on the border of phenomenology and theologyHenry adds: “Life ‘is’ not. It happens and does not cease to happen.”^58
Life assumes the character of an event which has its particularity: It is
a “process of self-revelation,” a “phenomenological process.”^59 In
Eckhart’ terms, one could speak here of (re)cognition [Erkenntnis], and
one could add: if being is to be attributed to Life, it can be done so
only on the basis of this Erkenntnis.^60
The idea of a self-revelation of life makes it possible for Henry to
keep a distance from the metaphysical conception of being. That is
why the relationship between Life and the living cannot be interpreted
as a kind of ontological difference, either. Henry has another model
in view: Eckhart’s distinction between Divinity and God. If it is true
that, in C’est moi la vérité, he contents himself with a few allusions to
Eckhart,^61 it is no less true that he still carries on the ideas borrowed
from Eckhart. In C’est moi la vérité, he says: “Life is more than the
living. This thesis is valid for God as well.”^62 Henry emphasizes that
“in God Himself, Life precedes the living.”^63 We may assume that by
Life, written with a capital “L,” Henry means still something like the
Eckhartian abyss of indistinctness, this “still desert.”
In C’est moi la vérité, it is clearly stated that Life, written with a
capital “L,” is “to be neatly distinguished from the object of biology.”^64
This is because, in biology, living beings are considered, but life itself,
as it manifests itself corporeally and affectively in the living, is precisely
that which is not inquired into. Henry quotes the scientist François
Jacob, who says: “In our days, in laboratories, life is no longer an
object of research.”^65 As a phenomenologist, Henry takes it for granted
that life cannot be known on the basis of external observations, but
only from within, on the basis of lived experience. That is why he poses
the question: “Is it not paradoxical to turn to infusoria or, at best, to
bees in order to find out what life is? [... ] As if we ourselves were no
- Ibid.. Ibid.
- Ibid., 75f.. Ibid., 75f.
- Cf. Meister Eckehart,. Cf. Meister Eckehart, Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke, Vol. V, 45.
- See especially Henry,. See especially Henry, C’est moi la vérité, 132 f.; cf. 214.
- Ibid., 68.. Ibid., 68.
- Ibid.. Ibid.
- Ibid., 47.. Ibid., 47.
- Ibid., 52.. Ibid., 52.