy of the Body,” trans. Lechner, Philosophy Today 13 (1969): 93. 22 Rudolf Bernet, “An Intentionality without Subject or Object?” Man and World 27 (1994): 244.23 Bernet, “An Intentionality without Subject or Object?” 233.24 Bernet, “An Intentionality without Subject or Object?” 241.25 Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, 265.26 Michel Henry, The Genealogy of Psychoanalysis, trans. D. Brick (Stanford: Stanford UP), 68.

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horizon within which beings stand apart. Subjectivity is theself-manifestation of transcendence. Or, as he goes on to say,“the ecstatic explosion that never ceases to bring forth a worldand the center of all possible affection also never ceases, inthe untiring accomplishment of its transcendence, to self-affectitself and thus to experience itself as life.”27 In MaterialPhenomenology, he refers to noeses as “transcendental life.”28

Noeses are intentional Erlebnisse. ‘Life’ is a term of art forHenry. It denotes that which is auto-affective. Hence, noeses areboth intentional and auto-affective. This is confirmed by thePrétentaine interview, where Henry states that “All intentionalityis therefore both self-affective in that it experiences itself,insofar as given to itself, and hetero-affective insofar as itopens itself to other things.”29

As for emotion in particular, Henry claims that one of themost important discoveries of modern philosophy (i.e.,phenomenology) is that affectivity is intentional. “What wouldlove without an object be? How could we deal with a hate whichwould not be the hate of Peter or Paul, the hate of such and sucha social group, the hate of a character trait or of an actualattitude considered as hateful?”30 He does not dispute theintentionality of emotion. His dispute is with phenomenologicalanalyses which reduce emotion to transcendence. To love is notjust to intend an object (even an object of a special sort,outfitted with value-qualities). Insofar as there is something itfeels like to be in love, love is also self-revelatory. Indeed,Henry holds that the term ‘feeling’ really should only apply toemotions insofar as they are auto-affective.31 This is quitedifferent from denying that emotions are intentional.

Henry also regards sensations as intentional. He writes that

every sensation is by its nature the sensation of something.That of which the sensation is the sensation is preciselythe excitant. The excitant is not an unknown term ‘x’,

27 Henry, The Genealogy of Psychoanalysis, 256.28 Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, 77-8. 29 Michel Henry, “Art and the Phenomenology of Life,” trans. M. Tweed, https://www.academia.edu/5595144/Art_and_the_Phenomenology_of_Life_an_interview_with_Michel_Henry (accessed on January 27, 2015), 12.

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determinable only through scientific progress and acting onthe sensorial organ which is itself foreign to the sensibleexperience, it is the object of the experience. To the extentthat sensation refers to an object of which it is thesensation, it is representative.32

But he almost immediately adds that

Sensation has two contents, an immanent and affective one,viz. the content of affected-Being, i.e., that which lifeexperiences when it experiences itself in this specificdetermination which results in it from affection and atranscendent content, i.e., the excitant itself, theaffectant, such as it is presented in sensing and by it.33

Take color sensations. Colors are ordinarily seen as propertiesof objects in a horizon; e.g., the purple of the vase as it looksunder present lighting conditions. Color sensations arerepresentative. They are about properties of objects. Theseproperties are their transcendent content. But there is more tothe experience of color than being in an information state aboutthe distal environment, else “seeing the invisible” would beimpossible. That is the title of Henry’s book on Kandinsky, onechapter of which deals with invisible colors.34 ‘Visible’ forHenry is yet another term of art. It means “belonging to themilieu of exteriority.” The purple of a vase is a visible colorin this sense. ‘Invisible’ for Henry refers to that which isauto-affective insofar as it is auto-affective. Colors are saidto be invisible insofar as seeing color is self-revelatory. It is

30 Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, 486.31 Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, 563-4. In a different, analytic idiom the point might be put this way: to call an emotion a feeling is to refer to it under a description, a description that emphasizes its self-revelatory aspect. Much the same can be said of Henry’s use of the term ‘praxis.’ It refers to actions insofar as they are auto-affective. See discussion below. 32 Henry, The Essence of Manifestation , 502.33 Henry, The Essence of Manifestation 503.34 Michel Henry, Seeing the Invisible, trans. S. Davidson (New York: Continuum,2009), 70-9.

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in virtue of this aspect of color vision that color has emotionalpower in and of itself, independently of whatever role it mightplay in the representation of objects. Supposedly, Kandinskyincreasingly emphasized this dimension of color vision as hemoved away from representational painting and toward totalabstraction. Colors, in any case, are both visible and invisible.Sensations are representative, but they are also auto-affective.

Henry’s views on “transcendental corporeality” are largelybased on Maine de Biran’s radical phenomenology of the body, and“Maine de Biran in no way despised the transcendence of thecorporal existence, the capacity which the body has for making usknow a world.”35 For Biran, “our body is an ensemble of powerswhich we have concerning the world.”36 Henry has no interestwhatsoever in disputing bodily intentionality. The issue is the“how” of givenness of this intentionality. Even well-knownphenomenologists of the body have neglected this issue. “Merleau-Ponty discovered a subjective body, but an intentional subjectivebody, and he did not see that this concept left in the dark adimension of another order that is the pathetic dimension.”37

Henry rates Biran so highly precisely because Biran calledattention to the auto-affectivity of bodily Erlebnisse.

