Founder: Professor Wolfe Mays

 

1) Introduction
2) Immanence and transcendence, self-affection, monism and dualism
3) Eckhardt
4) Body
5) Mechthild, the relation between the human and the Divine

1. In this paper I want to discuss Henry’s distinction and criticise his separation between immanence and transcendence in relation to the Christian mystic tradition. Henry addresses this Christian tradition and activates it in a contemporary philosophical context, and just as many phenomenologists within the so called “turn to religion” he turns to the male apophatic tradition, i.e. negative theology. But because of his discussion and emphasis on the body, he also implicitly takes on the tradition of female mysticism, which emphasizes the body more than male mystics do. This tradition is rarely discussed in contemporary philosophy, but through a reading of Henry, we can also allow the female mystics to respond in a different way. I will thus provide a critical perspective on Henry.

I will mainly draw on Essence of manifestation (1963) and Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body (1965), but I will also add a few remarks from I am the Truth (1996). Even though Henry’s emphasis indeed does change over time, I will, for the sake of my argument here, present it as a coherent stance.

2. Henry criticises the phenomenological tradition for its ontological monism i.e. for only accepting one kind of manifestation. The phenomenologists only accept a manifestation that bears on intentionality, where the manifested needs to be different from that which manifests. The self is thus only manifested to itself as other than itself. When the subject tries to see itself it always loses its own subjectivity since it turns itself into an object as soon as it sees itself.

This paradox is discussed from the beginning of the phenomenological tradition, already in Husserl’s lectures and texts on internal time-consciousness. Even though Husserl sees the problem, he refuses to acknowledge its full scope and claims that subjectivity does not chang by becoming an object. This has been strongly criticized in the phenomenological tradition. Heidegger, Derrida, and Levinas, among others, have all criticized Husserl on this point. And even though they all developed this paradox in different ways, they all turned to some kind of phenomenology of the invisible. In this perspective Henry is no different, but he radicalises, to an extreme degree, the insight into the impossibility of reducing subjectivity to objectivity. He argues that the self can not be objectified, but that it is still given, although in a totally different way. He criticises all other phenomenologists for not accepting this totally different givenness, i.e. an unobjectified givenness of subjectivity, the movement of subjectivity. He thus claims that we should accept two types of givenness, and this will be the basis for what he calls an ontological dualism, a dualism that separates transcendent and objectified manifestation from immanent and directly given manifestation. In the following I will try to explain what this means.

Henry claims that the self not can be reduced to the representation of itself, since the representation or objectification of the self is a transcendent outer manifestation of the self, and not the self itself. But this transcendent objectification does not come about by itself, its possibility, and thus essence, lies in the manifesting or objectifying power. We find this objectifying power in the seeing and not in the seen, in the feeling and not the felt, and so on. This power or unfolding of the seeing and the feeling, is what Henry calls immanence. As such it is also that which makes the seen and the felt (i.e., objects) possible. Henry radicalizes this distinction between immanence (the objectifying power) and transcendence (the object), and calls them two different ontological realities. The radicalisation lies in making immanence independent of transcendence.

The independency of the immanent structure of transcendence derives from the fact that the self receives itself without making itself transcendent. Immanence is a receptivity unto itself and a kind of manifestation that does not separate its manifestation from the manifesting power. To explain this Henry distinguishes between transcendent and immanent content. With this distinction Henry emphasizes that it is not the case that immanence would be only the empty form of a transcendent content. Subjectivity is not transcendental apperception, i.e., a dative that the world is for, and only exists in this being “for” and thus dependent upon the world. But neither is subjectivity as immanent content something “of the world,” it is that which enables the world, and thus it is transcendental in Husserl’s sense. Immanence receives itself directly without any mediating help of a transcendent world, it is immediate. Because of this lack of mediation it is non-horizontal, non-ecstatic, a-temporal and a-cosmic, and therefore escapes reflexive thematisation. Its appearance is invisible, but it is not non-appearance, on the contrary it is the most foundational kind of manifestation. It is not unknown, but known in a radically different way. Since it is immediate, it is a self-sufficient immanence, not dependent upon outer knowledge.

