Continental Philosophy Review 32: 223–240, 1999.

© 1999 KluwerMICHEL
AcademicHENRY
Publishers.
ANDPrinted in the Netherlands. OF THE INVISIBLE
THE PHENOMENOLOGY 223

Michel Henry and the phenomenology of the invisible

DAN ZAHAVI
Department of Education, Philosophy, and Rhetoric, Njalsgade 80 DK-2300,
Copenhagen S, Denmark

The present paper has two aims. On the one hand, I would like to present and
discuss some central aspects of Michel Henry’s philosophy. On the other
hand, I would like to call attention to a peculiar, if not to say paradoxical,
feature that characterizes recent French phenomenology, namely the idea that
a radicalisation of phenomenology must necessarily lead us to a phenom-
enology of the invisible.
One of Henry’s persisting theses is that a revitalisation of phenomenology
can only take place through a radical reconsideration of its proper task, and
that such an enterprise must necessarily criticize the account provided by
classical phenomenology.
According to Henry there is a common leitmotif in Kant’s, Husserl’s and
Heidegger’s philosophy. All of these philosophers have, despite all the other
differences that might prevail, had a common aim, namely to analyse the
conditions of possibility for appearance or manifestation. If we for instance
look at Husserl his concept of epoché and reduction should exactly be under-
stood as a methode that permits us to gain a distance from the natural atti-
tude, thereby making a philosophical reflection possible which permits us to
analyse something which we are surrounded by, but which we seldom
thematize, namely appearance. The task of phenomenology is not to describe
the objects as precisely and meticulously as possible, nor should it occupy
itself with an investigation of the phenomena in all their ontic diversity. No,
its true task is to examine their very appearance or manifestation and to dis-
close its condition of possibility.1
What has classical phenomenology had to say on the issue of appearance?
According to Henry, it has focused almost exclusively on its self-transcending
nature; no appearance is independent and self-reliant, it always refer to some-
thing different from itself. On the one hand, every appearance is character-
ised by a dyadic structure; it is an appearance of something for someone.
224 DAN ZAHAVI

Every appearance has its genitive and its dative. On the other hand, every sin-
gle appearance is characterized by its horizontality, that is by its reference to a
plurality of other appearances. If we for instance examine a perceptually given
apple tree, it is necessary to distinguish that which appears and the very appear-
ance, since the apple tree is never given in its totality, but always in a certain
finite perspective. It is never the entire apple tree, the front, the backside, the
exterior and the interior which is given perceptually but only a single profile.
One can wonder why we would nevertheless insist that we have an experience
of the apple tree itself, and not simply of the front of the apple tree, and the
explanation that Husserl originally provided was that our consciousness of the
present profile of the object is always accompanied by a consciousness of the
object’s horizon of absent profiles.2 It is only due to these references that the
appearing profile is given as an object-appearance.

Die uneigentlich erscheinenden gegenständlichen Bestimmtheiten sind mit

aufgefaßt, aber nicht ‘versinnlicht’, nicht durch Sinnliches, d.i.
Empfindungsmaterial dargestellt. Daß sie mit aufgefaßt sind, ist evident,
denn sonst hätten wir gar keine Gegenstände vor Augen, nicht einmal eine
Seite, da diese ja nur durch den Gegenstand Seite sein kann.3

