Founder: Professor Wolfe Mays

Selfhood, Passivity and Affectivity in Henry and Lévinas[1]

László Tengelyi

That selfhood is related to passivity and affectivity is an observation that goes back to earlier times than the 20th century. It is already implied in the most severe criticism of personal identity which has ever been developed. Indeed, David Hume insists that “we must distinguish betwixt personal identity, as it regards our thought or imagination, and as it regards our passions or the concern we take in ourselves”.[2] Whereas he rejects the idea of personal identity in the first sense, he endorses it in the second. The importance of this distinction consists in indicating, for the first time, that selfhood does not result from an act of reflection on oneself, but it rests on the basis of an affectivity which is originally entirely passive.

This conception of selfhood is not alien to the phenomenological tradition. Husserl has already paved his way in this direction. However, it is preeminently Michel Henry and Emmanuel Levinas who make visible the close relationship between the three concepts. The two thinkers are, in spite of all differences between them,  united in their efforts to ground selfhood on passivity and affectivity. This is precisely what I am trying to establish in this paper by considering, first, Henry’s phenomenology of life and by examining, second, Levinas’s foundation of ethics. I intend to accomplish these two tasks separately, before coming to formulate, thirdly, some critical remarks which concern both projects.  

1. Originally passive affectivity and selfhood in Henry

In the last part of his main work on The Essence of Manifestation, Michel Henry attempts to show, on the first hand, that affectivity is characterized by “an original ontological passivity”[3] and, on the other hand, that it is affectivity which constitutes the very “essence of selfhood”[4]. Even if these ideas are repeatedly treated of in Henry’s later works as well, it is mainly the argument to be found in The essence of manifestation which, in his richness and coherence, lends itself to a close scrutiny.

The line of thought that interests us is entirely consistent with the general conception developed in this work. It is common knowledge that Henry distinguishes between two kinds of manifestation. He characterizes the extatic manifestation of the world by the notion of transcendance, opposing to it, as a different kind of manifestation, the self‑revelation of life linked up with the notion of immanence. This double distinction, on the first hand, between the two kinds of manifestation and, on the other hand, between transcendence and immanence is used in the work for an attack of what is called “ontological monism”[5], a tendency considered as prevalent in philosophical thought since the times of ancient Greek philosophy. This term is, however, misleading, since it suggests that Henry himself is the adherent of an ontological dualism, which he is, of course, not. In reality, he tries to reduce the dimension of the world entirely to the dimension of life, maintaining, at the same time, that immanence is the very essence of transcendence.[6] It is, precisely, for this purpose that the essence of self‑revelation is submitted to a close scrutiny.[7] The chief result of this scrutiny consists in the statement that the self-revelation of life can be characterized by the notion of the invisible.[8] It is here that the proposition asserted, according to which the relationship between invisible life and the visible world is a relationship between “reality” and “unreality”.[9] But, at first sight, it is only the “formal and empty negation” of the visible world which seems to be designated by the notion of the invisible.[10] In order to give a positive content to this notion, Henry tries to show that the essence of life is affectivity.[11] It is this major tenet that I wish to consider in the following.

According to the phenomenological conception of Husserl and Scheler, feelings and affective states in general are, at least in most cases, characterized by intentionality. Henry does not contest the pertinence of this conception. He says: “This essential characteristic of intentionality is, indeed, exhibited by every affective determination, just as well as by any other psychic fact.” If I am glad, I am glad to see or to learn something, if I am feared, I am feared of something, and even if I am in pain, I am in a pain because of something. Yet, Henry adds that affects are marked by a self‑referentiality which distinguishes them from all other mental states and which has nothing to do with intentionality.[12] Whereas what is perceived in a perception is only exceptionally itself a perception and what is recalled in a remembering is only exceptionally itself a remembering, etc., it is pain itself which we feel in pain and it is fear itself which we feel in fear. This fundamental self‑referentiality of feelings and affective states is described by Henry as a “self‑feeling” (se sentir soi-même)[13] and it is revealed to be the “very essence of affectivity as such”.[14]

As far as it is the expression of this self‑referentiality of affective states, affectivity is opposed to intentionality. Assuredly, this does not mean that affective states are not related to the world. However, according to Henry’s conviction, it is not from this relation with the world that their specific essence results, but solely from the self-referentiality which is expressed by the French term se sentir soi-même.

