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International Journal of Philosophical Studies

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Selfhood, Passivity and Affectivity in Henry and Lvinas

Lszl Tengelyi a a University of Wuppertal, Germany Online Publication Date: 01 July 2009

To cite this Article Tengelyi, Lszl(2009)'Selfhood, Passivity and Affectivity in Henry and Lvinas',International Journal of

Philosophical Studies,17:3,401 414

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International Journal of Philosophical Studies Vol. 17(3), 401414

Selfhood, Passivity and Affectivity in Henry and Lvinas1

Lszl Tengelyi
International 10.1080/09672550902948993 RIPH_A_395071.sgm 0967-2559 Original Taylor 2009 0 3 17 tengelyi@uni-wuppertal.de LszlTengelyi 000002009 and & Article Francis (print)/1466-4542 Francis Journal of Philosophical (online) Studies

Abstract
When we compare Henry and Levinas, we stumble upon a difficulty. Henry tries to reduce transcendence to immanence; Levinas, on the contrary, strives to call immance into question and to lend a new dignity to transcendence. Hence, the two thinkers seem to be diametrically opposed to one another. Yet, if one does not limit oneself to such an overall view, one finds some similarities between them. There is an affinity between the two approaches which results from the fact that both thinkers establish a narrow relationship between originally passive affectivity and the selfhood of the self. Henry and Levinas are, despite all their differences, united in their efforts to ground selfhood on passivity and affectivity. Assuredly, it remains a question whether or not an originally passive affectivity is really capable of founding selfhood. Some doubt arises here from the observation that affectivity tends to anonymity. However, the observation that affectivity is marked by a tendency to anonymity has not only a negative and critical significance; it also characterizes affective states and arousals in a positive way, since one can maintain that the self could not be a self unless it were constantly confronted with a tendency to anonymity. Keywords: Michel Henry; Emmanuel Levinas; phenomenology; affectivity; personal identity; alterity

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That selfhood is related to passivity and affectivity is an observation that goes back to well before the twentieth century. Indeed, David Hume insists that we must distinguish betwixt personal identity, as it regards our thought or imagination, and as it regards our passions or the concern we take in ourselves.2 Whereas he rejects the idea of personal identity in the first sense, he endorses it in the second. The importance of this distinction consists in showing, for the first time, that selfhood does not result from an act of reflection on oneself; it rather rests on the basis of an affectivity which is originally entirely passive. This conception of selfhood is not alien to the phenomenological tradition. Husserl has already paved the way in this direction. However, it is pre-eminently Michel Henry and Emmanuel Levinas who make visible the

International Journal of Philosophical Studies ISSN 09672559 print 14664542 online 2009 Taylor & Francis http://www.informaworld.com DOI: 10.1080/09672550902948993

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close relationship between the three concepts. They are, despite all their differences, united in their efforts to ground selfhood on passivity and affectivity. This is precisely what I am trying to establish in this paper by considering, first, Henrys phenomenology of life and by examining, second, Levinass foundation of ethics. I intend to address these two tasks separately, before adding, third, some critical remarks which concern both projects. A Passivity, Affectivity and Selfhood in Henrys The Essence of Manifestation In the last part of his main work, The Essence of Manifestation, Michel Henry attempts to show, first, that affectivity is characterized by an original ontological passivity3 and, second, that it is affectivity which constitutes the very essence of selfhood.4 Although these ideas are repeated in Henrys later works, it is mainly the argument to be found in The Essence of Manifestation which, in its richness and coherence, lends itself to closer scrutiny. The line of thought that interests us is entirely consistent with the general conception developed in this work. It is common knowledge that Henry distinguishes between two kinds of manifestation. He characterizes the ekstatic manifestation of the world by the notion of transcendence, against a different kind of manifestation, the self-revelation of life linked to the notion of immanence. He uses this double distinction, on the one hand, between the two kinds of manifestation and, on the other hand, between transcendence and immanence for an attack on what he calls ontological monism,5 a tendency considered as prevalent in philosophical thought since the time of ancient Greek philosophy. This term is, however, misleading, as it suggests that Henry himself is the adherent of an ontological dualism, which is not the case. In reality, he tries to reduce the dimension of the world entirely to the dimension of life, maintaining, at the same time, that immanence is the very essence of transcendence.6 That is, precisely, why the essence of self-revelation requires closer scrutiny.7 The main result of this scrutiny is the statement that the self-revelation of life can be characterized by the notion of the invisible.8 Here, the proposition is asserted that the relationship between invisible life and the visible world is a relationship between reality and unreality.9 At first sight, only the formal and empty negation of the visible world seems to be designated by the notion of the invisible.10 In order to give a positive content to this notion, Henry tries to show that the essence of life is affectivity.11 It is this major tenet that I now wish to consider. According to Husserl and Scheler, feelings and affective states in general are, at least in most cases, characterized by intentionality. Henry does not contest that this conception is well-founded. He says: This essential characteristic of intentionality is, indeed, exhibited by every affective 402

