SIS Henry Cross

Ruud Welten, The night in John of the Cross and Michel Henry. A phenomenological interpretation in: Studies in Spirituality 13/2003 Leuven: Peeters, pp. 214-233.

THE NIGHT IN JOHN OF THE CROSS AND MICHEL HENRY. A PHENOMENOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION IN : STUDIES IN SPIRITUALITY 13/2003 LEUVEN : PEETERS, PP. 214-233.

RUUD WELTEN 2003

RUUD WELTEN

Ruud Welten, The night in John of the Cross and Michel Henry. A phenomenological interpretation in: Studies in Spirituality 13/2003 Leuven: Peeters , pp. 214-233.

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RUUD WELTEN

THE NIGHT IN JOHN OF THE CROSS AND MICHEL HENRY

A Phenomenological Interpretation1

INTRODUCTION

According to some writers, the night is the realm of revelation. Among these writers we find the Spanish mystic John of the Cross (1540-1591) and the French phenomenologist Michel Henry (1922-2002).2 For both John of the Cross and Michel Henry, the night is a metaphor for a field of experience that is not unlike our acting and being in the visible world dependent on the light of the world. This similarity between John and Henry is significant and remarkable. It is significant because both are writing about human experience. For the mystic, the focus is on the experience of his way to a union with God. For the phenomenologist, experience, as original givenness, is the access to philosophical reflection. The similarity is also remarkable: how is it possible that the night can be the realm of revelation? Is not light the goal and metaphor for truth for a Christian mystic? Is not phenomenology concerned with the visibility of things?

At the focus of the question of how the night can be the realm of revelation is the conception of light and, consequently, what the absence of light at night implies. We are dealing here with a classical distinction between the use of the word light in two radically different ways. On one hand, light is the condition of visibility of

1 I thank Frans Maas, Peter Jonkers and Michelle Rochard for their valuable comments. 2 Michel Henry, born in Vietnam in 1922, was professor at the Paul-Valry University at

Montpellier. He taught as a guest professor at the cole Normale Suprieure and the Sorbonne in Paris, the Catholic University of Louvain, the University of Washington, Seattle and the University of Tokyo. His main philosophical works are LEssence de la manifestation, Paris 1990 (orig. publ. 1963), translated by Girard Etzkorn as The Essence of Manifestation, The Hague 1973; Gnalogie de la psychanalyse. Le commencement perdu , Paris 1985, translated by Douglas Brick as The Genealogy of Psychoanalysis, Stanford (CA) 1998; La barbarie [The Barbarism], Paris 2001 (orig. publ. 1987); Cest moi la vrit. Pour une philosophie du christianisme, Paris 1996, translated by Susan Emanuel as I Am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, Stanford (CA) 2003; and Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair [Incarnation: A Philosophy of the Flesh], Paris 2000.

He published several voluminous studies on Marx and wrote five novels. His works are translated in English, German, Italian, and Japanese. Henry died 3 July 2002. For a bibliography, see http://www.ruudwelten.nl

THE NIGHT IN JOHN OF THE CROSS AND MICHEL HENRY 3

the things in our world. We see this light with our carnal eyes. We are able to see things due to the fact that light shines upon them. Darkness is absence of light and, as a result, a disability to our carnal vision. On the other hand, there is a light that illuminates not the things in the world, but the things of our soul. It shines directly within our soul. It is obvious that this distinction between two radically different manifestations of light plays a role in the thoughts of Henry and John, but we must scrutinize how. The thoughts of Henry and John can be understood as a philosophy or theology of illumination, but they cannot be reduced to it. I will demonstrate that the structure of this division between the two uses of light in John and Henry is neither metaphysical nor theological, but phenomenological. By phenomenology I mean the philosophical science that describes appearing, and restricts itself to the original givenness of this appearing without appeal to artificial, theoretical constructions. As will become clear in this article, for Henry, phenomenology describes the essence of revelation itself.

This justifies the phenomenological starting-point of a study of the night as the realm of revelation. We find this elaborated in very different ways in both Henry and John. The purpose of this article is to examine whether and how Michel Henrys phenomenological conception of the night and revelation can be fruitful in revealing phenomenological structures in the thought of John of the Cross.

1 THE NIGHT IN JOHN OF THE CROSS

Born as Juan de Yepis y Alvarez, the man who became the poet and mystic John of the Cross is one of the greatest mystics in Christianity. The facts of this saint are well known. With the help of Teresa of Avila, he sought to reform the order of the Carmelites. For nine months John lived as a captive of his rival Carmelites and is particularly well known for his account of The Dark Night, written in imprisonment. The text of The Dark Night consists of a commentary on the poem Dark Night written by John himself.3 It is a continuation of the book Ascent of Mount Carmel, which comments upon the same poem. In modern times, John of the Cross inspires not only Carmelites and Christian believers, but also painters and artists, writers and philosophers.4 This shows that Johns work is not only important and inspirational for those who have chosen to live a monastic life; his spiritual thought is also rele-vant to a wide field of human existence. This article focuses on the theme of the night in the work of John of the Cross from a phenomenological point of view. As a result, I am particularly interested in the meaning of the night which John describes and its relevance for human existence. Therefore, my focus is neither theological nor historical. It must be noted that the great phenomenologis t and Carmelite Edith Stein

3 John of the Cross, Dark Night Of The Soul (3rd rev. ed., Trans., intr. & ed. E. Allison Peers

from the critical edition of P. Silverio De Santa Teresa, C.D.), New York 1959. 4 Such as Salvador Dali or the present-day American video-artist Bill Viola (Room for St. John

of the Cross , video/sound instellation, 1983).

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(1891-1942; who was, according to Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), his most brilliant assistant and who is today a Saint herself), wrote a magnificent book on John of the Cross. Although the method of her book is not phenomenological, many phenomenological influences are clear.5 And though I sometimes refer to this work, it is nevertheless my aim in this article to read the work of John from the point of view of new French phenomenology, which is characterized by a critical relationship to Husserl and his followers.