Biran recognized that movements such as pushing are self-surpassing. Pushing and meeting resistance, I become aware ofsomething that opposes my movement, something that stands overand against it, an object.38 But I can only be aware of that whichopposes my movement if I am aware of my movement itself, andawareness of this movement is a matter of making the effort to35 Henry, “Does the Concept of ‘Soul’ Mean Anything?” 107.36 Henry, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, 2.37 Henry, “Art and the Phenomenology of Life,” 14.38 To the best of my knowledge, Henry is one of only three phenomenologists (if we count Maine de Biran) to have recognized the importance of meeting resistance in the course of exercising one’s powers of movement. The third is A. D. Smith, who argues that moving against that which resists (aka the Anstoss) suffices for an experience that is not only sensory but also perceptual: i.e., a sensory experienceof that which is over and against the perceptual organ. See A.D. Smith, The Problem of Perception, (Dehli: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2005), 153-60.

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move. Movement is auto-affective. It is at once both self-awareness and awareness of an object. “Our concrete life whichconstitutes the integral and transcendental experience of itselfas subjective movement constitutes, of itself and at the sametime, the experience of the world as the transcendent terminus,as the resisting continuum.”39 Much the same can be said aboutbodily intentionality generally: “Each of these features of thistranscendental body can only give us that which it gives –seeing, touching, hearing . . . – if it gives itself originallyto itself in the giving that it accomplishes. An immanent auto-donation of this type only happens, however, in life, in itspathetic auto-revelation.”40

As virtually any action involves the exercise of corporealpowers of movement, it follows that actions are self-revelatory:“our action is itself, in its peculiar essence, a knowledge.”Henry’s examples of such knowledge include “washing, doing manualwork, practicing a sport, driving a car.”41 Each is an ordinaryand concrete act of living. It would be most implausible to claimthat none of them “unfold a horizon in which beings can becomephenomenalized and ob-jects,” if only because each involveseffort to move against a resisting continuum. It is also justnon-sense to talk about washing that has nothing to do withanything washed, or driving a car that is in no way automobilerelated. There is no sport that does not involve obstacles. It isdifficult to conceive of manual work that has nothing to do withhandled objects.

Why, then, do Bohman, Adler, et al think that action, for Henry,must be unrelated to objects? Of the numerous passages in Marxthat might suggest such an interpretation, consider thefollowing:

The German Ideology is based entirely on the opposition betweenreality and representation. At the end of the extraordinaryphilosophical itinerary that Marx has covered in the threeyears previous, this opposition takes on a rigorous sense:

39 Henry, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, 75.40 Michel Henry, “Phenomenology of Life,” trans. N. Hanlon, Angelaki: Journalof the Theoretical Humanities 8, no.2 (2003): 107.41 Henry, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, 199.

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it is the opposition between praxis and theory. Praxisdesignates the internal structure of action as it excludesfrom itself the objectification process, all distancing, alltranscendence in general. What is held to be real,consequently, will be whatever excludes from itself thisdistancing, whatever is subjective in a radically immanentsense, whatever experiences itself immediately without beingable to separate itself from itself, to take the slightestdistance with regard to itself, in short, whatever cannot berepresented or understood in any way at all. What is real,therefore, is need, hunger, suffering, labor too –everything that consists in this inner and insurmountableexperience of the self. To the radical immanence of thissubjectivity, which now constitutes reality for him, Marxgave the name appropriate to it: life.42

Several of these claims are apt to mislead.43 But what causes themost trouble is surely the claim that “Praxis designates the42 Henry, Marx: a Philosophy of Human Reality, 160.43 We are told, for instance, that praxis cannot be represented. Subsequent paragraphs explain that ‘representation’ can mean either giving an ob-ject in the flesh (leibhaftig), or giving a stand-in for something, a “mere representation,” as with an image, symptom, or sign. That which is auto-affective cannot be given in the flesh as an ob-ject.Given in the flesh, it is not distant. Since praxis is auto-affective, it follows that praxis cannot be represented in the first sense. This does not rule out the possibility that praxis might be represented in the second sense, as when I see someone chopping wood. His or her chopping is not given to me in the flesh, in the non-intentional self-awareness of swinging the ax – otherwise, his or her chopping would not be his or hers at all; it would be mine. But I can certainly see signs of his or her effort. We are also told that praxis constitutes reality for Marx (and presumably Henry as well), which might suggest that the chopping is real but the wood is not. But this impression is immediatelycorrected when Henry contrasts the reality of objects with the irrealityof their images. Both Henry’s Marx and Henry himself seem willing to countenance a real world. Bohman is therefore mistaken to suggest that for Henry, “the reality of an event such as a race would simply be the plurality of the lived experiences of those who ran in it or witnessed it as a spectator” (“A New Phenomenological Marxism,” 166). In a cyclingrace, the movement of the bicycles from one location to another is a real part of the event. It has something to do with who wins. I see no reason why Henry would be compelled to deny this.

