Life、science And Art

Since the 20 th century,Henry is one of the most important phenomenologists in France.He has made outstanding achievements in philosophy,theology,politics,culture,art and psychological analysis.His contributions to phenomenology can be summarized as follows: revealing the priority of inner life as a way of appearing,thus pushing the radical movement of phenomenology to a new dimension.During World War II,Henry was engaged with the French Resistance and this experience had a profound impact on his thoughts.The chaos and massacre of war made him begin to reflect on the crisis of western social development.In Henry’s view,the root of the crisis lies in the forgetfulness of life in Western society.This paper takes “the forgetfulness and salvation of life” as the clue,which runs through three themes of life,science and art.The purpose of this paper is to explore Henry’s theory on the causes why life has been forgotten,and why classical phenomenology failed to solve this problem,and finally to reveal how Henry tried to save the forgotten life by art.The first reason why people forget life is the ecstasis of the world.The appearance structure of the world is transcendence,for it always places things in the visible horizon and shows them as visible objects.For Henry,this appearance structure cannot grasp the inner life,because life is invisible and cannot appear in the visible horizon.When Western philosophy regards the object-showing of the world as the sole way to appear,life is forgotten.The second reason why people forget life is the concealment of life.The appearance structure of life is immanence,for life experiences itself and feels itself in itself,which is an auto-affection.The concealment of life prevents itself from the ecstasis in the world’s horizon,so it cannot be the object of thought.Thought is a form of life in essence.The forgetfulness of life by thought is essentially the forgetfulness of itself,which is a kind of self-forgetting of life.The self-forgetting of life is its self-negation.The essence of life lies in experiencing itself and feeing itself,so life’s self-negation is the denial of experiencing itself and feeling itself.The third reason why people forget life is the barbarism of science.The so-called Barbarism is the denial of life.In Henry’s view,the self-feeling and self-experiencing that make life as it is are also the unbearable suffering of life.In suffering,life has the desire to “no longer be oneself” in order to get rid of oneself.The best way to get rid of oneself is to deny everything alive and to consider the object itself exclusively.The classical phenomenology,represented by Husserl and Heidegger,could not accomplish the task of saving life.Because they only understood appearance as the object-showing of the world,but did not pay attention to another more original appearance,namely the self-showing of life.The goal of phenomenology is to "return to things-themselves",but the question is how can we return to things-themselves? By appearance.Because appearance is the transcendental condition for things to appear,and it is meaningless to talk about phenomena without appearing.However,when appearance is understood exclusively as the object-showing of the world,and then phenomena are understood exclusively as visible things,classical phenomenology narrows phenomenology into a phenomenology of the world,thus missing the invisible life.Henry tried to save the forgotten life through art,which endowed art with a new significance different from that of the classical phenomenology.In the work of awakening life,art plays a double role.First of all,in an era of narrowing being into being in the world,art reveals to us another forgotten being,namely,inner life.Secondly,art does not reveal life to us by representation,but let us to experience life in ourselves.Art is not a medium or means to reveal life,but a mode of life.In this mode,not only can people experience the lively pulsation of life,but also life itself achieves transformation and growth.Since art is a mode of life,that art reveals life is the self-revelation of life.