Michel Henry lettore di Descartes: la manifestazione del soggetto carnale

Riflettendo con Heidegger, Levinas, Michel Henry

In the context of the PRAGMATEIA philosophical workshop, and more specifically of the history of modern and contemporary philosophical thought, the Faculty of Philosophy is continuing - on the basis of last year's comparison with Kant, Hegel and Husserl - a cycle of three lectures focusing on the decisive theme of "subjectivity" as the principle from which every relationship with reality arises and in which it returns; in which is rooted the possibility or impossibility of the knowledge of truth and free action; inquiring consciousness that with a "critical attitude" welcomes multiple views of the world, on condition that they are subjected to the analytical method of evidence, so that the knowledge can be founded as science.

Through three specialists, respectively from the thought of Heidegger, Levinas and Michel Henry, subjectivity is problematised in itself and shown in its structural 'criticality' following the unravelling of three different phenomenological orientations.

The first lesson (7 March), given by Prof. Andreas Gonçalves Lind (Pontifical Gregorian University), is entitled Michel Henry reader of Descartes: the manifestation of the carnal subject.

Descartes plays a fundamental role in radical phenomenology. Indeed, Michel Henry considers him not only the founder of phenomenology in general, but also of his material phenomenology of life. In particular, Henry identifies in the II Meditatio the description of the original phenomenon of self-affection, which consists of the pure manifestation of the carnal cogito. While recognising that Descartes moves away from this original affective dimension, especially from the III Meditatio, Henry underlines that the French philosopher never fully adopts Galilean rationality. The latter reduces the intelligibility of the universe to a geometric understanding, ignoring the appearance mode proper to the affectivity of the subject. The author of the Meditationes emerges thus in a perspective that goes beyond the usual dualisms between soul and body. In this context, Henry highlights how Descartes bases the reason for clear and distinct ideas on a substratum of carnal affectivity that defines us as subjects.