Material Phenomenology by Michel Henry (review)

382 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE Material Phenomenology. By Michel Henry. Translated by Scott Davidson. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0823229444. Pp. xviii + 138. $24.00. Originally published in 1990,Phenomenologie materiellewas Henry's response to critiques of his earlier magnum opus, Iessence de la manifestation (1963); as such, it expands and develops many of the central themes of Henry's philosophy regarding Husserlian phenomenology and the radicalization of a "material phenomenology" devoted to "the discovery of the reign of a phenomenality that is constructed in such a surprising way that the thought that always thinks about the world never thinks about it" (2). Material Phenomenology thus calls for radical renewal of the phenomenological project and should be required reading for anyone interested in phenomenology and, particularly, the "theological turn" in French phenomenology. The book is comprised of three interrelated essays. The first, "Hyletic Phenomenologyand Material Phenomenology:'waswritten in response toaquestion from the editors of Philosophie: "How does material phenomenology, which your project iscalled, differ from what Husserl callshyletic phenomenology?" (5).Henry's reply centers on Husserl's notion of hylein Ideas I (1913) and The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness (1928). §85 of Ideas I draws a distinction within subjectivity between material or hyletic moments and intentional moments, with the latter giving sense to the former: "In the perception of [a] tree, for example, there are sense contents, such as color data, that serve as the basis for this perception" (7). Objective noematic properties, which are intentional, thereby differ from sensuous impressions, which are purely subjective and hyletic. According to Henry, "The essence of these sensuous impressions-which are subjective adumbrations in which the world presents itself-is precisely that they are inherent to subjectivity as its real elements, just like the intentionality that constitutes the object on the basis of them" (7f). Hyle is therefore defined by Husserl in two ways: first, as something inherent to subjectivity as its "constitutive stuff"; and second, as something that excludes all intentionality. The problem, as Henry sees it, is not in Husserl's programmatic statements about hyle: rather, Henry rejects the gradual subordination of hyle to intentionality: "hyle becomes originally and in itself lacking of ... the capacity to carry out the work of manifestation in an by itself ... it is nothing more than blind content, and that is why it is 'given as matter for intentional complexes" (11). Husserl's original insight into hyl«, as the constitutive stuff of subjectivity, giveswayto a conception of hyleas matter that exists derivatively, only for the sake of morphe. Henry's material phenomenology, in contrast, seeks to rehabilitate and examine the non-intentional elements of consciousness, revealing such moments to be essential components of subjectivity. BOOK REVIEWS 383 Henry's critique of Husserl continues in the book's second essay, "The Phenomenological Method:' This essay is a "must read:' It is, to my mind, one of Henry's most compelling and tightly argued philosophical works. Here, Henry analyzes the connection between phenomenology and method in Husserl's 1907 lectures, TheIdeaofPhenomenology, wherein Husserlarticulatesaphenomenological method aimed at establishing the possibility of empirical knowledge. In Cartesian fashion, Husserl begins by doubting the veracity of knowledge: "Everything is dubitable apart from the fact that I doubt" (44). The indubitability of the act of doubt leads Husserl to posit the indubitability of a whole range of affective acts of cognition or cogitations-e.g., perception, imagination, judgment, inference, etc. These cogitationes, in turn, serve as the bedrock of the phenomenological method inasmuch as, "Every intellectual experience ... can be made into an act of pure seeing while it is occurring. And in this act of seeing it is an absolute givenness" (45). Henry argues, however, that turning the cogitatio into absolute givenness is tantamount to "the substitution of what is never an object by something which can become one" (91). Absolute givenness is accomplished by submitting the cogitatio to "the pure gaze;' wherein the essential affectivity of the cogitatio is negated by treating it as an object, or a given, under the regard of "pure seeing:' Real cogitatio, which is immanence and affectivity,is unwittingly exchanged for the objectifiable essence of cogitatio. And that essence consists in nothing more than...