The immanent self is therefore not only an empty form of the transcendent world, but has a content of its own. But this content cannot be separated from its form, there cannot be any gap within immanence, since such a gap is exactly that which characterizes transcendence. The form is the content. The form as well as the content of immanence is auto-affection, which constitutes the original essence of receptivity.*1 For this receptivity of otherness to be possible, receptivity first needs to be constituted, and this is what auto-affection does. It consists in the very possibility of receptivity. Manifestation and appearing thus have a pure moment, “before” something is manifested and before something appears. This is a moment where the possibility of manifestation itself is manifested and the possibility of appearing itself appears. This also means that affection completely merges with receptivity. Auto-affection is thus “the internal structure of the essence whose property is that of receiving itself.” (EM, 236) There is a moment of receiving oneself before objectifying oneself. There are thus two kinds of receptivity: The receptivity that receives the horizon, exteriority, transcendence, and representation, but also a receptivity that receives itself, a reception in immanence.

“The internal possibility if the transcendental relationship of Being-in-the-world resides in the fact that it is not a simple ‘relationship’ in the ordinary sense, but a ‘relating oneself to’ it is the relationship itself which relates itself to that to which it relates itself.” (EM, 253) This ‘relating oneself to’ is thus, as is every relation, based on the fact that it exists for a self. The self is already given before it can relate to something else. It is also only from immanence that relations at all are possible, in objectivity there is no relationship. Only something “self-given” can in its turn give world.

Henry even states that transcendence is not real: “The horizon is a purely imaginary product, its ontological reality is not that of the essence, it is not reality. That which the essence creates is merely an image. The transcendental horizon of Being defines the ontological milieu of unreality. Because the essence, on the one hand, and its imaginary product, on the other, are the form and the content of receptivity which resides in representation, they differ, from the ontological point of view, as reality and unreality.” (EM, 242-243) Immanence therefore has a twofold power, it can receive itself and it can represent (itself as well as the world). It first receives itself and can therefore receive otherness and include difference. Immanence is thus the essence of transcendence. Immanence is real and transcendence unreal. Since reality is the basis of unreality, this is a monistic philosophy. Since reality and unreality are totally different, this is also a dualistic philosophy. Henry calls this two orders of facts bound together by one truth. Not two perspectives, but two kinds of being.

Immanence as real lies in immanence as that which makes transcendence possible. Henry phrases his radical position in the following way: “Possible means real. The possibility of movement is the phenomenological reality of its original manifestation.” (EM, 263) I think this is important for the understanding of Henry’s thinking, especially in its radicalised form in I am the truth, where the unreality of transcendence is further emphasized. The presuppositions are what is real, i.e., the movement of immanence before the transcendent result. This is why immanence is true and transcendence untrue. Henry wants to think the movement of immanence independent of the world and transcendent results.

3. Eckhardt
In The Essence of Manifestation Henry discusses his theory of the primacy and unity of immanence in relation to Meister Eckhardt. Natalie Depraz has discussed this relationship in her essay “Seeking a phenomenological metaphysics: Henry’s reference to Meister Eckhardt” *2 and she states that Henry’s philosophy is a deepening of Eckhardt’s thinking. Even though Henry did not write a whole work on Eckhardt, the medieval thinker kept providing Henry with a positive parallel. There are some central paragraphs on Eckhardt in The Essence of Manifestation, and Henry also draws on him in I am the truth. Thematically this parallel is found in the analysis of immanence that I discussed above, and which Eckhardt talks about using the vocabulary of the union between the soul and God. Eckhardt’s theme is, according to Henry, Man’s journey from a life in the transcendent world to a life in the immanence of God. This relates to Eckhardt’s discussion of the inner man, that is the immanence of man that is one with God, and outer man, which Henry understands as the transcendent human being:

Thus the Scriptures says of us that there is in us an outer man and another, inner man. To the outer man there belongs everything which, while it adheres to the soul, is nevertheless enclosed by flesh and mixed up with it and which cooperates with each and every member of the body, such as the eye, the ear, the tongue, the hand and so forth. All this the Scripture calls the old, the earthy, the outer, the hostile or the slavish man.
The other person in us is the inner man, which the Scripture calls the new, the heavenly, the young, the nobel man, or the friend. And this is the one which is meant when our Lord says that ‘a certain nobleman went away to a distant country to gain a kingdom for himself and returned’. *3

