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“remember,” but not as I would remember an ontic fact. By reason of my transcendentalself’s ontological excessiveness, I receive it anew as a surprise, as a jolt, 32 as a“shock.” 33To thus recover myself intentionally and consciously is to be surprised andoverwhelmed by myself in a reflective manner that is itself a trace of my livingexperience of my first being given to myself in the mode of the “saturatedphenomenon.” 34II.The Existential Significance of Henry’s Understanding ofthe Affective Structure of the Being of the EgoFor Henry, it is always first and foremost with reference to ourselves -- and this forontological rather than merely methodological reasons -- that we ask the question, “Whatdoes it mean ‘to be’?” 35 The question about the Being of the Ego 36 is at once both anontological and existential question. It should now be clear that Henry’s manner of thetaking up of the Seinsfrage in no way pits Being against the human being in a dialecticallyviolent manner. Henry’s manner of taking up the Seinsfrage therefore in no wayentails viewing human subjectivity as a merely ontic reality.Henry’s violence toward the text, furthermore, is primarily of a methodological order.Textual violence is itself effectively possible only on the foundation of the ontologicalpeace that obtains between “Being in general” and “the Being of the ego.” In readingHenry, one must therefore continually keep in mind that Henry’s violent existentielltreatment of apophantic logos is tributary to and dependent upon the foundation of theoriginal ontological peace that obtains between agonic Being, agonic subjectivity, andagonic textuality.Henry’s methodological violence is furthermore always motivated by a single existentialgoal: the securing of the phenomenological and ontological dignity of human reality in itsindependence of ontologically situated dialectical violence and alienation relative both toits being and to its appearing. Henry seeks to achieve a philosophical and therefore textuallymediated articulation of what man is in his humanity, by which term Henry first ofall means the specific difference that radically distinguishes man from any and every ontic32REP, 162: “Mais comment s’obtient cette révélation? Et d’abord, pourquoi parler ici de révélation?Parce qu’il s’agit là de la manifestation d’une vérité primordiale, et que cette manifestation insigne seproduit à la manière d’une surprise qui suspend et déprend le regard de tout ce qui, par principe, lui estdonné de voir et de comprendre.”33Cf. UU, 99. “Such a shock,” Chrétien says, “showing that we are not the measure of the divine,and that the divine escapes us at the same moment that we do not escape it, relates us to it essentially.”34Cf. Jean-Luc Marion, “The Saturated Phenomenon,” in Dominique Janicaud, ed., Phenomenologyand the “The Theological Turn: The French Debate,” trans. Bernard Prusak (New York: FordhamUniversity Press, 2000), 176-216. Audi, REP, 241-43, elaborates on the remarkable convergence thatobtains between the thought of Rousseau and that of Henry. Thus, in Audi’s eyes, what is true ofRousseau is true of Henry. As Audi observes, ibid., 232, “la sagesse de Rousseau” has no other goal “qued’inviter l’âme à se re-prendre en soi, en sa propre puissance constitutive, afin d’en déployer les désirset les ‘facultés’ intentionelles conformément à ses possibilités subjectives les plus propres.” The samedesire, that of assisting the human person in the project of self-recovery, is likewise the motive force ofthe work of Henry.35EM., 275.36Cf. ibid., 1. The guiding question of EM -- and this is true of the whole of Henry’s œuvre -- is“[t]he meaning of the Being of the ego . . . what we mean by ‘I’ or ‘me’ whenever it is a question ofourselves.”146