The Michel Henry Reader

Description

From beginning to end, the philosophy of Michel Henry offers an original and profound reflection on life. Henry challenges the conventional understanding of life as a set of natural processes and a general classification of beings. Maintaining that our access to the meaning of life has been blocked by naturalism as well as by traditional philosophical assumptions, Henry carries out an enterprise that can rightfully be called “radical.” His phenomenology leads back to the original dimension of life—to a reality that precedes and conditions the natural sciences and even objectivity as such.   The Michel Henry Reader is an indispensable resource for those who are approaching Henry for the first time as well as for those who are already familiar with his work. It provides broad coverage of the major themes in his philosophy and new translations of Henry’s most important essays. Sixteen chapters are divided into four parts that demonstrate the profound implications of Henry’s philosophy of life: for phenomenology; for subjectivity; for politics, art, and language; and for ethics and religion. Contents Acknowledgments Editors’ Introduction Part 1. Phenomenology 1. The Four Principles of Phenomenology 2. The Phenomenology of Birth 3. Incarnation 4. Those within Me: A Phenomenology Part 2. Subjectivity 5. The Critique of the Subject 6. Philosophy and Subjectivity 7. Descartes’s Cogito and the Idea of an Ideal Phenomenology 8. Ricoeur and Freud: Between Psychoanalysis and Phenomenology Part 3. Politics, Art, and Language 9. The Concept of Being as Production 10. Difficult Democracy 11. Kandinsky and the Meaning of the Work of Art 12. Material Phenomenology and Language (or, Pathos and Language) Part 4. Ethics and Religion 13. Ethics and Religion within a Phenomenology of Life 14. Theodicy from the Perspective of a Radical Phenomenology 15. The Experience of the Other: Phenomenology and Theology 16. Speech and Religion: The Word of God