Quand ce qui ne sent rien et ne se sent pas soi-même, n'a ni désir ni amour, est mis au principe de l'organisation du monde, c'est le temps de la fol… - Michel Henry

Life is given in its own way, in a completely unique way, even though this singular mode of givenness is universal. Life is given in such a way that what it gives is given to itself and that what it gives to itself is never separated from it, not in the least. In this way, what life gives is itself. Life is self-givenness in a radical and rigorous sense, in the sense that it is both life that gives and life that is given. Because it is life that gives, we can only have a share of this gift in life. No road leads to life except life itself. [...] Life is absolute subjectivity inasmuch as it experiences itself and is nothing other than that experience. It is the pure fact of experiencing itself immediately and without any distance. This is what constitutes the essence of every possible community. Again, what is shared in common is not some thing; instead, it is this original givenness as self-givenness. It is the internal experience that brings to life everything that is and makes what is alive in this experience become alive in and through it alone.

No abstraction, no ideality has never been neither in position to produce a real action nor, by consequence, what only represents it.

The action implied in merciful works is now quite clear. Whether it involves nourishing those who are hungry, clothing those who are naked, caring for sick, or another act, the manner of acting in these various actions has ceased to concern the ego that acts or to relate to it in any fashion; a common trait equally determines them all: forgetting oneself. […] Hence, what kind of action is acting in works of mercy, if it is not a power proper to the transcendental ego that says “I Can”? In this ego there is no power different from its own, different from all the powers it possesses, except for the hyper-power of absolute Life that gave it to itself in giving itself to itself. In works of mercy – and this is why they are “works” – a decisive transmutation takes place by which the ego’s power is extended to the hyper-power of absolute Life in which it is given to itself.