We start with the chief source of our investigation: Johns own comments on The Dark Night. With the scope of this article in mind, we limit ourselves to one question: what is the underlying phenomenological structure of the dark night?

Some preliminary remarks are necessary. First, I will not follow Husserls classical conception of phenomenology, but the contemporary so-called radical phenomenology of Michel Henry. I will discuss this new phenomenology in section III. Second, we are not dealing here with psychological structures of a mystical experience; instead, we are searching to describe the phenomenological structure of revelation itself. Our point of view has nothing in common with a science that elucidates particular mystical experiences such as ecstasy, for example. What is at issue here is not an examination of a single phenomenon (night or ecstasy) among other phenomena, but a description of a kind of phenomenology that underlies the works of John of the Cross. Third, the word night (noche) in Johns text does not correspond with just one, clear-cut meaning. It is used metaphorically and stands for the spiritual reality of those who approximate a union with God. As Edith Stein explains, the night is not, strictly speaking, a symbol, such as a signal, characterized by its arbitrary significance. The night is also a field of real, immediate experience. Therefore, it is more than just a metaphor. It is always already there, before we speak of metaphors or symbols. Indeed, the state of consciousness of the night has some psychological dimensions, but it has theological dimensions as well. The night in The Dark Night and in Ascent of Mount Carmel stands for experiences of fear, disorientation, loneliness, and even despair. This characterisation of the night plays an important role in these texts . John describes the struggle that a human being endures on his way to God. In this sense, night means affliction, grief, and torment.6

Let me begin with an examination of the night according to John. Later, I will discuss the underlying phenomenological structure of the night. The light of God blinds human existence and this experience is also called night or dark night. Against the background and within the scope of the light of worldly affairs, the light of God brings darkness. This is not due to a lack of light, but to an abundance of light. John of the Cross illustrates this with an example of the sun that blinds our

5 Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross (trans. Josephine Koeppel), Washington, DC 2002 (orig.

publ. 1950). The same holds for the dissertation of the present pope: Karol Wojtyla, Faith According to St. John of the Cross (trans. Jordan Aumann), San Francisco 1981.

6 Dark Night, Book II, V, 2.


vision, often found in mystical literature: The more directly we look at the sun, the greater is the darkness which it causes in our visual faculty, overcoming and overwhelming it through its own weakness.7 The word darkness here not only has a theological meaning but also, and more importantly, a phenomenological meaning since it tells something about the manifestation of God within our human existence. This seems to be characteristic of Johns approach to God: he starts from human existence itself. In our immature human experience, God is not light but darkness. In God there is no darkness (1 John 1:5); darkness is on the human side.

John makes a distinction between two kinds of night. The first is a sensual night, which is preparatory; the second kind of night is properly spiritual . Both mu st be understood as purifications.8 In the sensual night, we withdraw from sensual stimuli in order to clear our minds for the reception of something that cannot be understood as a stimulus. Not only do we close our eyes, but all active mental states are extinguished. Because this night demands activity from our side, this night is also called the active night. In contrast, the spiritual night is passive. However, the terms activity and passivity cannot simply be used to replace the terms sensual and spiritual. Activity and passivity play a role in both kinds of nights. Nevertheless, for the sake of clearness, in what follows, I treat the spiritual night from the point of view of passivity.

2 THE PASSIVE NIGHT

The night is a purifying stage in our ladder9 to a union with God. Moreover, those who suppose they already receive the light of God deceive themselves since when they believe that the sun of Divine favour is shining most brightly upon them, God turns all this light of theirs into darkness, and shuts against them the door and the source of the sweet spiritual water which they were tasting in God whensoever and for as long as they desired.10 This means that the light of God is not provided on our own initiative but only by God himself, on condition that we are in a state of absolute purgation. However, as the quote makes clear, we cannot command this state since purgation is not realized through our worldly light but through the light of God. This is why purgation is called night: the light of the world is extinguished. Night means especially: absence of this light. And, of course, in our daily life, the night is a space of time in which the worldly light is extinguished naturally. This happens without our will; it just happens. The absence of our light and our will must be achieved by the release of our grip on the visible world, the world of visible phenomena. The night is the condition for union with God: without this dark and nocturnal, frightful experience, we are not able to receive the true light. In short, the

7 Dark Night, Book II, V, 3. 8 Cf. Dark Night, Prologue. 9 Dark Night, Book II, XVIII. 10 Dark Night, Book I, VIII, 3.

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theme of the night focuses on the extinction of light. The endurance of this extinction opens up the road to the light of God. Thus, night has something to do with passivity.

Chapter nine of the second book of The Dark Night is entitled How, although this night brings darkness to the spirit, it does so in order to illumine it and give it light. Already from the title we learn that the darkness of the night must be understood as purgation. Night brings darkness in order to make illumination possible. At night we are not overwhelmed by all kinds of impressions of the things we chase during the day. The concept of night brings, very obviously, a radical inversion of values: For that which is most clear and true is to us most dark and doubtful; where fore, though it is the thing that is most needful for us, we flee from it. And that which gives the greatest light and satisfaction to our eyes we embrace and pursue, though it be the worst thing for us, and make us fall at every step.11 For us, it seems as though the day is the realm of light and truth, while, for John, it is the night that lodges the real Truth. The point is that we see wrongly, we follow the wrong light. As Augustine states in his famous metaphor: we chase the lights of the city built by ourselves; it is the city lightened by artificial lights. Moreover, in our contemporary metropolis, there is no dark of the night at all. We do not know anymore what darkness is or what silence is. We are afraid of the dark and silence and repress our fears with the never-ending light and sound of our televisions both night and day. The night-time street lights blare constantly; CNN and MTV drone on endlessly. We live in a city of light. We are obsessed by worldly phenomena. For Augustine, just as for John of the Cross, illumination becomes possible only in a state of mind in which the light of the world does not shine anymore. This implies not only that another kind of light is of concern, but also that the vision of the light of the world actually interferes with illumination.