These reflections assign, at the same time, to the notion of affectivity a sense which distibguishes it from all particular affects. In Henry, it is nothing but the self‑referentiality of affective states that is designated by the term “affectivity”. At the same time, affective states are distinguished from sensations. Even if, according to a well‑known tenet of Husserlian phenomenology, sensations are not intentional experiences, there is something – for instance, the red colour or a bitter taste – which is felt in them, without coinciding with them. Consequently, there is an at least minimal distance between sensation and the sensed. It is by the fact of this distance that Henry justifies his statement according to which sensations are, in spite of their non‑intentional character, vehicles of the extatic manifestation of the world rather than of the self‑revelation of life. 

He adds that the minimal distance between sensation and the sensed is only a consequence of the fact that every sensation goes back to an affection by the world. This “hetero‑affection”, which is at the root of sensations, is the second mark which distinguishes them from all feelings and affective states. Assuredly, affective states are themselves linked up with certain influences of the world upon the ego. But Henry is convinced that the events arriving to us and irrupting, all of sudden, into our interior life are only  occasional causes of our feelings. It is our affectivity itself which makes it possible for the world to exert an influence upon our interior life. In other words, it is, in each case, our particular “attunement” which exposes us to an affection by the world. Henry says: “The eventual fact of one’s attunements depending on the vicissitudes of life and being adjusted to them […], the decision to rely to what arrives to oneself and, so to speak, to let it attain to one’s core […], all this, which is deeply rooted in the emptyness of existence, i. e. precisely in an attunement, is far from being able to determine one’s attunement, since it is identical to it and results from it.”[15] It is clear from this quotation that Henry does not admit of any possibility of a violent irruption of exterior events into our affectivity, without assuming that a particular receptivity for the impact of these events is developed in interior life itself. This position is deeply characteristic of Henry’s view of life and world.

In The essence of manifestation, the self‑referentiality of feelings and affective states is narrowly tied up with the idea of a self‑affection of life.[16] However, it is not this self‑affection which lays the basis for a comprehension of affectivity, but, inversely, it is affectivity which makes possible the comprehension of self‑affection. It is in this sense that Henry states: “Affectivity is the essence of self‑affection […].”[17] In order to elucidate this statement, we have to consider more closely the relationship between affectivity and passivity.

It is a consequence of the self‑referentiality of feelings and affective states that they are characterized by an “original” or “originary passivity”.[18] From this self‑referentiality, it immediately follows that “every feeling is delivered to itself irremediably, for being what it is »[19] and that, in its “being‑always‑already‑given‑to‑itself”[20], every feeling is “pushed back to Being, to its very being, sticking to it in every respect” [21] and “without recoil”[22]. These features assign to every feeling, even to the most joyful one, an irremediable character of suffering[23].

But every feeling is marked, just as well, by a character of enjoyment.[24] This latter character results from the fact that an affective state is never only delivered to itself and pushed back upon its very being, but one may equally say that it “arrives at itself, and becomes what it is”.[25] This identity of a feeling with itself is a source of enjoyment. According to Henry, it is life which experiences itself in affective states and attunements. But life does not only experience itself, it also finds and regains itself, by having an experience of what it is. All these aspects of feelings and affective states show that they are the vehicles of a self-revelation of life. That life not only experiences itself in them, but also finds and regains itself, by having experience of what it is, is a complex fact which is summarized in the notion of a self‑affection of life.

