laszlo tengelyiHenry as “the antinomial structure of life itself.”^78 On the one hand,
it is an anxiety which may even turn into despair (Henry relies here
on Kierkegaard); but, on the other hand, life constantly remains
pleasure and joy.^79
As an affective tonality of such an ambiguous character, selfhood
proves to be an indispensably fundamental structure of life itself. Life,
as a self-giving, self-affecting, and self-revealing event, cannot take
place without assuming the character of selfhood. In other terms,
selfhood belongs to “the self-generation of life as that ‘in which this
self-generation is accomplished as a self-revelation’”; it belongs “to
self-revelation as the very instance that makes it possible.”^80
On this point, the difference between the life of God and the life of
man becomes important. My selfhood is by no means the result of my
own deed. “I am given to myself, but this self-giving of myself does
not depend on me.”^81 Rather, I receive my selfhood as a gift. Assuredly,
this gift was not given to me in the sense “in which one gives somebody
something, for instance a present, which goes from one hand to
another,” but was given to me in the sense in which life, or “the
condition of living” as such is given to us: as “the happiness to have
experience of ourselves in the self-experience which is Life [... ]”.^82
Henry has a gift in mind that has nothing to do with creation. Just
as, according to Eckhart, the “spark in the soul,” the self is also
uncreated. According to Henry, selfhood is a gift stemming from self-
giving Life. This Life gives me “the condition of living,” by generating
the Primal Son. Henry says that it is only in the selfhood of the Primal
Son that “the Father has an experience of Himself.”^83
It is with this assertion that the phenomenology of self-revealing
Life assumes the character of a philosophy of Christianity. Indeed, it
is precisely in this tenet that Henry discovers the distinctive trait of
Christianity. That man is a Son of God is a conviction that is common
- Ibid., 249.. Ibid., 249.
- Ibid., 251.. Ibid., 251.
- Ibid., 76.. Ibid., 76.
- Ibid., 136.. Ibid., 136.
- Ibid., 130f.. Ibid., 130f.
- Ibid., 76.. Ibid., 76.