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internal structure of action as it excludes from itself theobjectification process, all distancing, all transcendence ingeneral” (my emphasis). It looks as though Henry is assertingthat any action that counts as praxis cannot be self-surpassing.

But that is not what he is saying. ‘Praxis’ designates theinternal structure of action as it excludes transcendence.‘Praxis’ refers to action insofar as it possesses a certainontological structure. This structure excludes transcendence and,with it, distance and horizon. The aspect of action that excludestranscendence is auto-affectivity, the “insurmountable experienceof the self.” That is why Henry links praxis to need, hunger, andsuffering. Each is an auto-affective phenomenon.

Labor too. Henry goes on to characterizes labor as “adetermination of living praxis possessing its own end, itsproblems, its difficulties, and, above all, its internalpositivity, its tonality, which is identical to the experience ofthe activity that is being performed as it overcomes thedifficulties that it encounters, difficulties that are thecorollary to its free exercise.”44 Labor is an instance of praxis.As with praxis in general, labor possesses its own “internalpositivity” or “tonality,” and this is identified with theexperience of the activity that is being performed. Labor, aspraxis, possesses an experience of laboring. Labor is self-revelatory. Note, though, that labor is the experience of theactivity as it overcomes the difficulties that it encounters. Labor is self-given as coming up against resistance of various kinds. It isboth auto-affective and self-surpassing.

Praxis, as Henry understands it, is neither rare nor absurd.Labor is praxis, and labor takes up most of the waking life of agreat many, if not most human beings. Labor is, furthermore,unintelligible apart from its relations with objects in a socialcontext. In some parts of the world labor remains the manufactureof something, the making of a product with one’s hands. Labor issometimes enjoyed, especially when work is the masterful exerciseof corporeal powers. But in too many cases, labor is tedious,exhausting, and even back-breaking, degrading, or soul-destroying. It would be impossible to explain why anyone would do

44 Henry, Marx: a Philosophy of Human Reality, 227. 20

it but for the fact that it pays the bills, or at least some ofthem.45

TRANSCENDENCE IS FOUNDED UPON IMMANENCE

Misinterpretations of ontological dualism are probably based on the way in which Henry sometimes describes the relationship between immanence and transcendence. For example: “If the imagination did not live as imagination, there would not be any imagination. Thus, the imagination, before projecting the image that it imagines, auto-affects itself.” Later in the same interview he says that “The body, before being what throws me towards objects – “my body rises towards the world” Merleau-Pontysaid – is pathetically one with itself.”46 These formulations suggest that auto-affection is temporally prior to transcendence.If auto-affection is temporally prior to intentionality, the auto-affective cannot very well be intentional. But other formulations make it clear that this is not what he means: “immanence is the condition of transcendence, the reality of the act which sets up the horizon in opposition to itself.”47 He adds that “Opposition can arise, the world is capable of affecting us and touching us, because the power of opposition which opens the

45 There is little reason to think that praxis as Henry conceives it could not play an important role in a reconstructed historical materialism. It might even make for a superior reconstruction, since theconcept of praxis allows Henry to maintain at least some contact with the reality of labor, with the lived experience of labor, even if this contact can in principle amount to no more than “mere representation.” The same cannot be said for the reconstruction favored by Bohman: Habermas’ critical social theory. The latter has a great deal to say about the rationality of the system of which labor is a part and little or nothing to say about what work (or going without work) is like in a capitalist society (or any other society). For examples of descriptions of working and going without work that should be relevant for any theoryof society with practical intent, see Simon Charlesworth, A Phenomenology of Working Class Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000) or, for that matter,Marx’s descriptions of the living and working conditions of wage-laborers in Capital: Volume One.

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world to us and is affected by it, originally affects itself.48 ‘Before’ indicates that immanence is logically prior to transcendence, or, more precisely, that immanence is the foundation of transcendence. Shortly after claiming “That which permits something to be in itself manifesting is what we call a foundation,”49 he tells us that “Transcendence rests upon immanence.”50

Since Henry draws the concept of foundation from Husserl, itpays to give some consideration to Husserl’s definition. Husserlintroduces the notion of a foundation by way of ‘non-independentobject.’

Non-independent objects are objects belonging to such pureSpecies as are governed by a law of essence to the effectthat they only exist (if at all) as parts of more inclusivewholes of a certain appropriate Species.51

A shade of red is a non-independent object, since it can onlyexist as part of a whole that includes some visual expanse. Thisholds for any object belonging to the pure Species color (i.e.,all possible colors). Doubt too is a non-independent object.Necessarily, any doubt has some propositional content, and thismeans that doubt must be part of a whole that includes some act-matter. This holds for all instances of the pure Species act-quality, so not just doubt but also belief, will, refusal, etc.

Husserl then defines ‘foundation’ as follows:

If a law of essence means that an A cannot as such existexcept in a more comprehensive unity which connects it withan M, we say that an A as such requires foundation by an Mor also that an A as such needs to be supplemented by an M.

46 Henry, “Art and the Phenomenology of Life,” 12-3.47 Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, 479.48 Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, 482.49 Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, 40-1.50 Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, 41.51 Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol 2, ed. D. Moran, trans. J. N. Findlay (New York: Routledge, 2001), 12.

