Depraz Seeking a Phenomenological Metaphysics-Henry's Reference to Eckhart

303SEEKING A PHENOMENOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS Continental Philosophy Review 32: 303324, 1999. 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Seeking a phenomenological metaphysics: Henrys reference toMeister Eckhart*

NATALIE DEPRAZ45 bis, rue Pouchet, 75017 Paris, France

Introduction

One can discern of the presence of Eckhart in foundational German Phenom-enology, whether it concerns Husserl or Heidegger, by measure of its secreteminence. In a conversation with D. Cairns, dated 27 June 1932 and dedi-cated to mystical experience, and more precisely to the authenticity of hisevidence, Husserl indicated this is at least what Cairns reports that hewould be able to take over whole pages of Meister Eckhart unchanged.1

Certain assertions presented in the Vienna lectures also furnish a remarkableillustration of this eminence insofar as they echo certain Eckhartian state-ments though without an explicit reference. This one is the most remarkable:It is only when the mind, ceasing to turn naively toward the outside, returnsin itself and remains in itself and purely in itself, that it can suffice ontoitself.2 As for Heidegger, he dedicates very early on3 several rather densepages to Eckhartian mysticism, to the potentialities of thought that it offers inthe context of a dismantling of rationality as determination of objectivity andof the promotion of a knowledge of unity as living [Erleben] of the abso-lute. Through this conception of what he calls irrationality in Eckhartsworks,4 which is not, by right of the plenitude of multiplicity, what situatesitself before all rationality,5 Heidegger brings to light an experience of thebracketing [Ausschaltung] of particularities and the form itself, for the gainof the experience of emptiness as power [potenzierte Leere]; doing this, hefrees up an ethical (ethisch)6 retreat outside multiplicity, outside of particular-ity [Entmannigfaltigung, Abstoung der einzelnen Krfte in ihrer Einzelheitund bestimmten Gerichtetheit],7 outside, of temporality, in the eternal now[ewigen Nu]8 which has detachment [Abgeschiedenheit] as its name, a cen-tral concept, as he says so well, of the intellectual mysticism of the Rhenian.9

*Translated by Gregory B. Sadler.

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One will say that these references in the two phenomenologists works arefleeting, too late in Husserls works to be able to be inscribed in the projectof phenomenology as a rigorous science, too precocious in the works ofHeidegger to have been able to guide, in a subterranean way, his belatedinteriorization [Verwindung] of Metaphysics, which is not a dialectical over-coming [berwindung]: But one knows that this reference reappears muchlater, and in a manuscript that is essential, to say the least, the Beitrge. Infact, one will see that each in their own way they devote themselves to thepossibility of a phenomenological metaphysics,10 and not the least of whichthe Henryian perspective offers a possible dimension.

The questions that pose themselves to us presently number three:

1. To what degree are Eckhart, and the singular speculative mysticismthat he opens, a decisive support in light of the liberation of aphenomenological metaphysics?

2. In what sense is this irreducible both to classical phenomenology,static or hermeneutic, and to traditional metaphysics, naive orontotheological?

3. How does Henryian phenomenology allow one to give a rigorous senseto such a phenomenological metaphysics via the deepening of theEckhartian thread?

These three questions do not form the three stages of a progression. Thedetailed examination of the last one alone will attempt to illuminate, inturn, both the first and the second. I would like to make apparent howthe original phenomenological advance of M. Henry, sustaining itself onthe trail itself blazed by Eckhart in the West, opens the way to the novelpossibility of a metaphysical experience,11 as an experience of non-dualpassivity (I), which supposes a specific mode of temporalization whoseform, we shall see, is self-antecedence (II), and an act of knowing originarilynon-distinct from affect (III).

Just as in the works of Husserl and Heidegger, the reference to MeisterEckhart in M. Henrys works is far from occupying, it seems, the place thatphilosophers such as Maine de Biran12 or Schopenhauer13 have evidentiallyreceived, in a way somewhat inaugural or even much later, in the discoveryof an originarily self-affected subjectivity.

Although he did not devote a work to Eckhart, M. Henry makes an appealto the Rhenian mystic in sections whose significance goes beyond elaborat-ing on him, and in a manner that does more than eulogize him.14 In his firstwork from 1963, the author relies on the mystic15 in order to give all of his

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power to his conception of essence as simple, plenary, and passive unity,already determined at this stage as life.16 In Cest moi la vrit which ap-peared in 1996,17 the appeal to Eckhart, taking him up twice, now furnishes apowerful conceptual scheme to the thought of the self-engendering of life.18

Even if this reference is on the order of a simple footnote, it comes to bringabout the proposed rereading of the Gospel of John. By having present such arereading, one will be better able to grasp the importance of the RhenianMaster since 1963, he who does not cease to draw upon John as a resource inhis sermons. The Eckhartian impulse of Henrys suggestion thus implies athird-figure, John, who plays the role of mediator between the two.

1. An experience of non-dual passivity

The Essence of Manifestation confers an eminent role upon the EckhartianSermons.19 Aside from the fact that Meister Eckhart is the only mystical andpre-modern presence in a work that dedicates in other respects, in addition toDescartes, important analyses to the most well-known representatives ofGerman Idealism (Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, but also in counterpoint,Kierkegaard), as well as to major phenomenologists of the period (Husserl,Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty), the place that the Rhenian mystic occu-pies in the economy of the progression is decisive.

Between the two first parts that elucidate the structure of the phenomenonin a critical manner, and the fourth which interprets the originary essence ofrevelation as affectivity, the third part forms a necessary joint where the in-ternal structure of immanence itself sees itself freed: A bridge is built therebetween the critique of intentional or exstatic phenomenality, found lackingin as much as it always conceals in a residual way a reductive tendency to-ward objectification, and affectivity brought to fight by an internal revelationof essence. The bridge in question resides in the analysis of immanence, whichalone assures the internal understanding of affectivity.

Thus, beyond the explicit reference to Eckhart, which only concerns sev-eral paragraphs of the third section, one can make sense out of the whole ofthe analysis of immanence that is generously given there. In our opinion, it isevident that 37, opening this third part and entitled precisely the inter-nal structure of immanence forms the crucible of an appropriate apprecia-tion of the importance of Eckhart for M. Henry. Eckhart is not mentionedthere, but there is an annunciatory anticipation of 39, this mirror of 37where the figure that remained in the shadows until then appears in full light.A fecund shadow, however, since it is by the nonmanifest Eckhart that the

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Rheneian could appear a little later.It is on the basis of a unnamed but recurrent gesture of radical reduction,

approached in a general fashion as a turn[ing] itself way from opposed to adirect[ing] itself toward,20 retying what remains with the also very pro-found gestures in Husserl,21 Heidegger,22 Levinas,23 a gesture at work just asmuch, one will see, in the Eckhartian attitude princeps of detachment,24 asthe phenomenologist uncovers the internal structure of immanence. But hedoes this by using traits that can seem surprising at the first approach.