From these considerations, it follows, at the same time, that one has to distinguish between affectivity and affects. The affective tonality of affectivity does not necessarily coincide with the affective tonality of particular affects. Indeed, the affective tonality of affectivity is determined by suffering and enjoyment; these are the feelings that accompany the whole life in its accomplishment, providing it with a particular sense of reality. Suffering and enjoyment do not alternate in life; on the contrary, they are intermingled with each other. In order to make perceptible this interpenetration, Henry borrows from Heidegger a paradoxical figure of thought, which, in Being and Time, is for pointing out the intricate structure of the existential concept of destiny. The figure of thought in question unites in itself a certain idea of power or powerfulness and a certain idea of impotence or powerlessness. The powerlessness of feeling results from the fact that it is “the gift which cannot be refused […].”[26] Its powerfulness consists, on the contrary, in the experience of an “original force”.[27] This experience lends to every feeling a certain calm and sweet character (douceur)[28], due to the aforementioned fact that every feeling is ‘always‑already‑given‑to‑itself’, as well as to the “tranquil force resulting from this fact. From this statement, we may already draw the conclusion that the powerfulness of feeling is inseparable from its powerlessness. Indeed, Henry says: “The powerfulness of feeling is not opposed to its powerlessness, like one determination to another, but it is identical with it and it resides precisely in it.”[29]

This belonging together of powerfulness and powerlessness which is characteristic of feeling provides the idea of a self‑affection of life with a concrete meaning and makes its pertinence obvious. In its originary passivity, feeling finds itself, in spite of its ‘tranquil force’, ‘delivered to itself irremediably, for being what it is’, and even ‘pushed back to its being’. The word of tradition for expressing this ‘being‑always‑already‑given-to‑itself’ of an affective force is no other than precisely ‘self‑affection’.

We have seen how Henry established a relationship between affectivity and passivity; however, we have still to see how he establishes equally a relationship between affectivity and selfhood. The latter relationship cannot be deduced from the self‑referentiality of affective states. The self‑feeling characteristic of attunements and affects is an expression of the self‑affection of life, but it does not yet have any immediate bearing upon the selfhood of the self. Yet, Henry expressly states that “every feeling is, as such, a self‑feeling, a feeling of the self […].[30] He adds: “It is never the particular content of a feeling, the proper affective attunement differenciating and separating it from all other feeling, which can make of it the feeling of an I […][31], but it is “its affective character”, “affectivity as such”.[32] However, the particular connection between the self‑referentiality of a feeling and its relationship with the self has not yet become manifest. Everything has the appearance as though Henry tried to discover the missing link in the idea of an originary passivity of affectivity. His starting‑point is the observation that every feeling has a tendency to surpass itself.[33] This tendency is narrowly related to the character of suffering which necessarily belongs to every feeling. For all suffering finds itself constrained to surpass itself. Henry describes this predisposition of suffering to transcending itself in a particular way. According to him, it is not a pregiven world to which the self‑trancendence of feeling is directed. Paradoxically enough, feeling transcends itself, precisely, by arriving at itself, by becoming that which it is and nothing else. This paradox has a profound sense: by becoming itself and nothing else, feeling gets fixed and cristallized within a milieu of a diffuse and fluent affectivity; thus, it loses its agility and its multivocity. Henry says: “In a feeling the absence of surpassing – its identity with itself – is that which surpasses it. Such a surpassing, that of identity, accomplishing itself in identity, gives to a feeling its content […].”[34] This is the way how an affective attunement becomes an affect, a particular feeling: love or happiness, sadness or dispair.[35] It is this process of coagulation of particular feelings which provides us with the missing link between affectivity and selfhood. For it is this process which conveys to feeling “the weight of its proper being”.[36] It is in this way that feeling becomes the feeling of a self. In The essence of manifestation, we are told: “That which, in this way, is charged by itself, for being itself once and for all, is solely what may be rightly described as a self.”[37]

Consequently, it is “by this self‑surpassing of a feeling in identity towards its proper content”[38] that, according to Henry, originally passive affectivity finds itself bound up with the selfhood of the self. Later, we shall come back to the question of whether or not this bound is really unbreakable.