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determination, just as well as by any other psychic fact. If I am glad, I am glad to see or to learn something, if I am afraid, I am afraid of something, and even if I am in pain, I am in a pain because something pains me. However, Henry adds that affects are marked by a self-referentiality which distinguishes them from all other mental states and has nothing to do with intentionality.12 Whereas what is perceived in a perception is only exceptionally itself a perception and what is recalled in a remembering is only exceptionally itself a remembering, etc., it is pain itself which we feel in pain and it is fear itself which we feel in fear. This fundamental selfreferentiality of feelings and affective states is described by Henry as a self-feeling,13 and it is revealed as the very essence of affectivity as such.14 As far as it is the expression of this self-referentiality of affective states, affectivity is opposed to intentionality. This does not mean that affective states are not related to the world. However, according to Henry, it is not from this relation with the world that their specific essence results, but solely from the self-referentiality which is expressed by the French term se sentir soi-mme. These reflections give the notion of affectivity a sense which distinguishes it from all particular affects. In Henry, it is nothing but the self-referentiality of affective states that is designated by the term affectivity. At the same time, he distinguishes affective states from sensations. Even if, according to a well-known tenet of Husserlian phenomenology, sensations are not intentional experiences, there is something for instance, the red colour or a bitter taste which is felt in them, without coinciding with them. Consequently, there is at least a minimal distance between sensation and the sensed. It is due to this distance that Henry justifies his statement according to which sensations are, in spite of their non-intentional character, vehicles of the ekstatic manifestation of the world rather than of the self-revelation of life. He adds that the minimal distance between sensation and the sensed is a consequence of the fact that every sensation goes back to a process in which the subject is affected by the world. This hetero-affection is at the root of sensations. It is the second characteristic that distinguishes sensations from all feelings and affective states. Affective states are themselves linked to certain influences that the world has upon the ego. Yet, Henry is convinced that the events of the world are only occasional causes of our feelings. It is our affectivity itself which makes it possible for the world to exert an influence upon our interior life. In other words, it is, in each case, our particular attunement that exposes us to an affection by the world. Henry says: The eventual fact of ones attunements depending on the vicissitudes of life and being adjusted to them [], the decision to rely upon what arrives at oneself and, so to speak, to let it reach ones core [], all 403