These traits are the following, according to the order of their appearancein 37:

1. poverty (and its synonyms: indigence, becoming-naked, loss);25

2. dis-interest (or abandon);263. solitude;27

4. simplicity (specified in concrete fullness and unity);28

5. non-freedom.29

These five traits contribute to the liberation of essence as passivity. Eachof them takes up at the same time an essential facet of the transcendentaldisposition to engage the reduction and roots itself evidentially in theEckhartian preparation of the soul to welcome the Godhead. It is thisdouble anchoring, both phenomenological and metaphysical, of theHenryian meditation on immanence that I will attempt to explain foreach of them.

1. Poverty

. . . the essence encloses nothing else, thought which turns itself towardthe essence necessarily turns itself away from all that is other than it . . .the liberation of the essential is pursued as a retreat [which is not] that ofa provisional renouncement, but of a poverty which chooses itself andwills itself as essential.30 To cultivate the indigence of essence as radicalexperience of self, this is to highlight the necessity of an impoverishment ofself which corresponds exactly to the demands which are at the same timeEckhartian and Husserlian: the Meister praises interior poverty in his ser-mon entitled Beati pauperes spiritu;31 Husserl invokes this necessary vowof poverty, with an absolute lack of knowledge at the beginning of theCartesian Mediations, when it is a matter of extricating oneself from opin-ions and prejudices in order to dispose the mind in all transparency to the


transcendental attitude to come.32 Metaphysics and Phenomenology ratify, inan inaugural manner, a constituitive disposition of the internal immanentattitude which M. Henry seeks, and which is defined ultimately, as we shallsee, as a transcendental attitude of non-dual passivity.

Yet, conforming to the recurrent vocabulary of the denudation of selfthat one finds equally in M. Henry, to be poor in spirit is in Eckhart nolonger even occupying a place which would still be promising difference,that is, potential internal discord and opposition. So I say that man shouldbe so poor that he should not even be or have any place in which God couldwork. When man clings to places, he clings to distinction.33 This radicalEckhartian demand of annihilation of all spatialization of self whatever itmay be, and which M. Henry himself takes up, permits one to understandthe critique that the latter levels at Heidegger and at his highlighting dwell-ing and the Earth as the ontological place of the return to the source ofself.34 It would be naive, of course, to understand this critique of space, andof its intrinsic differentiation, as a promotion of identical and abstract unity.The annihilation of self, to which we will return below, is this dynamic thatputs out of play identity just as much as difference, always suspect ofreturning back to opposition. Through the figure of poverty as annihilationof self, one has here the first appearance of the non-duality of the experi-ence in question, as dynamic that dismisses both abstract unity and dis-cordant difference. We shall see that this schema runs throughout the othertraits as well.

2. Dis-interest

Because it wants nothing, because it has neither project nor desire, becausethere is nothing in it from which it would be separated, everything in it is inrepose, it is, in this absence of trouble, without anything to divide it,tranquility in its absolute simplicity. Without doubt, this is how theessence rests when it no longer goes outside of itself, when, immobile, itno longer creates anything.35 The formal structure of dis-interest pro-posed here contains in itself a critique of naive intentionality as objectifying(of directing oneself toward), and disengages from it a more correct formwhere the attention to what is placed at a distance just as much the firstmovement to project, itself there as that of abstracting from it by a refusal.Let us note here, again, the intrinsically non-dual movement of the experi-ence taken up.

One would have very hastily interpreted the Eckhartian detached soul36

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(or even the Husserlian-Finkian dis-interested spectator)37 as these instancesthat observe without participating, that contemplate without acting, leadingback to and making of this the comfortable opposition between theory andpractice. But dis-interest has the virtue of being placed outside of this opposi-tion, without however plucking itself away artificially, but by extricatingitself from its rigidity just enough in order to continue to remain immanentup to the point of marrying the acting itself with attention. In fact, it is amatter of assuming this paradoxical turn of a thought that draws its forceprecisely in the paradox, and that thus leaves a naive diet of dualizing dis-tinction:38 In this sense, dis-interest properly understood is the highest inter-est, in as much as it takes the measure of a often little working oscillationbetween the blind immersion in the world and abstract reflection situated at adistance from the world, in order to engage itself in an active and attentivepractice in this measure.

3. Solitude

The essence reposes in solitude and, because repose constitutes its nature, it isitself solitude as such.39 Here again, it is not a matter of contributing to thepromotion of a thought of unity and of the individual walled up inside himselfagainst multiplicity and plurality. Rather, more exactly, the relation of essencewith itself is constitutive of essence, as an interior working of itself, an imme-diate connection which is relation to self.

Solitude is therefore the internal structure of essence itself. But, it is pre-cisely this trait of solitude which interiorizes the intersubjective relation forthe purpose of living fully within a structure of internal alterity that Husserlhas in mind when he invokes the radical solitude that the gesture of reductionreclaims in the Crisis;40 it is that ontological experience which the Rheniandescribes through the metaphor of the castle of the soul, which is not at allthe sign of an encapsulation in oneself, but the apprenticeship of a mastery ofself that passes through absolute receptivity to the other to the point leadingto the extreme of empathy.41

4. Simplicity

The experience of self of Being in its totality determines it in its sim-plicity and constitutes it because it is precisely the act of presenting itself toitself. . . . Such a structure in conformity with which it presents itself to


itself and with which it identifies itself is, nevertheless, nothing other thansimplicity.42 For simplicity, two characters emerge, unity and fullness, bothof them envisaged as processes as not as states. The self-donation of essenceto itself as experience of itself is 1) self-reunion of essence with itself, bywhich the unity is nothing isolated, exterior and, consequently, abstract; 2)self-accomplishment of essence, in which the richness without limit whichis fullness distinguishes itself from all lack solely understood as privation.43

The experience of simplicity summarizes itself thus in the simple feeling ofa fullness,44 which experiences itself in the very discovery of self, distinctjust as much from a polar unity as from a destructured fluidity.

