From the Life Phenomenology to the Criticism of Work Objectiveness (M. Henry, La Barbarie)

Abstract

Abstract This article aims to analyze Michel Henry's denunciation of the dehumanization of work in modern culture. The pretension to extend the instrumental scientific vision to all dimensions of human life determines, among other consequences, the loss of the genuine meaning of work as a display, and manifestation of subjective life. The study is part of the phenomenology of transcendental subjectivity that Henry proposes, whose intellectual keys are the understanding of life as “auto-affection” and the theory of the body as the pathos of living flesh, the “I” as “subjective body”. The notion of body-appropriation and its implications regarding work are examined, as exposed in Barbarism (chapters 1 and 3) to guarantee the unity of body-land and convert work as an expression of the subjective body through the objective body, avoiding any risk of rupture between them. The reflection leads to the conclusion that although Henry provides a vision of work that responds to life in its phenomenological reality, it is worth questioning whether confining the individual to his own subjectivity guarantees the ability of the work as a means of personal fulfillment. The unity and complexity of the human being demand a deep understanding of his personal being and the permanent search for a unifying principle so that work can be appreciated as an expression of a being that not only works through his body, but is himself that body that lives, acts, and works.

Keywords

• work, life phenomenology, subjectivity, immanence, self-affection, living body.