Cet article vise à interroger l’ambivalence de la notion d’exercice dans le champ artistique, et à en assurer l’intelligibilité par une phénoménologie de la formation de l’habitude. On mettra donc d’abord en lumière le lien essentiel liant l’exercice à l’habitude, et à l’équivoque de cette notion. On cherchera ensuite à interroger la genèse de l’habitude comme structure transcendantale de la visée intentionnelle avant d’entreprendre une phénoménologie de l’acquisition du geste habituel à travers une critique des descriptions du geste chez (...) class='Hi'>Henry. On concevra ainsi l’habitude comme la fixation d’un « horizon de potentialité » qui permet la constitution de l’objet et conditionne de cette manière la perception. Cette phénoménologie vise à mettre en évidence le caractère acquis et contingent des habitudes perceptives, afin de concevoir l’exercice en art comme une pratique de renforcement, de subversion et de génération de telles structures habituelles. On exposera enfin la possibilité de cette pratique en montrant que la formation de nouveaux gestes repose ultimement sur un conditionnement affectif. La possibilité de l’art est ainsi conçue, non pas dans un « désintéressement », mais dans un « intérêt flottant » permettant un renouvellement de la perception dans lequel l’habitude joue un rôle clef. (shrink)

La complessa, profonda e articolata costruzione filosofica di Michel Henry (1922-2002), sviluppata nell’arco di più di quaranta anni, è interamente dominata dalla passione per la verità e dalla fedeltà alla ricerca. Per comprenderla a fondo è necessaria una solida conoscenza della tradizione filosofica e fenomenologica a lui precedente, che tenga conto non solo del pensiero di Heidegger e Husserl ma anche — tra gli altri — di Cartesio, Kant, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty e Sartre. Sulla base di una at...

RésuméJ'analyse la façon dont Bergson caractérise la logique tel un organe de simplification, de dissimulation, d'ordonnance, de limitation, de systématisation, comme habitude de pensée et comme ontologie foncière. Partout, la logique semble la prérogative de l'entendement et inapte à s'appliquer à la durée, voire à la réalité elle-même. Pour sortir d'un tel dualisme, je montre que Bergson conçoit une logique de l'absurde et de l'imagination, avec le rêve, la folie et le comique, laquelle transmute la logique dans le domaine du (...) pathologique et de l'art littéraire, et offre à l'image une seconde gloire.In this paper, I analyze the sense in which Henri Bergson characterizes logic, which he understands to be a means of simplification, dissimulation, ordering, limitation and systematizing, as well as a habit of thinking and something basically ontological. Overall, logic seems to be the privilege of the understanding; it is unfit to apply itself to duration, or to reality itself. To help us out of such dualism, I show that Bergson — considering dreams, madness, and comedy — conceives of a logic of the imagination and of the absurd that transplants logic into the field of the pathological and literary art, and that offers a second glory to images. (shrink)

Here I investigate the possibility of a phenomenological approach to Christianity, with the understanding that this would not be a matter of proposing an interpretation, but that such an “approach” would be able to lead directly to the heart of Christianity. I will say immediately that a phenomenology that would be able to undertake such a task is not the historical phenomenology that was born with Husserl. Only an ideal phenomenology that would become what is required would be able to (...) respond to our investigation. This ideal phenomenology is a phenomenology of life. (shrink)

Translator's preface -- Introduction: The question of phenomenology -- Hyletic phenomenology and material phenomenology -- The phenomenological method -- Pathos-with reflections on Husserl's Fifth cartesian meditation -- For a phenomenology of community.

t. 1. De la phénoménologie -- t. 2. De la subjectivité -- t. 3. de l'art et du politique -- t. 4. Sur léthique et la religion.

La question du phénomène précède de beaucoup la phénoménologie, elle s'ouvre avec la philosophie et l'accompagne tout au long de son histoire. Mais ce préalable incontournable - car être veut dire apparaître - est surdéterminé par une présupposition irréfléchie. De la Grèce à Heidegger, dans les problématiques classiques de la conscience et de la représentation, dans leurs critiques, dans la phénoménologie de l'intentionnalité et dans ses prolongements, "phénomène" désigne ce qui se montre à l'intérieur d'un horizon de visihilisation, l'Ek-stase d'un (...) Dehors. La mise en cause de ce monisme ontologique établit que l'Ekstase ne subsiste que sur le Fond de son anti-essence : immanence si radicale qu'elle ne se tient jamais à distance, incapable de se voix, âme sans Idée, vie dépourvue d'archétype mais liée à soi invinciblement, s'éprouvant dans le subir, le souffrir et le jouir de son propre pathos. Parce que, avant que ne se lève le monde, une Affectivité transcendantale accomplit en nous son Archi-Révélation en même temps qu'elle engendre notre ipséité, ce sont d'autres catégories, d'autres penseurs, une nouvelle phénoménologie qui sont requis si nous voulons parvenir, enfin, à l'intelligence de ce que nous sommes. (shrink)