Here, one has a temporal structure of plenary accomplishment that byvirtue of perfection and completion interrupts any schema of linear suc-cession as much as of instantaneous punctuality: a temporality of antici-pation of the future in the past, literally of the future anterior whichechoes on the formal plane to the temporalization present in the EckhartianSermons On Accomplishment and The Souls Perfection, or evenThe Eternal Birth,45 as to the temporality of the Husserlian geneticregressive inquiry (Rckfrage), at work notably in the Crisis.

5. Non-freedom

In general non-freedom belongs to the essence as the very thing whichconstitutes it.46 Freedom in effect implies the possibility to leave oneself,that is, equally, to be delivered to exteriority, which supposes a form ofdependence that immediately relativizes the freedom in question. The essen-tial experience of self is an assumed experience of non-power, and, in thissense, the fifth trait already sets in motion a synthetic recapitulation of theexperience of self as a passive non-dual experience. Through the affirmationof non-freedom as refusal of a power that would be imposition of self onothers (on exteriority), it is the affirmation of a higher freedom that sketchesitself out, that of the interiorization of a finitude tied to the resistance of thereal which itself gives itself in the recurrent assertion of the reduction in allfreedom in Husserl, simply itself which results from the reiterated Eckhartianaffirmation of the impassibility of essence.47

It is time now to come to this global determination of essence as passivityin M. Henrys works and to the soul as impassibility in Eckhart, a determina-tion which recapitulates the five traits of which we spoke, which traversesthem through and through in their very utterance, and which gives an accountwith intensity of the metaphysical experience in question.48 In the last phase

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of the analysis of 37,49 M. Henry takes up again the cardinal meaning of theexperience of self as passive experience by means of a double delimitation ofpassivity by relation to 1) activity as mastery and responsibility,50 2) to pas-sivity as reaction to an exterior reality.51 This passivity emerging from thereciprocal limitation of activity and passivity gives itself literally as the radi-cal experience of a power-lessness that is the origin of all power, butconstituitively escaping every structure of power. Thus, the idea-force experience-force which traverses Eckhartian thought is precisely that of thepower of impassibility, which is not at all indifference which would leadback to an unilateral interpretation in terms of contemplation, specifically, ofcontempt for the world but vigilant welcome exceeding-oneself to the ex-tent that the intensity of the welcome, of all desire, even of all passion,52 areinteriorized in the very welcome, rather than to the extent that they are elimi-nated.53 The force derived from non-passion does not eradicate the passion,but converts it by intensifying it, just as it does not reject action but valorizesit as modest activity of vigilance to what is.

Can such an experience of powerlessness then still be said to be on-tological? Is it not the radical antistrophe carried to all thought of being,which determines itself traditionally in its intrinsic place with ability orpower?54 There again, the Henryian and Eckhartian approaches con-verge on a denial of ontology as the determining structure of the meta-physical experience in question: the exit from the structure of power isthe exit from ontology.55 The relativization of being in the name of thebeautiful experience of re-nunciation [dis-being] of oneself is a con-stant in the Eckhartian meditation on passivity.56 He is without propri-ety, he who does not raise any kind of pretension neither on his own menor on what is outside of him. . . . The more this poverty is perfect anddisengaged, the more this possession is ours.57 To undo being in one-self after having relativized all action understood as activism in oneself, is tobreak with the omnipotence of the ego as ones own. Such a radical exerciseof renunciation agrees quite directly with the other contemporaryphenomenological perspectives,58 whether it be a matter of Levinas facingthe so-called Husserlian ego or facing the Heideggerian Being, or whether itis a matter of Derrida facing the Heideggerian mineness, or even J.L. Marionfacing the residual Levinasian idolatry of the Other. Beyond the gnosological,ontological, ethical, even deconstructive recoverings of this first experienceof becoming-naked as experience of the discovery of self, it is this core ofdrastically desubstantialized passivity, where the constructed oppositions an-nul themselves, that remains and makes sense, and which confers an undeni-able eminence on the perspective sketched but by M. Henry since The Essence


of Manifestation.In order to conclude this first reading of the work of 1963 via the Eckhartian

thread, let us remark that poverty comes again to ready the accomplishmentof the experience of passivity, itself integrative of the five traits mentioned:A type of intensificating spiral movement makes of poverty at the same timethe initial threshold and the terminal threshold of the experience. These fivetraits furnish the specific dimensions of the experience in question which onecan grasp under a synoptic form:Among these traits, poverty and non-liberty correspond to the position of theinitial and terminal thresholds which form the spiraladic ring in question, anddisinterest and solitude are correlated to the reductive articulate core that

constitutes the matrix of the experience. What remains is simplicity whosespecific temporalization we have begun to unveil. It is this trait that domi-nates, to my understanding, the work of 1996, and which offers the later,most fecund crystallization to the passive experience already freed.

II. The self-engendering of life and the temporality of antecedence

To crystalize, this could be either to rigidify a living experience, or to allow itto attain that adamantine force in which its maturity shines forth, a finiteimage of perfection. Cest moi, la vrit, by making the Johanic tenor of theexperience described since 1963 reemerge into full light, inevitably producesthis double effect whose ambiguity is the measure of the risk taken. But, it iswithout a doubt by exposing oneself that one has the chance to unseal theaporias deemed insurmountable. The work of 1996 situates itself on thisvertiginous path: its difficulties bear witness to the insight that works there.

Michel Henry and Meister Eckhart share the Johanic thought. It is there-

Five thresholds of experience:

poverty disinterest solitude simplicity (non-)freedomstructural epoche reduction temporality ethospre-dispostion suspension

Intensification

Integration:passivity aspower ofpowerlessness

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fore on this common ground that one can address the status of the referenceto Eckhart in Cest moi, la vrit by connecting it to the appropriationalready worked out since 1963, and in order to evaluate the evolution ofand the differences between them. The mention of the Rhenians works donot intervene except in chapter 6 of the itinerary, entitled Man as Son ofGod, after M. Henry had closely taken up the interior and reciprocalrelation of the Father and the Son as a relation constituitive of the struc-ture of non-manifested revelation.59 What is at the center is no longer theinternal relation puts into play man as the singular living being. M. Henryapproaches this second internal relation as that of the relation between theArchi-Son engendered by the Archi-Son. There is therefore a double imma-nent relation of engendering: 1) of the Son by the Father; 2) of the Sons bythe Archi-Son. In both cases, is it a matter of an self-engendering to thedegree that the Son engendered by the Father, as the Sons engendered bythe Archi-Son are already there in the Father in one way, in the Son inanother. Life is that structure of self-engendering which requires a specifictemporalization, connected to a singular mode of inter-subjectivation. 1)The immanent relation of the Father and the Son redefines time by placingat a distance irreversibility just as much as futurition: Time is an self-generation originarily anticipated of the Son with the Father; theintersubjectivity tied to this temporality is not, then, the encounter of anexteriority nor even fusional empathy, but the co-generation, the interiorreversibility of the Father and the Son; 2) the immanent relation of theArchi-Son to living human beings leads, we shall see, to an inter-subjectivation which is co-singularization/ipseitization, and to a temporal-ity reconceived as the arrival of a surprise originarily anticipated but neverfore-seen as such, as a singular un-expected.

