Horizontes de uma fenomenologia da religião em Michel Henry

Abstract

Michel Henry (1922 – 2002) was a Vietnamese philosopher naturalized French and linked to the phenomenological approach, inaugurated by Edmund Husserl. Henry developed a “phenomenology of life” that seeks to overcome limitations and problems that he saw in classical phenomenology. He also developed important discussions in the field of religion, to which his Christian trilogy stands out: "I Am the Truth"; "Incarnation: a philosophy of the flesh" and "Words of Christ". Based on an investigation of henryan phenomenology and its studies on religion, this research aims to answer the following question: “Is there a phenomenology of religion in Michel Henry?”. To do so, its phenomenology of life and its philosophy of Christianity are discussed and, finally, we investigate what is meant by what we call “phenomenology of religion”. A narrative review of the literature relevant to the subject is adopted as a method, also using the principles of inspectional, analytical and syntopical reading (ADLER & DOREN, 2010). Michel Henry's phenomenology of life takes as its primary task to elucidate the essence of manifestation, which leads to the discovery of the duplicity of appearing and the originary field of transcendental affectivity. This affectivity is the Absolute Life that engenders each living ego, which is linked to the Life by a religious bond. Henry sees approximations between his phenomenology of life and Johannine Christianity, recognizing Christ as the primordial ego generated by Life. The French philosopher emphasizes, however, the living and immediate religious experience. This concern with the religious experience is found in the phenomenology of religion which, as a discipline, emerges from the encounter, in the works of Gerardus van der Leeuw, between the Dutch approach in phenomenology of religion (Chantepie de la Saussaye, Brede Kristensen) and the Husserlian phenomenology. It is concluded, then, that we can affirmatively say that there is a phenomenology of religion in Henry, if this is understood, not in a typological sense (comparative study of religions), but in the sense of a way of understanding the religious experience oriented from the phenomenological theses.