Abstract Michel Henry (1922-2002) is an important figure comparable to Levinas and Marion in the contemporary French phenomenological movement, and he has made unique contributions in elucidating the phenomenological connotations and advanced radical reduction in phenomenology founded by Husserl and Heidegger. The research on Michel Henry’s phenomenology is in its initials and rising stage in the domestic academic circles. Unfortunately, Henry’s discussion on the issue of time has not attracted enough attention, and the text of Henry’s interpretation of time lacks corresponding investigation. Henry describes the essential movement of time as auto-affection. For the auto-affection of time, it essentially means that the original time affects itself by itself, which is not only a living force but also a living time.Henry criticizes Husserl’s and Heidegger’s view of time and argues that their time is the same transcendent and ecstatic time, but he deconstructs their phenomenological time with a slightly different strategy. (1) Static and dynamic phenomenology are not separated at the beginning of Husserl’s phenomenology. Therefore, Henry deconstructs the intentionality of internal time consciousness in Husserl’s static phenomenology, and the ecstasy of the three dimensions of time in Husserl’s dynamic phenomenology. Husserl is more concerned with intentionality than auto-affection, so he constructs time with intentionality and focuses on the homogeneity, continuity and identity of time. However, Henry explains time with impressionality and with the original composition of impressions, so he emphasizes the self-giveness, heterogeneity and affectivity of time. For Henry, whatever in intentionality must first appear in feelings, or give itself in the non-intentional horizons. Henry understands the impressionality of life as phenomenality, as the basis for all the phenomena to show themselves, and as the prerequisite for all possible experiences, while the auto-affection of life does not need to presuppose external conditions and standards. Life really reveals itself in itself by itself.The intentionality has not been fully demonstrated in Heidegger’s existential time, so Henry focuses on deconstructing Heidegger’s view of time from the perspective of the ecstasy of three-dimension-time. For Heidegger’s explication of the self-giveness of time, his world-time is essentially a pure time, which is formed in the horizon of intentional transcendence, with the three dimensions of future, present and past. But Henry’s life-time is the original time as opposed to pure time, which is a non-intentional first giving, the primordial self-given of time itself or the affect-itself of time. The original time is a subjective life experience by auto-affection, which is also an internal original giving of life, and which phenomenizes itself in the form of affection by life itself. Therefore, Henry calls it life-time. Henry’s life-time is a pathos-time, where there is no past and future but only the living now. Everything is a continuous emergence of the present, and the “now” brings life back to life itself. Therefore, the slogan of phenomenology “back to thing itself” is embodied by Henry as “back to life itself”.
Jiang Haiquan. Michel Henry’s Conception of Time of Phenomenology of Life: A Comparison with Heidegger’s and Husserl’s[J]. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2023, 53(1): 133-143.
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2023, Vol. 53 