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this, which is deeply rooted in the emptiness of existence, i.e. precisely in an attunement, is far from being able to determine ones attunement, since it is identical to it and results from it.15 This quotation makes clear that Henry does not admit any possibility of a violent irruption of exterior events into our affectivity without assuming that a particular receptivity for the impact of these events is developed in interior life itself. This position is characteristic of Henrys view of life and world. In The Essence of Manifestation, the self-referentiality of feelings and affective states is narrowly tied up with the idea of a self-affection of life.16 However, it is not this self-affection which lays the basis for a comprehension of affectivity, but, inversely, it is affectivity which makes possible the comprehension of self-affection. Henry states: Affectivity is the essence of self-affection.17 In order to elucidate this statement, we must consider more closely the relationship between affectivity and passivity. A consequence of the self-referentiality of feelings and affective states is that they are characterized by an original or originary passivity.18 From this self-referentiality, it immediately follows that every feeling is delivered to itself irremediably, for being what it is19 and that, in its being-alwaysalready-given-to-itself,20 every feeling is pushed back to Being, to its very being, sticking to it in every respect21 and without recoil.22 These features assign to every feeling, even to the most joyful one, an irremediable character of suffering.23 But every feeling is equally marked by a character of enjoyment.24 This latter character results from the fact that an affective state is never only delivered to itself and pushed back upon its very being, but one may equally say that it arrives at itself, and becomes what it is.25 This identity of a feeling with itself is a source of enjoyment. According to Henry, it is life which experiences itself in affective states and attunements. But life does not only experience itself, but also finds and regains itself by having an experience of what it is. All these aspects of feelings and affective states show that they are the vehicles of a self-revelation of life. That life not only experiences itself in them, but also finds and regains itself, by having experience of what it is, is a complex fact which is summarized in the notion of a self-affection of life. Hence, one has to distinguish between affectivity and affects. The affective tonality of affectivity does not necessarily coincide with the affective tonality of particular affects. Indeed, the affective tonality of affectivity is determined by suffering and enjoyment; these are feelings that accompany ones life as a whole, providing it with a particular sense of reality. Suffering and enjoyment do not alternate in life; on the contrary, they are entwined with each other. In order to make this interpenetration perceptible, Henry borrows a paradoxical figure of thought from Heidegger. In Being and Time, Heidegger points out the intricate structure of the existential concept 404

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of destiny. The figure of thought in question unites in itself a certain idea of power or powerfulness and a certain idea of impotence or powerlessness. The powerlessness of feeling results from the fact that it is the gift which cannot be refused.26 Contrary to this, the powerfulness of feeling results from the experience of an original force.27 This experience lends a certain calm and quietness (douceur)28 to every feeling, because every feeling is alwaysalready-given-to-itself and because of the tranquil force resulting from this fact. Here, we may already draw the conclusion that the powerfulness of feeling is inseparable from its powerlessness. Indeed, Henry says: The powerfulness of feeling is not opposed to its powerlessness, like one determination to another, but it is identical with it and it resides precisely in it.29 This belonging together of powerfulness and powerlessness which is characteristic of feeling provides the idea of a self-affection of life with a concrete meaning and makes its pertinence obvious. In its originary passivity, feeling finds itself, in spite of its tranquil force, delivered to itself irremediably, for being what it is, and even pushed back to its being. The traditional way of expressing the fact of this being-always-already-given-toitself that characterizes every affective force is no other than precisely to use the term self-affection. We have seen how Henry established a relationship between affectivity and passivity; however, we have still to show how he establishes a relationship between affectivity and selfhood. The latter relationship cannot be deduced from the self-referentiality of affective states. The self-feeling characteristic of attunements and affects is an expression of the self-affection of life, but it does not yet have any immediate bearing upon the selfhood of the self. Yet, Henry expressly states that every feeling is, as such, a selffeeling, a feeling of the self.30 He adds: It is never the particular content of a feeling, the proper affective attunement differentiating and separating it from all other feeling, which can make of it the feeling of an I,31 but it is its affective character, affectivity as such.32 However, the particular connection between the self-referentiality of a feeling and its relationship with the self has not yet become manifest. Everything appears as though Henry were trying to discover a missing link in the idea of an originary passivity of affectivity. His starting-point is the observation that every feeling has a tendency to surpass itself.33 This tendency is narrowly related to the character of suffering which necessarily belongs to every feeling. For all suffering finds itself constrained to surpass itself. Henry describes this predisposition of suffering to transcend itself in a particular way. According to Henry, it is not a pre-given world to which the self-transcendence of feeling is directed. Paradoxically, feeling transcends itself precisely by arriving at itself, by becoming that which it is and nothing else. This paradox has a profound meaning: by becoming itself and nothing else, feeling becomes fixed and crystallized within a milieu of a diffuse and fluent affectivity; thus, it loses its agility and its multivocity. Henry says: In a feeling the absence of surpassing 405

