Michel Henry: The Affects of Thought

Description

Michel Henry (1922-2002) was a French philosopher and novelist whose work spanned decades and genres while remaining united by a singular vision. In this specially commissioned collection, eight internationally recognized experts on Henry's thought investigate his profound acquaintance with the mystery of life-which he understood as the irreducible bedrock of all reality-in its self-manifestation under the rubrics of phenomenological experience, religion, and praxis. Each chapter investigates a different aspect of Henry's remarkable range of thought, focusing on his special relevance to debates on the relationship of phenomenology and theology as well as to contemporary radical discourses on embodiment and immanence, politics and theory. Henry's phenomenology of life is both deep and demanding, and its relevance to the topics under examination in this book cannot be denied. This collection represents the first sustained effort in coming to an understanding of just how far and wide that relevance reaches. It will not only spark a resurgence in Henry studies, but resonate within that sphere for many years to come.

Jeffrey Hanson is Research Fellow in Philosophy at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the editor of Kierkegaard as Phenomenologist: An Experiment (2010) and the co-editor with Michael R. Kelly of Michel Henry: The Affects of Thought. Michael R. Kelly is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, USA. He is the editor of Bergson and Phenomenology (2010).

Emmanuel Levinas devoted his last Sorbonne seminar, in 1976, to The Essence of Manifestation. Those there present will remember the illuminating comments of the Master. And if the essays collected by Jeffrey Hanson and Michael Kelly happen to be even more illuminating to me at many places, it means probably that thirty-five years after Levinas, we are still beginning to read Henry - as he deserves to be read. -- Jean-Yves Lacoste, author of Experience and the Absolute and editor of The Encyclopedia of Christian Theology