Cet article présente des notes préparatoires inédites de Michel Henry sur le phénomène érotique. Ces notes sont essentiellement relatives à la préparation des ouvrages « Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps » et « L’essence de la manifestation », mais également et plus tardivement de son livre « Incarnation ». Maine de Biran est au cœur de ce projet, mais Michel Henry lit et commente également ses contemporains, dont Sartre qui est sans doute celui qui reçoit le plus d’attention (...) de sa part. (shrink)

Der transzendentalen Subjektivität als sinngebender Instanz liegt in der Husserlschen Phänomenologie ein fundamentaler, der Reflexion nicht zugänglicher Bewusstseinsbereich zugrunde: die absolute Subjektivität.Das basale Defizit der epistemisch ausgerichteten Phänomenologie Husserls ist die Unmöglichkeit einer unmittelbaren Selbstreferenzialität in Bezug auf das eigene Selbst-Bewusstsein. Ausgehend von einem ersten Zugang zur Präreflexivität bei Sartre wird auf Grundlage eines radikalisierten phänomenologischen Designs Michel Henrys und Jean-Luc Marions die Struktur dieser basalen Bewusstseinssphäre systematisch entwickelt.

Jean-Paul Sartre insists that Marxism is the only philosophy that speaks to and out of the condition of contemporary man. Each cultural period has but onephilosophy that is authentic. Today, that philosophy is Marxism. Even if one accepts Sartre's position, it is clear that Marxism today is not one monolithic ideologydeveloped by proclamation. A recent group of articles in Philosophy Today , devoted to the thought of Ernst Bloch, indicated this. The two followingarticles of Michel Henry and Arthur McGovern (...) indicate further some of the sources of diverse interpretations and positions. (shrink)

Claire Katz & Lara Trout, Emmanuel Levinas. Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers ; Thomas Bedorf, Andreas Cremonini, Verfehlte Begegnung. Levinas und Sartre als philosophische Zeitgenossen ; Samuel Moyn, Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics ; Pascal Delhom & Alfred Hirsch, Im Angesicht der Anderen. Levinas’ Philosophie des Politischen ; Sharon Todd, Learning from the other: Levinas, psychoanalysis and ethical possibilities in education ; Michel Henry, Le bonheur de Spinoza, suivi de: Etude sur le spinozisme de (...) Michel Henry, par Jean-Michel Longneaux ; Jean-François Lavigne, Husserl et la naissance de la phénoménologie. Des Recherches logiques aux Ideen: la genèse de l’idéalisme transcendantal phénoménologique ; Denis Seron, Objet et signification ; Dan Zahavi, Sara Heinämaa and Hans Ruin, Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation. Phenomenology in The Nordic Countries ; Dimitri Ginev, Entre anthropologie et herméneutique ; Magdalena Mărculescu-Cojocea, Critica metafizicii la Kant şi Heidegger. Problema subiectivităţii: raţiunea între autonomie şi deconstrucţie. (shrink)

C’est dans l’approche phénoménologique de la subjectivité que la question de l’identité du moi se pose avec la plus pure radicalité. Le problème s’inaugure chez Husserl : la réduction mène à l’analyse de la constitution qui rend possible l’ego transcendantal. Mais rendre compte de son identité en termes d’auto-constitution aboutit à l’aporie. L’incompatibilité entre trans-temporalité de l’ego et synthèse intentionnelle semble dépassée par Michel Henry, qui substitue l’affectivité originaire de l’auto-affection pure à la spontanéité de la « synthèse (...) passive ». Mais au prix d’une contradiction : si l’expérience paradigmatique de la vie est celle de la souffrance, la structure du souffrir confirme-t-elle l’étrange thèse selon laquelle « c’est la souffrance qui se souffre elle-même »? (shrink)

앙리는 1984년 발표된 논문, 「코기토와 현상학의 이념」에서 처음으로 자신의 독창적인 데카르트에 대한 해석을 제시한다. 그리고 바로 이 논문에서 우리는 앙리가 ‘질료 현상학’이라는 용어를 처음으로 사용하는 것을 볼 수 있다. 비록 앙리가 ‘질료 현상학’이라는 이름을 자신의 철학이 아닌 데카르트의 철학에 부여하고는 있지만, 우리는 이 말, ‘질료 현상학 phenomenologie materielle’이라는 용어가 정확히 후설의 ‘질료(質料) 현상학 phenomenologie hyletique’을 겨냥하고 있다는 사실과 그것이 의미하는 바가 무엇인지 어렵지 않게 추측해 볼 수 있다. 즉 후설의 현상학과 그 길을 달리하는 진정한 의미의 앙리 현상학이 시작되는 곳은 바로 (...) 이 지점이다. 이 논문에서 필자는 데카르트에 대한 후설의 해석과 이에 대한 앙리의 해석을 병치시켜 비교함으로써, 앙리 현상학이 어떻게 후설의 현상학과 구별되며, 그 고유한 탐구영역이 무엇인지를 보여줄 것이다. (shrink)