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If accordingly A0, M0 are determinate instances of the purekinds A or M, actualized in a single whole , and standing inthe relations mentioned, we say that A0 is founded upon M0,and that it is exclusively founded on M0 if A0s need forsupplementation is satisfied by M0 alone. . . A0 requiressupplementation by, is founded upon a certain moment,plainly means the same as the expression: A0 is non-independent.52

No color exists unless it is part of a more comprehensive unitywhich connects it with visible extension. If there is some shadeof red, it is founded upon some visual expanse. Similarly, ifthere is some doubt, it is founded upon some act-matter.

Husserl uses the notions of non-independent object andfoundation to define two additional concepts, both of which alsoappear to be employed by Henry: abstractum and concretum. Anabstractum is as an object “in relation to which there is somewhole of which it is a non-independent part.” A concretum is awhole relative to which some part is an abstractum.53

Return to Henry’s claim that the body, before being whatthrows me toward objects, is pathetically one with itself. Thismeans that bodily intentionality is a non-independent part of awhole which includes another part on which it is founded: auto-affectivity. Bodily intentionality is an abstractum. This readingis consistent with Henry’s use terms such as ‘abstract,’‘abstractness,’ and ‘abstraction’, as in “The abstractness oftranscendence means its non-phenomenality.”54 Transcendence isabstract insofar as it is not phenomenologically effective byitself. Transcendence only appears on the condition of immanence.

This raises the question of whether auto-affection is also anabstractum. The foundation relation, as Husserl defines it, isneither symmetric nor anti-symmetric. It is possible, then, thatx-is-founded-on-y and y-is-founded-on-x and x≠y. This is a caseof what Husserl calls ‘reciprocal foundation.’55 In such cases,52 Husserl, Logical Investigations, 25.53 Husserl, Logical Investigations, 2954 Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, 21455 Husserl, Logical Investigations, 27

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both x and y are abstracta. Thus, auto-affection would itself bean abstractum if it were in a relation of reciprocal foundationwith transcendence.

What is Henry’s view? He consistently characterizestranscendence as abstract, and never describes auto-affection insuch terms. But emphasis on the abstractness of transcendenceshould be expected of someone who thinks that the entire Westernphilosophical tradition has overlooked the ontological structureon which transcendence depends. When he uses the term ‘concrete,’it is applied to the transcendental,56 as opposed to thetranscendent, and the transcendental, as Henry understands it,involves both immanence and transcendence.

There are passages in which Henry seems committed tounilateral foundation, as in the following commentary onDescartes:

But not all ideas have representational content . . . Thatideas exist as such, deprived and independent of allrepresentational content, independent of seeing and itsekstasis, shows that phenomenality’s original dimension isconstituted neither by representation nor its ekstasis.Insofar as Cartesianism made this essential discovery, itcan be seen as a philosophy of radical interiority andlife.57

In another work, he says that “In this modality of our life[auto-affection] the “outside the self” of the world might aswell be absent.”58 But neither passage is convincing evidence ofunilateral foundation. The point of the first is that Descartesdiscovered immanence. It is not altogether clear that Henryagrees with every step Descartes took en route to this discovery.The second passage might just be an awkward expression of thealready misleading exclusion claim discussed in the previoussection. Other passages strongly suggest reciprocal foundation,especially the claim that every sensation has two contents: oneimmanent, one transcendent. Here is another:

56 Henry, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, 186.57 Henry, Genealogy of Psychoanalysis, 5258 Henry, “Phenomenology of Life,” 103. My gloss.

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But all consciousness is consciousness of something; theinternal transcendental experience is always alsotranscendent experience. If movement is truly anintentionality, it is because it is the very place somethingis also proclaimed to us in the truth of transcendent being.Henceforth, we shall have been correct in asserting that thebeing of the body is truly one of ontological knowledgebecause, in its own revelation to itself, the being of theworld will also be manifested to it.59

The evidence concerning reciprocal foundation is inconclusive,which is not surprising given Henry’s aims. The conclusion forwhich he argues is “Not only transcendence but also immanence.”To this end, he establishes that transcendence is non-independent. He shows, specifically, that transcendence requiressupplementation by a distinct ontological structure. Pursuingthat conclusion by an argument of this kind, it is unnecessary toshow that auto-affection is independent vis-à-vis transcendence.This explains why Henry seems to be unconcerned with the issue.Apparently contradictory statements are signs of his lack ofconcern, as is the fact that none of his major publicationsinclude a sustained attempt to establish the independence ofauto-affection.60

INTERDEPENDENCE OF IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE

This has not prevented critics from taking issue with Henry’sdualism on the grounds that immanence and transcendence areinterdependent. The trouble is not so much that Henry is supposedto have denied this. The problem, instead, is that his account of

59 Henry, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, 71-2.60 The claim that auto-affection is independent vis-à-vis transcendence is a far from obviously true. If Henry holds that auto-affection is independent in Husserl’s sense, then one would expect him to discuss examples of non-intentional experiences at length. Candidate experiencesinclude nausea, anxiety, dizziness, and even dreamless sleep. It is noteworthy that he does not do this. Even when he brings up his favoriteexample of auto-affection, pain, he acknowledges that pain is felt somewhere, as with pain in one’s foot (Henry, The Genealogy of Psychoanalysis,77). Pain, the exemplary immanent phenomenon, is also intentional.