The inner man leaves the outer man and search for its own essence i.e., God. In this essence of his own there is no distinctions:

Every kind of mediation is alien to God. God says, ‘I am the first and the last’ (Rev. 22:13) There is neither distinction in the nature of God […] The divine nature is One, and each Person is both One and the same One as God’s nature. […] Distinction is born, exists and is possessed only where this Oneness no longer obtains. Therefore it is in Oneness that God is found, and they who would find God must themselves become One. *4

Immanence is thus the essence of the individual, but not the individual as one person next to others in a manifold world. Immanence comes before difference, and before one individual as differing from another. The immanence and self-affection that define the human essence is not the work of man. The human being finds itself self-affected. Immanence thus shows itself as the absolute immediacy of God, and the humanity of the human being first and foremost as manifested, transcendent being. The union between them is possible exactly for the same reason as we stated above, that is, since the essence and possibility of transcendence is immanence. According to the same logic, the possibility and essence of man is God. God and man are joined in their ontological immanent unity. This might seem strange (especially for atheistic thinkers) since immanence in Henry’s thinking is the innermost of the interiority of man, and God most of the time is understood as something transcendent. But this is exactly what Dominique Janicaud, in his famous criticism of the “religious turn within French phenomenology,” calls the surprise of immanence. Immanence turns out to be a radical alterity, but only in the sense that it is unreachable for transcendent knowledge. At the same time this alterity is always present as immediate knowledge and somehow possible to approach when the human being turns away from the world and towards its own preconditions and its own immediacy.

But what then is God? Henry states that God is only a creative power, a pure operation. God is not a “something” that exists and in creation adds something transcendent to his own existence. The operation of God is instead the movement of immanence, the movement that continually constitutes, and thus is not itself constituted. So far so good, but with Eckhardt Henry also makes a distinction between God and Godhead. God is the operation, the creative act, and Godhead is non-action. Henry sometimes uses this logic: A, thus non-A. God is only his creative power and therefore there is a Godhead that does not create. The argument is that Godhead is the existence of the possibility of the possibility. Before creation is set in motion, there is Reality, and in a second step this Reality bestows a second order of reality to the creation. We can also, and maybe better, understand this according to a Neo-Platonic scheme where the creative God creates the creatures, since he only is this creative power of self-manifestation. But as Godhead God is also the goal toward which the creatures strive to return, and as goal he is not creative but only pure union. Since Henry does not ascribe any value to creation, he cuts immanence off from creation and plurality. Since he discusses God and Godhead without creation, he gives it a value of its own beyond all otherness, all creatures: “the essence which subsist in its ejection from itself of the creative power of exteriority and consequently of exteriority itself; this is not the dead unity of a being or its empty identity in tautology; it is in its solitude and in the absence of all relationship to the world, in the ‘purity’ which characterizes the absence of this relationship, the essence of the absolute itself, its original and fundamental power of arriving in itself” (EM, 323) God, and thus the human being, have their essence in the absence of all relationship, and in the absence of difference.

Eckhardt and Henry state that the human being in its essence is not created, but the human essence is God. The “I” is thus essentially not its human manifestation, but the inner possibility of the I. They are not two different beings that come together in love, love is already binding them together, and only therefore can they be joined in love. Love is therefore also one and the same, God loves himself when he loves Eckhardt. The love that Eckhardt bestows on God is the same love that God bestows on Eckhardt. This love shows that they already are “the same” in love. In immanence and God there is no difference.

With Eckhardt Henry can describe the movement of thought that turns away from all exteriority. It is a rejection of everything that separates itself from its own essence, of all positing of exteriority and otherness. Creation and birth are here understood as the creative process of exteriority. Henry therefore includes man in God and excludes him from all creatures.