These two relations, of co-appartenance and of co-dependence, are crys-talized in the speculative expression of the Sons in the Son.

In this respect, Eckhart comes to the point under consideration: He of-fers a support of intelligibility of the structure of self-engendering whichdynamises and consequently temporalizes that which the structure of self-revelation could still have of being static, figurative, visual, that which thestructure of self-engendering could still contain of the formal.60 If, on thisbasis, M. Henry can mobilize without difficulty the decisive concept ofself-affection by connecting it to the analyses and to the results of 1963, it ishere that he deploys a genetic sense of self-affection.61 The essential point ofthe context of the reference to Eckhart is the bringing to light of the singular-ity of the self as living transcendental Self: In as much as, in the self-movement by which life does not cease in itself [en soi] and to experience


itself, an Ipseity and thereby a Self builds itself up, in as much as this experi-encing of itself is an effective one, is necessarily this one, the Self engenderedin this self-movement of Life is also itself an effective one, it is necessarily thisor that, a singular self and by essence different from every other. Myself, I amthis singular self engendered in the self-engendering of absolute Life, and I amonly this.62

If the self is not at all particular but singular, it is that it derives its concreteunicity from the absoluteness of Life: only the absolute is one, unique; onlythe absolute is concrete, because it collects itself beginning at itself and with-out being limited to the exterior; on the other hand, if Life is universal andnot general, it is because it receives its plenitude of efficacy from each self.It is this relation in the form of a chiasm of self and life that M. Henry bringsback to Eckhart in two transposed statements whose internal variation pro-duces the reciprocity of the chiasm: 1) Life self-engenders itself as myself.If with Meister Eckhart and with Christianity one calls Life God, one willsay: God engenders himself as myself ;63 2) In such a way, life traverseseach of those whom it engenders in such a way that there is nothing in himwhich is not living, and nothing either which does not contain in itself thiseternal essence of Life. Life engenders me as itself. If with Eckhart andwith Christianity one calls Life God, one will say: God engenders me ashimself. 64 Beyond the de-onto-theo-logizing substitution of God of Life,which confers a phenomenologically metaphysical and no longer solely theo-logical sense to the approach, what is in play here is the sudden variation onone utterance for another: 1) Life self-engenders itself as myself; 2) Lifeengenders me as itself. The first movement described is that of asingularization, the second that of an universalization. In both cases, life isthe first mover of the movement in play; in the first, the singularity of me/selfpresses its intensified density into the internal self-engendered movement oflife; in the second, the singular self is passively carried by life that traverseseach one. In both cases a passivity of the singular self is brought to light byrelation to life, which differentiates itself in ipseity, personalized, for it isdensified by life (as myself), and in flux, in the accusative, for it is carriedby life (life engenders me). Only the general structure of self-engenderingthat M. Henry mobilizes beginning with the Eckhartian statements permitsthe double and intimate close link of the singular living Self and Life toappear, and this, in the name of a quest of singularity experienced in animmanent way, against the abstraction of a Life thought as separated.

Other notions come to emphasize this temporalizing dynamic of the en-gendering of self in life and of the engendering of life in each self, notably,beyond generation, the notion of birth. For it is precisely on the occasion of

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an analysis of birth as second birth that the second reference to Eckhartappears. The leading thread of the interrogation carried by this reference isthe following: In what sense can the second birth, such as it is thematized byEckhart,65 and such as it is taken up again by M. Henry,66 be said to be atranscendental birth?67

This connection between second birth and transcendental birth is ex-plicitly assumed by M. Henry at the end of Chapter 8, which opensprecisely on the chapter dedicated to The second birth (Chapter 9),and where the culminating reference to Eckhart finally appears: if it istrue that in his transcendental birth he has not come in-himself exceptwithin the proper coming in-self of absolute life would this not be toborn a second time? But can man be born a second time?68 In order tounderstand this the re-explanation of the problematic of self-engender-ing of life, it is fitting to tie together two references with which M. Henryconverses with a doubled proximity of a distance: 1) Husserl; 2) SaintJohn in the mirror of Eckhart.

1. The possibility of transcendental birth is assured from a strictlyHusserlian point of view after one sets to work the reduction of the Krperto Leib, and that this reduction be deployed in an originarily intersubjectivemode where the other makes my body appear to myself as lived body incar-nated in the same moment when I reveal to the other his corporeity as flesh.Transcendental birth is then, in a constitutive manner, an inter-subjectivebirth, literally a co-birth of one to the other, of thou to me.69 This transcen-dental co-birth is approached by Husserl, in one place at least, as a secondbirth (Zweite Geburt), in the sense that it is not a matter of the single natu-ral, empirical, or biological birth, but of a lived birth, or better, co-livedwhich can deploy itself without founding itself on the first: This birth issecond in the order of appearing, it is second while being completely primor-dial since its lived dimension makes a phenomenon possible for me, thatwhich cannot be the first birth, of a biological order. The second birth can ineffect make the object of an self-apparition to myself.70

2. The metaphysical theme of the second birth is found formulated in thefirst place in the Johanian utterance, taken up at a dedicated to the secondbirth: It is the anguished question of Nicodemus when he holds his noctur-nal conversation with Christ: How can a man be born when he is old? Canhe enter a second time into his mothers womb and be born again? (John,3:4).71 It emerges from this interrogation that the second birth is not a bio-logical birth, strictly corporeal in the organic sense. This point is radicalized


by Eckhart in the thematic of non-birth, which is not, as for the gnosticMarcion, a negation of birth, but on being born, but on the contrary sets inmotion a novel temporality, forever being born incessantly,72 which foundsitself precisely on the rejection of biological birth as an unique andunreiteratable event. For it is precisely this reference to Eckhart that M.Henry takes up in his turn with respect to the Son understood as the Archi-Son: He has found again the Power from which he is born and which itselfis not born. He is born a second time. In this second birth he has rediscoveredthe life in such a way that from then on he will no longer be born, and it istrue to say that in this sense he is non-born (Meister Eckhart, Trait etsermons, op. cit., p. 258).73

Thus, the common structure that phenomenology and metaphysics liberateby converging on each other is one of a reiterable (because incessant) tempo-rality of the engendering of oneself, of which the metaphysical theme, of thesecond birth of course (not as a gnostic negation of birth), supplies the pre-liminary, of which the phenomenological experience of transcendental birthoffers a methodical experiential structuration. Transcendental birth comesthen to proffer a concrete tenor to temporalization as a form of an intrinsicself- and co-generation: the incessant being born to oneself makes of thegeneral form of self-anticipation a tangible experience of renewal of self bythe welcome of the un-expected, always possible at each instant.