At the dawn of the modern era, philosophers reinterpreted their subject as the study of consciousness, pushing the body to the margins of philosophy. With the arrival of Husserlian thought in the late nineteenth century, the body was once again understood to be part of the transcendental field. And yet, despite the enormous influence of Husserl’s phenomenology, the role of "embodiment" in the broader philosophical landscape remains largely unresolved. In his ambitious debut book, _Phenomenology and Embodiment,_ Joona Taipale tackles the (...) Husserlian concept—also engaging the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michel Henry—with a comprehensive and systematic phenomenological investigation into the role of embodiment in the constitution of self-awareness, intersubjectivity, and objective reality. In doing so, he contributes a detailed clarification of the fundamental constitutive role of embodiment in the basic relations of subjectivity. (shrink)

Michel Henry a fondé une partie de son oeuvre philosophique sur la phénoménologie matérielle. L'ouvrage tente d'en analyser la singularité, parmi les oeuvres d'autres phénoménologistes tels que Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur et Derrida. Cette analyse renvoie à une interrogation de la phénoménologie matérielle elle-même et ouvre d'autres voies de réflexion.

Michel Henry is regarded as one of the most important French philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. Yet, he is still not widely cited as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and Jean Paul Sartre are. His thought constitutes a philosophy of life, distancing itself not only from the phenomenology of the 20th century, but also from the science and technology inaugurated by Galileo Galilei and Rene Descartes. Furthermore, Leopold Sedar Senghor is an African philosopher whose (...) philosophy has often been misunderstood in both African as well as in most Western philosophical scholarly circles. Critiquing representation in Western thought only makes sense if it is made clear that it is entirely conceivable that this critique squanders its meaning elsewhere, in the East. It is inherent in it. However, very few academics have felt that this should be done. It is essential to make connections, because what Henry discovers puts him in an immediate proximity of the radical approach of Vedanta and the approach of Senghor’s Negritude theory of emotion. The objective of this article is to find significant points of convergence between absolute subjectivity, the idea of affectivity, and Negritude and Vedanta in Henry’s speculative thought. The reading of Henry, Indian philosophy (Vedanta) and Negritude (Senghor) allows for establishing a bridge between Indian philosophy (Vedanta) and phenomenology, most notably a bridge between Negritude and the phenomenology of life. (shrink)

L’enjeu de cet ouvrage est de mettre au jour une continuité des exercices spirituels dans la philosophie contemporaine depuis Ralph Waldo Emerson et Henri David Thoreau jusqu’aux philosophes que sont, entre autres, Pierre Hadot, Hilary Putman, Stanley Cavell, William James, John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty ou encore Richard Shusterman. A travers le pragmatisme, le méliorisme, le perfectionnisme ou l’esthétique de l’existence, ce parcours de près de deux siècles met en évidence l’idée que la philosophie comme pratique des (...) exercices spirituels demeure, que celle-ci perdure dans notre espace contemporain en s’appropriant parfois de nouveaux terrains comme l’art, le corps... (4e de couv.). (shrink)

Born in 1900–1901 with the publication of Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations, phenomenology, as a critical method of reflection on consciousness and its cognitive achievements against its naturalisation in the natural sciences, has undergone many changes and developments. Critiques of both its methods and tasks have emerged, plus it has served as an inspiration for numerous thinkers, including Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel Marcel, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Luc Nancy, Michel Henry, Emmanuel Levinas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur (...) and Jacques Derrida, in their attempts to address the question of value, the meaning of being, existence, the lived body, the Other, life, art, history and language in original and fresh ways. The current paper reflects upon the question of what the fate of phenomenology in the twenty-first century could be by considering some of the recent work presented at the first conference of the South African Centre for Phenomenology held at the University of Johannesburg earlier this year. (shrink)

Alongside with ethics and religion, art occupies a prominent place in Michel Henry’s phenomenology of life. His opposition to Husserl and Heidegger, and his analyses of Wassily Kandinsky’s paintings and theoretical works, led Henry to the conclusion that the content of art is the ‘invisible life’. As a consequence, art – itself invisible though at the same time revealing the Life – becomes a means of achieving a non-intentional experience (pathos) of Life in its transcendental affectivity. The radical (...) immanence of experiencing art stands in sharp contrast to the visible external world, thus opening new directions in phenomenological study of both aesthetic and religious experience. In this article, I point out the ontological, epistemological and axiological limitations of Henry’s and Kandinsky’s art theory. (shrink)

