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Generation, interiority and the phenomenology of Christianity in Michel Henry

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Abstract

In this paper I focus on a central phenomenological concept in Michel Henry’s work that has often been neglected: generation. Generation becomes an especially important conceptual key to understanding not only the relationship between God and human self but also Henry’s adoption of radical interiority and his critical standpoint with respect to much of the phenomenological tradition in which he is working. Thus in pursuing the theme of generation, I shall introduce many phenomenological-theological terms in Henry’s trilogy on Christianity as well as how he understands the relationship between phenomenology and theology. In the final sections of the paper, I turn to positively defining Henry’s notion of divine generation and examine the theological implications of it in light of his confrontation and rejection of the doctrine of creation in the book of Genesis found in his book, Incarnation: une philosophie de la chair. Humans are not created but are eternally generated, a bold claim that brings Henry to the brink of a kind of interiorized pantheism or Gnostic dualism. Finally, I offer some critical comments specifically about Henry’s doctrine of generation in light of the tension between auto-affection and hetero-affection and thus how one might think “after Henry” in light of the basic Augustinian theological distinction between self and God and the intentionality of faith opened up by that distinction.

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Notes

  1. See Henry (2000a, 2002, 2003).

  2. Henry (2003, p. 50).

  3. Henry writes in full: “The relation of Life to the living is the central thesis of Christianity. Such a relation is called, from life’s viewpoint, generation, and from the living’s view point, birth.” See, Henry (2003, p. 51).

  4. Henry explicitly schematizes the entire book around these two points at the very end of Chap. 3, ‘This Truth Called Life’. See Henry (2003, p. 52).

  5. See his essay, “Archi-christologie.” Henry (2004b).

  6. See for instance, Henry (2003, pp. 120, 138, 160, 169).

  7. For this distinction between Life/life see Henry (2003, p. 279 fn. 1).

  8. See especially Henry (1993, Chaps. 1–3).

  9. Henry (2004c).

  10. Henry (2003, pp. 51, 62).

  11. In both Henry (2000a, 2002) Henry does remain Trinitarian in perspective but tends to identify Life as the manifestation of the binitarian reciprocity between Father and Son. For explicit references to the Holy Spirit, see, Henry (2000a, pp. 245, 367, 374; 2002, p. 108).

  12. Henry (2003, pp. 62, 78).

  13. Henry (2003, p. 52).

  14. Henry (2003, p. 57).

  15. Henry (2003, pp. 57–58).

  16. Henry (2003, p. 67).

  17. Henry (2003, pp. 67–68).

  18. See for example, Henry (2003, pp. 15, 102, 153).

  19. Henry (2003, p. 106).

  20. Henry (2003, p. 107).

  21. Henry (2003, p. 110).

  22. Henry (2003, p. 61).

  23. For more on the self-positing or constituting role of the “I” in which the “I” sets up in advance (a priori) the conditions for the possibility of experience thereby determining its own limits of what the “I” can experience (what Kant calls the transcendental aesthetic), see Kant (1998, A20- 49/B34 -73).

  24. For a summary and critical analysis of invisibility in Henry from a Husserlian perspective, see Zahavi (1999).

  25. For insightful overviews of Henry’s reinterpretation of Christianity from a phenomenological-theological perspective, see the following articles: Hart (1999, 2007, 2009b).

  26. Hart (1999, p. 187).

  27. Heidegger (2003, p. 80).

  28. Janicaud (2000, pp. 28–31).

  29. Henry (2003, pp. 24–32).

  30. Henry (1973, p. xi).

  31. For more on the historical and philosophical problematic of ontological monism within the discipline of phenomenology, see Henry (1973, §§ 1–16).

  32. Didier Franck argues this point well when he demonstrates that Husserl’s notion of auto-affection is penetrated by and immediately opened to hetero-affection of temporality and the experience of alterity. See Franck (1981, especially Chaps. 16–17).

  33. Henry (2000a, pp. 361–73).

  34. Henry (2003, p. 193).

  35. Henry (2000a, p. 363).

  36. Henry (2000a, p. 364) (translation mine).

  37. Bernet (1999, p. 339).

  38. The best recent model of religious experience framed in terms of radical verticality from a phenomenological perspective is Steinbock (2007). He is in part indebted to Marion’s phenomenology of givenness and saturated phenomena as the standard model of religious experience (Marion 2002b). This vertical model is antithetical to Henry’s pursuit of pure immanence.