It remains at the present and this is not the least of the tasks to connectthe experience of non-dual passivity, whose five traits we have taken up, tothis concrete temporality of self-antecedence. Only an elucidation ofself-affection will be able to procure such a phenomenological connecting.

III. The intensification of knowledge by affect

It is fitting at the present to return to The Essence of Manifestation whereone finds exposed, in the third part of the work, the thesis of self-affection.We will take up this re-reading beginning with the paragraphs this timeexplicitly dedicated to Eckhart, situated at the end of the third part.74

The knot of the interrogation can be formulated in this way: Is therean incompatibility between the Henryian primacy of self-affection andthe Eckhartian highlighting of intelligence?75 In other words, is it a matter oftwo different mysticisms, one affective, and one speculative?76 While thisdifferentiation may be pedagogically useful and theologically necessary, itwill be incumbent on us to show how, on the plane of a phenomenologicalmetaphysics, the distinction of affect and knowledge is avowed to be factical.

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Before approaching this point, which touches on 40, let us stick to theparagraph that precedes it, and resituates for the first time the Eckhartianperspective in that of M. Henry. On a plane less phenomenal (as in 37) thanstructural, the author works to disengage the grand phenomenological axesof the Eckhartian work. What is found specified there, eight times, are thedifferent modalities of a re-taking up of Eckhart that clearly operates by be-ginning with the distinction between theology and metaphysics. The knotof them is without any doubt the distinction between God and the God-head.77 In effect, the Godhead is the passive and non-formal essence ofGod, which, as active, resorts to theology or traditional metaphysics78

(we read: onto-theo-logy); it is the proper foundation of God, his inti-mate experience. The other points order themselves there, up to the pointof echoing the three questions in respect of which the Rhenian Masterwas judged heretical and condemned at Avignon: 1) creation; 2) theidentity of essence between the soul and God; 3) the refusal of exteriorworks. In fact, 39 is deployed as a strictly transcendental movement ofseeking the conditions of the possibility via their implication of I. Theontological identity of the essence of the soul and God (pp. 309312); II:conditions of this identity, where love sees itself relativized in favor ofdenudement understood as poverty and humility at the same time (pp. 312315); III: the structure beneath identity: the articulated immanence of thedivine absolute, where the essence is the non-formal foundation (pp. 314317); IV: unity as indifference to difference (pp. 318319); V: the virginalbirth as temporality of antecedence, according to the mixed model of crea-tion as preexistence (Thomas, Eckhart) and as genesis of the Word (ScottusErugina) (pp. 319320); VI: distinction between God and the Godhead, theheart of the argument (pp. 320322); VII: the non-dual unity as condition forthe possibility of identity (pp. 322324); VIII: passivity as fullness and sweet-ness, absence of desire and of will, which phenomenalizes the complete struc-ture into a full circle (pp. 324326).

Beginning here, one can make the community of thought between Eckhartand Henry in relation to knowledge appear.79 Two classic traits of knowledgeare put out of play by each other: 1) representation; 2) exteriorization. Inphenomenological terms, one remains subjectivist, the other objectifying.Both of them are without a doubt necessary as preparatory supports for knowl-edge in the strict sense, but both of them remain extremely limited. In orderbetter to discern the strong sense in question, it is the Johanian reference thatserves as the essential mediation. In John, knowledge is essentially life. But,for Eckhart, the purest knowledge is apprehended as the taste of God, inconformity with an entire theological tradition that finds, in Gregory of Nysa


for example, one of its eminent representatives.80 Pure knowledge is pas-sive knowledge before cognoscibility: the soul tastes God himself as hewas before he ever took upon himself the forms of truth and knowledge. 81The privileged knowledge is therefore affective knowledge, knowledge ofthe heart and not of the rational mental: nothing gets to him [man] without. . . going through Gods sweetness.82 If man is essentially one who knows,that is, in the Eckhartian terms taken up by M. Henry a theognostic [einGottwissender Mensch],83 this knowledge puts into play the deepest affectivefibers of man, that is, a grace whose taste is the first vibration. It is in thisway that the phenomenologist can take up in his turn the Eckhartian distinc-tion between twilight knowledge by images, representative and discur-sive and daybreak knowledge, which proceeds from a perception ofGod in his own taste.84

This is to bring to light an affective sensibility of a quality such that itpricks the senses themselves: the perception purifies itself in gustation, vi-sion goes back to the source of the most penetrating vision. The agentwhich makes us conscious of seeing should rank above the agent ofvision itself, affirms Eckhart, as M. Henry cites.85

Here is then the deep signification of the critique of consciousness inEckharts works:86 to liberate in the last moment a purified form ofknowledge which frees us from God. I pray God to liberate me fromGod, for my essential being is above God. A radically de-onto-theo-logising movement of the Eckhartian metaphysics that disrupts God asnotion or concept in favor of his intimate experiential approach, an ap-proach whose first phenomenological basis remains precisely the affec-tive structure of taste of God. Ultimately, the renunciation of all knowledgeas absolute loss of oneself, that which one has been able to call learnedignorance or annihilation of self87 defines the radical phenomenologicalexperience, its secret basis,88 where the experience of life proceedsfrom an essential disposition of becoming-naked.

To conclude, one can take up again the principal traits of the experi-ence freed in this way by M. Henry:

1. a passivity which dis-engages the factical opposition of activity andpassivity by highlighting its non-duality. The acme of this is formalizedin the oxymoronic structure of paradox and finds its ultimate point of intelli-gibility in the power of impassible detachment.

