The Life of Michel-Henry

2. Biography
Michel Henry
• (10 January 1922 – 3 July 2002) was
a French philosopher and novelist. He
wrote five novels and numerous
philosophical works. He also lectured at
universities in France, Belgium,
the United States of America, and Japan.

3. • Michel Henry was born
in Haiphong, French
Indochina (now Vietnam), and he lived in
French Indochina until he was seven
years old. Following the death of his
father, who was an officer in the French
Navy, he and his mother settled
in metropolitan France.

4. While studying in Paris, he discovered a true
passion for philosophy, which he decided to
make his profession—he enrolled at the École
Normale Supérieure.
From June 1943 he was fully engaged with
the French Resistance, joining the maquis of the
Haut Jura under the code name of Kant. He
often had to come down from the mountains in
order to accomplish missions in Nazi-
occupied Lyon, an experience of clandestinity
that deeply marked his philosophy.

5. • At the end of the war he took the final
part of the philosophy examination at the
university, following which he wrote in
1963 a doctoral thesis, titled L'essence de
la manifestation (The Essence of
Manifestation), under the direction
of Jean Hyppolite, Jean Wahl, Paul
Ricœur, Ferdinand Alquié, and Henri
Gouhier.

6. • His first book, on the Philosophy and
Phenomenology of the Body, was
completed in 1950. His first significant
published work was on The Essence of
Manifestation, to which he devoted long
years of necessary research in order to
surmount the main deficiency of all
intellectualist philosophy, the ignorance
of life as experienced.

7. • From 1960, Michel Henry was a
professor of philosophy at
the University of Montpellier,
where he patiently perfected his
work, keeping himself away from
philosophical fashions and far
from dominant ideologies. He
died in Albi, France, at the age of
eighty.

8. • The sole subject of his philosophy is
living subjectivity, which is to say the
real life of living individuals. This
subject is found in all his work and
ensures its deep unity in spite of the
diversity of themes he tackled. It has
been suggested that he proposed the
most profound theory of subjectivity
in the Twentieth Century.