The night is purgation; however, it is not the same as illumination itself. Illumination (iluminacin) supposes purgation. As said above, to speak of the night is to start with the human side of revelation. It concerns not a theology of illumination, in its own right, supported by metaphysical suppositions, but a phenomenology of the human experience of illumination.12 From the side of human experience, illumination takes place in the darkness of the night. Of course, illumination itself is not dark; but the field of human experience that it requires is dark. Within this field, illumination remains invisible. Phenomenologically speaking, the light of the world must cease before that other light is able to appear. It is needful to expel and annihilate the other, as with two contrary things, which cannot exist together in one person, says John.13 It must be one or the other, without

11 Dark Night, Book II, XVI, 12. 12 Compare the title of the famous study by Jean Baruzi, Saint Jean de la Croix et le problme de

lexprience mystique, Paris 1999 (rev. ed. of the 1931 edition). In John of the Cross, mysticism is not presented as a fact, but as a continuous struggle from the point of view of the experience. See e.g. pp. 279-285.

13 Dark Night, Book II, IX, 2.


compro mise. The distinction between purgation and illumination is not just a distinction between two states of mind. Illumination requires purgation. Illumination is unconditional. Purgation is the preparatory, necessary stage for the reception of that other light.

But what exactly is this other light? Do we have any permission from our experience to call it illumination? It is called illumination when God Himself shines His light upon our souls. The other light is called the way of illumination or of infused contemplation, wherein God Himself feeds and refreshes the soul, without meditation, or the souls active help.14 And: the illumination of the round earth by the lightnings of God is the enlightenment which is produced by this Divine contemplation in the faculties of the soul.15 Human consciousness cannot take the initia tive to approximate this Divine light. It shines upon us. The only thing we can do is to free ourselves from the light of the world. The night enables this purgation. In The Dark Night , the other light is not supposed as a fact. The only way to see this light is by means of purgation. It is purgation that is passive.

This brings in a new, fundamental phenomenological structure that cannot merely be understood by means of a phenomenology of light, namely, the difference between two modes of the activity of consciousness. These two modes, activity and passivity, are the backbone of the four books of John of the Cross. In the Ascent of Mount Carmel John says:

The first night or purgation is of the sensual part of the soul, which is treated in the present stanza, and will be treated in the first part of this book. And the second is of the spiritual part; of this speaks the second stanza, which follows; and of this we shall treat likewise, in the second and the third part, with respect to the activity of the soul; and in the fourth part, with respect to its passivity.16

In this quote we find Johns opinion of the structure of his own work, which is governed by two main distinctions. First, there is the distinction between two kinds of night, as mentioned above. The second distinction is of great interest from the point of view of phenomenology. The first night is active, whereas the second is passive. Without doubt, these are modalities of consciousness. John describes the dispositions of consciousness in what he calls the night of the senses and the night of the soul. The book The Dark Night can be considered as the fourth stage of elaboration, especially the part in which John speaks of passivity. The Dark Night is not concerned with systematic theology. Even the divine sphere is not understood theologically, but as it manifests itself after purgation. John thinks from the point of

14 Dark Night, Book II, XIV, 1. 15 Dark Night, Book II, XVII, 8 (With a quote from the Psalms). 16 John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel (3rd rev. ed., Trans. intr. & ed. E. Allison Peers

from the Critical Edition of P. Silverio De Santa Teresa, C.D.), Garden City (NY) 1962, Bk. I, chap. I, 2.

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view of man. Nevertheless, passivity implies activity from the side of God. It is the light of God that acts upon us. This Divine Action requires total passivity from the side of man. However greatly the soul itself labours, it cannot actively purify itself so as to be in the least degree prepared for the Divine union of perfection of love, if God takes not its hand and purges it not in that dark fire, in the way and manner that we have to describe.17

For John of the Cross, the distinction between activity and passivity implies a hierarchical step. Activity is associated with the level of the beginner. In Book I of The Dark Night, the situation of the consciousness of the beginner is described: it is the state in which the beginner is actively longing for God and wants to unite with Him. John writes: But neither from these imperfections nor from those others can the soul be perfectly purified until God brings it into the passive purgation of that dark night [...].18 Passivity is the central theme of the second book.

3 A PHENOMENOLOGICAL POSSIBILITY OF RADICAL PASSIVITY

As said above, I will make use of the radical phenomenology of Michel Henry. However, to understand his conception of phenomenology, I have to start with its antithesis. Especially when it comes to passivity, it becomes clear that we cannot rely on classical phenomenology. What does Husserl say about passivity? Activity and passivity are the central themes in Husserls thought during his mid-period (1918-1926).19 From the time of Husserls Logical Investigations onward, consciousness is governed by a structural intentionality. From a phenomenological point of view, Johns meaning of activity can be understood as intentionality. Activity for John is wanting something, seeing something. Every consciousness is consciousness of something, are the famous words of Husserl in his Ideas I .20 It is this of in the definition of intentionality that makes consciousness always more or less active. This implies that the phenomenological understanding of love, for instance, is always to love something. It is this active intentionality that remains deficient in trying to understand what John of the Cross is saying about the central theme of Love: Inasmuch as [] love is infused, it is passive rather than active, and thus it begets in the soul a strong passion of love.21 Because love is infused, it cannot be understood as a result of our will. Every kind of intentionality must cease.

17 Dark Night, Book I, III, 3. 18 Dark Night, Book I, III, 3. 19 Edmund Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. Lectures on

Transcendental Logic (trans. A.J. Steinbock), Dordrecht-Boston-London 2001 (orig. publ. 1966).

20 Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy I: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology (trans. Fred Kersten), Dordrecht-Boston-London 1982, 84 (orig. publ. 1913).