Les pages que Husserl a consacrées à l'art et à la conscience esthétique sont rares et éparses. Il n'en reste pas moins que la théorie qui y voit le jour fait preuve d'une grande systématicité. L'oeuvre d'art, comme elle le sera plus tard chez Sartre, y est invariablement désignée au titre d'objet irréel. Non qu'elle ne possède une effectivité matérielle qui en assure la présence dans le champ de la perception et en constitue le soubassement physique, mais, bien plutôt, qu'elle (...) soit illocalisable dans ce champ et irréductible à ce soubassement. La raison en étant que l'objet d'art est un objet imaginaire qui ne trouve dans la réalité dont il est fait que le moyen de s'y objectiver et non celui de s'y individualiser. Son irréalité, il la reçoit du regard "désintéressé", au sens kantien du terme, qu'il appelle, de la visée intentionnelle particulière qui lui donne d'apparaître en tant que "néant" ou "rien", comme se plaît à le répéter Husserl. C'est à retracer la genèse de cette conception dématérialisée de l'oeuvre artistique et du type de conscience qui l'appréhende que s'attache ce livre, non moins qu'à en cerner les enjeux théoriques. Deux voies d'investigation ont été privilégiées à cet égard. L'une, interne, s'efforce d'en dégager la provenance et d'en saisir le statut au sein même de la phénoménologie husserlienne. L'autre, externe, la confronte à des théories esthétiques rivales et à la production artistique dont elle a à rendre compte afin, par contraste, d'en faire jaillir et d'en apprécier la véritable portée heuristique. Le résultat est que les catégories conceptuelles élaborées par Husserl pour fonder son approche du phénomène de l'art et de l'intention qui en prend acte s'avèrent, en définitive, sujettes à la critique. (shrink)

Este repertorio registra información de Husserl en la Internet, una breve historia sobre los Nachlaß, el índice de la Husserliana, un listado de las publicaciones de y sobre Husserl disponibles en la Biblioteca Central de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, y los artículos sobre Husserl que se encuentran en la Hemeroteca. El listado abarca las publicaciones existentes hasta el año 1997.

Henri Maldiney’s aesthetics can be seen as an attempt to push traditional phenomenological descriptions of the image, such as can be found in the works of Husserl and Sartre, to their theoretical limits. In this paper, I examine how Maldiney’s phenomenological approach to visual works of art leads him to disclose a non-intentional dimension of the image which is that of “form.” At this level, the image is not primarily a structure or modification of consciousness, but a mode of presence (...) to the world. Next, in turning towards what Maldiney considers to be non-objective forms of pictorial representation, exemplified by Byzantine mosaics and the works of Paul Cézanne, I show how this presence is articulated rhythmically in a tension which embraces both image and viewer. Finally, I explore the meaning of Maldiney’s claim that the image is not an imitation of reality, but synonymous with reality itself. (shrink)

In the vocabulary of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance the term ‘humanist’ literature refers only to profane, as opposed to sacred, writings. However, the greatness of the ancient authors appeared such that a certain confusion was created between profane and classical writings. Thus the idea arose of what was much later called humanism, and the feeling of a mission ‘to revive dead things’ (in the words of Machiavelli) gained ground. Today we like to give a wider meaning to (...) the word humanism: to be a ‘humanist’ is to have faith in Man, to believe in his eminent dignity and in the potentialities of his genius. Such humanism is of all times, but it seems (and this is no mere chance) that its golden age coincides with that of the renaissance of antiquity and that it has remained inextricably linked with classical culture—culture understood here in the two-fold sense of ‘knowledge’ and ‘cult’ of Graeco-Roman antiquity. The reason for this correspondence between certain ideas on the potentialities of Man and admiration for the ancients is founded not only on the fact that these latter were admirable because of their wisdom, their virtues and their arts, but also, and primarily, because in the eyes of the Christians (who had good cause to believe themselves their equals), these ancients, whether Latin or Greek, not having received the help of Revelation and Redemption, had to accept on their own account the authority of moral law and to procure for themselves all the benefits of a truth envisaged only imperfectly. How could such triumph of Man, incomplete though it might have been, be arrived at? This was a crucial question, ever since the first centuries of Christianity, a question to which the Fathers of the Church, particularly the Greek Fathers, had found various answers. Some of them denied that the pagans had any knowledge whatever of Truth, others admitted that whatever they had learned or divined of Truth could be due merely to chance Hebraic influence or to the grace of partial revelation. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to French phenomenology in the post-1945 period. While many of phenomenology's greatest thinkers--Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty--wrote before this period, Steven DeLay introduces and assesses the creative and important turn phenomenology took after these figures. He presents a clear and rigorous introduction to the work of relatively unfamiliar and underexplored philosophers, including Jean-Louis Chrétien, Michel Henry, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Jean-Luc Marion and others. After an introduction setting out the crucial Husserlian and Heideggerian background to French (...) phenomenology, DeLay explores Emmanuel Levinas's ethics as first philosophy, Henry's material phenomenology, Marion's phenomenology of givenness, Lacoste's phenomenology of liturgical man, Chrétien's phenomenology of the call, Claude Romano's evential hermeneutics, and Emmanuel Falque's phenomenology of the borderlands. Starting with the reception of Husserl and Heidegger in France, DeLay explains how this phenomenological thought challenges boundaries between philosophy and theology. Taking stock of its promise in light of the legacy it has transformed, DeLay concludes with a summary of the field's relevance to theology and analytic philosophy, and indicates what the future holds for phenomenology. Phenomenology in France: A Philosophical and Theological Introduction is an excellent resource for all students and scholars of phenomenology and continental philosophy, and will also be useful to those in related disciplines such as theology, literature, and French studies. (shrink)