These considerations have typically provoked a question with which both

Kant, Husserl and Heidegger fought. If it is acknowledged that the appear-
ance of, say, books and apples is characterized by horizontality and a dyadic
structure, what about the subject for whom the appearance is given? Does
this subject also manifest itself, and if the answer is yes, does it then also
appear perspectivally, does its appearance also have a dyadic structure, i.e.,
is it also an appearance of something for somebody?4 The answer to the last
question presumably must be negative. If the appearance of subjectivity
were dyadic, it would involve us in an infinite regress, insofar as there
would always be yet another dative of manifestation. Against this back-
ground it is tempting to answer no to the first question as well. The (tran-
scendental) subject that must be taken into account if we are to speak of an
appearance does not itself appear, is not itself a phenomenon. But although
this option might have been available to Kant, it is not available to the
phenomenologists. To deny that transcendental subjectivity manifests it-
self, is to deny the possibility of a phenomenological analysis of transcen-
dental subjectivity. And to deny that, is to deny the possibility of
transcendental phenomenology altogether.
It is in the light of these problems that the dominant thesis of Henry asserts
itself: A radicalisation of phenomenology must necessarily investigate the
 MICHEL HENRY AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE INVISIBLE 225
dimension of self-manifestation (or to use a more well known expression
‘self-awareness’). Unless phenomenology were able to show that there is
in fact a decisive and radical difference between the phenomenality of con-
stituted objects and the phenomenality of constituting subjectivity, i.e., a
radical difference between object-manifestation and self-manifestion, its
entire project would be threatened.5 Not only would its own preferred re-
flective methodology remain unaccounted for and obscure, but without an
adequate understanding of self-manifestation, its detailed analysis of act-
intentionality and object-manifestation would also lack a proper founda-
tion, and phenomenology would consequently be incapable of realising its
own proper task, namely, to provide a clarification of the condition of pos-
sibility for manifestation. In other words, if phenomenology is to account
for object-manifestation it must also account for the subject for whom the
object appear, but it is exactly this subject which threatens to elude the
phenomenological analyses. To clarify the subject’s self-manifestation is
consequently not only a phenomenological detail-analysis, but in Henry’s
view a precondition for a philosophical comprehension of any manifesta-
tion whatsoever.
How does Henry reach such a fichtean sounding thesis? Let me first specify
how the term self-manifestation is being used. Obviously I can be aware of a
piece of garlic, a shining pearl, or a tune by Mingus, but I can also be aware
that these objects are smelt, seen and heard, that different perceptions are
taking place, and furthermore that I am the one experiencing them, just as I
may be aware that I am sad, curious, or tired. According to Henry, self-mani-
festation should be understood in a broad sense. It is not only legitimate to
speak of self-manifestation when I realize that it is myself who acts, thinks
and perceives; it is also something that occurs the moment one is acquainted
with an experience in its first-personal mode of givenness, i.e. it is possible
to speak of self-manifestation the moment I am no longer simply conscious
of a foreign object, but of my experience of the object as well, for in this case
my subjectivity reveals itself to me.6 Thus, Henry’s discussion of self-mani-
festation is not primarily a discussion of how consciousness if aware of a self
(understood as a distinct pole of identity, the one having or possessing the
different experiences), but rather a discussion of how subjectivity can be aware
of itself, that is of how subjectivity experiences itself, how it is given to itself,
how it manifests itself.
Now, according to Henry, we are never conscious of an object simpliciter,
but always of the object as appearing in a certain way (judged, seen, feared,
remembered, smelt, anticipated, tasted, etc.). However, I cannot be conscious
226 DAN ZAHAVI

of an intentional object (a tasted lemon, a touched table, a remembered New

Year’s eve) unless the experience which constitutes this object, that is the
experience through which this object is made to appear (the tasting, the
touching, the recollection), is to some extent given to me. The object is
given through the act, and if there is no awareness of the act, the object
does not appear at all. But this is not to say that our access to, say, the
lemon is indirect, namely mediated, contaminated or blocked by our aware-
ness of the experience, since the given experience is not itself an object on
a par with the lemon, but instead constitutes the very access to the lemon. If
I lose consciousness, I (or more precisely a body) will remain causally
connected to a number of different objects, but none of these objects will
appear. Nothing will manifest itself unless it is encountered by a self-mani-
festing mind.7 Henry consequently argues that we can only be conscious of
objects if the objects appear, and that every object-appearance is necessar-
ily an appearance of the object for a (self-manifesting) subject. It is only a
self-manifesting subject which can be conscious of foreign objects, and it
is only because we are already given to ourselves that object-manifestation
becomes possible.8 Phrased in a slightly more familiar vocabulary, Henry
argues that intentionality presupposes self-awareness, and that the very self-
transcending that we encounter in intentionality is founded upon the abso-
lute self-coincidence of subjective immanence. It is in the light of these
reflections that Henry will insist that the analysis of the structure of self-
manifestation is at the same time an investigation into the principal topic of
phenomenology: the condition of possibility of manifestation. This is why,
he can write: “la manifestation de soi est l’essence de la manifestation.”9
Obviously, self-awareness or self-manifestation has been analyzed in the
course of time, and particularly within phenomenology one finds detailed
analyses of a pre-reflective, non-objectifying self-awareness. But accord-
ing to Henry all of the previous analyses have failed to conceive of self-
manifestation in a sufficiently radical manner.10 If one goes to Husserl,
Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lévinas and Derrida one will often en-
counter the claim that division, separation and opposition are structural
elements in all kinds of manifestation, including self-manifestation, and
that it consequently implies a form of internal splitting, self-alienation or
self-transcendence.11
For Henry however these claims are merely expressions of one funda-
mental and fatal misunderstanding. A misunderstanding that has dominated
most of Western thought, and which Henry has dubbed the ontological
monism. This is Henry’s term for the assumption that there is only one type
 MICHEL HENRY AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE INVISIBLE 227
of manifestation, only one type of phenomenality. Thus it has been taken for
granted, that to be given, to appear, was always to be given as an object. Need-
less to say, it is exactly this principle of ontological monism which has been
behind the persisting attempts to interpret self-awareness in terms of reflection
or introspection. The model of intentionality has been the paradigm;
self-awareness has been understood as the result of an objectifying, intentional
activity, and self-manifestation therefore as a special form of inner
object-manifestation, characterized by horisontality, duality and transcendens.12
I have already mentioned some of the reasons why Henry would claim
that self-manifestation possesses a different structure than object-manifes-
tation But his disclosure of absolute self-manifestation is by no means to be
taken as a regressive deduction of a transcendental precondition, but as a
phenomenological description of an actual and incontestable dimension in
lived subjectivity. This is clear from what might be one of Henry’s most
central claims, namely that the self-manifestation of subjectivity is an im-
mediate, non-objectifying and passive occurrence, and therefore best de-
scribed as a self-affection.13
As illustration, Henry calls attention to the way in which we are aware of
our feelings and moods. When we are in pain, anxious, embarrassed, stub-
born or happy, we do not feel it through the intervention of a (inner)
senseorgan or an intentional act, but are immediately aware of it.14 There is
no distance or separation between the feeling of pain or happiness and our
awareness (of) it, since it is given in and through itself.15 According to
Henry, something similar holds for all of our conscious experiences. To
make use of a terminology taken from analytical philosophy of mind, Henry
would claim that all conscious experiences are essentially characterized by
having a subjective ‘feel’ to them, that is, a certain quality of ‘what it is
like’, or what it ‘feels’ like to have them. To undergo an experience neces-
sarily means that there is something it is like for the subject to have that
experience.16 This is not only the case for sensuous experiences. There is
something it is like to taste coffee, but there is also something it is like for
the subject to entertain abstract beliefs, yes there is even something it is
like to contemplate the problem of self-manifestation. And insofar as there
is something it is like for the subject to have these experiences, there must
be some awareness of these experiences themselves; in short, there must be
some kind of rudimentary self-awareness.17 And as Henry would say, this
way of ‘feeling’ the experience does not presuppose the intervention or
mediation of any sense organ or higher-order intentional act, but is simply
a question of a direct and immediate self-affection.18
228 DAN ZAHAVI