21 Dark Night, Book II, XI, 2.


Yet, for Husserl, passivity has nothing to do with the withdrawal of intentionality. Rather, passivity for him is characterized in a twofold way. First, it concerns the pre-given sphere of the objects of consciousness.22 The objects of consciousness are already there, before I turn my attention to them. Second, it is the name for the consciousness that is not governed by the Ego. However, withdrawal from the I or the Ego does not mean that intentionality is abandoned. Husserl says that all passive consciousness is already constitutive of objects.23 It is in the years after 1920 that Husserl discovers that consciousness is not dependent on the intentions of an Ego, but that consciousness is already there where the Ego is not yet involved. This is what he calls passivity or passive synthesis. Indeed, this means that I, as the actor in consciousness, am not, or am not yet, involved. As far as phenomenological structures in John of the Cross are concerned, with this passive synthesis we can only explain the passivity of the mystic by this non-egocentric structure. I went forth from myself [...], says John.24 Husserlian passivity is distinguished from activity by its absence of judgement. In passivity, objects are pre-given. Objects are already there but without explicit appellation. In this way, although we reach a sphere of consciousness that is characterized by a total withdrawal of the I, it is not a divine sphere; its transcendence is the world itself, not God. In The Dark Night we read that the affections, feelings and apprehensions of the perfect spirit, being Divine, are of another kind and of a very different order from those that are natural. They are pre-eminent [].25 Pre-eminence does not only mean perfection, but it also implies that the sphere of intentional affections, feelings, and apprehensions remains tributary to the Divine sphere. It is the purgative state of mind that becomes Divine. This is a state of affairs that is reserved for those who are united with God.26

However, there is a good reason not to rely upon Husserls concept of passivity when we are trying to unfold its phenomenological structure in John of the Cross: Husserl does not know anything of a radical passivity. In contrast, the passivity about which John speaks is not directed to objects at all. This stage is already abandoned in the sensual night in which we must withdraw from any kind of intentionality. Hence, total receptive consciousness in a passive way remains impossible for Husserl since such a conception would undermine and destroy the possibility of consciousness itself. In Experience and Judgement, Husserl unambiguously writes, that even the purely perceptive contemplation of a pregiven substrate proves to be our achievement, an act, and not a mere suffering of impressions.27 This seems to undermine the conception of passivity according to

22 Husserl, Experience and Judgement, Evanston 1973, 4 (orig. publ. 1948). 23 Husserl, Experience and Judgement, 62. (Introduction, written by Husserls assistant Ludwig

Landgrebe). 24 Dark Night, Book II, IV, 1. 25 Dark Night, Book II, IX, 2. 26 Dark Night, Book II, 4 -6. 27 Husserl, Experience and Judgement, 59 (my italics).

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John of the Cross. For John, passivity is understood in a radical way, which means: without any egocentric intentionality. It is precisely this mere suffering of impressions that seems to be the kernel of passivity according to the mystic. One might argue that this complies with Husserl because in both Husserl and John radical passivity implies the extinction of consciousness. Moreover, John says that the state of union with God does not belong to this life.28 And wouldnt John admit that it is not our consciousness that strives after a union with God? As a consequence, doesnt a union with God indeed escape phenomenological analysis? These questions are misleading. The point is that for Husserl, phenomenology is only possible through an analysis of intentionality. If we abandon intentionality, we abandon phenomenological method. The question now becomes: what is implied by passivity according to John of the Cross? It has been shown that John starts his description of the path to the union with God from human existence and thus from human consciousness itself. How can this methodological problem be resolved? Does this mean that we cannot understand John of the Cross in a phenomenological way? I would suggest that we cannot understand his work in a Husserlian way. Michel Henrys critique of Husserl opens up another way to view this problem that does not expel the union with God from phenomenology, but understands this union phenomenologically.

It is Husserls primacy of intentionality, which still governs his thought on passive synthesis, that is the target of Henrys critique. It is clear that, for Husserl, it is nonsense to speak about consciousness without intentionality. This position has been sharply attacked, especially in French phenomenology after World War II. In the philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, and Michel Henry, for instance, this criticism is directed against the inability of intentional phenomenology to understand a relationship with God. God is not an object of thought for mystics or for the phenomenologists who speak of a so-called turn to religion.29 This means that passivity must be understood in a non-intentional, radical way. Moreover, intentionality is understood in an inversed direction: from the other to me. A description of consciousness that is able to understand the relationship with otherness and infinity requires an inversion of the direction of intentionality.30 Indeed, this is how John of the Cross understands intentionality: For spiritual blessings go not from man to God, but come from God to man.31 Again, this reversed direction supposes radical passivity. And radical passivity is non-intentional.

28 Dark Night, Book II, XX, 4. 29 As called by Dominique Janicaud in Le tournant thologique de la phnomnologie franaise,

Paris 1991. 30 Cf. Emmanuel Levinas, La conscience non-intentionalle, in: Entre nous. Essais sur le penser-

-lautre (Figures), Paris 1991, 141-152; Jean-Luc Marion, tant donn. Essai dune phno-mnologie de la donation (2nd rev. ed.), Paris 1997, 367.

31 Dark Night, Book II, XVII, 5.


In his recent book Incarnation, Henry states that Husserl has failed to appre-ciate the original essence of passivity.32 Passivity is understood in a radical way, which means: not as passivity in relation to something. There is a passivity that precedes both the visible and relational passivity. As a result of this primacy, it cannot be reduced to a passivity that remains intentional, or that is understood as a retired activity. In Henrys thought, this passivity is called suffering or passion (souffrance). Of course, this does not solve the problem of intentionality so as long as suffering is understood intentionally.33 However, suffering discloses for Henry the most original modus of manifestation. It concerns not a passion of. What passion manifests is not something outside itself, but its own manifestation. Passion, suffering, in its non-intentional endurance, manifests itself. Since it does not manifest something other than itself, it is invisible. It does not appear in the world of visible things. This might provide a phenomenological understanding of sorrow, for instance. If I am filled with sorrow, my sorrow becomes visible through the tears in my eyes. However, the tears themselves are not my sorrow. My experience, my sorrow, remains invisible. My sorrow is not the manifestation of the cause of the sorrow or the visible phenomenon of it; rather, it is the manifestation of nothing other than itself. This is what Henry calls original passivity, called pathos in his earlier work LEssence de la manifestation [The Essence of Manifestation].34

