By putting out of play not only the lifeworld but, more seriously, life itself or what we are, the play of knowledge is laden with significant conseq… - Michel Henry

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By putting out of play not only the lifeworld but, more seriously, life itself or what we are, the play of knowledge is laden with significant consequences from the outset. If the auto-transformation and growth of culture is the business of life, what we have only glimpsed now appears with a striking clarity: since science has no relation to culture, the development of science has nothing to do with the development of culture. At the limit, one can imagine an extreme development of scientific knowledge that would go along with an atrophy of culture, with its regression in some domains or in all domains at once and, at the end of this process, its annihilation. This image is neither ideal nor abstract. It is the actual world we live in, a world which has just given rise to a new type of barbarism that is more serious that any that have preceded it and from which human beings risk dying from today.

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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.

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Additional quotes by Michel Henry

The experience of red does not consist of perceiving a red object or the colour red as such and of taking it as being red; instead, it consists of experiencing the power of the impression in ourselves. That is what eliminates all objective mediation from painting: the mediation of objects, the sense that they can be given, thought, 'culture' with its variations by time and place and ultimately the various theories that represent this non-existent mediation. That is also why abstract painting, which bypasses the mediation of language and culture understood as a group of representations, can be called a popular art. It is devoted to the expressive power and the direct communication of colour, its immediate experience in life.

From these brief preliminary indications it follows that the concept of truth is twofold, designating both what shows itself and the fact of self-showing. What shows itself is the gray sky or the equality of radii in a circle. But the fact of something showing itself has nothing to do with what shows itself, with the gray of the sky or with geometric properties, and is even totally indifferent to what shows itself. The proof of this is that a blue sky can show itself to us as well, just as geometric properties, other forms, or even the fury of peoples killing each other, the beauty of a painting, the smile of a child. The fact of self-showing is as indifferent to what shows itself as the light to what it illuminates – shining, according to Scripture, on the just as well as the unjust. But the fact of self-showing is indifferent to all that shows itself only because by its nature it differs from all that, whether it may be: clouds, geometric properties, fury, a smile. The fact of self-showing, considered in itself and as such – that is the essence of truth.

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Marx certes était athée, « matérialiste », etc. Mais chez un philosophe aussi, il convient de distinguer ce qu’il est de ce qu’il croit être. Ce qui compte, ce n’est d’ailleurs pas ce que Marx pensait et que nous ignorons, c’est ce que pensent les textes qu’il a écrits. Ce qui paraît en eux, de façon aussi évidente qu’exceptionnelle dans l’histoire de la philosophie, c’est une métaphysique de l’individu. Marx est l’un des premiers penseurs chrétiens de l’Occident.

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