The fact that this weight [of existence] becomes too heavy and that it can be experienced as a weight and as an unbearable weight, is due to the fact… - Michel Henry

The abstraction made by science is thus twofold. First, it is abstraction that defines the scientific world as such. Sensible qualities and the affective predicates that belong to them a priori are put out of play from the being of nature so that they only retain the forms capable of giving them an ideal determination. This nonconsideration of the subjective features of every possible world is indispensable from a methodological point of view, inasmuch as it allows for the establishment of procedures such as quantitative measurement that permit types of knowledge to be obtained that otherwise would be inaccessible. But, the infinite development of this ideal knowledge can only be pursued legitimately inasmuch as it remains clearly conscious of the limits of its field of investigation, limits that it has drawn itself. It cannot escape the fact that the setting aside of the sensible and affective properties of the world presupposes the setting aside of life itself, that is to say, of what makes up the humanity of the human being. That is the second abstraction made by science in the current sense: the abstraction of Life and of what alone truly matters.

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.

Art opens us to a metaphysical knowledge of an entirely different nature (that 'objective' knowledge of the external world): it is a knowledge without object. Life in its ontological milieu, a life which embraces itself entirely without ever separating from itself and without been placed in front of itself like an object. We said that no path leads to life, except for life itself. One must stand within life in order to gain access to it: one must begin from life. Kandinsky just showed us the point of departure for painting -- it is an emotion, a more intense mode of life. The content of art is this emotion. The aim of art is to transmit it to others. The knowledge of art develops entirely within life; it is the proper movement of life, its movement of growth, of experiencing itself more strongly.