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its identity with itself is that which surpasses it. Such a surpassing, that of identity, accomplishing itself in identity, gives to a feeling its content.34 This is the way in which an affective attunement becomes an affect, a particular feeling: love or happiness, sadness or despair.35 It is this process of coagulation of particular feelings that provides us with the missing link between affectivity and selfhood. This process conveys to feeling the weight of its proper being.36 Feeling becomes the feeling of a self. In The Essence of Manifestation, we are told: That which, in this way, is charged by itself, for being itself once and for all, is solely what may be rightly described as a self.37 Consequently, it is by this self-surpassing of a feeling of identity towards its proper content38 that, according to Henry, originally passive affectivity finds itself bound up with the selfhood of the self. Later, we shall come back to the question of whether or not this bond is really unbreakable.
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B Passivity, Affectivity and Selfhood in Levinass Totality and Infinity When we compare Levinas to Henry, we stumble upon some major difficulties. The author of Totality and Infinity and here I am concentrating upon this work, which is almost contemporary with The Essence of Manifestation is far from trying to reduce transcendence to immanence. In this respect, the two thinkers are diametrically opposed to one another. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas strives to call immanence into question and to convey a new sense and a new dignity to transcendence. Yet, if one does not limit oneself to such an overall view of the two thinkers and attempts to analyse the two approaches, one finds some similarities. There is an affinity between the two approaches which results from the fact that Levinas, like Henry, establishes a narrow relationship between originally passive affectivity and the selfhood of the self. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas makes use of an ontological language. Metacategories like the Same and the Other play an important role in this work. Levinas says: Being produces itself as multiple and as split into Same and Other. This is its ultimate structure.39 In another passage, he adds: We are the Same and the Other.40 It would be erroneous to think that, for Levinas, the extensive use of these metacategories leads to a reduction of selfhood to sameness. On the contrary, in Totality and Infinity, Levinas clearly states that: The I is not a being that remains always the same, but a being whose existence consists in identifying itself with itself through everything which happens to it.41 Levinas takes it for granted that the I is confronted with the possibility of alterations. Indeed, I am constantly subjected to some changes. During my lifetime, I may change, without even being aware of it, to the point of no longer being the same as I was before. But I can never change to the point of no longer being myself. That is what Levinas has in mind when he says: The I is identical with itself even in its 406

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alterations.42 However, with these considerations in mind, it becomes clear that the identity of the I with itself does not consist in the sameness of an immutable core which the I preserves in all circumstances, but rather in the fact that the I constantly relates to itself and that, in this relationship with itself, it finds its way back to itself in an ever renewed manner. Indeed, the egos capacity of representing the world, as well as its capacity of representing itself to itself, is by no means without impact on the selfhood. Levinas says: To remain the same is to represent to oneself.43 Self-awareness, memory and the capacity for telling stories about ones own life belong to the constitutive factors of selfhood. However, these factors are not the only bearers of the self. Like Michel Henry, Levinas relies upon the affective life of the I so as to make it clear that selfhood is more original than the forms in which the I represents itself to itself in a conscious and thematic way. In Totality and Infinity, he shows that there is a more original kind of selfreferentiality than the reflexivity of representing oneself to oneself. What Levinas has in mind is the self-referentiality of the joy to live, the happiness of enjoyment. We are told: To live is to enjoy life. To despair of life only makes sense because life is, originally, happiness.44 However, this joy to live does not signify a simple adherence to a naked Being. Levinas says: The naked fact of life is never naked. Life is not the naked will to be, an ontological Care of this life. [] Life is love of life, a relationship with contents which are not just my Being, but which are more valuable than my Being: thinking, eating, sleeping, reading, working, basking in the sun.45 This distinction between Being and life, in which one easily discerns a polemical thrust against the fundamental ontology of Heidegger, is all the more important because, according to Levinas, it is not ontological Care, but joy to live, happiness of enjoyment, which is closely bound up with the selfhood of the self. We are told: since life is happiness, it is personal. The personality of a person, the selfhood of the I, more than the particularity of the atom and the individual, is the particularity of the happiness of enjoyment.46 Here, the selfhood of the self finds itself relegated to an originally passive affectivity. As opposed to representation, the happiness of enjoyment is not based on any activity of the subject. It is rather based on the originally passive groundwork of all activity. This groundwork precedes and grounds all reflective self-awareness. Levinas says: Life is affectivity and feeling.47 The line of thought we have been following so far is summarized in the formula affectivity as the selfhood of the I, which is used as the title of a chapter in Totality and Infinity.48 According to Levinas, the bond which ties up affectivity and selfhood is no other than the happiness of enjoyment. According to him, happiness is essentially incomparable, unique and, consequently, irreplaceable. This is the meaning of the following quotation: every happiness arrives for the first time.49 What is true of happiness (bonheur) is also true of its opposite, misfortune (malheur).50 Just as Henry 407