Henry conceives of this self-affection as a purely interior and self-suffi-

cient occurrence involving no difference, distance of mediation between
that which affects and that which is affected. It is immediate, both in the
sense that the self-affection takes place without being mediated by the world,
but also in the sense that it is neither temporally delayed nor retentionally
mediated.19 It is in short an event which is strictly non-horizontal and non-
ecstatic.20 Insofar as the self-manifestation of subjectivity is distinguished
by this unified self-adherence and self-coincidence, insofar as subjectivity
reveals itself directly and immediately, without temporal delay, and with-
out passing through the world, Henry characterizes it as an atemporal and
acosmic immanence.21

Affectivity reveals the absolute in its totality because it is nothing other

than its perfect adherence to self, nothing other than its coincidence with
self, because it is the auto-affection of Being in the absolute unity of its
radical immanence.22

Henry is not the first to have accounted for self-manifestation in terms of

self-affection. One finds related considerations in both Kant, Husserl,
Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. In Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik
Heidegger takes the essence of time to be pure self-affection.23 And as he
then points out, the concept of self-affection does not merely designate a
process in which something affects itself, but a process that involves a self.
Not in the sense that self-affection is effectuated by an already existing
self, but in the sense that it is the process in and through which selfhood
and subjectivity is established.24 Thus, qua pure self-affection, time turns
out to be the essence of subjectivity. This line of thought is continued by
Merleau-Ponty, who claims that it is the analysis of time which gives us
access to the concrete structures of subjectivity, and which permits us to
understand the nature of the subject’s self-affection. 25 Ultimately
self-temporalisation and self-affection are one and the same: “The explo-
sion . . . of the present towards a future is the archetype of the relationship
of self to self, and it traces out an interiority or ipseity.”26
According to Henry, however, these temporal interpretations are ruinous
to a correct understanding of self-affection. When self-affection is con-
ceived as an ecstatic and self-transcending process it is furnished with a
ruptured structure which is completely foreign to its nature. Somewhat sur-
prisingly Henry now launches a similar criticism against Husserl. Whereas
post-Husserlian phenomenology has generally tried to rectify what was be-
lieved to be an imbalance in Husserl’s account of the relation between im-
 MICHEL HENRY AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE INVISIBLE 229
manence and transcendence, namely his disregard of exteriority, Henry has
accused Husserl of never having managed to disclose the true interiority of
subjectivity in a sufficiently radical and pure manner. Thus, according to
Henry, the basic problem in Husserl’s phenomenology is not that it some-
how remained unable to free itself from immanence, but on the contrary,
that it kept introducing external elements into its analysis of this imma-
nence. As Henry even puts it, it is absurd to accuse Husserl of having advo-
cated a philosophy of pure presence, since Husserl never managed to
conceive of a presence liberated from horizontality.27
This accusation might at first seem strange, since Husserl has often pointed
to the decisive difference between the perspectival givenness of spatial ob-
jects, and the absolute givenness of our conscious experiences. Whereas
the object always transcends its present appearance, for which reason we
can always experience it from other perspectives as well, this is not the
case when it comes to the givenness of consciousness itself. When I am
aware of my perceptual act it has no hidden backside, and it does not make
sense to operate with a corresponding difference between the appearance
and that which appears. But although Husserl denies that the act appears in
spatial perspectives, he does emphasize the temporality of the act, and there-
fore acknowledges that it appears in temporal perspectives. That is, instead
of conceiving of pre-reflective self-awareness as a truly immanent, non-
horizontal, and non-ecstatic self-manifestation, Husserl treats it – accord-
ing to Henry – as a givenness in inner time-consciousness, that is, as a
givenness which is intrinsically caught up in the ecstatic-centred structure
of primal impression-retention-protention.28 But as we have already seen,
Henry takes this conception to be disastrous.
Dès ce moment, en effet, la donation extatique de l'impression dans la
conscience interne du temps a remplacé son auto-donation dans
l’impressionalité et la question de l’impression est perdue de vue.29