2. a temporality formally structured as self-antecedence of oneself and inces-sant and always surprising reiterability of the event of birth to the self as

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mobile and inexhaustible superabundance.Passivity and temporality are seen to be renewed through this in their

phenomenological structuration, by the intercession of intersubjectivityfounded anew, as co-generation, and effectuated in self-affection itselfThis is deployed in a final way as an act of knowledge which is a know-ing, and whose ethical virtue emerges from a vigilant welcome, emotion-ally tinted, in an undissasociable manner, as co-suffering and co-enjoyment.

Notes

1. D. Cairns, Conversations with Husserl and Fink, The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1976, p.91:LXII Conversation with Husserl, 27/6/1932: Husserl spoke of mysticism. Everygenuine evidence has its right. The question is always of the Tragweite of any given evidence. This applies also to the particular evidence the mystic has.Whole pages of Meister Eckhart, Husserl said, could be taken over by him unchanged.He doubts however the practical sufficiency of mysticism. The awakening from themystical experience is likely to be a rude one. On the other hand the insight into therationality of the world which one gains through true scientific investigation remainsthrough all future experience. The difference is furthermore, one between passiveenjoyment and work. The mystic neglects work. Both are necessary.

As every evidence has its right, the proper attitude toward religion is tolerance towards all genuine religion. See also, regarding the relation between mystical cer-tainty and phenomenological certainty, Ms. A VI 10.

2. E. Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.,Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970, David Carr trans. finds a surprisinganticipation of this formulation in the sermon of Eckhart consecrated to detachment:perfect humility curves itself underneath all creatures by which man leaves ittowards the creature; but detachment remains in himself. For, however remarkablesuch an exit from oneself might be, to remain in oneself is, however, something evengreater Matre Eckhart, Sermons-Traits, Paris: Galimard, 1942, 1987 (for the pref-ace of J.-P. Lombard, p. 20).

3. M. Heidegger, Phnomenologie des religisen Lebens, Frankfurt am Main:Klostermann, GA 60, 1995, pp. 315318. Cf. on this point, J. Caputo, The MysticalElement in Heideggers Thought, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978. Cf. also theBeitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (manuscript from the years 19368), GA65, Frankfurt: Klosteman, 1989.

4. Op. cit., p. 315. Such is the title of the paragraphs dedicated to Meister Eckhart:Irrationality in Eckharts works.

5. Op. cit., pp. 315316.6. Op. cit., pp. 315, 318.7. Op. cit., p. 316.8. Op. cit., p. 318.9. Ibid.

10. Regarding such critiques, cf. in those which concern Husserl, A. Diemer, Die


Phnomenologie und die Idee der Philosophie als Strenge Wissenschaft, in Zeitschriftfr philosophische Forschung, 1959, vol. XIII, 2 and A.L. Kelkel, Rflexionshusserliennes, Etude philosophiques, 1959, no. 4. Cf. also our clarification of themeaning to accord to the expression of phenomenological metaphysics:Mtaphysique scientifique et empirisme transcendental, given in the course of thedoctoral seminar of M. Haar in February 1996, published in Epoch.

11. Cf. L. Landgrebe, Phnomepologie und Metaphysik, J. Wahl, Trait de mtaphysique,et G. Vallin, La perspective mtaphysique.

12. Philosophie et phnomnologie du corps chez Maine de Birain, Paris, P.U.F., 1965.13. Gnalogie de la psychanlyse, Paris, P.U.F., 1985.14. The Essence of Manifestation, The Hague, Nijhoff, trans. Girard Etzkorn, p. 309. In

the last bit of 38, which opens on the paragraphs expressly dedicated to Eckhart, M.Henry expresses himself in this way: Such an understanding, which is identicallythat of the internal structure of immanence and of the original essence of revelation. . . is hardly ever encountered in history unless, however, it is found in an excep-tional thinker whom they used to call, and with good reason, a master: Eckhart.

15. Op. cit., Section III, 39, 40, and 49, pp. 309326, 326335, 424-437 respec-tively.

16. Op. cit., p. 285. Implied in this positivity as constituting it is the relation of theessence with itself. It is a relation such that in it the essence rejoices concerning itself,has the experience of itself, reveals itself to itself in that which it is, such as it is. Thatwhich has the experience of self, that which enjoys itself and is nothing other thanthis pure enjoyment of itself, than this pure experience of self, is life.

17. Cest moi la vrit, Pour une philosophie du Christianism. Paris, Seuil, 1996.18. Op. cit., Chapter 6.: Lhomtne en tant que Fils de Dieu, pp. 132133; Chapter 9:

La seconde naissance, p. 214.19. M. Henry refers to the edition which appeared from Aubier in 1942, end entitled

Traits et sermons, in the translation of F.A and J.M. (Reference of The Essence ofManifestation, op. cit., p. VIII) or of M. de Gandilac (Reference of Cest moi la vrit,op. cit., p. 132); We ourselves refer to the edition which appeared in the translation ofPaul Petit from Gallimard, also in 1942, but which was not printed at that time (reed.In 1987). We have not consulted the Latin Sermons, and for two correlative reasons:1) Our current of analysis is here the Henryian reading of Eckhart, not Eckhart forhimself; 2) we opt for a non-Scholastic reading of the Rhenian, at work in the Ger-man texts more than in the Latin corpus. In this light, we take for ourselves theformula of R. Schrmann: If the Latin work places the beacons on the route, theGerman work is compatible with the procession. (ST, p. IV). Nevertheless, one canrefer to the complete German edition, Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke, Stutt-gart, Kohlhammer (since 1954), as well as to the works of the CNRS group, who,under the direction of F. Brunner, are working on a complete French edition. [Trans-lators note: there are several English translations of Eckharts works, some being ofselections only, and there is some degree of controversy as to the faithfulness ofcertain translations. The most complete edition, that of C. de B. Evans (Meister Eckhart,London: John M. Watkins, 1924), has been superseded in part by the recent transla-tion by Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn, Meister Eckhart: The Essential Ser-mons. Commentaries, Treatises and Defense, New York: Paulist Press, 1981. Sincethe significance of the citations of Eckhart is their meaning within the work of M.

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Henry, we retain the citations of the French sources and add, where possible, Englishsources.]

20. The Essence of Manifestation, op. cit. 37, p. 281.21. To turn oneself away from the object in order to return towards the act which aims at

it (sich umkehren) is the very paradigm of the Husserlian reductive gesture.22. Leading back (Rckfhren) of the being to Being is the proprium of the Heideggerian

reductive gesture.23. To undo the Said in order to make the Saying arrive, or further to ruin the represen-

tation in order to free the epiphany of the face is another way of practicing the reduc-tion, according to accents closer to uncloaking (Abbau) of idealities in the Crisis orof Heideggerian destruction (Destruktion) of metaphysics.

