Talk:Michel Henry

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	France Portal Michel Henry is within the scope of WikiProject France, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to France and Monaco on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please join the project and help with our open tasks.
A	This article has been rated as A-Class on the Project's quality scale. See comments

Is this really an important author, or the work of one Wikipedian with an agenda?

I personally think that Michel Henry is really an important author, and that's why I have tried to write an article about his work in french first and then to translate it in english, with the help of a big dictionary as my english is not very good.

I must however admit that I do not always understand all what he has written, as he often commented philosophers in a very technical language, and I am not philosopher at all by training. I have tried to gather simple quotations that I really understand, even if they often seem paradoxical at first sight because of our thinking habits to reduce everything to its visible appearance in the world instead of reaching its invisible reality in the life.

He is certainly better known in France as few of his books seem to have been translated in english, and some of then, like "The Essence of the manifestation" are very expensive, and therefore reserved to libraries and professional searchers. He was not a very well suited in the media philosopher, I think he has concentrated his efforts on his work, not on its diffusion.

I have added to this article the translation of a sentence written in the french version by the Wikipedian "Pierrot le Fou", who says that Michel Henry has proposed the deepest theory of the subjectivity of the twentieth century and that he has produced the lastest complete philosophical system.

I have also added the translation of some of my favorite quotations about the affectivity from "The Essence of the manifestation", and completed the quotation from his wonderful book about the painter Wassily Kandinky, but I don't know if an english translation of this book exists.

Philippe Audinos

He is quite important, especially as one of the leading lights in the "Theological Turn" in recent French phenomenology (along with Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Louis Chrétien, and even Derrida was writing about theological topics), but as M. Audinos says he is not very well known in the English-speaking world. This may change, however, as most of his major works are now in or undergoing translation. I think the only two which aren't translated or currently undergoing translation in some form are "La Barbarie" (unless someone wants the awful version I've been handing off to friend who can't read French) and "Voir l'invsible, sur Kandinsky."

Of course, since the wiki "community" is largely made up of shallow Anglophones with a bias against philosophy, it isn't suprising that the question of relevance and importance is raised.

CH

I, for one, consider philosophy to be THE most important science. Without philosophy, you lose natural sciences, historical knowledge, and theological wisdom. Philosophy, if you will, is the mother knowledge - not simply its study. ANYWAYS, while Henry may have been important, I'm not so certain that his views really had that much impact on the world in general...especially since most still consider life to be an exterior concept - that is, that one has life because he breathes, acts, etc. Perhaps, then, his theory should be put on the same page and the NPOV enforced in determining the level of importance here. -Eltinwë 20:29, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that the criteria for inclusion of a philosopher is how important he was or what impact he had on the world. As long as he was or is a recognized philosopher he has the right to be in wikipedia and his thoughts to be summarized here. manu3d 18:31, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On the merging issue

The article on the phenomenogical life is sufficiently self-conclusive and can stand on its own. There might be an argument about reducing the duplicate information in this page about Michel Henry, but I wouldn't be too pickey about it. manu3d 19:01, 14 March 2006 (UTC)