  39. Henry (2003, p. 41).

  40. Henry (2000b, p. 233). This is, of course, an echo of Augustine’s “Deus interior intimo meo” Confessions, 3.6.11.

  41. Henry states, “Au fond de sa Nuit, notre chair est Dieu.” See Henry (2000a, p. 373).

  42. Henry (2000b, p. 233).

  43. Maxine Sheets-Johnston claims against Henry that a pure human nature can be viewed from the “outside” as an auto-affective feeling of bodily kinesthetics intimately tied to emotions, especially first-personal emotions. Though she does not broach the non-temporal meaning of Henry’s conception of auto-affection and thus fails to account for Henry’s purely transcendental project. See Sheets-Johnston (2007).

  44. Henry (1973, pp. 309–310). For more on how Henry develops his notion of Life in light if Eckhart, see Henry (1973, §§ 39–40, 49). Also, for an insightful essay that shows several ways in which Henry appropriates Eckhart, see Depraz (1999). In similar vein, for two comparative studies of John of the Cross and Henry, see Cugno (2001) and Welton (2003).

  45. Henry writes: “Insofar as the relation of Life to the living occurs inside God himself, it is produced as the generation of the First Living at the core of Life’ self-generation. Insofar as such a relation concerns not just God’s relationship with himself but also his relationship with man, it is produced as the generation of transcendental man at the core of God’s self-generation.” Henry (2003, p. 51).

  46. Henry (2000a, p. 327).

  47. Henry argues that this religious experiencing structured as radical immanence in unity with God is frequently forgotten in the human tendency to remain unduly immersed in the things of the world. There are surely Heideggerian undertones here about inauthenticity. In the time of forgetfulness, for Henry, the self feels a burden of the I-Can. This is the feeling whereby the self believes itself to be the source and condition for all actions, feelings, cognitive efforts, etc. The I-Can symbolizes the Transcendental illusion, or the ego without God: the feeling associated with this illusion is for Henry a feeling of terrifying lack, a burden and angst about having to be born but not wanting to bear the sole responsibility of one’s living in and through oneself. It is only, according to Henry, when the self rediscovers its original birth in Life, as the condition for all possible ipseity and self-experience, that the self undergoes a liberation from this burden. Henry reminds us that after having been liberated from the Transcendental illusion, the self feels a release of pressure and the emotional security representative of a cathartic religious experience that flows from the generating-spirit of Christ’s life. See Henry (2003, pp. 207–208). Also, for a helpful outline and critique of forgetfulness in Henry from a theological and phenomenological perspective, see Steinbock (1999).

  48. Henry (2002, p. 49).

  49. Henry (2002, p. 46).

  50. Henry (2003, p. 103).

  51. I repeat here the French because of the programmatic nature of the statement. Henry writes: “Débarrassé des idées d’extériorité, d’extériorisation, d’objectivation—de monde—le concept de création signifie maintenant generation, generation dans l’auto-génération de la Vie absolue de ce qui n’advient à soi que dans sa venue en elle et pour autant qu’elle ne cesse de venire en lui.” (translation mine). Henry (2000a, p. 263).

  52. Henry (2000a, pp. 323–324). Henry repeats in part this critique of Genesis in his subsequent work, Henry (2002, pp. 107–110).

  53. Henry (2000a, p. 325) (translation mine).

  54. Henry writes: “Adam est la premier homme en ce sens éminent qu’il est l’archétype de tout homme concevable, cette essence de l’humain qu’on retrouvera inévitablement en tout homme réel.” (translation mine). Henry (2000a, p. 324).

  55. Henry (2000a, p. 327) (translation mine).

  56. Henry (2003, p. 103).

  57. Henry (2000a, p. 328) (translation mine).

  58. Henry (2000a, p. 323) (translation mine).

  59. Henry (2000a, p. 328).

  60. Henry writes: “In fact, life does not create content at all; the content of life is uncreated.” See Henry (2003, p. 106).

  61. Henry (2003, pp. 104–105).

  62. See Chap. 7 entitled, “Man as son Within the Son” in Henry (2003).

  63. Henry (2003, p. 105).

  64. Henry (2000a, p. 372) (translation mine).

  65. For a helpful historical and theological introduction to Greek patristic conceptions of deification, see Russell (2004). For an introduction to theosis from the perspective of Greek Orthodox mysticism and thus a style of thinking perhaps that can aid one in coming to terms with Henry’s appropriation of the term, see the now classic, Lossky (1991).

