Beneath Time and Reflection: The Shadow of Husserl in Michel Henry’s Non-Intentional Phenomenology

Ever since The Essence of Manifestation (1963), Michel Henry’s phenomenology developed in a close dialogue with Husserl. This confrontation led Henry, in 1995, to formulate the project of a “non-intentional phenomenology,” which would find its point of departure in a quite simple question: is intentionality—the key feature of consciousness and of lived experience as such in Husserl’s perspective—able to ground itself? Does it provide its own foundation? If not, in what could its possibility-condition be found? Henry’s gesture invites us not to a purely descriptive attitude toward such intentional acts, but rather to an inquiry into their origin and their inner ground, to submit them to a transcendental interrogation in order to discover “what ultimately makes them possible.