Genealogy of modern philosophy: Henry's views on community (Pathos-with)

We'll read Michel Henry's essay "Pathos-with" from his Material Phenomenology over two weeks. See below for some notes on the text. All texts are available in the Google folder linked at the very BOTTOM of this description - scroll down 👇

Please take the time to read and reflect on the reading prior to the meeting. Everyone is welcome to attend, but speaking priority will be given to people who have read the text.

Reading schedule:
Nov 23: Henry's critique of Husserl on the Other
Nov 30: Henry on community (Pathos-with)
Dec 7: Break
Dec 14: Deleuze's "Immanence: a Life"

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GROUP RULES

• Please spend 1-2 hours per week reading and preparing for the discussion.
• Keep your comments concise and relevant to the text.
• Please limit each comment to a maximum of 2-3 minutes. You're welcome to speak as many times as you wish.
• Virtual meeting courtesy: let's not interrupt each other and keep mics muted when not speaking.
• We'll focus the discussion with key passages and discussion questions. Be sure to bring your favorite passages, questions, comments, criticisms, etc.

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NOTES ON THE TEXT
Henry has rejected the theory of an intentionality-based community as found in Husserl and other phenomenologists. He now spells out his view of community as the shared affectivity of Pathos-with. Such a community has its origin in life itself and is therefore grounded in life’s auto-affection. As we know, life for Henry is immanent and absolute: it is a radical ‘here’ that knows no exteriority or transcendence and never goes outside of itself. And yet life is also subjectivity, experiencing itself in the first person (an I or ego) as an individuated ipseity. As immanent ipseity, life thus only ever experiences itself, even when it encounters its full experiential richness. This is only possible if life is in turn an auto-donation: it gives itself to itself in its full plenitude, and at the same time it is that which is given. Finally, this self-givenness of life (life as a gift to the living) implies its affectivity as pathos. Here Henry repeatedly emphasizes the receptive, material and felt relation of life to itself, in contrast to the intellectualism of Husserlian phenomenology.

Turning to the question of community, Henry describes what is shared between self and other as a "subterranean layer" lying below cognitive intentionality and existential projection. This is a community of a shared life-pathos, a pathos-with, that is nevertheless a radically individuated life. Thus there is even an “abyss” separating the affects of the self from the affects of the other. In a way that must surely appear paradoxical from the standpoint of intentionality, the entirety of life is immanent to the singular individual: life is never more than the two feet on which it is standing. And yet life is shared between all individuals and is the common a priori basis for their community—indeed, not only of "rational beings" but of all beings capable of a suffering pathos. Accordingly, on the invisible level of primordial pathos-with, not even a distinction can be drawn between the self, the other, and the life that connects them. For distinction implies difference and negation, while life in its communal aspect is still pure fullness and immanence. This pathos-with is the fundamental intelligibility of that which connects all living beings—not as a biological nature or even a mode of activity, but as the original how of their givenness in, through and by life itself.

Although primordial life for Henry is prior to the world in every sense (cognitive or existential), the affective community in fact contains the world. Only, Henry explains, what is contained therein is neither the intentional world of scientific objectivity nor the existential existential world of pragmatic projection. Instead, this is the world in its primordial affective layer, the phenomenological materiality of the world of life into which living beings are thrown. This is the world of drive and desire, explored by psychoanalysis and what is later called ‘libidinal economy’. Relations where this pure materiality emerges are those of the mother-infant, hypnotist-hypnotized, analyst-patient, etc. The other in each case remains invisible from the standpoint of intentionality and can only be felt in the co-presence and consubstantiality of pathos-with.

Questions

• How could Henry claim that there is an “abyss” between my affects and those of the other, while also maintaining that at the level of life there is no primordial distinction between self, other and life itself?

• Henry claims that the real world does not fall outside of the affective community. And yet, isn't there a gaping abyss between life as he understands it and the world in any sense?

• By claiming that the individual and the community are consubstantial, Henry would hope to evade the extremes of individualism and collectivism. Is he successful, however, or does he have a bias in one direction or the other?

• Is there any reality of death for Henry at all (cf. Heidegger's being-towards-death or the Freudian death drive)? Or is death unreal, non-existent when seen from the perspective of absolute life (cf. "O death, where is thy sting?")

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All readings can be found in this Google folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VPRdvZYmUKBY3cSxD8xC8sTYtSEKBXDs

Art: Wassily Kandinsky — Improvisation 6 (African), 1909