Michel Henry’s “Radical Phenomenology of Life”

Born in 1922 in Haiphong, Vietnam, Michel Henry studied philosophy in Lille and at the Lycee Henri IV and the Sorbonne in Paris. He finished his studies with a thesis on Le bonheur chez Spinoza. In 1945, after World War II, during which he readily participated in the Resistance, he was a candidate for the Agregation in philosophy. After years of doing research at the Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques in Paris and various teaching activities in France and other countries, Henry earned his doctorate, became university lecturer, and finally a professor at Paul Valery University in Montpellier. In 1963, Henry’s main work L’essence de la manifestation appeared, in which he worked out the foundations of his “radical phenomenology of life” (radikale Lebensphanomenologie) within an extensive analysis of the metaphysical tradition of the Occident and the constellation of classical phenomenology. Critical essays as well as novels complete the literary production of this exemplary phenomenological thinker, whose works have also been translated into various languages.