If we turn back to John of the Cross, the mystic is also writing about this fundamental passion, which is passive in a radical way. In the words of Edith Stein, radical passivity coincides with suffering. This suffering is to take up our cross and to abandon oneself to crucifixion. To bear ones cross is to suffer from the abundance of our worldly truths. The knowledge of this other truth, which is not the truth of the world, is called a science of the cross (Kreuzwissenschaft). Against this horizon, she argues that John of the Cross is indeed a disciple of Christ. In Luke we read: And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me, he cannot be My disciple (Luke 14:27). Stein quotes Luke 14:33: So then, everyone of you who does not forsake all his possessions, he cannot be My disciple. We cannot forsake all our possessions and needs without suffering. However, as Stein remarks, one is able to offer oneself to the cross, but one is not able to crucify oneself. Passivity and suffering belong to each other in a phenomenological way: passivity consists not in doing nothing, but in endurance. Endurance cannot be understood as activity at all. For Henry, this endurance or passion does not make something other than itself manifest; passion manifests itself in a self-manifestation. We have to explain this further.

32 Michel Henry, Incarnation , 87. 33 E.g., I suffer from pain in my stomach, or I suffer under these circumstances. Within

Husserls thought, suffering remains always suffering from something. 34 Michel Henry, LEssence de la manifestation, 53.

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4 THE NIGHT IN THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MICHEL HENRY

The phenomenological structure of revelation remains unclear at this point, since it seems that self-manifestation and the Revelation of God are two different kinds of manifestation. First, we have to scrutinize how Michel Henrys disclosure of self-manifestation brings us to Gods revelation. According to Henry, phenomenology, as described by the great phenomenologists of the 20th century, is characterized by a major mistake. This mistake consists in the fact that phenomenology fails to describe its fundamental supposition, namely, the appearance of [] appearance itself.35 The phenomenological question is not what appears, not even that there is appearance, but how appearance appears to itself. Husserlian phenomenology is built on a presupposition instead of the description of the things themselves. What exactly is presupposed in Husserlian phenomenology?

Henry reproaches the majority of the history of Western thought because, according to him, it acknowledges just one kind of manifestation: manifestation of the things brought to light, called phenomena. This monism is nothing other than the reduction of manifestation to object-manifestation, which fails to explain the essence of manifestation itself.36 Object-manifestation is always characterized by a necessary fission between subjective and objective sides of manifestation. As we have seen, for Husserl, phenomenology consists in the analyses of the structures of intentionality. Intentionality implies a transcendental relationship with the world. Husserl states that the analysis of intentionality can only be developed starting from this intentionality, and not from a pre-existing consciousness or ego. However, according to Henry, in spite of Husserls conviction, by reducing it to object-manifestation, the concept of intentionality fails to describe what manifestation itself is. In other words: Husserl reduces manifestation to phenomenality, which is always phenomenality of something. Henrys critique embarrasses Husserls phenomenology since the most important theme in phenomenology, namely, the theme of appearance, remains hidden behind a huge supposition. Intentionality is not the last ground for consciousness, as Husserl thinks, because it only reveals some thing , but it cannot reveal itself. What Husserl forgot, according to Henry, is the ability (pouvoir) to reveal.37

Henry does not defend an old solipsistic schema of subjectivity, but a manifestation that is totally immanent: the manifestation of subjectivity to itself. This means that every transcendental relationship (sic., being directed to the world) supposes immanence. Immanence is nothing other than the ability to reveal itself to itself. It is not a consciousness of something, but of itself. Immanence is totally independent of transcendental conditions. Although Henry uses the term immanence to free this manifestation from every kind of exteriority, distance, or alienation, immanence is not just a logical counterpart of transcendence. Every

35 Henry, Incarnation, 1. 36 Henry, LEssence de la manifestation, section I, 59-164. 37 Henry, LEssence de la manifestation, 479.


transcendental relation supposes immanence. This is the reason why Henry calls it essence. In fact, the term immanence performs similar duties to Descartes notion of substance: a substance is a thing capable of existing of itself.38 It does not need any external reason for existing. Husserls transcendental consciousness always and fundamentally presupposes the appearance of things that are other than itself. But as we have seen in paragraph III, it is the field of passion or pathos that is the nature of this immanence.

Before we turn to the religious implications of Henrys view, it is important to see that this essence is not a phenomenon itself. It does not appear like phenomena do. It is invisible. But this does not mean that it does not manifest itself. Manifestation and phenomenality are not the same. Manifestation manifests itself, but not in the way of the things in the world. Let us recapitulate this by means of a simple daily life experience. If I burn my hand because the pan is too hot to touch without oven gloves, I say that I feel the heat of the pan. My pain is pain of something: namely, pain caused by the hot pan. I say: the pan hurts me. But is this right? How can I feel the pan? Does the pan manifest itself? In fact, what I experience is not the experience of the pan, but of myself. In pain, (cf., suffering), I feel myself. The pan does not affect me. What I primarily feel is my own affection. Moreover: I feel that I live. Why is it not the pan that affects or hurts me and why is my pain not an effect of the hot pan? Let us ask a counter question: how is it possible that the pan affects me? Can a pan affect the spoon or the cooker? Can a pillow affect the bed?39 This leads to a remarkable answer: the self-affection is constitutive of the so-called hetero-affection. Hetero-affection is affection that is a result of something other than itself. Its phenomenological structure is that of intentionality. But as Henry argues, this hetero-affection is only possible because there is an ability to be affected. This self-affection or self-manifestation is always previous to any kind of hetero-affection. For Henry, the evidence of self-manifestation that follows from self-affection is not logical, but phenomenological evidence: my sensibility reveals itself to itself. This primacy of immanence as self-manifestation is the experience of life itself. In other words: if I feel pain, this feeling does not manifest the hot pan, and not even the burning of my hand (which is intentional), but Life itself.40 This Life cannot be reduced to intentional and transcendental structures. Life is invisible. Unlike the pan, the cooker, the pillow, or the bed, I live and this life manifests itself only through the manifestation of the power of sensibility. Contrary to the phenomenology of Husserl, Sartre, or Merleau-Ponty, Henry does not reduce this sensibility to external affection. This brings in a