So, this seems to mean that we are once again back in the understanding of the mystic as someone who is withdrawn from society and intersubjective activities. And once again it is the human soul that should find its unity with God whereas the physical body with its exteriority should be negated and find its inner essence in immanence. In I am the truth this aspect of Henry’s philosophy becomes even more pronounced. In this book he focuses on how technology and science threaten man by negating his immanence, and only understand him as outer manifestation. In his most negative moments he cuts of Life from the living, and values Life but not the living. Religion, in contrast to science, seems to emphasize a unity beyond creation and difference. Science exists only in the objectified, transcendent world, whereas religion wants us to turn towards the manifesting power of immanence.

4. Body
In his philosophy of the body Henry develops the interconnection between immanence and transcendence. This is discussed in Philosophy and phenomenology of the body from 1965, only two years after Essence. And here a much less religious tone appears. This text explicitly draws on the French philosopher Maine de Biran, but it also shows a clear influence of Husserl and his distinction between Leib and Körper, the living body and the body as an object.

It might seem surprising that a philosopher of immanence prefers to discuss the human being in terms of body instead of subjectivity. But the reason is that the body offers another approach that does not involve the same problems that subjectivity does: subjectivity can only admit existence as manifestation for subjectivity. As we have seen, subjectivity can never understand itself unless it objectifies itself. The living body, on the other hand, is immediate and direct, and what Henry calls absolute body, a body that does not objectify itself, but which is the presupposition for the objectification. Here too Henry emphasizes the immanence of the living body to such a degree that all exteriority disappears. The body is no longer characterized by having an outside, but as direct knowledge, as the immediate feeling of the living body. Here too he distinguishes between immanence and transcendence in terms of an objectified body that is part of a mediated and outer knowledge, and a living, transcendental body that is given to us directly through a lack of distance. Here the logic we have seen earlier returns, contrasting the lived body, transcendental immanence, and God, to the objectified body, transcendence and creatures.

Just as immanence, the living body should be understood as one kind of knowledge, a direct knowledge of simple and clear ideas, the original source of all evidence. But in contrast to Descartes’ simple and clear ideas, these ideas should not be understood as a reflexive or intellectual act, but instead as an action, an effort, and a movement. It is therefore not mediated or objectified knowledge that demands distance. Henry identifies this knowledge with the active and knowing productive force, i.e. the self-affection. To Henry this means an inner knowledge that all outer knowledge is dependent upon. Inner knowledge is primarily not a knowledge about the self but about the transcendent. “This bodily knowledge of the world is not an actual knowledge. Our body is not exactly a knowledge, it is rather a power of knowledge, the principle of infinitely various, multiple, and yet coordinated knowledges, of which it is truly the owner.” (PPB, 94-95) Bodily knowledge is therefore not exactly a knowledge but rather a power of knowledge. This transcendental body signifies absolute transparency and immanence. The experiencing and the fact that is experienced in transcendental body coincide, they are related to the same essence. Form and content are once again the same.

Since it is the transcendental body that gives rise to the transcendent world, as well as the transcendent person, life and knowledge can only come into being through individual life. Henry therefore says that the individual is the light of the world and its original truth.

Henry’s philosophy of the body thus provides a parallel to his philosophy of immanence. But in the philosophy of the body he focuses more on the relation between the immanent and transcendental, and the transcendent. This perspective leads to an interest in the individual rather than in the fact that the individual does not create itself or in the possibility of the possibility. These two areas do not contradict one another, it is only a question of different interests. I think this is why he uses the word “transcendental” instead of “immanence” in Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body. By using the term immanence, he stresses the opposition between immanence and transcendence, whereas the use of the term “transcendental” instead points out their continuity. He also states that “transcendent” and “transcendental” are the same concept because they belong together (and here I would guess that he draws on Scheler and Dilthey, not to say Schelling). When the transcendental power encounters resistance, transcendent extension is created. Transcendent extension is arises through a limitation of my capacity. We find that the transcendent world is a necessary consequence of the transcendental movement. The transcendental is the necessity of the movement, the transcendent is what resists the movement.