The article raises the subject of intentionality of art in the light of transformations that counter-intentional phenomenology and non-intentional phenomenology have undergone. The changes to the way intentionality was understood substantially influenced aesthetic reflection and for that reason the starting point for the article is the analysis of Edmund Husserl’s intentional phenomenology followed by counter-intentional phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion and non-intentional phenomenology of Michel Henry. Next, we will analyse how the ideas were absorbed by the developing phenomenological reflection on (...) art, which paradoxically resulted in counter-reduction of the world and existential opening to experiencing its contents thanks to art. At the same time, the changes in understanding intentionality opened new directions for research into the intentionality of art itself. Therefore, the article aims at pointing towards contemporary research areas for phenomenological aesthetics and also indicates major methodological problems related to counter-intentional and non-intentional research perspective. (shrink)

'A whole man, made of all men, worth all of them, and any one of them worth him.' This was how Jean-Paul Sartre characterized himself at the end of his autobiographical study, Words. And Bernard-Henri Levy shows how Sartre cannot be understood without taking into account his relations with the intellectual forebears and contemporaries, the lovers and friends, with whom he conducted a lifelong debate. His thinking was essentially a tumultuous dialogue with his whole age and himself. He learned from (...) Gide the art of freedom, and how to experiment with inherited fictional forms. He was a fellow-traveller of communism, and yet his relations with the Party were deeply ambiguous. He was fascinated by Freud but trenchantly critical of psychoanalysis. Beneath Sartre's complex and ever-mutating political commitments, Levy detects a polarity between anarchic individualism on the one hand, and a longing for absolute community that brought him close to totalitarianism on the other. Levy depicts Sartre as a man who could succumb to the twentieth century's catastrophic attraction to violence and the false messianism of its total political solutions, while also being one of the fiercest critics of its illusions and shortcomings. (shrink)

‘A whole man, made of all men, worth all of them, and any one of them worth him.’ This was how Jean-Paul Sartre characterized himself at the end of his autobiographical study, Words. And Bernard-Henri Lévy shows how Sartre cannot be understood without taking into account his relations with the intellectual forebears and contemporaries, the lovers and friends, with whom he conducted a lifelong debate. His thinking was essentially a tumultuous dialogue with his whole age and himself. He learned from (...) Gide the art of freedom, and how to experiment with inherited fictional forms. He was a fellow-traveller of communism, and yet his relations with the Party were deeply ambiguous. He was fascinated by Freud but trenchantly critical of psychoanalysis. Beneath Sartre’s complex and ever-mutating political commitments, Lévy detects a polarity between anarchic individualism on the one hand, and a longing for absolute community that brought him close to totalitarianism on the other. Lévy depicts Sartre as a man who could succumb to the twentieth century’s catastrophic attraction to violence and the false messianism of its total political solutions, while also being one of the fiercest critics of its illusions and shortcomings. (shrink)

Cette étude met en confrontation Michel Henry avec Paul Ricoeur sur la question de la lecture de S. Freud. Il y est donc question de la psyché et de l’affectivité. L’auteur de l’étude rappelle combien le projet de la rationalité contemporaine conjoint des thèses philosophiques sur le statut du sujet et sur celui des schèmes perceptifs de la conscience, au gré d’une relation complexe entre l’étant et le phénomène. L’auteur rappelle les analyses husserliennes relatives à la psyché entendue (...) comme « vie » et ses effets de co-implication. Chez M. Henry, l’inconscient est toutefois compris, soit comme un « inconscient de la représentation », mais cela dans une perspective critique, soit comme cet autre nom de la « vie », spécifiquement dans ses structures d’auto-révélation et d’auto-affectivité. En reprenant la nature du débat entre M. Henry et P. Ricoeur, l’auteur montre que tout l’enjeu réside dans la place que l’on confère aux effets et opérations de la dialectique et de la réflexivité. (shrink)

À quoi peuvent servir les mathématiques pour résister à la confusion ambiante des idées? À apprendre la rigueur de la 'méthode scientifique' mais aussi la liberté de penser. Cette liberté farouche est bien celle qui anime le mathématicien Michel Broué dans cette réflexion 'en zigzags.' Qu'il s'interroge sur son propre parcours - son amour des mathématiques, sa formation trotskyste, ses combats anti-staliniens, ses convictions universalistes-, ou qu'il dénonce les mensonges de l'Histoire, les fausses transgressions en art ou l'usage frauduleux des (...) chiffres, c'est chaque fois avec la même obsession: essayer de 'voir clair'. Et pour cela, il s'agit de repérer les conventions, de ne rien croire bouche bée (ni les évidences, ni les arguments d'autorité, ni ses propres intuitions) et de développer une éthique des faits. Exercices pratiques avec de 'petites agitations de certitudes' sur les sept couleurs de l'arc-en-ciel, le mystère d'un carrelage de salle de bain, l'espace-temps, l'âme des animaux... Hommage à la beauté des mathématiques, ce livre très personnel les réconcilie avec la morale et la politique. C'est le credo d'un humaniste passionné et jamais tranquille."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