2. Originally passive affectivity and selfhood in Levinas

In comparing Levinas with Henry, we stumble upon some major difficulties. The author of Totality and Infinity – here I content myself to mention just this work, which is almost contemporary to The Essence of Manifestation – is far from trying to reduce transcendence to immanence. In this respect, the two thinkers are diametrically opposed to each other. What, in Totality and Infinity, Levinas is striving at is precisely to call into question immanence and to convey to transcendence a new sense and a new dignity.

Yet, if one does not content him- or herself with this panoramic view of the two thinkers, but attempts to go into the details of the two approaches, one comes across somein identifying itself with itself through everything which happens to it.”[41] Here, Levinas takes it for granted that the I is confronted with the possibility of alterations. Indeed I am constantly submitted to some changes. During the years I live through, I may change, without even becoming aware of it, to the point of not being any longer the same I was. But I never can change to the point of not being any longer myself – and no other. That is what Levinas has in mind, when he says: “The I is identical with itself even in its alterations.”[42] However, from these considerations, it is clear, at the same time, that the identity of the I with itself does not consiste in the sameness of an immutable core which the I preserves under all circumstances, but rather in the fact that the I constantly relates to itself and that, in this relationship with itself, it finds back to itself in an ever renewed manner.

Assuredly, the ego’s capacity of representing the world, just as well as its capacity of representing itself to itself, is by no means without impact on the selfhood. Levinas says : “To remain the same is to represent to itself.”[43] Self‑awareness, memory and the capacity of telling stories about one’s own life belong to the constitutive factors of selfhood. However, these factors are not the only bearers of the self. Just as Michel Henry, also Levinas relies upon the affective life of the I in order to make it clear that selfhood is more original than the forms in which the I represents itself to itself in a conscious and thematic way.

Indeed, in Totality and Infinity, it is shown that there is a more original kind of self‑referentiality than the reflexivity of representing oneself to oneself. What Levinas has in view is the self‑referentiality of the joy to live, the happiness of enjoyment. We are told: “To live is to enjoy life. To despair of life has only a sense because life is, originally, happiness”.[44] However, this joy to live does not signify a simple adherence to a naked Being. Levinas says: “The naked fact of life is never naked. Life is not the naked will to be, an ontological Care of this life. […] Life is love of life, a relationship with contents which are not just my Being, but which are more valauble than my Being: thinking, eating, sleeping, reading, working, heating oneself in the sunshine.”[45] This distinction between Being and life, in which one easily discerns a polemical thrust against the fundamental ontology of Heidegger, is all the more important because, according to Levinas, it is not ontological Care, but joy to live, happiness of enjoyment, which is closely bound up with the selfhood of the self. We are told: “[…] since life is happiness, it is personal. The personality of a person, the selfhood of the I, more than the particularity of the atom and the individual, is the particularity of the happiness of enjoyment.”[46]

Here, the selfhood of the self finds itself relegated to an originally passive affectivity. As opposed to representation, the happiness of enjoyment is not based on any activity of the subject. It is rather based on the originally passive groundwork of all activity. This groundwork precedes and founds all reflective self‑awareness. Levinas says: “Life is affectivity and feeling.”[47]

The line of thought followed up so far is summarized in the formula “affectivity as the selfhood of the I”, which is used, in Totality and Infinity, as the title of a chapter.[48] According to Levinas, the bound which ties up affectivity and selfhood is no other than the happiness of enjoyment. For, according to him, happiness is essentially incomparable, unique and, consequently, irreplaceable. This is the meaning of the following sentence: “[…] every happiness arrives for the first time.”[49] What is true of happiness (bonheur), is true also of its opposite, misfortune (malheur).[50] Just as Henry insists on the inseparability of suffering and enjoyment, Levinas insists on the inseparability of happiness and misfortune.