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insists on the inseparability of suffering and enjoyment, Levinas insists on the inseparability of happiness and misfortune. Yet, in Totality and Infinity, the happiness of enjoyment is very far removed from exhausting the entire sense of selfhood. Contrary to Michel Henry, Levinas decidedly refuses to reduce selfhood to the self-referentiality that is truly characteristic of the manifestation of life. At this point, the approaches of the two thinkers start to differ. Levinas considers the equation of selfhood with an affectivity that accompanies the accomplishment of life to be untenable, because, in his view, this equation restricts the sense of the unicity or singularity of the I to what is designated in Totality and Infinity, by a term borrowed from Sartre,51 as separation and described by Levinas as the exclusive domain of egoism. With this in mind, Levinas says: The identification of the Same is neither the emptiness of a tautology nor the dialectical opposite of the Other, but the concreteness of egoism.52 However, this is far from being Levinass last word on selfhood. In Totality and Infinity, the concreteness of egoism is by no means the only notion applied to selfhood. Levinas does not hold that the irreplaceable singularity of the I is reducible to the otherwise entirely unique character of happiness. He rather deduces this singularity from the ethical task of the I. He says: The I is a privilege or an election,53 adding that To pronounce I [] signifies to have a privileged place in respect of the responsibilities in which nobody can replace me and from which nobody can exempt me. Not to be able to withdraw oneself that is the I.54 Here, a second notion of selfhood makes its appearance, a notion that is distinct from the first one. The two notions are not easily reconciled. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas defines selfhood, on the one hand, as the enjoyment of life in separation55 and, on the other hand, as the apologetical position56 of the I a position which surpasses every separation. The apology of selfhood57 is decribed as follows: My arbitrary freedom reads its shame in the eyes which glance upon me. It is apologetic, i.e. it refers already, by itself, to the judgement of the Other.58 According to Totality and Infinity, both egoism and apology belong to the constitution of selfhood. Whereas egoism is equally characterized as an atheism,59 apology is juxtaposed with religion.60 In Totality and Infinity, this opposition makes clear the irremediable tension between the two notions of selfhood proposed by this work. In Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Levinas strives to overcome this tension by breaking with the former use of ontological metacategories like the Same and the Other. Instead of defining the I as the Same, he now coins formulas like the other in the same61 and the other in me62 in order to make visible a selfhood, an ipseity which has become at odds with itself in its return to itself.63 The identity underlying this selfhood is only an identity in diastasis, where coinciding is wanting.64 In this new conception of selfhood, the unicity or singularity of the I is entirely detached from 408