Against this background it is hardly surprising that Henry would also ob-
ject strongly to Derrida’s interpretation of the temporal self-givenness of
consciousness. Derrida argues that consciousness is never given in a full
and instantaneous self-presence, but that it due to the intimate relation be-
tween primal impression and retention presents itself to itself across the
difference between now and not-now. That is, self-presence must be con-
ceived as an originary difference or interlacing between now and not-now,
it is in short a self-presence across a primal fracture.30 To claim that the
self-manifestation of the primal impression is due to a retentional media-
230 DAN ZAHAVI

tion is in Henry’s eyes however tantamount to a complete nihilation of

subjectivity. Henry certainly acknowledges the ecstatic nature of inner
time-consciousness, but in contrast to other phenomenologists, he does not
take inner time-consciousness to be the original self-manifestation of sub-
jectivity; instead, he understands it as the primary self-objectivation.31 Thus,
Henry can reproach classical phenomenology for having been so
pre-occupied with the analysis of the self-objectivation of transcendental
life that it overlooked the truly fundamental level of self-manifestation.32
We have seen that Henry takes subjectivity to be absolute in the sense of
being completely self-sufficient in its radical interiority. It is immanent in
the sense that it manifests itself to itself without ever leaving itself, without
transcending itself, without producing or presupposing any kind of fracture
or alterity. Thus, Henry insists that the originary self-manifestation of sub-
jectivity excludes all kinds of fracture, separation, alterity, difference,
exteriority, and opposition,33 and as he adds

A la structure intérieure de cette manifestation originelle n’appartient

aucun Dehors, aucun Ecart, aucune Ek-stase: sa substantialité
phénoménologique n’est pas la visibilité, aucune des catégories dont use
la philosophie, depuis la Gréce en tout cas, ne lui convient.34

Ultimately, it must be realized that one cannot approach absolute subjectiv-

ity as if it were merely yet another object. For Henry, absolute subjectivity
does not reveal itself in the world. It is impossible to grasp this unique form
of immediate and non-ecstatic manifestation through any categories per-
taining to worldly appearance, and it will consequently remain concealed
for a type of thinking which adheres to the principle of ontological monism
and which only conceives of manifestation in terms of horison, transcend-
ence and ecstasis.35 The manifestation of subjectivity is not only utterly
different from the visibility of worldly objects, it is also characterized by a
certain elusiveness, not in the sense that it does not manifest itself, but in
the sense that there will always remain something which eludes reflective
thematisation.36 Since the essence of manifestation cannot appear in the
visibility of worldly exteriority, it is called obscure and invisible, and it is
exactly at this point that the radicality of Henry’s thought is revealed: Ac-
cording to him, the self-manifestation of absolute subjectivity must exactly
be characterized as an invisible revelation.37

The foundation is not something obscure, neither is it light which be-

comes perceivable only when it shines upon the thing which bathes in its
 MICHEL HENRY AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE INVISIBLE 231
light, nor is it the thing itself as a ‘transcendent phenomenon’, but it is an
immanent revelation which is a presence to itself, even though such a
presence remains ‘invisible’.38

One might perhaps criticize Henry for making use of an unnecessarily para-
doxical terminology, but his point is quite clear. The fundamental invisibil-
ity of absolute subjectivity should not be interpreted as a mode of
non-manifestation. It is invisible, it does not reveal itself in the light of the
world, but it is not unconscious, nor the negation of all phenomenality, but
rather the primary and most fundamental kind of manifestation.39
Henry’s entire oeuvre is devoted to a study of exactly this kind of mani-
festation, and it can therefore best be described as an ambitious attempt to
develop a phenomenology of the invisible.