Yet, in Totality and Infinity, the happiness of enjoyment is very far from exhausting the entire sense of selfhood. In opposition to Michel Henry, Levinas decidedly refuses to reduce selfhood to the self‑referentiality that is properly characteristic of the manifestation of life. This is precisely the point at which the approaches of the two thinkers are separated from each other. Levinas considers as untenable the equation of selfhood with an affectivity that accompanies the accomplishment of life, because, according to his opinion, this equation restricts the sense of the unicity or singularity of the I to what is designated in Totality and Infinity, by a term borrowed from Sartre[51], as ‘separation’ and what is described by Levinas himself as the exclusive domain of ‘egoism’. It is in this sense that Levinas says: “The identification of the Same is neither the emptiness of a tautology nor the dialectical opposite of the Other, but the concreteness of egoism.”[52] This is, however, far from being the last word of Levinas on selfhood.

Indeed, in Totality and Infinity, the ‘concreteness of egoism’ is by no means the only notion applied to selfhood. Levinas does not hold that the irreplaceable singularity of the I is reducible to the – otherwise entirely unique – character of happiness. He rather deduces this singularity from the ethical task of the I. He says: “The I is a priviledge or an election”[53], adding that “To pronounce ‘I’ […] signifies to have a priviledged place in respect of the responsibilities in which nobody can replace me and of which nobody can exempt me. Not to be able to withdraw oneself – that is the I.”[54]

Here, a second notion of selfhood makes its appearance, a second notion that is distinct from the first one. The two notions are not to be reconciled without difficulties. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas defines selfhood, on the one hand, as the enjoyment of life in separation[55] and, on the other hand, as the ‘apologetical position’[56] of the I – a position which surpasses every separation. The ‘apology of selfhood’[57] is decribed as follows: “My arbitrary freedom reads its shame in the eyes which glance upon me. It is apologetic, i. e. it refers already, by itself, to the judgement of the Other […].”[58] According to Totality and Infinity, both egoism and apology belong to the constitution of selfhood. Whereas egoism is equally characterised as an ‘atheism’[59], apology is opposed to it under the term of ‘religion’[60]. In Totality and Infinity, this opposition makes perceptible the irremediable tension between the two notions of selfhood proposed by this work.

On the contrary, in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Levinas strives for surmounting this tension, by breaking with the former use of ontological metacategories like the Same and the Other. Instead of defining the I as the Same, he now coins formulas like ‘the‑Other‑in‑the‑Same’[61] and ‘the other in me’[62] in order to make visible a selfhood, an ipseity which “has become at odds with itself in its return to itself”[63]. The identity underlying this selfhood is only an “identity in diastasis”, where “coinciding is wanting”.[64] In this new conception of selfhood, the unicity or singularity of the I is entirely detached from identity or sameness in the traditional sense of the word. That is why the new formula “Uniqueness without identity”[65] is now proposed.

But just as in Totality and Infinity, also in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, selfhood is linked up with passivity and affectivity. Levinas says: “It is in the passivity of obsession […] that an identity individuates itself as unique […]”.[66] The passivity which Levinas has in mind is a passivity that is “more passive still than all the passivity of undergoing”[67], i. e. “a passivity inconvertible into an act, the hither side of the act–passivity alternative […]”[68]. From the allusion to obsession, it becomes already clear that this absolutely original passivity is inseparable of affectivity. Moreover, in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Levinas describes a whole range of affective states like ‘despite oneself’, fatigue, patience and endurance of age or vulnerability in the sense of an “exposure to wounding in enjoyment”[69]. A characteristic of these analyses appeals immediately to our attention: in opposition to Michel Henry, Levinas considers these affective states like some traces of an immemorial irruption of alterity into selfhood. These traces are related to the ethical task of the I, as well as to its ‘election’. Just as in Totality and Infinity, also in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, the ethical task of the I is described as a the “not-being-able-to-slip-away-from obligation”[70]. But, in the new work, this expression assumes an additional shred of meaning, which is much more related to affectivity than to ethics in its proper sense. Now, Levinas insists on the irruptive et violent character of the appeal or claim of the Other from which the I cannot ‘slip away’. That is why, in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, he does not even shrink from defining selfhood as a “traumatic […] uniqueness”.[71]