To sum up: I think Henry’s philosophy becomes problematic when he tends to separate immanence from transcendence and Life from the living, and as a consequence of this establishes transcendence and immanence as two ontologies. I would say that it could never be a question of two ontologies, since Henry’s understanding of transcendence is totally dependent on immanence, and can not be an ontological order on its own. Immanence on the other hand is not “an order of facts,” since it can never allow for difference, and thus never establish an order between facts. There is no differentiation in immanence other than in relation to transcendence, in itself immanence can only have negative characteristics, as we have seen. It is not a knowledge, but a power of knowledge; not an order, but a power to order. Neither can we talk about an independent immanence “before” transcendence, since immanence is atemporal. I also have a problem with the claim that possibility is real and that its product, the world, is unreal. It seems equally implausible to say that possibility would be unreal, and that reality is the process of the transcendental and the transcendent. I don’t want to cut off the transcendent from the transcendental.

I am of course not alone in this criticism of Henry, (i.e. that he too strongly separates immanence from transcendence). Similar criticisms have been voiced by for example Rudolf Bernet and Dan Zahavi. But my aim has not only been to bring forth a criticism but also to show that Henry helps us to address a mystical tradition, and to show that this mystical tradition can help us to think the relation between immanence and transcendence differently. Henry shows how contemporary philosophy is closely related to the Christian mystical tradition that emphasizes God as immanence – unnameable but necessary, invisible but always present. (Henry’s philosophy also shows that the connection between philosophy and religion is not a question of applying a secular, philosophical terminology on religious material. It is instead clear that the contemporary philosophical tradition stands in continuity with respect to the history of Christianity.)
In the discussion on the body the connections are stronger, but here too he talks about two orders of facts. To get another perspective on the body and the relation between the human body and God as its transcendental presupposition, it is useful to turn to another mystic and another gender. One difference between male and female mystics is, according to contemporary research, that they had different relations to the body. The woman was defined as body whereas the man was defined as soul. Jesus as human thus played a much more significant role for the female mystics. Since Jesus is the incarnated God he made it possible for women, defined as bodies, to create a relation with God. Through Jesus the body takes part in God.

6. Mechthild von Magdeburg
I will turn to Mechthild von Magdeburg, the beguine from the 13th century and her work The flowing light of Godhead. There are close parallels between Eckhardt and Mechthild, and it is even the case that Eckhardt, who lived some 200 years after Mechthild, probably read her and was deeply influenced by her and other beguines from the same period.

There are also many similarities between Mechthild and Eckhardt, for example they both formulate the self as passive, finding its own central core in God. But Mechthild emphasises that as long as she exists as a human being she can’t experience total unity with God other than in an evanescent orgasmic moment. As a human being she is not “the same” as God, although they are intertwined:

Lord, you are the sun in all eyes,
Lord, you are the joy in all ears,
Lord, you are the voice in all words,
Lord, you are the power in all holiness,
Lord, you are the teaching in all wisdom,
Lord, you are the life in everything living,
Lord, you are the order of all beings!
[…]
You [Mechthild] are a light for my eyes,
you are a harp for my ears,
you are one tone in my words,
you are a thought in my holiness,
you are one glory in my wisdom,
you are one life in my liveliness,
you are one glorification in my Being!
(III, 2)

Here we can see that the definition of God is very close to that of Eckhardt and Henry, God is the transcendental presupposition for everything created. And Mechthild is a ”product” among many in Gods creation. This might seem very close to Henry, in separating Life from the living. But we also see that God responds to Mechthild in expressing a need for her as human, as “one”. It is actually a pretty complicated relationship. God is the voice of all words and Mechthild is one tone in this voice. We can also note that God is “the order of all beings” and that Mechthild is “one glorification in this Being”. Unlike in Henry, we are not dealing with two orders, but one. We should thus not leave the created world in order to search for the creator, we should not go beyond all living in search of Life:

The one who knows and loves the nobility of my freedom, can not bear to love me only for my sake, but he must love me in the creatures. In this way I will remain most close to his soul. (VI, 4) (So bleibe ich seiner Seele der Nächste)

I am in myself, in all places and in all things (II, 25)

This might seem very pantheistic, but at the same time Mechthild does not erase the difference between God and created beings.