  66. Athanasius (1880, p. 197).

  67. Emmanual Falque rightly raises the question of a flesh without a body in view of Henry’s radical distinction between flesh and body or subjective and objective body in Christ’s Incarnation. See Falque (2004).

  68. In fact, Henry argues it is the extreme humility (i.e. Eckhart’s detachment) that the self must practice in the hope of provoking a disclosure of that original self-revelation of Life within the inner-self. Christ models the pragmatics of detachment through his extreme humility as a Son who displays perfect obedience to the Father. Henry quotes John 7.17, which declares that, “If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking o my own authority.” Henry notes that this statement illustrates, “the phenomenon of religious experience, experience indisputably had by all humans to whom it is given. And this experience arrives each time that one hears the Word and abandons himself to it, and does the will of God.” (translation mine). Henry (2002, p. 153).

  69. Henry (2003, p. 124).

  70. For more on Henry’s understanding of the duplicity of appearing with respect to the Incarnation, see Henry (2000a, b, pp. 7–32, “Introduction: la question de l’incarnation”).

  71. Hart (2009b, p. 173).

  72. Hart (2009b, pp. 185–187).

  73. Hart (2009b, pp. 183–184).

  74. Lavigne (2009, p. 385).

  75. Lavigne (2009, p. 382).

  76. Lavigne (2009, pp. 384–386).

  77. Laoureux (2009, p. 398). Laoureux borrows the term hyper-transcendentalism explicitly from Bernet’s (1999) analysis of Henry.

  78. Laoureux (2009, p. 398).

  79. Henry (1973, p. 281).

  80. Henry (1973, p. 249).

  81. Henry (1973, p. 266).

  82. Henry (1973, p. 261).

  83. Henry (2003, p. 87).

  84. For more on Plato’s cosmogony and the preexistence or eternality of matter, see Plato (2000).

  85. Henry (2000a, p. 324).

  86. For more on the historical evolution and variegated nature of Gnosticism, see the classic text by Hans Jonas (1958).

  87. For more on the finite and radically temporal (or ecstatic) nature of Dasein in Heidegger, see Heidegger (1996, §§ 69–77).

  88. Henry (2003, p. 46).

  89. See for example, Augustine (1991, 15.7–15.12; 15.20 [pp. 400–404, 410]).

  90. I borrow this term, “Theological Distinction” from James G. Hart’s use of the term in which he posits the basic distinction between God and world. I am not denying that distinction but am following the more basic Augustinian distinction between creature and Creator. See Hart (2009a, Chap. 7, § 6).

  91. For some Henry’s reflections on intersubjectivity, see Henry (2008, Chap 3; 2004a).

  92. Hart is in part influence by Jean-Luc Marion. For the counter-intentional nature of love in Marion, see Marion (2002a, 2007, especially §§ 19–21).

  93. Hart (2009b, p. 191).

  94. Steinbock (1999, pp. 294–297). Steinbock also acknowledge that an intertwining of immanence and transcendence is an absurdity strictly within Henry’s framework. Steinbock (1999, p. 301 fn. 14).

  95. Steinbock (2007, pp. 203–205).

  96. I am drawing on Renaud Barbaras’ recent interest in expanding Henry’s phenomenology of Life to include both the work of auto-affection and hetero-affection whereby both spheres of manifestation shape the essence of the human self. See Barbaras (2008).

  97. On several occasions Henry mentions that the Parousia is equal to the self-revelation of Life in human auto-affection. In this way, he risks endorsing a theological variant of over-realized eschatology. See for example, Henry (2000a, b, pp. 367, 372–373) and (1973, §§ 17–18).

  98. Augustine (1991, 15.7 [p. 400]).

  99. Augustine (1991, 13.15 [p. 383]).

  100. For an illuminating phenomenological discussion of selfhood and creation in St. Augustine, see Chap. 6, “La création du soi,” in Marion’s book on Augustine (2008).

  101. Augustine (1991, 14.3 [pp. 371–372]).

  102. Augustine (1991, 14.4 [p. 372]).

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    Joseph M. Rivera

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Rivera, J.M. Generation, interiority and the phenomenology of Christianity in Michel Henry. Cont Philos Rev 44, 205–235 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-011-9176-7

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