De Husserl à Henry, l’essence de la phénoménalité a changé de lieu, quittant le monde de la manifestation dans lequel l’être est à la fois caché et livré par des apparences, pour la pureté d’une auto-affection qui ne saurait s’y révéler comme telle, étant donné que son déploiement est purement immanent. Si la phénoménologie husserlienne ne peut, selon Michel Henry, que contribuer à « étendre le règne de l’apparence », la philosophie henryenne ira jusqu’à remettre en question le (...) statut de la phénoménalité à partir de la vie transcendantale incarnée. Le paraître se videra ainsi progressivement de la vie transcendantale dont il s’était fait l’expression sensible chez Husserl. En revenant de Henry à Husserl, nous essayons de montrer que si l’apparence est considérée comme la voix sensible de l’apparaître, ce dernier ne cesse pas pour autant de vivre. (shrink)

In this essay, I will examine Henri Maldiney’s phenomenological aesthetics, focusing on his claim that “art is the truth of the sensible.” This claim is presented by Maldiney in the context of a two-fold critique of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s respective attempts to phenomenologically elucidate the experience of artworks. According to Maldiney, both Husserl and Heidegger fail to recognize what he, following Erwin Straus, terms the “pathic” moment of sense experience, which is also the key moment of the aesthetic reception of (...) art. Drawing on this concept of the pathic and its way of engaging what Maldiney calls the “transpassibility” of receptivity, I argue that his phenomenology of art can be viewed as an attempt to bring together the two senses of the aesthetic in the Kantian sense, namely as an aesthetics of sense experience and as an aesthetics of art, from within the domain of sensibility itself. I develop this idea by turning to Maldiney’s notion of rhythm and examining how he thinks that it can be applied to the visual arts. Ultimately, I suggest that Maldiney’s aesthetics imbues art with ontological significance, since he takes the rhythmic presence of artworks to be a sensuous manifestation of the rhythmic ground of the world’s constitution. The truth of art, in this sense, is a revelation of the ontological functioning of rhythm. (shrink)

L'œuvre de Michel Henry aura été de « recueillir » et développer le côté affectif de la phénoménologie, que Husserl, dans un passage clé de ses « Idées directrices », a délaissé au profit du côté intentionnel de la subjectivité - tout comme trois siècles plus tôt Descartes avait « recueilli » la subjectivité écartée par Galitée. Le texte qui suit compare le concept de soubassement, ou âme, chez Husserl avec celui de chair chez Michel Henry. On verra (...) que les deux philosophes parlent d'une couche sensible, qu'on peut d'une certaine manière situer entre corps et esprit, de deux points de vue diamétralement opposés. Au-delà de l'opposition entre les deux philosophies, cette recherche mène à une interprétation topologique du rapport ente corps, âme et esprit, tel que suggéré par le terme husserlien de soubassement, et propose un éclairage différent de la notion henryenne d'auto-affection. (shrink)

The studies in this book set out to examine the labile resonances of phenomenology and art in Michel Henry, by examining the different figures of movement given to the concept of the aesthetic by the philosopher. They are preceded by one of Michel Henry’s own texts. Les études qui composent ce livre proposent d’interroger les résonances labiles de la phénoménologie et de l’art chez Michel Henry, en examinant les différentes figures du déplacement imprimé par le philosophe au (...) concept d’esthétique. Le tout est précédé d’un texte de Michel Henry. (shrink)

Based on a close reading of Sartre’s essay, The Transcendence of the Ego, this paper shows the importance of Sartre’s arguments against the transcendental ego for the Deleuzian project of restructuring the transcendental field. Sartre formulates four propositions which he takes to be the implications of the rejection of the transcendental ego as found in Kant and Husserl. The paper attempts to show how these propositions are derived, and furthermore how they become reinterpreted by Deleuze into nascent forms of transcendental (...) empiricist notions such as the virtual, and auto-synthesis. I then conclude by showing why Deleuze believes that Sartre’s own work needs to be surpassed, and why this movement beyond Sartre in fact undercuts the very arguments which generate the four conditions Deleuze takes to be necessary for transcendental empiricism. (shrink)

