Although the meaning of «phenomenology» significantly differs from Fichte to Henry, it is nonetheless a similar problem that both thinkers encounter since they both can be read as conceiving of the absolute as life, i.e. as that which essentially and necessarily escapes the power of the concept as well as that of sight. If life is according to its very essence invisible, then it must remain outside the realms of intuition and discourse. On the other hand, life is precisely what a phenomenology of life as a philosophical discourse is aiming at. By placing the recognition of the absolute in the center of their approach, both Henry’s material phenomenology and Fichte’s phenomenology – presented in his 1804 Wissenschaftslehre Zweiter Vortrag – raise the question of the conditions of possibility enabling such knowing and recognition. From an ethical point of view, however, the decisive question, that of the existential form that this recognition could take in the realm of action, remains open.

Continental Philosophy | History of Philosophy | Major Philosophers