Properties of Phenomenological Life
Life is by nature invisible because it never appears in the exteriority of a look; it reveals itself in itself without gap or distance. The fact of seeing does in effect presuppose the existence of a distance and of a separation between what is seen and the one who sees, between the object that is perceived and the subject who perceives it. A feeling, for example, can never be seen from the exterior, it never appears in the "horizon of visibility" of the world; it feels itself and experiences itself from within in the radical immanence of life. Love cannot see itself, any more than hatred; feelings are felt in the secrecy of our hearts, where no look can penetrate.
Life is constituted of sensitivity and affectivity — it is the unity of their manifestation, affectivity being however the essence of sensibility (as Henry shows in The Essence of Manifestation) which means that every sensation is affective by nature. Phenomenological life is the foundation of all our subjective experiences (like the subjective experience of a sorrow, of seeing a color or the pleasure of drinking fresh water in summer) and of each of our subjective powers (the subjective power of moving the hand or the eyes, for example).
In Incarnation, a philosophy of the flesh, Henry establishes a radical opposition between the living flesh endowed with sensibility and the material body which is as a matter of principle insensitive.
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