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immanence is incompatible with the fact of interdependence. Thisis the thrust of Zahavi’s criticism. He ends a remarkably luciddiscussion of Henry’s phenomenology with these critical remarks:

Henry operates with the notion of an absolutely self-sufficient, non-ekstatic, irrelational self-manifestation, but he never presents us with a convincing explanation of how a subjectivity essentially characterized by such a complete self-presence can simultaneously be in possession of an inner temporal articulation; how it can simultaneouslybe directed intentionally toward something different from itself; how it can be capable of recognizing other subjects (being acquainted with subjectivity as it is through a completely unique self-presence); how it can be in possession of a bodily exteriority; and finally how it can give rise to the self-division found in reflection. Self-presence (properly understood) is definitely an important feature of our subjectivity, but so is temporality, intentionality, reflexivity, corporeality and intersubjectivity, and an analysis of self-manifestation which does not leave room for these aspects is hardly satisfactory. To put it differently and very concisely (I have addressed the question in more detail elsewhere) I would argue that Henry's approach is problematic and insufficient because it conceives of self-manifestation in abstracto, rather than accounting for the self-manifestation of the self-transcending temporal, intentional, reflexive, corporeal and intersubjective experiences. This prevents Henry from clarifying the relation and interdependency between the self-presence and the self-transcendence of subjectivity, and I believe this must be the task.61

He makes similar remarks in several other articles and a book.62 His point is not simply that self-manifestation and intentionality are interdependent. 63 Rather, Henry’s account of self-manifestation is supposed to have left the relation between immanence and transcendence unclear. Zahavi demands answers to a series of questions about this relation. He claims to have shown that Henry’s analysis of self-manifestation is inconsistent with 61 Dan Zahavi, “Subjectivity and Immanence in Michel Henry,” in Subjectivity and Transcendence, eds. A. Grøn, I. Damgaard and S. Overgaard (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 146-7.

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providing answers, or what Zahavi calls ‘explanations.’ There must, then, be something wrong with Henry’s analysis.

Before turning to consider the argument to which Zahavi refers, it should be noted that there is something odd about his demand for explanation. Recall the examples of foundation relations given above. Color is founded upon visual expanse. Whatexplains the fact that any color is simultaneously part of a whole that includes some visual expanse? How can this be? Act-quality is founded upon act-matter. Indeed, they are in a relationship of reciprocal foundation.64 Do Husserl scholars ask how this can be? Do they demand explanation? Zahavi, for one, does not,65 and there is a good reason for this. It has to do withthe nature of the claim in question.

The claim that act-quality is founded upon act-matter is synthetic a priori. Husserl offers an intensional theory of parts, meaning that the theory includes modal concepts.66 Case in point: the concept of a non-independent part. This is a part suchthat, necessarily, it does not exist except as part of a more comprehensive whole. The concept of foundation is likewise modal in character, since it is defined by way of the concept of non-62 Dan Zahavi, “Michel Henry and the Phenomenology of the Invisible,” Continental Philosophy Review 32, no.3 (1999): 232-3; Self-Awareness and Alterity: a Phenomenological Investigation (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1999), 115; and“The Fracture in Self-awareness,” in Self-awareness, Temporality, and Alterity, ed. D. Zahavi (Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers: 1998), 35. Zahavi consistently maintains that self-manifestation, for Henry, is irrelational: “it cannot in any way be conceived of as a kind of relation” (Self-awareness and Alterity, 113). He cites three passages in support of this interpretation, but in each case it looks as though Henry is simply saying that self-manifestation is not an intentional relation. His interpretation is also inconsistent with Henry’s claim that immanence is a self-relation (Michel Henry, “Material Phenomenologyand Language (or, Pathos and Language),” trans. L. Lawlor, Continental Philosophy Review 32 (1999): 353). Zahavi’s reading is likely informed by his own views about self-awareness. He argues that self-awareness must be irrelational because any relation implies a distinction between at least two relata (Self-awareness and Alterity, 33). But this seems to overlook identity relations. If I say that D. Z. is the same person as D. Z., I do not make any distinction between D. Z. and himself. I do not claim that there are two of him. I point this out because, on my reading, auto-affection is a reflexive phenomenon, and reflexivity is a characteristic of relations.

