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This paper addresses the claim that the social orders of Western civilization operate on the basis of the law's presumed sovereignty over life. I demonstrate how the respective works of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and French phenomenologist Michel Henry are joined in their concern over this issue, and in their shared belief that life can be made sovereign over the law through a communal life based upon habit. At the same time, I argue that their respective conceptions of this communal life are flawed, and that they would benefit from being brought into a productive dialogue with one another. More specifically, I show that Henry's account of a Christian communal life based upon the habitual practice of love moves at least some way toward addressing Agamben's account of a coming community that is decidedly abstract and lacking in a substantial ethic. However, I maintain that Henry's own account of this community is founded upon a problematic conception of potentiality that would benefit from Agamben's study of the matter. By bringing these two figures together and drawing out the lessons that can be learnt from each of them, this work provides a more concrete and substantial account of how a coming Christian community can play a role in making life sovereign over the force of the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines two fundamental claims by Michel Henry on his philosophy's relationship with classical phenomenology (Husserl and Heidegger) and Christianity. It shows in what way Henry's phenomenology is the radicalization and absolutization of classical phenomenology: pure phenomenological truth is the identification of appearing and what appears rather than the separation of the two. According to Henry, his notions of life and truth is fully in accordance with Christianity's Revelation of God. In the last part, the paper challenges Henry's claim that his phenomenology is a Christian philosophy from a Kierkegaardian point of view and argues that Henry's phenomenology is, as a matter of fact, a philosophy without Christ. Contrary to a popular viewpoint that Michel Henry is a Christian thinker of our age, I would argue that Henry's concept of God and Christ is essentially a scholarly philosophical invention. If Henry's philosophy is an absolute and ultimate form of phenomenology, then it is reasonable to draw a conclusion that Christ as the Truth of Christianity is outside the boundary of phenomenology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines two fundamental claims by Michel Henry on his philosophy’s relationship with classical phenomenology (Husserl and Heidegger) and Christianity. It shows in what way Henry’s phenomenology is the radicalization and absolutization of classical phenomenology: pure phenomenological truth is the identification of appearing and what appears rather than the separation of the two. According to Henry, his notions of life and truth is fully in accordance with Christianity’s Revelation of God. In the last part, the paper challenges Henry’s claim that his phenomenology is a Christian philosophy from a Kierkegaardian point of view and argues that Henry’s phenomenology is, as a matter of fact, a philosophy without Christ. Contrary to a popular viewpoint that Michel Henry is a Christian thinker of our age, I would argue that Henry’s concept of God and Christ is essentially a scholarly philosophical invention. If Henry’s philosophy is an absolute and ultimate form of phenomenology, then it is reasonable to draw a conclusion that Christ as the Truth of Christianity is outside the boundary of phenomenology.

The idea of cosmos unity is not recent. It has been proposed from various viewpoints throughout human history as the locus of life. To begin with, the African worldview of Ubuntu tells the story of life from the experience of a cosmic perspective that upholds the primacy of the community and asserts that a truly fulfilling and complete life is attainable only by those who belong to the cosmic whole. There is no 'I' without 'we'; "Because we are, I am". And, unless the "I" belongs to "we", there is no life, biological or ancestral, after death. On its part, Paul's cosmology, generally understood as proposing a two/three-tiered cosmos, has a different viewpoint when seen from a closer look. Even if he would have agreed with his religious ancestors that sin had divided reality and that diastema is to blame for the cosmos fragmentation, Paul still recounts the story of a cosmic whole. His theology of reconciliation makes that unity more evident when he suggests that through Christ, the cosmos is reconciled, and life is restored. To belong to the cosmic whole is to be reconciled with God and have eternal life. From a third perspective, today's new cosmological investigations have uncovered the unfolding story of the grand unity and complexity of the universe, which is the only locus of life known to humanity. In this universe of connectivity and entanglement, one can scientifically appreciate the absence of fragments and observe the complexified unity of all things indispensable for living. These three stories reveal that togetherness and the experience of the cosmic whole are fundamental for life and the taste of eternal life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to promote the integration of knowledge and life based on a phenomenological description of sexuality and erotic relations. To carry out this task, I will follow the approaches of the French philosopher Michel Henry in order to extract the anthropological consequences of a phenomenology of incarnation pertaining to sexuality. Both the peculiar union produced by the sexual act and its perpetually threatened condition through the "event" of nihilation of the flesh will be the object of reflection throughout this work. In my search for the reintegration of the human being through the sexual act, I will show the importance of woman and her spiritual superiority in deepening the intimate meaning of sexuality. Further, I will argue that the intersubjective experience lived in sexual practice demands a consideration of human beings from their ultimate condition of relational possibility (Life), emphasizing their engendered, not merely created, condition. Thus, the salvation of human beings and their involvement in the coming of Life to them is intrinsically related to that carnal disposition which aids to unify them, beyond their diversity, in their self-revelation in Life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Henry tirelessly insists that all flesh is an invisible, radically immanent, impressional material in which life arrives in itself. But this raises a theological problem: is the material, visible