Michel Henry

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Michel Henry bigraphy, stories - Philosophers

Michel Henry : biography

1922 – 2002

Michel Henry ( 10 January 1922 – 3 July 2002) was a French philosopher and novelist. He wrote five novels and numerous philosophical works. He also lectured at universities in France, Belgium, the United States of America, and Japan.

Life and work

Biography

Michel Henry was born in Haiphong, French Indochina (now Vietnam), and he lived in French Indochina until he was seven years old. Following the death of his father, who was an officer in the French Navy, he and his mother settled in metropolitan France. While studying in Paris, he discovered a true passion for philosophy, which he decided to make his professionSee the of the official site on Michel Henry. From June 1943 he was fully engaged with the French Resistance, joining the maquis of the Haut Jura under the code name of Kant. He often had to come down from the mountains in order to accomplish missions in Nazi-occupied Lyon, an experience of clandestinity that deeply marked his philosophyJean-Marie Brohm et Jean Leclercq, Michel Henry, éd. l’Age d’Homme, Les dossiers H, 2009 (pp. 12-15).

At the end of the war he took the final part of the philosophy examination at the university, following which he wrote a thesis under the direction of Jean Hyppolite, Jean Wahl, Paul Ricœur, Ferdinand Alquié, and Henri Gouhier. His first book, on the Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, was completed in 1950. His first significant published work was on The Essence of Manifestation, to which he devoted long years of necessary research in order to surmount the main deficiency of all intellectualist philosophy, the ignorance of life as experiencedJean-Marie Brohm et Jean Leclercq, Michel Henry, éd. l’Age d’Homme, Les dossiers H, 2009 (pp. 21-26).

From 1960, Michel Henry was a professor of philosophy at the University of Montpellier, where he patiently perfected his work, keeping himself away from philosophical fashions and far from dominant ideologiesJean-Marie Brohm et Jean Leclercq, Michel Henry, éd. l’Age d’Homme, Les dossiers H, 2009 (pp. 27–50) Paul Audi, Michel Henry, Les belles lettres, 2006, p. 22 : « Michel Henry fait partie de ces très rares philosophes qui, dans la seconde moitié du siècle dernier, se sont frayé leurs voies propres à l’écart des modes contemporaines. ». Le sujet unique de sa philosophie, c’est la subjectivité vivante, c’est-à-dire la vie réelle des individus vivants, cette vie qui traverse toute son œuvre et qui en assure la profonde unité en dépit de la diversité des thèmes abordésJean-Marie Brohm et Jean Leclercq, Michel Henry, éd. l’Age d’Homme, Les dossiers H, 2009 (pp. 5-6). He died in Albi, France, at the age of eighty.

The sole subject of his philosophy is living subjectivity, which is to say the real life of living individuals. This subject is found in all his work and ensures its deep unity in spite of the diversity of themes he tackledJean-Marie Brohm et Jean Leclercq, Michel Henry, éd. l’Age d’Homme, Les dossiers H, 2009 (pp. 5-6). It has been suggested that he proposed the most profound theory of subjectivity in the Twentieth Century.

A phenomenology of life

The work of Michel Henry is based on Phenomenology, which is the study of the phenomenon. The English/German/Latinate word "phenomenon" comes from the Greek "phainomenon" which means "that which shows itself by coming into the light".I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity (§ 1, p. 14) The everyday understanding of phenomenon as appearance is only possible as a negative derivation of this authentic sense of Greek self-showing. The object of phenomenology is not however something that appears, such as a particular thing or phenomena, but the act of appearing itself.Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair (§ 1, p. 35) Henry’s thought led him to a reversal of Husserl’s phenomenology, which acknowledges as phenomenon only that which appears in the world, or exteriority. Henry counterposed this conception of phenomenality with a radical phenomenology of life.Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair (§ 1-15, pp. 35-132)