3. The Enigma of an Anonymous Affectivity

Thus far, we have seen, on the one hand, how Henry and Levinas try to base the notion of selfhood upon an analysis of original passivity and affectivity and we have distinguished, on the other hand, between two different versions of such an attempt, by showing that, whereas Henry does not admit of any hetero‑affection to which no internal receptivity corresponds, Levinas regards trauma as a necessary condition of the ‘identity in diastasis’ which he discovers at the very core of selfhood. Whereas, in the eyes of Henry, affectivity is not just one case of a self‑affection of life, but it is rather the very essence of this self‑affection, Levinas, on the contrary, has precisely a way of being affected in mind which “can in no way be invested by spontaneity”[72] and which, therefore, cannot be conceived of as a self‑affection, of whatever kind it may be.

However, we cannot content ourselves with separating these two versions of the attempt to base selfhood on an originally passive affectivity, without addressing a question to both thinkers: is an originally passive affectivity really capable of founding selfhood? A doubt arises here from the observation that affectivity shows an undeniable tendency to anonymity. The more definitely affective arrousals are transmuted into precisely determined and isolated affects, the more clearly this tendency manifests itself. For nothing lends itself more to caricature than a strong and unequivocal affect. One knows some marble statues which express anger, wrath or sadness in a very characteristic way, without representing any personal trait of a real or imaginary individual. Even if affective arousals preserve their fluent and multifarious character, inserting themselves entirely into the temporal flux of life, in their upsurging they hint at a force arising from immemorial depths and, resisting, therefore, to any assigment to a particular self.

Assuredly, one finds in Henry, just as well as in Levinas, some arguments which can be adduced in order to dissipate this doubt. However, one is discouraged by realizing that these arguments transcend the limits of a phenomenologically founded line of thought.

Henry sees clearly the danger generated by all attempt to reduce the originally passive process of life to impersonal forces and drives. It is such a reduction which he detects in the main tendency of what is generally described as a philosophy of life and what emerges, in late modernity, with Schopenhauer, Nietzsche et, according to him, also with Freud.[73] The phenomenology of life he himself endorses is, from the beginning, opposed to such a philosophy of impersonal forces and drives. However, it is only by invoking theology that Henry succeeds in defending his phenomenology against the danger of anonymity.[74] In his phenomenology of incarnation, the connection between affective life and selfhood is due to an “Orignal Selfhood” (Archi-Ipséité)[75], to the “Selfhood of the First Self”[76], i. e. to that of the “Original Son” (Archi‑Fils), who is Jesus-Christ[77].

As far as Levinas is concerned, the same difficulty takes a different form. In order to set out this particular form, we have to start with an objection formulated by Paul Ricœur. In his Reading of Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence of Emmanuel Lévinas, Ricœur emphasizes that the ethics expounded in this work suffers from a “desert of words” (désert des mots) and of a “distress of the discourse” (détresse du dicours).[78] What is indicated by these two expressions is the fact that, detached from ontology, ethics remains without “a direct, proper, adequate language” and, consequently, finds itself compelled to have recourse to a “non‑ethical language”[79] and even to a “discourse of evil (méchanceté)”.[80] If we think of the pre‑eminent role assigned, for instance, to the notion of persecution in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, we comprehend this objection without any difficulty. This does not change, however, on the fact that this objection cannot be considered as valid – at least not without some modifications. It is mainly the example of persecution that makes clear the real necessity of a recourse to a ‘non‑ethical language’ in an ethics which has got rid of the ontological metacategories of the Same and the Other. It is precisely the use of a non‑ethical language which makes it possible for Levinas to recognize a tendency to anonymity in affective life, to which he ascribes, nevertheless, not only an importance for ethics, but also a bearing upon selfhood. This is an incontestably paradoxical enterprise, which requires some new methods. Some of these methods are not entirely exempted of doubt. One of them consists in using terms of psychopathological origin in order to express the anonymity of affective life, extending, at the same time, the meaning of these terms to all conscious life, even if it is not characterized by any pathological feature. This is, obviously, the case with a term like ‘obsession’, but the same is true of ‘persecution’ as well. Indeed, Levinas says: “Obsession is a persecution, where the persecution does not make up the content of a consciousness gone mad; it designates the form in which the ego is affected, a form which is a defecting from consciousness.”[81] It is not so much the use of a non‑ethical language or the recourse to a discourse of violence and evil which raises here a major difficulty, but rather the ambiguity resulting from a systematic transgression of the limite that separates psychopathology from the phenomenology of affectivity.