The presentation so far could easily give the impression that Henry con-
ceives of self-manifestation in a way that excludes every mediation, com-
plexity and alterity. To a certain extent this is certainly true, but it is
nevertheless possible to unearth certain passages which challenges or per-
haps rather modifies this interpretation.

(1) First of all, Henry does acknowledge that an analysis of subjectivity

confronts us with an ontological dualism: in every experience something is
given to absolute subjectivity which is different from subjectivity itself. It
is the Other, the non-ego, which appears: “Certainly subjectivity is always
a life in the presence of a transcendent being.”40 To speak of an ontological
dualism, to distinguish a pure interiority and a pure exteriority, is by no
means to accept a classical cartesian dualism. It is merely to insist upon the
existence of an absolute dimension of subjective self-manifestation, with-
out which no hetero-manifestation would be possible.41

(2) When taking Henry’s occupation with pure immanence into account it
might be natural to conclude that reflections concerning the bodily nature
of subjectivity would be foreign to him. But this would be a mistake. In
fact, Henry clearly belongs to the French phenomenology of the body. How-
ever, Henry insists that a phenomenological clarification of the ontological
status of the body must take its point of departure in our original non-
objectifying body-consciousness.42 When I am conscious of my bodily
movements and sensibility, then I am conscious of it by virtue of the body
itself. More precisely, by virtue of the very self-affection of bodily life, and
not because the body has become my intentional object. According to Henry
232 DAN ZAHAVI

the body is originally given immediately, non-horisontally, and non-ecstati-

cally, and he consequently characterizes it as a radical interiority.43

(3) Finally, Henry is oven prepared to ascribe a certain complexity and

diversity to the life of the ego:

When we speak of the unity of, the absolute life of the ego, we in no way
wish to say that this life is monotonous; actually it is infinitely diverse, the
ego is not a pure logical subject enclosed within its tautology; it is the very
being of infinite life, which nevertheless remains one in this diversity [. . .].44

As we have already seen, Henry does not conceive of self-affection as an

ecstatic temporal self-positing, but recently he has admitted that the very
notion of self-affection is a dynamic and by no means a static notion. After
all self-affection understood as the process of affecting and being affected
is not the rigid self-identity of an object, but a subjective movement.45 A
movement which Henry has even described as the self-temporalisation of
subjectivity. But as he then adds, we are dealing with a quite unique form
of temporalisation, which is absolute immanent, non-horizontal and
non-ecstatic.46 We are dealing with an affective temporality, and even though
it seems to involve a perpetual movement and change, nothing is changed.
In fact, it would be wrong to characterize absolute subjectivity as a stream
of consciousness. There is no streaming and no change, but always one and
the same Living Present without distance or difference. It is always the
same self affecting itself.47
Are these precisions – or perhaps rather modifications – sufficient? Henry
is undoubtedly the phenomenological thinker who has been most attentive to
the problem of self-manifestation. His demonstration of its phenomenological
significance is distinguished by its conceptual clarity. Furthermore, Henry
delivers a quite interesting counter-attack against the customary critics of
subject-philosophy. Whereas it has often been claimed that subject-
philosophy is merely the reverse side of an object-fixated philosophy, Henry
would claim that it is the critics of subject-philosophy that have never es-
caped the ontological monism, and who have never realized that there is a
genuine alternative to object-manifestation.
But of course, it must also be admitted that Henry’s intense (almost
monomanic) preoccupation with this topic makes him vulnerable to criti-
cism. Henry operates with the notion of an absolutely self-sufficient,
non-ecstatic, irrelational self-manifestation, but he never presents us with a
convincing explanation of how a subjectivity essentially characterized by
 MICHEL HENRY AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE INVISIBLE 233
such a complete self-presence can simultaneously be in possession of an
inner temporal articulation; how it can simultaneously be directed inten-
tionally 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-awareness is definitely an important feature of our subjec-
tivity, 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 con-
ceives of self-awareness in abstracto, rather than accounting for the
self-awareness of the self-transcending temporal, intentional, reflexive, cor-
poreal and intersubjective experiences.48 This prevents Henry from clarify-
ing the relation and interdependency between the self-presence and the
selftranscendence of subjectivity, and I believe this must be the task. As
Merleau-Ponty has once formulated it:

[T]he question is always [. . .] how the presence to myself (Urpräsenz)

which establishes my own limits and conditions every alien presence is
at the same time depresentation (Entgegenwdrtigung) and throws me
outside myself.49

***

Let me conclude by first pointing to some interesting parallels between

Henry’s description of self-manifestation and the analysis that one can find
among two other thinkers of self-awareness, and then briefly addressing
the question concerning to what extent one can find a counterpart to his
‘phenomenology of the invisible’ among other phenomenologists.

