The Ethics of Affectivity and the Problem of Personhood

Frédéric Seyler

Michel Henry’s critique of barbarism,1 understood as a flight from life, almostimmediately raises the question of how life’s tendency to negate itself is then to beovercome. Undoubtedly, such a question refers to ethics. Although Henry not onlyprovides an analysis of civilization and its malaise, but also targets the level of theindividual through the concept of despair inspired by Kierkegaard, there is nosystematic treatment of ethics to be found in his phenomenology of life.2,3 In lightof the diagnosis of barbarism, it is therefore necessary to investigate what ethicswould be contained in, or follow from, Henry’s phenomenology. And if theessence of life is to be found in immanent affectivity, the questions thus become:is there an “ethics of affectivity” and, if so, which are its main aspects? The purposeof this article is to give an overview of ethics from the standpoint of Henry’s radicalphenomenology and to discuss some of the main problems it implies. Theopposition of barbarism and culture is essential in order to understand Henry’sdistinction between ethos (or “first ethics”) and normative ethics, but it is onlyintelligible if one refers to immanent affectivity as the key-concept of hisphenomenology. As we will see, it is the lack of recognition of immanent lifeas fundamental phenomenality that makes barbarism possible, a recognition that istherefore central to phenomenology of life as ethics and to the concept of “secondbirth.”  However, since phenomenology is, as theory, tied to intentionality, how can it become indicative of that which escapes intentionality, and how can it provide a truth-criterion for propositions that refer to affectivity as invisible? As the access to the transcendental becomes both an ethical and a theoretical problem, it is necessary to investigate how a radicalised reduction can be performed with regard to three interrelated aspects that are central to human life and therefore to ethics: community, personhood, and action. The analysis of action in particular shows Henry’s reductive move at work, while also facing the problem of articulating transcendence with immanence. His radicalised concept of personhood reveals the same features as those contained in his approach to action: they both combine affectivity and intentionality, but limit the reality of personhood and action to their affective core.