Phenomenological life

Phenomenological life has been defined by the philosopher Michel Henry as what possesses the faculty and the power to feel and to experience oneself in every point of its being. For Michel Henry, the life is essentially force and affect, it consists in a pure experience of itself which oscillates permanently between the suffering and the joy.

What he has called the « absolute phenomenological life » is the subjective life of the individuals reduced to its pure inner manifestation, as we live it and feel it permanently. It is the life as it reveals itself and appears inwardly, its self-revelation : the life is both what reveals and what it revealed. This life is invisible by nature because it never appears in the exteriority of a look.

This life is composed of sensitivity and affectivity, it is the unity of their manifestation, the affectivity being however the essence of the sensibility, which means that any sensation is affective by nature. The life is the foundation of our experience (the subjective experience of a sorrow, of seeing a color or the pleasure of drinking fresh water in summer) and of our powers (the subjective power of moving the hand or the eyes for example).

The word « phenomenological » refers to the phenomenology, which is the science of the phenomenon and a philosophical method which is reduced to study the phenomena as they appear.