‘No matter how long I may look at an image, I shall never find anything in it but what I put there. It is in this fact that we find the distinction between an image and a perception.' - Jean-Paul Sartre L’Imagination was published in 1936 when Jean-Paul Sartre was thirty years old. Long out of print, this is the first English translation in many years. The Imagination is Sartre’s first full philosophical work, presenting some of the basic arguments concerning (...) phenomenology, consciousness and intentionality that were to later appear in his master works and be so influential in the course of twentieth-century philosophy. Sartre begins by criticising philosophical theories of the imagination, particularly those of Descartes, Leibniz and Hume, before establishing his central thesis. Imagination does not involve the perception of ‘mental images’ in any literal sense, Sartre argues, yet reveals some of the fundamental capacities of consciousness. He then reviews psychological theories of the imagination, including a fascinating discussion of the work of Henri Bergson. Sartre argues that the ‘classical conception’ is fundamentally flawed because it begins by conceiving of the imagination as being like perception and then seeks, in vain, to re-establish the difference between the two. Sartre concludes with an important chapter on Husserl’s theory of the imagination which, despite sharing the flaws of earlier approaches, signals a new phenomenological way forward in understanding the imagination. The Imagination is essential reading for anyone interested in the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, phenomenology, and the history of twentieth-century philosophy. This new translation includes a helpful historical and philosophical introduction by Kenneth Williford and David Rudrauf. Also included is Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s important review of L’Imagination upon its publication in French in 1936. Translated by Kenneth Williford and David Rudrauf. (shrink)

Dans un dialogue constant avec la phénoménologie intentionnelle de Husserl, Michel Henry a tenté de mettre au point une nouvelle ontologie phénoménologique, pour cerner spécifiquement ce qu'il nommait «l’essence de la manifestation». Il ouvrait ainsi la voie d’une méthode philosophique originale, celle d’une phénoménologie «radicale», dont il ne cessa de l’appliquer à des objets divers, dans le cadre précis des pensées de l’immanence. Ce livre interroge ce moment de l’élaboration phénoménologique de la philosophie de Michel Henry et montre (...) notamment comment la notion de «sens» joue un rôle essentiel. (shrink)

Yves Larochelle | : Charles De Koninck, qui chercha à réconcilier la lecture thomiste d’Aristote avec la science contemporaine, et Michel Henry, qui voulut rénover la phénoménologie husserlienne et heideggérienne en restituant la place de l’affectivité dans le champ philosophique, ont connu des trajectoires intellectuelles très différentes. Pourtant, leurs parcours respectifs aboutissent ultimement aux deux mêmes conclusions déterminantes : le réductionnisme scientifique ambiant menace l’intégrité spirituelle de l’humanité et seul le constat d’une finalité d’ordre divin à la vie (...) humaine peut restituer un sain équilibre. | : Charles De Koninck, who tried to reconcile the thomistic reading of Aristotle with contemporary science, and Michel Henry, who wanted to renovate Husserlian and Heideggerrian phenomenology by placing affectivity at the center of philosophy, had very different intellectual trajectories. Nonetheless, they both come to two similar conclusions : contemporary scientific reductionism is menacing the spiritual integrity of mankind, and only the recognition of a divine finality to human life can restore a healthy balance. (shrink)

What is the relationship between phenomenology and material reality? What would be the place of phenomenology in a discourse about material reality? This paper tries to clarify the relationship between a type of knowledge and an ontological domain which at first sight seems foreign to it. It also contains the outline of a program for future research. We will show that the relationship between phenomenology and material reality is in some sense double. Hints to this duality may already be found (...) in Husserl’s Ideen II. Finally we will question a phenomenology that its author explicitly qualified as material: the philosophy of Michel Henry. We will investigate the possibility of a material phenomenology beyond Henry’s work in relation to material reality. (shrink)

