Our flesh carries in it the principle of its manifestation, and this manifestation is not the appearing of the world. In its pathetic self-impression… - Michel Henry

What is one hungry for, in this Hunger that comes to all those who are well fed, as the misfortune that none of them will escape? What is lacking to each person who sees himself as the site and source of his pleasures and powers, except the power that gave him to himself, and doing so, gave him, in experiencing himself, the possibility of experiencing the power that gave him to himself to enjoy himself and to enjoy the power that gave him the joy of self? It is absolute Life, for which all those who are “well fed” will hunger if each is satisfied with himself as the source if this satisfaction. That they are hungry for absolute Life – whether this absolute Life is the single Food that can satisfy the Hunger, especially the hunger of those who are well fed, or else the sole Water able to quench the Thirst of all those struck by the curse because they live their satisfaction and pleasure as their own doing – is stated in the uncompromising words of the one who speaks about Life as about himself and of himself as of Life: the Arch-Son, in whom Life generates and reveals itself. “I have food to eat that you know nothing about” (John 4:32); “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14). This Food, finally, is the self-accomplishment of absolute Life, as is also stated: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34).

That which is felt without the intermediary of any sense whatsoever is in its essence affectivity.

Art accomplishes a discovery, an extraordinary discovery: it places before our wondering eyes an unexplored domain of new phenomena that have been forgotten, if not hidden or denied. These are the phenomena in fact that open our access to what alone matters in the end: ourselves. Art is not only a theoretical proof of this invisible and essential reality of our being: it does not give it as something to be seen as an object; instead, it makes use of it: it is the exercise and development of it. We experience its certainty as something that must be, much like one experiences love. This certainty is absolutely identical to our life. All other certainties -- those of the sciences included -- pale and break down in comparison to it. Because art accomplishes the revelation of the invisible reality in us with an absolute certainty, it is a salvation. In a society like ours which is divorced from life -- either by being content to flee it in the external world or by stating the explicit negation of it -- it is the sole salvation possible.