Two Philosophies of Immanence. The Relevance of Meister Eckhart in the Phenomenology of Michel Henry

Abstract

The mystical thought of Meister Eckhart has a prominent place in the philosophy of Michel Henry, one of the most relevant French phenomenologists. He has carried out a profound radicalization of phenomenology, bringing all appearance back to a pure appearing, immanent and independent of transcendence, that is to say, of the horizon of the world. The hypothesis of this article is that Eckhartian mystical theology offers Henry the key conceptual elements to conceive and describe this pure appearing. To demonstrate this, the article will be organized as follows. In the first section, an introduction to the most important theses of Henry's philosophy will be offered. In the second section, it will highlight the concepts proper to Meister Eckhart's German work that are taken up by Henry in The Essence of Manifestation, his most important work, and examine what is the particular interpretation he made of them. In the third section, finally, the characteristic notes of phenomenology of life will be introduced and the link between the Eckhartian theory of generation and the Henryian theory of transcendental birth will be clarified. After this, we hope that it will be possible to observe how Eckhartian thought is present in all of Henry's work: from the most purely phenomenological moment, in which Henry tries to give subjectivity a strictly immanent phenomenality, to his last texts, in which the ultimate foundation is absolute Life, i.e. God, who reveals Himself to Himself, thus giving birth to the livings, structurally identical to Himself.