38 Oeuvres de Descartes (Ed. C. Adam & P. Tannery) VII, Paris 1996, 44. 39 Cf. example borrowed from Dan Zahavi, Self-Awareness and Alterity. A Phenomenological

Investigation, Evanston (Il) 1999, 113. 40 Henry says in a footnote of Cst moi la vrit, p. 40: Let us simply say here that, written with

a capital, the term refers to the Life of God; written with a small letter, it refers to our own life. Since life is one and the same, however, thes terminological nuances are intended to refer to one condition or the other (divine or human).

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highly tautological discourse: We have access to life itself. Where? In life. How? By means of Life.41 It is the manifestation that is, at its core, invisible precisely because of the absence of exteriority. To say this in other terms: my feelings are invisible. It is a crucial mistake to reduce the manifestations of my feelings to behaviouristic, empirical notions. The things in themselves, says Henry, are blind material.42 The tree does not appear in a manner like the dog that barks. The tree itself does nothing. Nevertheless, it appears. It appears because appearance itself becomes manifest.

The invisible manifests itself without the conditions of light, which means: there is a manifestation, but not an (external) appearance. Thus, manifestation is not the same as appearance. According to the concept of appearance, invisibility is nothing other than an absence of light. On the other hand, according to the concept of manifestation, invisibility is the absolute beginning, the phenomenological arch-structure of manifestation.

It is true that in daily life we continually forget this self-manifestation.43 Oblivion belongs to manifestation. Usually, when I look at a painting, I am intended at the painting and forget this intention itself. This intention is marked by oblivion. Husserl, indeed, made a revolutionary step forward by describing intentionalities. But he wrongly declared intentionality to be the first principle and thereby forgot the question of the manifestation of appearance. If I look at a painting in a museum, I forget the conditions of the ability of looking: consciousness, the manifestation of looking, and the presence of light. It is the sensibility of subjectivity itself that remains in the darkness of the night.44

Within the manifestation of appearance we find ourselves in the dark. The essence, and thus the condition of appearance, is darkness itself, says Henry. The essence does not appear in the realm of daylight where everything appears as this or that. The radical immanence remains with itself and does not exteriorise itself because it belongs to the night. The essence of night is invisibility, without any hori-zon of light (aucun horizon de lumire45). Because manifestation reveals itself without the condition of light, the night is the realm of revelation. The night is not the opposite of the day, but the point zero of every kind of phenomenality. Night itself is the essence of manifestation, it constitutes the reality of the specific phenomenological content and defines it.46 The night, as Henry understands it, is absolute and without deficiency. Because it is absolute, it is the condition of every kind of phenomenality. From the point of view of invisibility, which is always invisibility of something, the night remains hidden. It does not becomes manifest in the light of the world. It is this unveiling of manifestation that is constantly

41 Henry, Cest moi la vrit, 73. 42 Henry, Incarnation, 39. 43 Henry, LEssence de la manifestation, 45. 44 Cf. Michel Henry, Voir linvisible. Sur Kandinsky, Paris 1988, 74. 45 Henry, LEssence, 549. 46 Henry, LEssence, 550.


misunderstood in the phenomenologies of Husserl and his followers. The night is not the realm of the visibility of exteriority, but of the invisibility of interiority. When I am directed inwards, I close my eyes in search for darkness. Therefore, the night is the domain of inner revelation. However, the inner does not stand for a psychological state of mind, but refers to the point zero of phenomenality. The invisible is the starting point of every kind of appearance; therefore it is called revelation itself. Following Novalis Hymns to the Night, Henry calls the night the light that does not appear.47

5 THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF CHRISTIAN REVELATION

In I am the Truth (1996), self-manifestation is entirely understood in terms of Christianity. We have seen that manifestation and phenomenality are not the same. On the other hand, according to Henry, manifestation is the same as Christian revelation. For Henry, revelation is not the revelation of something; rather, revelation is seen as eternal self-revelation. This, says Henry, is exactly what Christianity teaches. According to I am the Truth and Incarnation, manifestation does not so much reveal the Christian revelation of God, but the structure of revelation according to Christianity is at its core phenomenologically in the way Henry understands phenome nology.48 As he says in Incarnation , phenomenalisation, revelation, disclosure, appearance, and manifestation are the key words of phenomenology and of theology as well.49 With this critique of the uncritical primacy of light in mind, it becomes understandable why Henrys phenomenology shows a tendency towards Christian sources (such as Eckhart and the New Testament).

Invisibility, this not appearing in the world, is, from a phenomenological point of view, the essence of the revelation of God. God is not a phenomenon among other phenomena of the world. God does not appear; no one has ever seen Him; He remains hidden.50 However, the phenomenological problem of the appearance of the appearance is not theologically solved. It would be to easy to state that the mistake of Husserl and his followers consists in the fact that they did not see the light of God. But this would solve nothing of the phenomenological nature of the problem of manifestation and revelation since, in making such a statement, we would step out of phenomenology. Henrys attention focuses on the fundamental, radical phenomenological structure of Christianity. The attention becomes theological while

47 Henry, LEssence, 555. 48 It is important to notice that Henry, notwithstanding his criticism of Husserl, still uses the word

phenomenology because he claims that the Husserlian foundation of phenomenology is wrong. Henry speaks of radical phenomenology because the new phenomenology discloses the roots (radical, radix) of phenomenality.