body of Christ to be excluded from what we understand by incarnation? To answer this and related questions, the problematic of the duplicity of appearing—the appearing of life and the appearing of the world—must be clarified. It is precisely through an analysis of flesh that Henry seeks to establish a rapport between the two modes of appearing, so a study of the flesh should allow us to articulate in one stroke an account of our access to the world and the thingly body. Against a simplistic reading that claims that, for Henry, an unbridgeable gorge separates life and the world, the flesh and the body, I argue that the objective, visible body is real, but that its reality is founded on the more immediate reality of the flesh. I use the results of this inquiry to argue further for two distinct but related senses of the concept "world", one which names a phenomenological reality and another that picks out an ideological aberration endemic to modernity. While the flesh opens up the reality of the former, the latter is an imaginary and impossible world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of evil in a world created by God raises very difficult questions to answer. Under the inspiration of Thomistic philosophy, in this article we face this problem first of all "from below", trying to understand the meaning of physical evils in living nature, especially in animals (pain, aggressive interactions). Secondly, in thinking of the enormous amount of moral evil in the human world, we consider the biblical faith in original sin as illuminating. We examine some points of Thomas Aquinas in this regard, especially his thesis that the physical cosmos is not affected by original sin and that the loss of man's primitive happy situation involves a contradiction between his spiritual aspirations and his mortal nature subject to limits and suffering. This situation is remedied by the help God gives man through his ordinary Providence, which includes a personal struggle against evil, and above all through his salvific plan which we know thanks to the biblical faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the claim that the social orders of Western civilization operate on the basis of the law’s presumed sovereignty over life. I demonstrate how the respective works of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and French phenomenologist Michel Henry are joined in their concern over this issue, and in their shared belief that life can be made sovereign over the law through a communal life based upon habit. At the same time, I argue that their respective conceptions of this communal life are flawed, and that they would benefit from being brought into a productive dialogue with one another. More specifically, I show that Henry’s account of a Christian communal life based upon the habitual practice of love moves at least some way toward addressing Agamben’s account of a coming community that is decidedly abstract and lacking in a substantial ethic. However, I maintain that Henry’s own account of this community is founded upon a problematic conception of potentiality that would benefit from Agamben’s study of the matter. By bringing these two figures together and drawing out the lessons that can be learnt from each of them, this work provides a more concrete and substantial account of how a coming Christian community can play a role in making life sovereign over the force of the law.

It is fair to say that religion, and in particular the ways in which some Christian and Islamic thinkers have again begun to encroach on the domain of science (e.g., global warming, the teaching of evolution), has caused a great deal of consternation within the scientific and philosophical communities. An understandable reaction to these developments is to reject out of hand even the slightest taint of religion in these fields—a position that has now attained the status of orthodoxy, at least in the western world. This is curious on its face, given the fact that religion has clearly provided a sense of meaning and purpose for most of our fellow humans as long as there have been humans pondering such things. Moreover, it is probably not necessary, provided one is very careful what sort of faith one endorses. Thus, the basic question I wish to address here, albeit in a very preliminary fashion, is whether it may be possible to delineate a form of faith that can inspire and guide humanity without the metaphysical baggage that causes conflict with epistemically conservative disciplines like science. To that end, I examine one recent thread within cosmology that views the universe as creative in the sense that it is biased towards the production of ever-increasing complexity at its edges. If that is true, it gives those so inclined permission, as it were, to view the creation of complexity (including human culture and its products) as a moral good (perhaps even an imperative) without the assumption of supernatural entities with mysterious motives and goals. After arguing that there is indeed logical space for such a faith that does not impinge on the essential commitments of either science or philosophy (properly conceived) I will examine its potential use in framing some of the emerging debates concerning space exploration. The prospect of humanity venturing beyond our homeworld in the near future offers an excellent case study of this "neo-naturalism" in action for two basic reasons. First, it seems likely that such a massive and complex undertaking needs a motivational source beyond mere discovery and expansion. Second, a neo-natural faith may influence how we go about this, and not always in ways those steeped in more traditional approaches to religion would predict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary Japan, a Buddhist discourse has emerged that links life and food and centers on gratitude. While the connection between animals and gratitude has a long history in Buddhism, here the meaning of repaying a debt of gratitude has shifted from an emphasis on liberating animals to consuming them with gratitude, thereby replacing anti-meat-eating arguments with a sacrificial rationale. This rationale is also apparent in Partaking of Life, a children's book written by a Jōdo Shin Buddhist adherent, which has found a receptive audience in Jōdo Shin circles, including the voice-acting troupe Team Ichibanboshi. This article provides a close reading of Partaking of Life: The Day That Little Mii Becomes Meat, followed by historical contexts for Buddhist vegetarianism and discrimination against professions that rely on killing animals, particularly as these themes pertain to Jōdo Shin Buddhism. The essay ends on an analysis of Team Ichibanboshi's sermon on Partaking of Life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]