(1) Dieter Henrich is often regarded as a key figure in the contemporary

discussion of self-awareness.50 He is primarily known for his criticism of
the reflection-theory, that is the theory which claims that self-awareness
comes about the moment consciousness directs its ‘gaze’ towards itself,
thereby taking itself as an object. More generally, Henrich has criticized
every attempt to understand self-awareness as a relation, be it a relation
between two acts, or between the act and itself. Every relation – in particu-
234 DAN ZAHAVI

lar the subject-object relation – implies a distinction between two (or more)
relata, and according to Henrich this fact is not consistent with the imme-
diacy and unity of self-awareness. When Henrich then adds that the
pre-reflective self-awareness of an experience is not mediated by foreign
elements such as concepts, nor by any internal difference or distance, but
that it is an immediate and direct self-acquaintance, which is characterized
by its absolute irrelationality, the similarities to Henry should be obvious.51
Henrich further argues that the original self-acquaintance is not something
we ourselves bring about. In contrast to reflective self-awareness which we
can initiate ourselves, the pre-reflective self-awareness is not the result of
our own achievement, but a given state. In Henry we find a similar view,
since he claims that self-affection is not the result of our own activity or
spontaneity, but an expression of a fundamental and radical passivity. Self-
affection is exactly a given state, it is neither something that one can initiate
or control, nor something that one can reject, escape or transcend.52

[T]he relationship to self of the ego in its original ontological passivity

with regard to self, his unity with self as an absolute unity in a sphere of
radical immanence, as unity with self of life, permits itself neither to be
surmounted nor broken.53

If we briefly turn our gaze from Germany to Denmark, we also find some
striking parallels between Henry’s position and the description that Erich
Klawonn has given of the ego-dimension’s self-presence. Whereas Henry
speaks of the absolute self-sufficiency of immanence, Klawonn speaks of the
ego-dimension’s first-personal autonomy. The ego-dimension’s first-personal
givenness is sui generis, it is given by itself, and is in that sense self-suffi-
cient and self-determining. Moreover its self-manifestation must be under-
stood in the light of its own simple nature, which is free from any duality or
relationality. And whereas Henry denies that the self-manifestation is charac-
terized by any temporal ecstasis, Klawonn argues that the primary
self-presence is free from any temporal declination.54

(2) In his book Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française from

1991 Dominique Janicaud has criticized a recent turn in French phenomenol-
ogy (apart from Henry, Janicaud is also thinking of Lévinas and Jean-Luc
Marion). All of these thinkers have tried to radicalize phenomenology by
going beyond a so-called surface phenomenology. They have not been satis-
fied with mere analyses of object-manifestation or act-intentionality, but have
tried to disclose a more profound and original dimension, be it the radical
 MICHEL HENRY AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE INVISIBLE 235
Other, the pure immanence or God.55 Janicaud asks whether this movement
still deserves to be called phenomenological, or whether it should not rather
be called metaphysical or theological. Is it not paradoxical to characterize a
thinking that abandons the precision and clarity of vision and delves into the
dark and mystical regions of invisibility, phenomenological? In short, is it
not simply an absurdity to speak of a phenomenology of the invisible?56
I think it is worthwhile to distinguish two questions. The first is whether
the movement from visibility to invisibility is phenomenologically motivated.
The second is whether the very investigation of this invisibility still deserves
to be called phenomenological, or whether it should rather be left to a meta-
physical or speculative thinking.
As for the first issue, it would be a mistake to think that the movement
towards the invisible were merely a recent French trend. On the contrary, one
finds a similar tendency among all the major figures in phenomenology. If
we start with Husserl, he often talked of his own investigation into
time-consciousness as an analysis of the absolute dimension.57 Husserl very
well knew that every description of this passive and anonymously function-
ing constitutive dimension were beset with difficulties, mainly because the
concepts we have at our disposal all originates from our interaction with
intra-mundane and intra-temporal objects.58 The decisive problem is conse-
quently whether it is at all possible to describe and conceptualize the condi-
tion of manifestation, without treating it as an object, thereby falsifying it
decisively. Husserl’s realization of the difficulties connected to an investiga-
tion of lived subjectivity was perhaps never expressed more acutely than in
the following passage from the Bernauer Manuscripts:

