on the border of phenomenology and theologyin one and the same sense. Marion says: “Not two loves are meant
here, but two names among the infinitely numerous ones which we
need in order to think and to say what a unique love is.”^47
2. God as Life
In L’essence de la manifestation, Henry devotes a profound analysis to
the thought of Master Eckhart.^48 It is through this thought that he, as
a phenomenologist of life, finds an access to Christianity for the first
time. There is a striking similarity between the analysis of Eckhart in
L’essence de la manifestation and the philosophy of Christianity elabor-
ated by Henry in the second half of the 1990s. It is useful to point out
some correspondences between the epochs, because, by contrast, these
correspondences also make recognizable the very novelty of this recent
approach. My interpretative hypothesis is that this novelty arises from
the task of determining the relationship between life and selfhood.
In L’essence de la manifestation, Henry does not content himself with
presenting Master Eckhart as a mystical thinker searching for a
unification with divinity. On the contrary, Henry tries to show that
what is at stake in Eckhart is not so much a unification [unio], but
rather a unity [unitas], with divinity: as Eckhart says, “I and God are
one and the same.”^49
It is this abyssal “indistinctness” [Ununterschiedenheit], this “still
desert” [stille Wüste],^50 which Eckhart’s thought is centered upon. If it
is true that Eckhart is a mystic, it is no less true that he is a purely
intellectual one. It is by no means an accident that Eckhart says: “It is
not because God is good that I am blessed. [... ] It is solely because
God is intelligent, and because I recognize this fact, that I am
- Ibid., 340.. Ibid., 340.
- Michel Henry,. Michel Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, Paris: PUF, third ed. 2003 (1963),
§§ 39–40 and § 49, 371–419 and 532–549. - Meister Eckehart,. Meister Eckehart, Deutsche Predigten und Traktate, ed. and trans. J. Quint,
Zürich: Diogenes, 1979, 309 and 215: “dass ich und Gott eins sind.” - Meister Eckehart,. Meister Eckehart, Deutsche Predigten und Traktate, 316.