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independent part. To say that act-quality and act-matter are in arelation of reciprocal foundation is thus to make a claim about anecessity. By Husserl’s’ lights, it is therefore a priori. It is synthetic, again in Husserl’s terms, insofar as it is not a substitution instance of an analytic claim. Analytic claims are claims of formal ontology or formal apophantics.67

It might make some sense to ask for an explanation of a synthetic a priori truth such as the following: doubt must be part of a whole that includes some act-matter. Explanation could take this form: doubt belongs to the pure Species act-quality; and it is a law of essence that act-quality is founded upon act-matter. Or consider the claim that perceiving resistance is founded on making an effort to move. There is a sense in which the alleged relation between this sort of bodily intentionality 63 Zahavi does in fact think that Henry must have denied interdependence. He writes that “Husserl, Sartre, and Derrida all opposeHenry insofar as they argue in support of some kind of interdependency between self-affection and hetero-affection” (Self-awareness and Alterity, 134). This interpretation appears to be based on a misunderstanding of the foundation relation. Zahavi claims that “it is untenable to introduce a founding-founded relation between self-affection and hetero-affection, since they are inseparable and interdependent” (123-4). Sinceinterdependence rules out any founding-founded relation and Henry holds that transcendence is founded on immanence, Henry must deny interdependence. As my discussion of the foundation relation should already have made clear, this is incorrect. Following Husserl, I take itthat A and M are interdependent if and only if A is non-independent relative to a whole including M and M is non-independent relative to a whole including A. This means that A and M are interdependent if and only if A and M are in a relation of reciprocal foundation. Far from ruling out a founding-founded relation, the claim that immanence and transcendence are interdependent implies both that transcendence is founded upon immanence and that immanence is founded upon transcendence.64 Husserl, Logical Investigations, 122.65 Dan Zahavi. Husserl’s phenomenology (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2004): 23. 66 J. N. Mohanty, The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl: a Historical Development (New Haven, CT: Yale, 2008), 118. See also D. W. Smith, Husserl (New York: Routledge, 2007), 153. 67 Husserl, Logical Investigations, 21, 72.

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and this sort of pathetic auto-revelation can be explained: bodily intentionality belongs to the pure Species transcendence; it is a law of essence that transcendence is founded upon immanence.

But what explains the latter? Had Henry read Wittgenstein, he might have replied “at this point my spade is turned.” This is the point at which it no longer makes sense to ask for explanation. Phenomenological ontology is inquiry concerning fundamental, invariant structures of appearance, structures of the sort that Husserl would surely have called essences. Henry argues that there are ultimately two of these ontological structures: immanence and transcendence. He asserts a law of essence: transcendence is founded upon immanence. This explains why perceiving resistance requires making an effort. Given the nature of his inquiry, it is not obvious that he must offer anything more in the way of explanation.

The argument to which Zahavi refers, 68 the one where he shows that Henry cannot explain what supposedly needs explaining, is divided into several parts. One deals with intersubjectivity, another with time, and another with reflection. The argument fromintersubjectivity runs as follows:

Since intersubjectivity is in fact possible there must exista bridge between my self-awareness and my awareness of Others; my experience of my own subjectivity must contain ananticipation of the Other, must contain the seeds of alterity. When I experience myself and when I experience an Other, there is in fact a common denominator. In both cases I am dealing with incarnation, and one of the features of my embodied self-awareness is that it per definition comprises

68 Zahavi’s reference is to Self-awareness and Alterity, which includes scattered discussions of Henry amidst a general treatment of the relationship between self-presence and self-transcendence. My focus willbe on “The Fracture in Self-awareness,” the article in which Zahavi undertakes a sustained criticism of accounts of self-awareness of the sort offered by Henry and Manfred Frank. He went on to incorporate nearly the whole of this article into Self-awareness and Alterity. The article contains virtually the same critical remarks as those noted at the outset of the present section. In “Michel Henry and the Phenomenology ofthe Invisible,” Zahavi cites both “The Fracture in Self-awareness” and Self-awareness and Alterity in support of the same remarks.

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an outside. To touch oneself is a type of self-awareness thatcan best be described as a bodily reflection. It is a thematic self-awareness mediated by difference and exteriority; the single parts of the body remain separated, and they gain contact through a surface which is exposed to the world. When my left hand touches my right, I am self-aware, but I am self-aware in a manner that anticipates both the way in which an Other would experience me, and the way in which I would experience an Other. The reason why I can experience Others is because I am never so close to myself that the Other is completely and radically foreign and inaccessible. In my bodily self awareness, I am always already a stranger to myself, and therefore open to Others.69

Zahavi begins with a series of modal claims. Since it is possiblefor me to be aware of Others, there must exist a bridge between self-awareness and awareness of Others, my experience of my own subjectivity must contain an anticipation of the Other, must contain the seeds of alterity. And so, in fact, it does. Self-awareness and awareness of an Other (Fremderfahrung) have somethingin common: awareness of that which is transcendent. Specifically,as an incarnate being my self-awareness is awareness of myself asbelonging to the milieu of exteriority. Bodily self-awareness is transcendence. Because I always already find myself in the world,I can find other selves there too.

There are several problems with this argument. For one, it simply does not engage with Henry’s phenomenology of embodiment. Henry was well aware that embodiment involves being of the world.The body is, in one sense of ‘body,’ transcendent. But he also claims that the transcendent body is constituted through perceptual Erlebnisse: seeing, touching, pushing, grasping, and so forth. These experiences make up what Henry calls the subjective body (or original body). It is in virtue of the subjective body that I have a world in which I encounter distant objects. If the subjective body is supposed to account for how it is that anything, including my transcendent body, manifests itself in theworld, then it must be phenomenologically effective. It too must appear. But if the subjective body is the condition of the possibility of anything appearing in the world, it cannot originally appear in the world. It must, instead, be auto-69 Zahavi, “The Fracture in Self-awareness,” 32.