49 Henry, Incarnation, 37. 50 Henry, LEssence, 481; Cest moi la vrit, 104-106; Incarnation , 327.

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the method remains fully phenomenological. In fact, Christianity reveals a radical phenomenology in which God is Life. It is this self-manifestation as life that Chris -tianity calls God.

The main frame of reference in I am the Truth is the Gospel of John.51 Now it becomes clear why God is not a phenomenon. God is Life itself. He is not the life of this or that living thing, but the self-manifestation of Life, called sensation, called pathos (see III). But Life never shows itself in the world.52 For phenomenology, the sentence God is Life is meaningless unless it is understood in terms of experience or sensation. For this reason, this sentence is fully phenomenological and not metaphysical.53 To say this in terms of the painting example illustrated above: when I am looking at the painting, I forget my looking at. I am not aware of the necessary moves I make with my eyes, my head, and my body. Instead, I am carried away in the beauty of the painting even if I might, in a moment of lucidity, become aware of my looking. This is similar to a religious experience of gratitude for the gift of Life. I thank God and, in fact, I am thankful that I am a being that is able to experience the beauty of art. In this example, gratitude reveals the fact that I am tributary to God, who is my Life.54 However, Henrys philosophy is not a phenomenology of this kind of experience. It is not a psychology of revelation, but a phenomenology of the most original revelation. This revelation is not dependent on special occasions such as so-called religious experiences. Revelation means nothing more or less than the experience of Life itself. In this regard, Christianity calls this incessant generation of Life God. God does not reveal something different than Himself. The self-revelation of Life is identical with the Revelation of God.55 God conceals Himself like Life conceals itself: He/it is invisible through the eyes of the world. Revelation is disclosure of this concealment. As we have seen, in terms of LEssence de la manifestation, God remains hidden in the dark of the night. His light is of a kind different from the light in and of the world.

The light of Christianity is dark for the world and vice versa. Christians are the blind who believe in Jesus; whereas the seers are searchers of visible proof, like the scientists obsessed by the worlds phenomena but always forgetful of the manifestations of these phenomena. This is the difference between science and faith. Faith has nothing in common with something that can be seen in the light of the world but has not yet become visible.56 Faiths phenomenological nature is radically different from knowledge on the basis of the visible world. True light, says 51 Cf. John 1:3-5: All things came into existence through him, and without him nothing was.

What came into existence in him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light goes on shining in the dark; it is not overcome by the dark.

52 Henry, Cest moi la vrit, 73. 53 It has nothing to with pantheism because pantheism is grounded on the metaphysical identifica-

tion of God with Nature or Life; whereas the phenomenological understanding is only grounded on experience, self-givenness, understood in a non-intentional way.

54 This is called sonship. Man is the son of God. Cest moi la vrit, ch. 6. 55 Cest moi la vrit, 73. 56 Cest moi la vrit, 108.


Christianity, is different from the light of the world.57 Henry recalls the blind man in John 9: 35-38: It came to the ears of Jesus that they had put him out, and meeting him he said, Have you faith in the Son of man? He said in answer, and who is he, Lord? Say, so that I may have faith in him. Jesus said to him, You have seen him; it is he who is talking to you. And he said, Lord, I have faith. And he gave him worship.58 In this quote, we meet all the elements mentioned above: the blind man lives in the dark, and thanks to this darkness, he is able to believe, whereas the seer is always searching for empirical evidence.

For John of the Cross, it is necessary to pass through the dark night in order to attain the Divine union with God. This necessity implies the radical difference, understood phenomenologically in Henry, between the light of the world, which is darkness in the eyes of God, and the light of God, which is darkness in the light of the world. John is very clear about this in the Ascent of the Mount Carmel:

The reason is that two contraries (even as philosophy teaches us) cannot coexist in one person; and that darkness, which is affection set upon the creatures, and light, which is God, are contrary to each other, and have no likeness or accord between one another, even as Saint Paul taught the Corinthians, saying [] What communion can there be between light and darkness [II Cor 6:14]? Hence it is that the light of Divine union cannot dwell in the soul if these affections first flee not away from it.59

6 A RADICAL-PHENOMENOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF JOHN OF THE CROSS

If Henrys philosophy discloses the phenomenological arch-structure of Christianity, is it not possible that we can find these structures elsewhere in the history of Christianity? Although Henry claims that he does not establish the truth of Christianity, but only describes the structure of truth in Christianity, which is radically different from the phenomenology of the world, the revelation of this truth is compelling due to phenomenological reasons.60 It is compelling because Christianity is not understood as a matter of arbitrary belief, but as the disclosure of the phenomenological structure of our ultimate reality. Does not the same hold for John of the Cross when he describes the states of consciousness enroute to its union with God? As said above, John is not writing a psychology for a very special mystical stage of consciousness. For John, mysticism is not an arbitrary attitude in life; it reveals the truth of our reality. It is not an escape from reality, but a justification of our relation with the ultimate reality. As John of the Cross scholar

57 Cest moi la vrit, 111. 58 Cest moi la vrit, 107. 59 Ascent, Book I, 4, 2. 60 Henry, Cest moi la vrit, ch. 1, 2.

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Hein Blommestijn writes: The night of John of the Cross does not entail the tragedy of a psychological or spiritual crisis, but is ontological and eschatological in nature. After all, it describes the ultimate reality.61 My reading of John via Henry underlines the importance of this thesis. The works of John of the Cross do not only have consequences for Carmelites, but for a philosophical approach to our existence. Combining John with Henry makes this clear. Moreover, Henrys radical phenomenology may be very important for a theological approach to John of the Cross as well due mainly to his new conception of immanence.

