"What do you have that you did not receive?" a phenomenological anthropology in Michel Henry

Abstract

From the concept of duplicity of appearing, basic principle of Michel Henry's radical phenomenology which represents both a continuity and rupture with Husserl's project, some points might be made for a philosophical anthropology. Such a phenomenology poses life as a primary phenomenon and, by defining it as self-affection, enunciates the necessity of recognizing in life the presence of an ipseity; in such a way that there is no life without a living being or a living being without life. Describing the features which define the conditions of such a living being is the aim of this phenomenological anthropology. Regarding the aforementioned duplicity, the living being -that is the human being- should be understood as radical passivity in relation to life and constitutive activity in relation to the world.