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affective. There is, then, a stratum of embodied being-in-the-world that excludes distance. In my bodily self-awareness, I am not always already a stranger to myself. Granted, there may be problems with this analysis. But Zahavi has simply assumed that Henry is mistaken, when that is what should be demonstrated.70

This is not the only respect in which Zahavi’s argument is question begging. Why must self-awareness contain seeds of alterity? An underlying assumption is that the relation between self-awareness and Fremderfahrung must be explained. I have noted problems with that assumption above. But that is not the only assumption at work. A second assumption is that any satisfactory explanation must have a certain form. It must show us that self-awareness and Fremderfahrung are alike, that they have a “common denominator.” That common denominator is transcendence. In that case, there are not two distinct modes of manifestation. There isonly one. If this second assumption is in play, then Zahavi has argued that Henry’s dualism is unsatisfactory - because it is notmonism.71

Since the argument from reflection appears to make the same question begging assumption, I will set it aside and focus the remainder of this section on the argument from temporality:

Any convincing theory of self-awareness has to take temporality into consideration. Not only because it has to explain how I can remember a past experience as mine, but also because consciousness is so intrinsically temporal thateven a clarification of instantaneous self-awareness must take it into account. It is not only possible to understand the perpetual self-differentiation, -distanciation, and -transcendence of subjectivity in temporal terms, it is necessary, since temporality constitutes the infrastructure of consciousness. It is inherently temporal and it is as temporal that it is pre-reflectively aware of itself. To useSartre's formulation: Consciousness exists in the diasporatic

70 After making the same argument in Self-awareness and Alterity, Zahavi reconsiders and then withdraws the claim that I am always already a stranger to myself: “Not every self-awareness is already an experience of oneself as an Other” (174). In that case the argument from intersubjectivity collapses. By Zahavi’s own lights, it is not the case that necessarily, if awareness of others is possible, then I am always already a stranger to myself.

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form of temporality. Spread out in all three temporal dimensions it is always existing at a distance from itself, its self-presence is always permeated by absence, and this unique mode of being cannot be grasped through the category of an irrelational, non-ecstatic self-presence.72

The main point here is not that Henry fails to provide an explanation of the right kind for the relation between self-awareness and awareness of time. Rather, Zahavi’s point is that self-awareness ultimately is awareness of that which is temporally spread out. It is awareness of a no longer and a not yet, and this means that it is awareness of that which is phenomenologically distant. Paci alludes to this when he notes that he retains awareness of the vase while he closes his eyes. Awareness of how the vase looked a moment ago is implicitly awareness of seeing it just then. It is awareness of a preceding phase of the stream of consciousness to which the present phase belongs. Paci adds that when he sees the vase as having an opposite side he is in the time of waiting (in protention). The opposite side is the side that would be shown in the next momentsif he were to move to have a look. Reference to how the vase 71 One possible rejoinder would note that the modal claims at the beginning of quoted passage are preceded by a brief account of Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts on embodiment and intersubjectivity. It might be arguedthat this account supports the modal claims, rather than a question-begging commitment to monism. Zahavi offers, for instance, the followingparaphrase of Merleau-Ponty: “If subjectivity were in fact characterizedby a pure self-presence, if I were given to myself in an absolutely unique way, I would lack the means of ever recognizing the embodied Other as another subjectivity. . .” (“The Fracture in Self-awareness,” 31). Perhaps that is the reason for accepting the subsequent modal claims. The trouble with this response is that the paraphrase looks suspiciously like the claim that necessarily, if self-awareness does notcontain seeds of alterity, then intersubjectivity is not possible. But that is just another way of saying that, necessarily, if intersubjectivity is possible, then self-awareness contains seeds of alterity. Zahavi’s discussion of Merleau-Ponty amounts to alternate waysof stating the modal claims with which the quoted part of his argument begins. Additionally, appeal to the authority of Merleau-Ponty is problematic in this context. Henry criticizes Merleau-Ponty’s account ofembodiment precisely because he neglects the self-manifestation of the transcendental, aka subjective body. 72 Zahavi, “The Fracture in Self-awareness,” 30-1.

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would look at that point involves implicit reference to future Erlebnisse, again belonging to the same stream as that to which the present visual experience belongs. Perception of the vase is implicitly self-awareness, and this self-awareness is awareness of that which is distant. In Husserl’s terms, perception of the vase is an example of Querintentionalität; and Querintentionalität is founded on Längsintentionalität. Subjectivity thus possesses “an innertemporal articulation,” and this is inconsistent with Henry’s analysis of self-manifestation.

Before responding to this objection, some care should be takento clarify the claim that subjectivity possesses “an inner temporal articulation.” This could mean that Erlebnisse are constituted as belonging to a horizon of more or less distant lived experiences. Or it could mean that any phase of the stream of consciousness includes impression of that which is now, retention of what has just been and protention of what is to come. The relationship between impression, retention, and protention is like the relation between the hue, saturation, and brightness of any color. Each part, though distinguishable from the other two, is non-independent relative to the others. There is no problem, for Henry, with inner temporal articulation in this second sense. His analysis of the self-manifestation of lived experience is consistent with the latter having non-independent parts. If there is a decisive objection here, it musthave to do with inner temporal articulation in the first sense.