The theme of the night in John of the Cross and Michel Henry has consequences for human existence, even if we leave aside theological motivations. When Henry speaks of Life and Christianity, he does not mean a consciousness that is peculiar to the life of a class of people we call Christians. It is not the cultural definition of Christianity that counts, but the inner structure of its particular under-standing of revelation. For Henry, the way to understand the words of the New Testament is not to reduce them to historical facts or theological dogmas. As a phemenologist, Henry recognizes in the gospel of John a phenomenological structure that exposes the ultimate reality of Life. This is not the life of living beings, but Life as the most inner experience of our existence: we feel, suffer, enjoy, look, etc. without reducing these experiences to what we feel, what we suffer, etc. In I am the Truth, Henry wants to make plausible that this Life of living beings is described in the gospel of John as God. The elaboration of this analysis is, nevertheless, phenomenological.

The French John of the Cross scholar Alain Cugno has, for the first time, demonstrated the fundamental links between Michel Henry and the John of the Cross.62 As Cugno observes, the most important and renovating concept in Henry that helps us to understand the phenomenological structures in John of the Cross is that of immanence. This is remarkable because mysticism is usually characterized in terms of the counter concept of immanence, namely, transcendence. Many theologies start from the basic assumption that God is transcendent. Henrys philosophy offers a new view: God is not understood in terms of transcendence, but of imma nence. This new thesis solves a problem that is peculiar to every science of spirituality: if God is othernes s, transcendence, how can we understand the inner revelation of God? How can we think about the inner in terms of exteriority? Henrys conception of immanence opens new viewpoints for readers of John of the Cross. The problem with the theological concept of transcendence is precisely that it does not explain how we are able to find God inwardly. From a phenomenological

61 Hein Blommestijn, The Dark Night in John of the Cross. The Transformational Process, in:

Studies in Spirituality 10 (2000), 227-241, esp. 236; See also his Een spoor van liefde. Jan van het Kruis als gids in de woestijn , Gent-Kampen 2000, 94.

62 Alain Cugno, Jean de la Croix avec Michel Henry, in: Alain David & Jean Greisch (Eds.), Michel Henry, lepreuve de la vie. Actes de Colloque de Cerisy 1996, Paris 2001, 439-452. Among the John of the Cross studies of this scholar: Saint John of the Cross. Reflections on Mystical Experience, New York 1982.


point of view, this creates an undesirable notion of God since transcendence always implies object-manifestation, as explained above ( IV) . But a God who is an intentional object is not theologys God described in terms of transcendence. Moreover, how can we explain, phenomenologically, that we have to search for God inwards when theology says he is outwards? This phenomenological viewpoint discloses the limitations of the discourse on God as transcendence. How do we find God per interiorem aspectum (the question is very Augustinian indeed)?63 What is the phenomenological structure of Augustines famous quote? It is clear that the inner path of John of the Cross is dark. Revelation, for him, is nocturnal revelation. Henry provides a phenomenology that discloses the immanent structure of the nocturnal revelation in John. Passivity cannot be understood on the basis of non-activity, but on a phenomenological basis: revealing itself to itself. Henrys reading of the night discloses the continuous attention on human experience in Johns writings. John of the Cross never escapes into a conception of God outside of the pathos of human existence. Man might be related to a God that is transcendent, but his everlasting attention to the grief and torment enroute to the union with God makes the conception of immanence plausible. The manifestation of this immanence is radically nocturnal, invisible, and inwards. The inner, spiritual light about which John speaks cannot be split up into interiority and exteriority. It is immanent. As John says: this spiritual light is so simple, pure and general, not appropriated or restricted to any particular thing.64 It only can shine when every kind of exteriority is abandoned. Therefore, it is very intimate.65

Both in Henry and John, the phenomenological structure of revelation is nocturnal. How do we know that there is another light other than the light of the world? The point is that we cannot know this since it remains fundamentally unknownable within the bounds of our knowledge and invisible against the horizon of the light of the world. The only access we have to this other light is through immediate experience; an experience that cannot be reduced to an experience of something. This experience remains always hidden behind the veils of light. Its veritable manifestation is that of the night.

Methodologically speaking, the problem of the traditional distinction between the light of the world and illumination is that it seems to entail a clear distinction between phenomenology and theology, which becomes questionable in the thoughts of both John of the Cross and Michel Henry. If we take a closer look at the relationship between the light of the world/illumination and phenomenology/theology, it becomes clear that it is premature and even inadequate to attribute light to phenomenology and illumination to theology. Why? Because illumination implies a fundamentally deeper level of phenomenality called revelation. The distinction is not concerned with two arbitrary concepts of light; however, the concept of illumination is necessarily the light of Truth because it

63 Augustine, Confessiones, caput VII, 8. 64 Dark Night, II, 8, 5. 65 Dark Night, II, 9, 3.

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precedes every other kind of light. This means that it is premature and even wrong to attribute the light of God to Christian believers, and the light of the world to non-believers. If we try to understand the concept of the light of God in Augustines thought, for instance, this divine light is the light that precedes every other kind of light but remains invisible within the light of the world.66 Hence, the light of God does not take the place of the light of the world; it presupposes it.

The new French phenomenology makes it possible to re-read the central texts of Christianity from a philosophical point of view. This link between the Spanish mystic and the French philosopher unveils a necessary union between philosophy and theology, realized through phenomenology yet demanding of a radical new beginning for phenomenology itself.

SUMMARY

In the texts of John of the Cross and the French phenomenologist Michel Henry, the night is the realm of revelation. How can we understand this seemingly paradoxical thesis from a phenomenological point of view? This article offers a phenomenological interpretation of the night in John of the Cross. The analysis focuses on passivity and its role in the experience of the night. Starting from Husserls analysis on passivity, it becomes clear that classical phenomenology cannot understand the radical passivity as described by John of the Cross. An appeal to contemporary radical phenomenology, offered by Michel Henry, is therefore inevitable. It is argued that the phenomenological interpretation of the night is not only of consequence for the science of spirituality or for the mystical attitude, but for human existence in general.

Ruud Welten, born in 1962 (The Netherlands), is lecturer at the Catholic Theological University at Utrecht.

66 Cf. Philip Cary, Augustines Invention of the Inner Self. The Legacy of a Christian Platonist,

Oxford-New York 2000, 73-76.

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