What, then, is a truth that differs in no way from what is true? If truth is manifestation grasped in its phenomenological purity – phenomenality and… - Michel Henry

" "

What, then, is a truth that differs in no way from what is true? If truth is manifestation grasped in its phenomenological purity – phenomenality and not the phenomenon – then what is phenomenalized is phenomenality itself. The phenomenalization of phenomenality itself is a pure phenomenological matter, a substance whose whole essence is to appear – phenomenality in its actualization and in its pure phenomenological effectivity. What manifests itself is manifestation itself. What reveals itself is revelation itself; it is a revelation of revelation, a self-revelation in its original and immediate effulgence. With the idea of a pure Revelation – of a revelation whose phenomenality is the phenomenalization of phenomenality itself, of an absolute self-revelation that dispenses with whatever is other than its own phenomenological substance – we are in the presence of the essence that Christianity posits as the principle of everything. God is that pure Revelation that reveals nothing other than itself. God reveals Himself. The Revelation of God is his self-revelation.

English
Collect this quote

About Michel Henry

Michel Henry (10 January 1922 – 3 July 2002) was a French philosopher, phenomenologist and novelist. He wrote five novels and numerous philosophical works. He also lectured at universities in France, Belgium, the United States, and Japan. His novel L'amour les yeux fermés (Love With Closed Eyes) has won the Renaudot Prize in 1976.

Unlimited Quote Collections

Organize your favorite quotes without limits. Create themed collections for every occasion with Premium.

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by Michel Henry

The interpretation of man as “Son of God,” or, more precisely, as “Son within the Son,” has many weighty implications. But before we pursue them, there is one question that cannot be differed. If men are really Sons of God within Christ, how can we explain that so few of them know this and remember it? If they bear within them this divine Life in all its immensity – because there is no other Life but that, and the living can only bow before its profusion – how can we understand why they are so unhappy? In the end, it is not the tribulations visited upon them by the world that oppress them; rather, it is with themselves that they are so discontented. It is their own incapacity to achieve their desires and plans, it is their hesitations, their weakness and lack of courage, that provoke the deep malaise that accompanies them throughout their miserable existence. If they never tire of attributing the cause of their failure to circumstances or to others, it is only to fool themselves and to forget that the real cause lies within themselves. As Kierkegaard puts it: “Consequently he does not despair because he did not get to be Caesar but despairs over himself because he did not get to be himself.” But how can one despair of this me if it is nothing less than the coming into us of God within Christ? Such despair is possible only if, one way or another, man has forgotten the splendor of his initial condition, his condition of Son of God – his condition as “Son within the Son.” It is this forgetting that we must now attempt to understand.

We gaze petrified at the hieroglyphs of the invisible, as they too stand motionless or only slowly change against the background of a nocturnal sky. We watch forces that slumbered within us, waiting stubbornly and patiently for millennia, even from the beginning of time. These forces explode into the violence and gleam of colours; they open spaces and engender the forms of the worlds. The forces of the cosmos are awakened within us. They lead us outside of time to join in their celebration dance and they do not let go of us. They do not stop – because not even they believed that it was possible to attain 'such happiness'. Art is the resurrection of eternal life.

Certainly, Marx was atheist, "materialist", etc. But for a philosopher also, it's advisable to distinguish between what he is and what he thinks to be. The most important, this is not what Marx thought and that we ignore, but what think the texts he has written. What appears in them, in a way as obvious as exceptional in the history of philosophy, this is a metaphysics of the individual. Marx is one of the first Christian thinkers of Occident.

Loading...