24. Du dtachement (Von der Abgeschiedenheit), op. cit. p. 20. On DetachmentColledge and McGinn translation, pp. 285294.

25. The Essence of Manifestation, op. cit., pp. 281282.26. Op. cit., p. 284.27. Op. cit., pp. 284285.28. Op. cit., pp. 285286.29. Op. cit., pp. 291293.30. Op. cit., p. 282.31. ST, p. 137. Evans translation, pp. 217221, Colledge and McGinn translation, pp. 199

203. Like Detachment, Beati pauperes spiritu is considered by some as inauthentic.But, it is remarkable that these two attitudes, detached and poor, form precisely for M.Henry the matrix of the general disposition to welcome the metaphysical experience inquestion: 1) the radical gesture of reduction is structurally homogenous to Eckhartiandetachment; 2) the attitude of poverty is announced in a manner princeps: in that re-spect, it is cardinal.

32. . . . anyone who seriously intends to become a philosopher must once in his lifewithdraw into himself and attempt, within himself, to overthrow and build anew allthe sciences that up to then, he has been accepting. Philosophy wisdom [sagesse] is the philosophers quite personal affair. It must arise as his wisdom, as his selfacquired knowledge tending toward universality, a knowledge for which he can an-swer from the beginning, and at each step, by virtue of his own absolute insights. IfI have decided to live with this as my aim the decision that alone can start me on thecourse of a philosophical development I have thereby chosen to begin in absolutepoverty, with an absolute lack of knowledge. Edmund Husserl, CartesianMeditatations, Dordrecht: Kluwer. Trans. Dorion Cairns. [Translators note: the French,as N. Depraz cites it, has jai donc par la mme fait le vu de pauvret en matire deconnaissance.]

33. ST, p. 138. Colledge and McGinn translation, p. 202.34. The Essence of Manifestation, op. cit., p. 282.35. Op. cit., p. 284.36. ST. Du dtachement, pp. 2123, where impassibility is defined as this pure noth-

ing which is, not void, but fullness. Evans translation, Detachment, pp. 340348,Colledge and McGinn translation, On Detachment, pp. 291292.

37. Cf. First Philosophy II of Husserl and the Sixth Cartesian Mediation of Fink.38. Cf. with respect to the functioning of the paradox in Eckhart and, more generally, in

mystical thought, J. Zap, Die Funktion der Paradoxie im Denken und sprachlichen


Ausdruck bei Meister Eckhart, Cologne, 1966, and M.A. Sallis, Mystical Languagesof Unsaying, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1994. Cf. as well thehomologous role of the oxymoron in Gregory of Nysa, with the commentaries of J.Danilou in Platonisme et thologie mystique, Paris: Aubier, 1944. One can think thatthe experience of non-duality expresses itself most precisely in the figures of para-dox and of oxymoron.

39. Op. cit., p. 284.40. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, p. 184, where

Husserl attacks solitude as returning to the source of plurality and by thematizing thepositively paradoxical structure. The epoche creates an unique sort of philosophicalsolitude which is the fundamental requirement for a truly radical philosophy. In thissolitude, I am not a single individual who has somehow willfully cut himself off fromthe society of mankind, perhaps even for theoretical reasons, or who is cut off byaccident, as in a shipwreck, but nevertheless knows that he still belongs to that soci-ety. I am not an ego, who still has his you, his we, his total, community of co-subjectsin natural validity. All of mankind, and the whole distinction and ordering of the per-sonal pronouns, has become a phenomenon within my epoche; and so has the privi-lege of the I-the-man-among-other-men.

41. ST. De la naissance temelle, II; De la perfection de lme, pp. 6872 and 7379, and Des deux chemins, where the relation of powers and essence as relation ofan internal motive plurality of essence is analyzed in a recurrent manner. Evans trans-lations, The Eternal Birth, pp. 2025, The Souls Perfection, pp. 306308, andThe Twofold Way, pp. 390396.

42. The Essence of Manifestation, op. cit., pp. 289290.43. Op cit., pp. 286289.44. Op. cit., p. 289.45. ST, pp. 13, 36, 68. Evans translation, pp. 306, 320. [Translators note. No sermon or

tractate corresponding in title to On Accomplishment is to be found in either Eng-lish translation.]

46. Op. cit., p. 292.47. Op. cit., p. 187: . . . To learn how one can effectively keep ones interior free.48. In respect to this paradoxical structure of the phenomenological experience where

power experiences itself as impassible passivity, cf. our Phenomenological reduc-tion and the political, Husserl Studies, Vol. 12 no. 1, 1995.

49. Op. cit., pp. 281298.50. Op. cit., p. 294. Here in the internal structure of the original essence of revelation,

interior to the original relationship of Being to itself, all domination, every faculty ofacting or effecting, everything which habitually presents itself as the foundation of aresponsibility of imputability, as an origin or a cause, every possibility of assumingand of taking an attitude, all cease.

51. Op. cit. p. 294: First of all, passivity could not designate, as Descartes wanted, theaction of a foreign reality. . . . Thus a radically incorrect, even though traditional,understanding is cast aside according to which passivity, within its own relationship,is necessarily extended to something other than itself which is imposed on it, given,and with regard to which it henceforth determines itself, in the fact of being af-fected by something else, in order to be what it is, namely passive.

52. Without a doubt, this line of force is not absolutely proper to Eckhart, to the degree

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that it forms the privileged relief of a number of spiritual traditions. All the same, it isfound there with an unaccustomed intensity.

53. ST, Du dtachement, p. 22: Now you may ask what detachment is since it is initself so excellent. Here you should know that true detachment is nothing else thanfor the spirit to stand as immovable against whatever may chance to it of joy andsorrow, honor, shame and disgrace, as a mountain of lead stands before a little breathof wind Colledge and McGinn Translation, p. 288; De la naissance temelle, p.51: Your suffering [is] your highest acting; De la perfection de lme, p. 77:His powerlessness is precisely his greatest power; De la sortie de lesprit et de sonretour chez lui, p. 118: God works, the God head does no work, there is nothing todo; in it is no activity. It has never envisaged any work. God and Godhead are asdifferent as active and inactive. Evans translation, pp.143, 194 finally: to be activein inaction.

54. It suffices here for our purposes to mention the decisive character of the attribute ofomnipotence in the Cartesian understanding of God. Cf. regarding this J.L. Marion,Sur la thologie blanche de Descartes, Paris, P.U.F., 1981.