Even the new description of selfhood as ‘the Other‑in-the‑Same’ or ‘the‑other‑in‑me” is permeated with this ambiguity. Indeed, in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, these formulas do not simply designate an ‘identity in diastasis’ which is characteristic of the new notion of selfhood, but they refer just as well to what, in this work, Levinas calls ‘the psyche of soul’ (le psychisme de l’âme). The ambiguity in question becomes especially clear from the following passage: “Soul is the other in me. Psyche, the one‑for‑the‑other, may be possession and psychosis; soul is already the grain of madness.”[82] It follows from these lines that, in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, the ethical language elaborated by Levinas is, indeed, not without ambiguity. ‘Trauma’, ‘possession’, ‘obsession’ and ‘persecution’ are terms which are not reduced to express the ethical meaning of an immemorial hetero‑affection; they are used just as well in a psychopathological sense, assigning to affective life an inalterable anonymity. Without this anonymity, one could not even speak of ‘the other‑in‑me’, i. e. of an alterity in ipseity. However, it becomes here also perceptible how the meaning of the ‘other’ oscillates between alterity in the ethical sense of the word and mental ‘alienation’ in the psychopathological sense of the word.

These critical remarks lead us up to see that the task of binding up selfhood with an originally passive affectivity has not yet been accomplished by Henry and Levinas, without leaving behing certain difficulties. However, the observation that affectivity is marked by a tendency to anonymity has not only a negative and critical signification, but it characterizes affective states and arousals also in a positive way. It is not by accident that, in The Essence of Manifestation, Michel Henry tries to describe how feelings surpass themselves and it is not by accident, either, that, in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Levinas determines affectivity as an alterity in ipseity. These are, indeed, the first steps on the road towards the perception that the self could not be a ‘self’ (in the only sense we are able to assigne to this word), if it were not constantly confronted with a tendency to anonymity. Enclosed into its identity with itself, it would be nothing else but a solus ipse, a self on the very limit of selfhood, containing in itself not just a ‘grain of madness’, but a veritable mental alienation.

Therefore, it is necessary to continue the work begun by Henry and Levinas in order to account for the tendency to anonymity which characterizes all feeling and affective tonality. It seems to me that no such attempt could be successful without giving back its weight to the concept of affective experience. By this concept, I mean an affective event which arrives to us, by bringing with itself something new and something unforseeable. An affect which, to put it in terms of Michel Henry, arrives at itself assumes inevitably a character of anonymity. On the contrary, an affective experience capable of surprising, astonishing and sometimes even of shocking us may contribute to the formation of our selfhood. That is why one could state that all ‘éducation sentimentale’ is a sentimental journey. In other words, it is only on an experiential way across the world that our selfhood is constituted.

In this conception of an affective experience, the notions of immanence and transcendence assume a meaning which is entirely different from how they are used by Henry and Levinas. All affective experience is, in a certain sense, transcendent, because, to put in Levinasian terms, it manifests itself as something real which “precedes and surprises the possible”. But all affective experience is, in another sense, immanent, because, even it has nothing to do with an encapsulated subject, it is proper and pertinent to a certain experiential way across the world and, consequently, inherent to the life of a self. It is in this way that the idea of a selfhood which is nothing else but the trace of an experiential way through the world, allows us, not only to account for the tendency to anonymity characteristic of all feelings and affective tonalities, but also to bridge the gap between Levinasian transcendence and Henrian immanence.