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While Henry thus questions “the metaphysics of objective conceptual presence” in a“post-modern” manner, he does so, however, only in order to achieve an end that standardpost-modern thought dismisses as impossible of attainment. Henry refuses the rationalistand idealist metaphysics of presence precisely in order to attest to the reality and powerof the Presence, radically subjective in structure, that both distinguishes from itself andunites to itself the transcendental milieu of objective presence in which things deprivedof ipseity appear.Henry’s theory of textuality is thus rooted in a radical metaphysics of Presencing, withPresencing now understood as the original affectively structured energeia or essence thatboth eludes the reach of intentional consciousness and makes intentional consciousnessitself effectively possible. Henry therefore resolutely develops his theory of textualityoutside of the post-modern ambit in seeking to secure the effective possibility both of thehorizon and of our intentional consciousness of everything that appears within it. Hiscritique of ontological monism is in great part motivated by his realization that the monistperspective takes for granted, but cannot itself secure, the effective possibility of thehorizon of objective conceptual presence upon which it would found human thought andhuman action.That which Henry wishes to indicate by means of the term “ontological monism” is infact a constellation of assumptions concerning the ultimate ontological structure both ofBeing and of the essence of manifestation. Ontological monism’s central thesis is that“Being” is homogeneous. 17 Phenomenologically speaking, this thesis means that thereis only one ontological mode of phenomenality, only one essence of manifestation, bymeans of which all ontic things are rendered manifest. From this perspective, humanreality is assumed to be an ontic reality like any other and as such dependent upon the oneessence for its own promotion into presence. This ontological essence is “transcendence,”which generates the transcendental horizon of objective visibility in which all thingsappear in the mode of objects. Anything supposed to exist that does not appear within this“horizon of light” must remain essentially non-phenomenal, “invisible” in a privativesense. 18From the monistic perspective, the essence of manifestation is thus an impersonal andaffectively indifferent foundation of an equally impersonal and indifferent horizon ofobjective visibility in which all things are equally and indifferently rendered manifest inthe form of objectively structured intentional correlates. The subjectivity of the humansubject is thus in fact no subjectivity at all, but only a transcendental objectivity that isrelated to human reality in a manner that is extrinsic, aporetic, and ontologically violent.From within the perspective of ontological monism, the relationship between transcendenceand its horizon also remains aporetic, volatile, and unsecured. Insofar astranscendence shows itself to be dependent upon the horizon it deploys, it also attests tothe fact that it is not itself the ultimate condition of possibility of the horizon. From withinthe perspective of monism, human reality is simply assumed to depend for its manifestationupon a horizon of visibility with which, however, it has an uneasy relationship,and the horizon itself depends upon the ontologically shaky foundation of transcendenceto which the horizon is likewise uneasily related. Within monism, therefore, it is not onlythe case that human reality is deprived of its subjective character in its being subordinatedto transcendence. It is also the case that transcendence cannot in fact play the ontologicalrole assigned to it with respect both to its horizon and to human reality itself.133.1718Ibid.Cf. EM, Section I, “The Clarification of the Concept of Phenomenon: Ontological Monism,” 49-142