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identity or sameness in the traditional sense of the words. That is why the new formula Uniqueness without identity65 is now being proposed. As in Totality and Infinity, in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence selfhood is linked up with passivity and affectivity. Levinas says: It is in the passivity of obsession [] that an identity individuates itself as unique.66 The passivity which Levinas has in mind is a passivity that is more passive still than all the passivity of undergoing,67 i.e. a passivity inconvertible into an act, the hither side of the actpassivity alternative.68 From the quotation above in which obsession is mentioned, it already becomes clear that this absolutely original passivity is inseparable from affectivity. Moreover, in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Levinas describes a whole range of affective states such as despite oneself, fatigue, patience and endurance of age or vulnerability in the sense of an exposure to wounding in enjoyment.69 A characteristic of these analyses immediately alerts our attention: unlike Michel Henry, Levinas considers these affective states to be traces of an immemorial irruption of alterity into selfhood. These traces are related to the ethical task of the I, as well as to its election. As in Totality and Infinity, in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, the ethical task of the I is described as a the not-being-able-to-slip-away-from obligation.70 But, in the new work, this expression assumes an additional meaning, which is more related to affectivity than to ethics in its proper sense. Levinas now insists on the irruptive and violent character of the appeal or claim of the Other from which the I cannot slip away. That is why, in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, he does not even shrink away from defining selfhood as a traumatic [] uniqueness.71 C The Enigma of an Anonymous Affectivity

We have seen how Henry and Levinas try to base the notion of selfhood upon an analysis of original passivity and affectivity, and we have distinguished between two different versions of such an attempt: whereas Henry does not admit of any hetero-affection to which no internal receptivity corresponds, Levinas regards trauma as a necessary condition of the identity in diastasis which he believes to be the very core of selfhood. In the opinion of Henry, affectivity is not just one case of a self-affection of life, but rather the very essence of this self-affection. Levinas, on the other hand, maintains that affectivity rests upon a way of being affected which can in no way be invested by spontaneity72 and which, therefore, cannot be conceived of as a self-affection, of whatever kind it may be. After having separated these two versions of the attempt to base selfhood on an originally passive affectivity, we may ask both thinkers whether an originally passive affectivity is really capable of founding selfhood. Some doubt arises here from the observation that affectivity tends to anonymity. The more definitely affective arousals are transmuted into precisely 409

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determined and isolated affects, the more clearly this tendency manifests itself. For nothing lends itself more to caricature than a strong and unequivocal affect. There are marble statues that express anger or sadness in a very characteristic way, without representing any personal trait of a real or imaginary individual. Even if affective arousals preserve their fluent and multifarious character, inserting themselves entirely into the temporal flux of life, in their upsurging they hint at a force arising from immemorial depths and, therefore, resisting any assigment to a particular self. In both Henry and Levinas, some arguments are to be found which can be adduced in order to dissipate this doubt. However, one is discouraged from doing so because these arguments transcend the limits of a phenomenologically founded line of thought. Henry clearly sees the danger of reducing the originally passive process of life to impersonal forces and drives. Such a reduction is at play in what is generally described as a philosophy of life. It emerges with Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and, at least according to Henry, with Freud.73 The phenomenology of life which Henry endorses is, from the start, opposed to such a philosophy of impersonal forces and drives. However, it is only by invoking theology that Henry succeeds in defending his phenomenology against the danger of anonymity.74 In his phenomenology of incarnation, the connection between affective life and selfhood is due to an Original Selfhood (ArchiIpsit),75 to the Selfhood of the First Self,76 i.e. to that of the Original Son (Archi-Fils), Jesus Christ.77 As far as Levinas is concerned, the same problem is clothed differently. In order to set out this particular form, we may start with an objection formulated by Paul Ricur. In his Reading of Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence of Emmanuel Lvinas, Ricur emphasizes that the ethics expounded in this work suffers from a desert of words (dsert des mots) and a distress of the discourse (dtresse du discours).78 These two expressions indicate that, detached from ontology, ethics remains without a direct, proper, adequate language and, consequently, finds itself compelled to have recourse to a non-ethical language79 and even to a discourse of evil (mchancet).80 When we think of the pre-eminent role assigned, for instance, to the notion of persecution in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, we comprehend this objection without any difficulty. However, this does not alter the fact that this objection cannot be considered valid at least not without some modifications. It is mainly the example of persecution that makes clear the real necessity of a recourse to a non-ethical language in an ethics which has got rid of the ontological metacategories of the Same and the Other. Precisely the use of a non-ethical language makes it possible for Levinas to recognize a tendency to anonymity in affective life. Not only is it of importance for ethics, but it also has a bearing upon selfhood. This is, incontestably, a paradoxical enterprise, requiring some new methods. Some of these methods are not 410