L'image de Pascal est souvent brouillée par la légende et par les commentaires maladroits ou malveillants. Or, on n'a jamais fini de scruter la personnalité et l'œuvre de Pascal. Il suffit de changer de point de vue pour apercevoir du nouveau, pour préciser des significations, pour repérer des sources inattendues, et parfois pour écarter des idées reçues. Michel Le Guern, après L'Image dans l'œuvre de Pascal, Pascal et Descartes, Les Pensées de Pascal de l'anthropologie à la théologie, les éditions des (...) Pensées et des Provinciales en Folio, l'édition des Œuvres complètes dans la Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, puis Pascal et Arnauld, souhaitait présenter d'autres points de vue, qui ont nécessairement varié en soixante ans de lectures et de relectures, et qui sont complémentaires des travaux d'Henri Gouhier, de Jean Mesnard et de Philippe Sellier. / Our image of Blaise Pascal is frequently blurred by legend and by clumsy or malicious commentary, but his personality and works bear continued scrutiny. A change of perspective is all that is required to glimpse something new, to clarify some finer points, and to brush aside a few common preconceptions. / Michel Le Guern, né en 1937, est professeur honoraire de l'Université Lumière-Lyon 2. Il est ancien président de l'Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Lyon. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.3 (2003) 177-188 [Access article in PDF] Chaïm Perelman's "First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy":Commentary and Translation David A. Frank Michelle K. Bolduc Chaïm Perelman's 1949 article, "First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy," has remained unavailable to readers unable to read French. Our commentary and translation is intended to provide English readers access to the context, influences, and themes that make the article an extraordinarily important work in (...) the history of twentieth-century rhetoric. In this article, Perelman offers a powerful critique of first philosophies and anticipates the problems of radical postmodernity. "First Philosophies" remains a strikingly elegant attempt to foil what Foucault (1984, 41-42) has called the "Enlightenment blackmail of reason," the assumption held by logical positivists and radical skeptics that if reason does not yield absolute and eternal Enlightenment knowledge, there can be no knowledge.Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's New Rhetoric project avoids Enlightenment blackmail by charting a third way between logical positivism and radical relativism, and "First Philosophies" sets forth the project's philosophical blueprint. Commencing in 1947 and culminating in 1958 with the publication of Traité de l'argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca sought, discovered, and developed a philosophical system designed as a rapprochement between dialectic (reason and logic) and rhetoric (the art of adapting arguments to audiences). Historians of rhetoric judge the work a "grand revolution" (Meyer 1999, 259), believing it marks a rhetorical renaissance in Europe, and suggest nothing like it will appear for another 100 years after its publication (Johnstone 1971). The New Rhetoric project influenced Gadamer and a host of post-war European and American thinkers (Mootz 1998). Michael Leff calls the 1970 English translation of Traité a "bombshell" (1994, 510). Beyond its historical importance, Crosswhite suggests that the New Rhetoric project is "the single most important event in contemporary rhetorical theory" (1996, 35)and "First Philosophies" marks Perelman's turn from logical [End Page 177] positivism to rhetoric, offering prescient answers to the post-World War II crises of reason, and the ideas in the article provide the Traité'sphilosophical glue (see in particular the English translation, 62).Perelman joined many post-war theorists, including Horkheimer and Adorno (1972), in the resistance to the reign of a disembodied Enlightenment rationality. However, Perelman identified what Habermas (1987, 119) would later call the "performative contradiction" in the conclusion that radical skepticism was the only alternative to Enlightenment rationality. In "First Philosophies," Perelman responds directly to Sartre's 1943 Being and Nothingness (198; see translation below) by exposing the failure of radical skeptics to see that they had been held hostage by Enlightenment blackmail in accepting the Enlightenment criterion for truth, rejecting it, and then making skepticism an absolute. Indeed, "First Philosophies" navigates from this performative contradiction to chart a third way between Enlightenment rationality and radical skepticism with an approach that he labels regressive philosophy. Regressive philosophy, Perelman argues, provides the human community with a mode of philosophical reasoning located between the extremes of Enlightenment rationality and radical skepticism. In this space between extremes, Perelman identifies contingent truths and values dependent on a rhetorical mode of reasoning, one making moral judgments possible.To best understand "First Philosophies," we recognize the importance of historical context in the development of social theories of knowledge (see Delacampagne 1999; Kennedy 1999). The intellectual networks in which philosophers operate also influence the development of philosophical systems, as Randall Collins has aptly documented. In addition to historical context and intellectual networks, Frederick Beiser has recently noted: "[t] he best introduction to any philosophy is the biography of the person who created it" (1999, 5). He argues that textual analysis alone cannot illuminate the motivation or meaning of a philosophy. A sense of Perelman's biography and the cultural influences that gave rise to "First Philosophies" are necessary for a proper understanding of its themes. For Perelman, the primary intellectual exigencies of the post-war period were the interrelated crises of justice, philosophical reasoning, and responsibility to which "First Philosophies" is a... (shrink)

Le normalien Tran Duc Thao (1917-1993), ne fut pas seulement le premier agrégé de philosophie vietnamien, il a aussi été un des premiers en France à traverser toute la pensée de Husserl, jusqu'à ses zones les moins fréquentées. Il campe un Husserl entier, pris dans toutes les ramifications de sa réflexion. La physionomie de ce qu'est Husserl pour nous, aujourd'hui, dépend encore largement de la synthèse qu'il a effectuée. En même temps on ne saurait le comprendre sans tenir compte du (...) passage entre cultures qu'il incarne, de sa langue maternelle vietnamienne, de son effort pour trouver une solution de continuité entre la phénoménologie et ce qu'il considère comme l'outil essentiel dans les luttes anticoloniales, à savoir une forme personnelle de marxisme. Au moment où son ouvrage sur la phénoménologie husserlienne, version étendue d'un mémoire présenté à Jean Cavaillès, paraît chez un éditeur confidentiel en 1951, son intérêt s'est déplacé vers le Vietnam et les mouvements annonciateurs des luttes pour l'indépendance en Indochine. Tran Duc Thao qui, d'Althusser à Derrida en passant par Kojève ou Sartre, a marqué tant de philosophes de l'après-guerre a également été un des premiers intellectuels du Vietnam indépendant. (shrink)

À partir de Merleau-Ponty, Henry et Sartre, ce livre montre comment chaque expérience perceptive est susceptible d'accroître ou d'affaiblir la capacité des individus à se laisser affecter en profondeur par leur situation et à l'endurer.