55. The Essence of Manifestation, op. cit., pp. 297298.56. ST. Comme une toile du matin, pp. 124125; Du ds-istement de soi-mme,

pp. 193196. Evans translation pp. 210214, 238241; in this respect the Levinasiananalysis of the passivity of the face of the other exposed to and as theft of myselfcorresponds equally to such an attempt of de-ontologization, but it rests upon, con-trary to M. Henry, a first Ethics; Heidegger himself has without any doubt opened theway in this sense, with all of the difficulties connected to the remaining complicity ofthe onto-theo-logic theme with fundamental ontology itself. The works of A. de Libera,notably, have already largely shown the non-onto-theo-logic character of Eckhartianmetaphysics. (cf. Matre Eckhart Paris, une critique mdivale de 1onto-tho-logie,coll. CNRS, Paris, P.U.F, 1984.)

57. ST. p. 196.58. As with the Asian traditions. Cf. the work of Rudolf Otto on Eckhart and Shankara

entitled West-stliche Mystik, Vergleich und Unterscheidung zur Wesensdeutung, Gotha,Leopold Klotz Verlag, 1929, as well as that of Ueda Shizuteru, Die Gottesggburt indem Durchbruch zur Gottheit. Die Mystische Anthropologie Meister Eckharts undihre Konfrontation mit der Mystik des Zen-Buddhismus, Gtersloh, Mohn, 1965. Seefinally our article Le spectateur phnomnologisant: au seuil du non-tre at dunon-agir, in Actes du Colloque Eugen Fink de Cerisy-la-salle (2330 July, 1994)(N. Depraz and M. Richir, eds.) Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997.

59. Cest moi, la vrit, op. cit., chapter 5, pp. 9899: Before Abraham came to be, Iam (John, 8, 58), p. 98; The reason of the radical Before, of the non-temporalBefore of Christ, is Christ himself who gives it in the language of phenomenologicalapodicticity: . . . Because thou hast loved me before the Creation of the world. . .(John, 17, 24); . . . And now do thou, Father, glorify me with thyself, with the glorythat I had with thee before the world existed. (John, 17, 5) (emphasis Deprazs), p.99. [Translators note: a translation, on my part, of Henry, with the exception of theScriptural quotes, these taken from the Confraternity Edition.]

60. Certainly, since 1963, the structure of internal revelation is already apprehended asengendering of the Son by the Father, but, it is true, in a still static mode (Op. cit.,40, pp. 332335).


61. Op. cit., p. 133: Let us introduce then a decisive concept, which would have had tobe earlier, in as much as it governs the philosophical intelligence of the essence oflife, the concept of self-affection.

62. Op. cit., p. 132.63. Op. cit., pp. 132133.64. Op. cit., p. 133.65. ST. pp. 3940 (with respect to the second birth as incessant birth of the soul in God).

Cf. P. Gire, Mtaphysique, thologie, et mystique chez Matre Eckhart, in Penser lareligion (J. Greisch, ed.), Paris, Beauschne, 1991, p. 94, n.34.

66. Cest moi. la vrit, op. cit., chapter 6, p. 133.67. Originally an Husserlian expression. Cf. on this point N. Dipnes, Natre soi-mme,

Alter no. 1, 1993.68. Cest moi la vrit, Op. cit., p. 191.69. Cf. N. Depraz, Transcandence et incarnation, le statut de lintersubjectivit comme

altrit soi, Paris, Vrin, 1995, chapter V.70. Hua XIV, no. 1 (Summer Semester 1921) p. 6 This alien flesh, as given in exteriority

and given in this as according to a first birth as an external thing, must therefore bebefore all translated, that is, must experience a second birth in the conception asflesh, flesh constituted in interiority and leading with itself an entire interiority ofconsciousness and an ego, as completing itself thereby as an animal and humanbeing.

71. Cest moi, la vrit, op. cit., p. 191.72. ST. De la naissance ternelle, pp. 36 and 39; Le livre de la consolation, p. 202:

Le non-n donnant naissance. Evans translation, pp. 2025, 308312.73. Cest moi la vrit, op. cit., p. 214.74. The Essence of Manifestation, op. cit., 39, 40 and 49.75. Regarding the divine noetic in Eckharts works, see P. Gire, art. cit., p. 88 sq.76. M. Henry uses the term mystic twice with regard to Eckhart, and in a sense that is

both fully positive and non-naive, since he lends him quotation marks. That is tosay that our author takes the term mystic in a non-strictly religious sense, but ratherproperly metaphysical: Is not the radical stripping of man, understood as the con-dition for the presence of god in him, the fundamental theme and at the same timethe final meaning of the mystique of Eckhart? (The Essence of Manifestation,op. cit., 39, p. 312); To those who would condemn him as if, duped by his enthu-siasm and also perhaps by his love, Eckhart had, in his claim of identifying crea-ture with god, as it were exaggerated the feelings and ideas which suggestedthemselves to his mystical soul, there would be lacking only one thing, the under-standing of his thought. (Op. cit., p. 319). With respect to the relation betweenmysticism and metaphysics. See S. Breton, Mtaphysique et mystique chez MatreEchkhart, in Recherches des sciences religieuses, Vol. 64, 1976, as well as P. Gire,art. cit.

77. The Essence of Manifestation, op. cit., 39, pp. 320323.78. Op. cit., p. 321.79. Op. cit., 41.80. Gregory of Nysa, Treatiste on Virginity, and J. Danilou, Platonisme et thologie

mystique, Doctrine spirituelle de Grgoire de Nysse, Paris: Aubier, 1944.81. Eckhart (T, 131) cited by M. Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, op. cit., p. 328.

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82. Eckhart (T, 131) cited by M. Henry, op. cit. , p. 329.83. Op. cit., p. 329.84. Op. cit., p. 330.85. Op. cit., p. 331.86. Op. cit., 49.87. Cf. the Sermon entitled Paul rose from the Ground (Surexit Saulus de Terra): Paul

rose from the ground wide-eyed, beholding nothing. I cannot see what is one. Hesaw nothing, to wit, God. Evans translation, p. 62. See as well regarding this, R.Schnman, Matre Eckhart ou la joic errante, Paris: Denel, 1972, and M.A. Sells,Mystical Language of Unsaying, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press,1994, which begins its analysis precisely by the Eckharts apparently paradoxicalphrase cited above.

88. The Essence of Manifestation, op. cit., p. 459.

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Depraz Seeking a Phenomenological Metaphysics-Henry's Reference to Eckhart