So high he lives above me,
his divinity is never so alien to me,
that I don’t feel it all the time
in all my limbs;
so that I never am cold again. (II, 22)

God is above her, but she does not need to search for him beyond herself since he is in her body. Just as in Henry we can find a double understanding of the body in Mechthild, it is both the prison of the soul, separating her from God, but it is also through her body that she becomes close to God. However, Mechthild’s experience of body does not constitute a dualism, but a continuum. The same body can be understood as blocking the way to God and as the most powerful way to God.
Here we can find a close parallels to Henry’s living and original body. In Mechthild’s limbs God is the Life of her body, just as immanence is the life of Henry’s transcendent body. God is the immanence of the body, not mainly the thinking soul, but the living power of the body. But Mechthild goes further than Eckhardt and Henry, and ascribes a positive role also to the exteriority if the body, the body that eats and has the capacity to hold something other than itself:

I take [Jesus] in my arms, as small as I might be,
and eat and drink him
and do with him what I want.
That can not happen to the angels,
how high above me they may stand. (II, 22)

Also the angels are to a certain degree shaped after the holy Trinity, they are however pure spirit. The soul is with her flesh alone the lady of the house in heaven and sits next to the eternal lord of the house, the one she equals the most. (IV, 14)

Mechthild is God’s elected, preferred by God because of her bodily being and exteriority. The angels are pure spirit and here we can see how the bodily power is favoured by God since God himself is body in Jesus. Body here does not only mean a transcendental Life beyond exteriority. It is through the exteriority of the body that she can be joined with God in the holy communion. The reason for this high evaluation of the exteriority of the body is that it is the presupposition for love. Only through difference can life and love come about and exteriority is the highest manifestation of difference. Oneness and unity is not Life, the possibility alone is not reality, reality and life must instead be understood as the middle between an isolated immanence and an isolated transcendent world—the middle between objectifying science and world-negating religion. I would say that the body is the main place for this “middle,” since the body can neither be reduced to a transcendental presupposition nor to an object. It is instead the birth of the transcendent. The goal of religion is not to reach a second birth to pure immanence (as Henry suggests in I am the Truth), but the birth of transcendent life. The magic moment is when the child comes out of the womb and thereby radicalizes the experience of exteriority, the birth of difference. Life is the love-affair between Mechthild and God, playing on the tension, intertwining, even uniting, but only in order to immediately once more separate. Mechthild calls it “a delightful waiting” (ein wonniges harren) between the two. Love needs this waiting. In total unity there is no love. There are of course plenty of erotic imagary of the relationship between Mechthild and God, too long and extensive to quote here. But they all focus on the tension between man and God. Once they reach climax in orgasmic unity the words disappear, but this orgasmic unity is not the end, it is an experience to bring back to transcendent life. God does not only love the inner man, not only the point in man that does not differ from God, but also the difference.

We could understand Mechthild as the movement of God, and transcendence and immanence can be understood as this same movement but in different directions: one out of God, as God’s creation, ignorant of this origin. Immanence can thus be understood as a turning back that also changes the creating God into non-creating Godhead. It is in a way only in this turning back that there is a split and the transcendence is seen as other than the creative act. The turning back, focusing on the transcendental presupposition, manifests a position that splits God’s creation into one living origin and one dead product, cut off from each other. God’s operation creates Mechthild’s body, he is thus constantly present in her body. To become a body is divine. It is also this living power in her body that enables her to change the direction of her gaze, to look back.

Through elaborating upon Mechthild’s text we can both continue Henry’s work and at the same time criticise him when he to radically separates immanence from transcendence.

Literature:
Bernet
Depraz
Eckhardt
Henry
Husserl
Janicaud
Levinas
Mechthild von Magdeburg
Zahavi

1 - The concept of auto-affection is in EM mainly worked out from a discussion with Heidegger and Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, but also in relation to Husserl’s inner time-consciousness.
2 - Continental Philosophy Review, 32: 303-324, 1999
3 - Meister Eckhart, "On the noble man", Selected Writings, Penguin Classics, 1994, p. 99.
4 - Ibid, p. 104