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entirely free of doubt. One of them consists in using terms of psychopathological origin in order to express the anonymity of affective life, extending, at the same time, the meaning of these terms to all conscious life, even if it is not characterized by any pathological feature. This is, obviously, the case with a term like obsession, but the same can be said of persecution. Indeed, Levinas says: Obsession is a persecution, where the persecution does not make up the content of a consciousness gone mad; it designates the form in which the ego is affected, a form which is a defecting from consciousness.81 It is not so much the use of a non-ethical language or the recourse to a discourse of violence and evil which raises a major difficulty here, but rather the ambiguity resulting from a systematic transgression of the boundary that separates psychopathology from the phenomenology of affectivity. Even the new description of selfhood as the other in the same or the other in me shows this ambiguity. Indeed, in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, these formulas do not simply designate an identity in diastasis which is characteristic of the new notion of selfhood, but refer equally to what, in this work, Levinas calls the psyche of the soul (le psychisme de lme). The ambiguity in question becomes particularly clear from the following passage: Soul is the other in me. Psyche, the one-for-theother, may be possession and psychosis; soul is already the grain of madness.82 It follows from these lines that, in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, the ethical language elaborated by Levinas is, indeed, not without ambiguity. Trauma, possession, obsession and persecution are terms which are not reduced to express the ethical meaning of an immemorial hetero-affection; they are also used in a psychopathological sense. They assign to affective life an inalterable anonymity. Without this anonymity one could not even speak of the other in me, i.e. of an alterity in ipseity. However, it becomes evident how the meaning of the other oscillates between alterity in the ethical sense of the word and mental alienation in the psychopathological sense. These critical remarks show that the task of linking selfhood to an originally passive affectivity has not yet been accomplished either by Henry or Levinas without raising certain difficulties. However, the observation that affectivity is marked by a tendency to anonymity has not only a negative and critical significance; it also characterizes affective states and arousals in a positive way. It is not accidental that, in The Essence of Manifestation, Michel Henry tries to describe how feelings surpass themselves, and it is not accidental either that in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Levinas determines affectivity as an alterity in ipseity. These are, indeed, the first steps on the road towards the perception that the self could not be a self (in the only sense we are able to assign to this word) unless it were constantly confronted with a tendency to anonymity. Enclosed in its identity with itself, it would be nothing other than a solus ipse, a self on the very limit 411

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of selfhood, containing in itself not just a grain of madness, but a veritable mental alienation. It is necessary, therefore, to continue the work which Henry and Levinas began in order to account for the tendency to anonymity which characterizes all feeling and affective tonality. It seems to me that no such attempt can be successful without giving back its weight to the concept of affective experience. I mean an affective event which arrives by itself with us and brings with itself something new and unforeseeable. An affect which, to put it in Michel Henrys terms, arrives by itself inevitably assumes a character of anonymity. On the other hand, an affective experience capable of surprising, astonishing and sometimes even shocking us may contribute to the formation of our selfhood. That is why one could state that all ducation sentimentale is a sentimental journey. In other words, it is on an experiential way across the world that our selfhood is constituted. In this conception of an affective experience, the notions of immanence and transcendence assume a meaning that is different from the way in which they are understood by Henry and Levinas. All affective experience is, in a certain sense, transcendent, because, to put it in Levinasian terms, it manifests itself as something real which precedes and surprises the possible. But all affective experience is, in another sense, immanent, because, even though it has nothing to do with an encapsulated subject, it is proper and pertinent to a certain experiential way across the world and, consequently, inherent in the life of a self. Thus, the idea of a selfhood which is nothing other than the trace of an experiential way through the world allows us not only to account for the tendency to anonymity characteristic of all feelings and affective tonalities, but also to bridge the gap between Levinasian transcendence and Henrian immanence. University of Wuppertal, Germany Notes
1 The first version of this paper was published in German under the title Selbstheit, Passivitt und Affektivitt bei Levinas und Henry, in M. Staudigl and J. Trinks (eds) Ereignis und Affektivitt. Zur Phnomenologie des sich bildenden Sinnes, Mesotes. Jahrbuch fr philosophischen OstWest-Dialog (Wien: Turia & Kant Verlag, 2006), pp. 22238. An extended French version of the text was presented as a public lecture within the framework of the Thirty-First Congress of the Association des Socits de Philosophies de Langue Franaise on 30 August 2006 in Budapest. It is being published in the proceedings of this congress in French. 2 D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. E. C. Mossner (London: Penguin Books), 1969, p. 301. 3 M. Henry, Lessence de la manifestation, 3rd edn (Paris: PUF, 2003) (1st edn, 1963), p. 585. 4 Ibid., p. 581.

