Michel Henry: The Affects of Thought edited by Jeffrey Hanson and Michael R. Kelly (review)

During recent years there has been a burgeoning interest in the French philosopher and novelist Michel Henry, whose impressive, wide–ranging corpus had hitherto been somewhat ignored in the English–speaking world, despite much of his output, including his magnum opus L’Essence de la manifestation (1963), having existed for decades in translation. In its intersection between philosophy of religion and phenomenology, it is unsurprising perhaps that his work should suddenly become the focus of interest. On the one hand, recent and current work on Henry can be located within the (re)turn to phenomenology and the new body of scholarship centred on Husserl and Merleau–Ponty; on the other, his unusual pursuit of a Johannine Christology provides an exciting, if ultimately limited, alternative to the Pauline focus that has dominated continental philosophy of religion from Heidegger to Badiou and beyond. For the present collection Jeffrey Hanson and Michael R. Kelly bring together a range of theorists who draw on Henry’s entire corpus, from L’Essence de la manifestation to his final trilogy on Christianity (1996–2002). The volume, however, does not set itself up as an all–encompassing companion to the philosopher. Underpinning each of the chapters, and a continuous thread running through the text, is the central importance of phenomenology in Henry’s work, with the contributors engaged in a discussion as to where Henry is located in relation to the phenomenologies mapped out by his predecessors. Rather than using Henry as a springboard for further critical reflection, the essays provide a contextualized commentary and offer a unique approach to reading Henry. Jean–Luc Marion’s close reading teases out the complexities of the concepts of the visible and invisible in Henry’s work, while Kevin Hart’s lively account of Henry’s theological scholarship brings in a multitude of engaging anecdotes and insightful references on everyone from Augustine to Fichte. Remaining focused on Henry’s understanding of the individual life–force, Raphaël Gély’s discussion of the potential Henry’s thought brings to questions of collective action, and his challenge to the notion of human rights, seems a fitting conclusion to the collection in terms of the wider, more practical application of this philosopher’s work. Yet — and this is perhaps the book’s main achievement — each chapter seems to build almost intuitively on the previous one, giving the collection an overall sense of coherence and integrity. This is not to say, however, that there is no divergence between scholars, or that a homogeneous reading of Henry is being presented. Not all contributors are convinced, for example, of the radicality of Henry’s reworking of phenomenology. This is most apparent in Renaud Barbaras’s examination of Henry’s notion of flesh: Barbaras seems reluctant to affirm the merits of Henry’s critical position above that held by Merleau–Ponty. Indeed, this embodies one of the underlying tensions of the book: the desire to put forward Henry’s work as both supplement and alternative to more widely received strands of phenomenology while being forced to acknowledge the obvious limits of reading Henry in this way.