Suppose it is true that the stream of consciousness is constituted by phases of that stream itself insofar as they involve retention, impression, and protention. Suppose I am awareof the stream insofar as I retain the preceding part the stream, a part that includes retention of the part preceding it, and so forth. Now, any phase in virtue of which I am aware of the streammust itself appear. How is it originally given? If it were only given through retention, I would be unconscious of my experience at first, and then, in the next moment, aware of how it was just a moment ago. That is, to say the least, phenomenologically off key. 73 It seems, then, that any phase in virtue of which I am

73 The idea that I am always just waiting to find out how my experience will go but unconscious of how it is actually going is similarly off key.

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aware of the stream must itself be given in a manner that excludes distance.

It looks as though temporalizing self-awareness involves two ontological structures, rather than just one. Aware of myself as spread out over time, I am aware of myself as both distant and ina manner that excludes distance. This is remarkably similar to Zahavi’s own account (following Husserl) of pre-reflective self-awareness. With regard to the original givenness of any phase of consciousness, he writes that

We are here confronted with a type of non-relational self-manifestation that lacks the ordinary dyadic structure of appearance. There is no distinction between subject and object, or between the dative and genitive of appearing. On the contrary, it is a kind of self-manifestation, a fundamental shining, without which it would be meaningless tospeak of the dative of appearance. Nothing can be present to me unless I am self-aware.

As for the relationship between this self-manifestation and Längsintentionalität, he tells us that

We are not dealing with two independent and separate types of pre-reflective self-awareness, but with two different descriptions of the same basic phenomenon. . . Husserl uses the term Längsintentionalität to designate the flowing self-manifestation of consciousness, but this self-givenness doesnot merely concern the elapsing phases, but takes its point of departure in an immediate impressional self-manifestation. Conversely, this impressional self-manifestation stretches to include the retentionally given.74

Henry could have agreed. Immanence and transcendence are neitherindependent nor separate. Transcendence is founded on immanence,for “nothing can be present to me unless I am self-aware.” If Henryallows for reciprocal foundation (and some evidence suggests hedoes), then he could also grant that “this impressional self-

74 Dan Zahavi. “Inner Time-consciousness and Pre-reflective Self-awareness” in The New Husserl: a Critical Reader, ed. D. Welton (Bloomington, IN:Indiana UP, 2003), 173.

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manifestation stretches to include the retentionally given.”Immanence is non-independent relative to transcendence.

Two problems remain. First, Henry consistently describes thatwhich is given immanently as neither distant nor in horizon. Itwould seem, though, that any phase of the stream is given in atemporal horizon. The second problem is that this defense ofHenry may have been purchased at the price of lost contrast. Onmy interpretation, it looks as though Henry would ultimately besaying what Husserl had already said.

Adequate treatment of these problems requires detaileddiscussion of Henry’s critique of Husserl’s phenomenology as wellas careful examination of Henry’s scattered remarks ontemporality. Owing to considerations of space, the followingremarks will have to suffice. First, Husserl was wary ofdescribing absolute consciousness, consciousness insofar as it isconstitutive of the stream of consciousness, in temporal terms.75 To do sowould be to describe it in terms of the horizon which it makespossible. Thus, there is some reason to think that Husserlhimself regarded absolute consciousness as atemporal. Second, Ibelieve Henry would allow that Husserl’s thought was in tension.Though ultimately committed to ontological monism, Husserl timeand again ran up against its limits. His lectures and manuscriptson time are among the places at which this tension is mostevident.

CONCLUSION

Henry holds that there are two distinct ontologicalstructures: immanence and transcendence. This is ontologicaldualism. Immanence is the mode of manifestation such that thegiven is neither distant nor in horizon. Immanence excludestranscendence. But this does not mean that what is given in themode of immanence is not also self-surpassing.

Transcendence is founded on immanence insofar as it is non-independent relative to immanence. There is, furthermore, some75 Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Inner Time (1893-1917),trans. J. B. Brough (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), 381.

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reason to think that the relationship between transcendence andimmanence is one of reciprocal foundation. In that case,transcendence and immanence would be interdependent.

In responding to objections, I hope to have cleared the way tomore fruitful engagement with the work of this importantphenomenologist. Concerns about non-teleological actions, non-representative sensations, and non-intentional emotions cansafely be set aside. If I am correct, questions about theviability of Henry’s ontological dualism are best addressed byreference to the phenomenology of temporality. Carefulexamination of his phenomenology of embodiment would also behelpful.

I also hope to have encouraged continuation of the kind ofphenomenological inquiry pioneered by Henry. His account of theaffective dimension of lived experience opens the door toimproved understanding of a host of phenomena which have,hitherto, been insufficiently studied from within thephenomenological tradition. Need is one such phenomenon. Labor,action typically performed out of need, is another. These arejust two of the directions in which Henryan phenomenology mightbe extended.

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