Beneath Time and Reflection

Claudia Serban

Ever since The Essence of Manifestation (1963), Michel Henry’s phenomenologydeveloped in a close dialogue with Husserl. This confrontation led Henry, in 1995,to formulate the project of a “non-intentional phenomenology,” which would findits point of departure in a quite simple question: is intentionality—the key featureof consciousness and of lived experience as such in Husserl’s perspective—able toground itself? Does it provide its own foundation? If not, in what could itspossibility-condition be found? Henry’s gesture invites us not to a purelydescriptive attitude toward such intentional acts, but rather to an inquiry into theirorigin and their inner ground, to submit them to a transcendental interrogation inorder to discover “what ultimately makes them possible."