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5 Ibid., p. 91. 6 Ibid., 312, pp. 289314, and mainly p. 309: Limmanence est lessence de la transcendance. 7 Ibid., 4551, p. 477571. 8 Ibid., p. 556. 9 Ibid., p. 564. 10 Ibid., p. 571. 11 Ibid., p. 596. 12 Ibid., p. 607. 13 Ibid., p. 578: se sentir soi-mme. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., pp. 616f. 16 Ibid., 31, pp. 289307. 17 Ibid., p. 577. 18 Ibid., p. 586. 19 Ibid., p. 588. 20 Ibid., p. 589. 21 Ibid., p. 593. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., p. 590. 24 Ibid., p. 593. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., p. 593. 27 Ibid., p. 594. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., p. 581. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., p. 582. 33 Ibid., pp. 590ff. 34 Ibid., p. 590. 35 Ibid., p. 582. 36 Ibid., p. 590. 37 Ibid., pp. 590f. 38 Ibid., p. 591. 39 E. Levinas, Totalit et Infini (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 1994), henceforth TI, p. 301. 40 TI, p. 28. 41 TI, p. 25. 42 Ibid. 43 TI, p. 132. 44 TI, pp. 118f. 45 TI, p. 115. 46 TI, p. 119. 47 TI, p. 118. 48 TI, p. 122. 49 TI, p. 117. 50 TI, p. 122: bonheur ou malheur. 51 J.-P. Sartre, Ltre et le nant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), pp. 345f. 52 TI, p. 27. 53 TI, p. 274. 54 TI, p. 275.

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TI, p. 54; TI, pp. 119, 1224. TI, p. 283; TI, p. 275. TI, p. 335. TI, p. 282. TI, p. 52. TI, p. 30. E. Levinas, Autrement qutre ou au-del de lessence, Edition Livre de poche (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 1990), henceforth AE, p. 46; in English: Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, tr. by A. Lingis, The Hague/Boston/ London: M. Nijhoff 1981, p. 25. Ibid., p. 111 n., 11 p. 198; in English: p. 125. Ibid. AE, p. 182: Identit en diastase; in English: p. 115. AE, p. 95; in English: p. 57. AE, p. 177; in English: p. 112. AE, p. 95; in English: p. 57. AE, p. 185; in English: p. 117. AE, p. 104; in English: p. 64. AE, p. 201; in English: p. 127. AE, p. 95; in English: p. 56. AE, p. 159; in English: p. 101. M. Henry, Gnalogie de la psychanalyse (Paris: PUF, 1985). M. Henry, Incarnation. Une phnomnologie de la chair (Paris: Seuil, 2000), partie III, pp. 239373. Ibid., p. 252. Ibid., p. 250. Ibid., pp. 350f. P. Ricur, Autrement. Lecture dAutrement qutre ou au-del de lessence dEmmanuel Levinas (Paris: PUF, 1997), p. 25. Ibid., p. 26. Ibid. AE, p. 160; in English: p. 101. AE, p. 111; in English: p. 69.

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