In diesem Sinn ist es also nicht ‘Seiendes’, sondern Gegenstück für alles
Seiende, nicht ein Gegenstand, sondern Urstand für alle Gegenständlichkeit.
Das Ich sollte eigentlich nicht das Ich heissen, und überhaupt nicht heissen,
da es dann schon gegenständlich geworden ist, es ist das Namenlose über
allem Fassbaren, über allem nicht Stehende, nicht Schwebende, nicht
Seiende, sondern ‘Fungierende’, als fassend, als wertend usw. – Das alles
muß noch vielfach überdacht werden. Es liegt fast an der Grenze möglicher
Beschreibung.59

If we turn to Heidegger, he already in Sein und Zeit remarks that the specific
task of phenomenology is to disclose that which ‘zunächst und zumeist’ re-
mains hidden from view, namely Being. It is exactly because there are phe-
nomena which do not reveal themselves immediately that we are in need of a
phenomenology.60 Much later, in a conference from 1973, Heidegger explic-
236 DAN ZAHAVI

itly speaks of a ‘phenomenology of the inapparent (Unscheinbaren).’61 In

L’être et le néant Sartre writes that the lived body is invisibly present in every
action, exactly because it is lived and not known;62 and I hardly need to men-
tion the title of Merleau-Ponty’s last book: Le visible et l’invisible. If one
finally takes a look at the two phenomenologists that in certain respects might
be called Henry’s absolute antipodes, Derrida and Lévinas, one can also find
similar ideas. According to Derrida, the ultimate condition of manifestation
is not intuitively graspable. It cannot become the object of a reflection, it
does not offer itself to vision, but remains forever the nocturnal source of
light itself.63 For Lévinas, to encounter the Other is to be affected in radical
passivity by something ‘invisible’ in the sense of not being representable,
objectifiable, thematizable, etc.64 Henry describes the absolute passivity of
self-affection in very similar terms. And whereas Henry emphasizes the ab-
solute difference between any worldly, horizontal object-manifestation, and
the non-horizontal, immediate character of self-manifestation, Lévinas says
the same of the Other: it offers itself immediately, i.e., independently of all
systems, contexts and horizons.65 Thus the philosopher of immanence and the
philosopher of transcendence meet in their criticism of the object-fixated sur-
face-phenomenology. In fact their description of the self and the Other are
amazingly identical: Functioning subjectivity and radical alterity both belong
to a totally different ontological dimension than the one dominated by vision.66
But perhaps this is not so strange after all. In both cases we are dealing with
subjectivity.
In so far as practically all of the major phenomenological thinkers eventu-
ally realized that it would be necessary to transcend a mere analysis of act-
intentionality and object-manifestation if they were to approach and clarify
the phenomenological question concerning the condition of possibility for
manifestation, I do not – contra Janicaud – think that there is any reason to
deny that the move towards the invisible is phenomenologically motivated.
And again let me emphasize that to speak of the invisible is not to speak of
that which for ever remains hidden, it is not to speak of that which never
manifests itself, but simply to speak of something that manifests itself in a
radically different way than the visible.
As for the second question, it might very well be that there are aspects
concerning the nature of manifestation which phenomenology cannot ex-
plore and answer itself. But to admit that, is definitely not to accept a narrow
definition of phenomenology that equates it with an analysis of
act-intentionality and object-manifestation, that is which identifies phenom-
enology with surface-phenomenology.67 So although one might, as I have
 MICHEL HENRY AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE INVISIBLE 237
already mentioned, criticize Henry for using an unnecessarily paradoxical
formulation, he is certainly right in arguing that there are other forms of mani-
festation than the visible and that phenomenology is bound to investigate
these as well. That it can in fact do so, is evident from his own investigations
of self-manifestation.

Notes

1. Henry 1963, pp. 14, 32, 64, 67; 1966, p. 5.

2. Hua VI 161.
3. Hua XVI 55.
4. Henry 1963, pp. 36, 50.
5. Henry 1963, pp. 47, 52
6. On this account, the only type of experience which would lack self-awareness, would
be an experience I were not conscious of, that is, an ‘unconscious experience’.
7. As Dieter Henrich would write. “Im Bewußtsein ist aber kein Erscheinen ohne ein
Erscheinen des Bewußtseins selber.” Henrich 1970, p. 260. Cf. Hart 1998.
8. Henry 1963, pp. 47, 52, 168–169, 173, 576, 584, 598–699, 613.
9. Henry 1963, p. 173. Cf. pp. 168–169.
10. It is interesting to notice that Henry takes the distinction between the reflective and the
pre-reflective cogito to be equivocal, and he himself does not use the term pre-reflec-
tive as a designation of the originary self-manifestation (Henry 1965, p. 76). Presum-
ably, this is because the notion betrays a certain affiliation with the paradigm of reflection.
To designate self-awareness as pre-reflective indicates that reflective self-awareness is
till the yardstick.
11. Henry 1963, pp. 86–87, 95–96, 138, 143, 262. Cf. Zahavi 1998 and 1999.
12. Henry 1963, pp. 44, 279, 329, 352; 1966, pp. 22–23.
13. Henry 1963, pp. 288–292, 301.
14. Henry 1963, pp. 578, 580, 590.
15. Henry 1990, p. 22. With an argumentation very similar to one found in Sartre (1943, pp.
18, 20, 28), Henry claims that our sentiments can only exist self-aware. Their self-
manifestation is not separated from or external to their being, but the ontological foun-
dation of it. To be in pain, embarrassed, happy or stubborn is to be (self)aware of it. It is,
so to speak, both a way of being and a way of being aware.
16. Nagel 1974, p. 436; Searle 1992, pp. 131–132.
17. Cf. Flanagan 1994, pp. 194–195.
18. Henry 1963, pp. 578, 580, 590.
19. Henry 1990, p. 166, 1966, p. 33; 1965 p. 139.
20. Henry 1963, pp. 349, 576, 858.
21. Henry 1990, p. 166; 1966, p. 33; 1963, p. 858.
22. Henry 1963, pp. 858–859.
23. Heidegger 1991, p. 194.
24. Heidegger 1991, p. 190. Cf. p. 189.
25. Merleau-Ponty 1945, p. 469.
238 DAN ZAHAVI

26. Merleau-Ponty 1945, p. 487.

27. Henry 1989, p. 50.
28. Henry 1990, p. 32. For an account of Husserl’s theory of inner time-consciousness
which relates it to the issue of self-manifestation, cf. Zahavi 1999.
29. Henry 1990, pp. 49–50.
30. Derrida 1967a, p. 73.
31. Henry 1990, p. 107.
32. Henry 1990, p. 130.
33. Henry 1990, p. 72; 1963, pp. 279–280, 351–352, 377, 419.
34. Henry 1990, p. 7. Cf. Henry 1963, pp. 58, 279–280, 351–352, 377, 396, 419; 1990, pp.
72, 111.
35. Henry 1963, p. 477.
36. Henry 1963, pp. 480–482; 1990, pp. 125, 164.
37. Henry 1963, pp. 53, 480–482, 490, 549; 1990, pp. 125, 164.
38. Henry 1963, p. 53. Cf. 1963, p. 549.
39. Henry 1963, pp. 53, 57, 550, 555.
40. Henry 1965, p. 259. Cf. 1965, p. 99.
41. Henry 1965, p. 162.
42. Henry 1965, p. 79.
43. Henry 1966, p. 29.
44. Henry 1965, p. 127.
45. Cf. Sebbah 1994, p. 252.
46. Henry 1994, pp. 303–304, 310; 1996, pp. 201–202.
47. Henry 1990, p. 54; 1994, p. 311.
48. Cf. Zahavi 1998 and 1999.
49. Merleau-Ponty 1945, p. 417.
50. For a discussion of his contribution cf. Zahavi 1999.
51. Henrich 1970, pp. 266, 273; 1982, p. 142. These similarities are especially striking when
considering that Henrich has repeatedly claimed that the phenomenologists never man-
aged to escape the paradigm of reflection (Henrich 1966, p. 231; 1970, p. 261; 1982, p.
131.
52. Henry 1963, pp. 299–300, 422, 585; 1994, p. 305.
53. Henry 1963, p. 854. Cf. 1963, pp. 363, 371.
54. Klawonn 1991, pp. 79, 117–118, 154, 256.
55. In his article ‘The Saturated Phenomenon’ Marion argues that one should describe the
self-sufficient, unconditioned and non-horisontal manifestation as a revelation (Marion
1996, p. 120).
56. Janicaud 1991.
57. Hua III 182.
58. Hua X 75, Hua X 371. Ms. C 3 4a, Ms. C 7 14a.
59. Husserl, Ms. L I 20 4a–b. I am grateful to the Director of the Husserl-Archives in
Leuven, Professor Rudolf Bernet, for permitting me to consult and quote from Husserl’s
unpublished manuscripts.
60. Heidegger 1986a, p. 35. Cf. Marion 1989, pp. 90–97, Marion 1996.
61. Heidegger 1986b, p. 399.
62. Sartre 1943, p. 372.
63. Derrida 1972, p. 297; 1989, p. 137.
 MICHEL HENRY AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE INVISIBLE 239
64. Lévinas 1979, pp. 9, 53, 78; 1949, pp. 194, 206, 214; 1961, p. 209; 1982, p. 183.
65. Lévinas 1961, p. 72. Cf. 1949, p. 229.
66. Lévinas 1974, p. 158.
67. A narrow understanding that one occasionally encounters in both Lévinas and Derrida
(Lévinas 1949, p. 199; 1979, p. 87; Derrida 1967b, p. 99).

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