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more than externality and its unfolding, when it is no longer something alive, and that bywhich it is life is lost sight of, denied or concealed, and this by philosophy and sciencealike, then the former has no lesson to remind the latter, they both live in the same oblivion,in the same stupor in the face of what is in front, which only qualifies as being intheir eyes. (…) It is also necessary to understand this subjectivity as life, in such a waythat the transcendental contributions which make up, or rather are, science let themselvesbe recognised as modes of absolute life, for the same reasons as the creations of art, forinstance, and in the same way as cultural phenomena for the same reasons as artisticphenomena.” 37Michel Henry’s critique to the egological character of phenomenology is directed at itsinsufficiency in overcoming the “illusions” of the transcendental and empirical subject.The critique of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty is based on the idea of the founding absenceof the “Oneself” (Soi), that is, in Henry’s phenomenology of life the fundamental issue isthat of the transcendental “Oneself” which allows us to say “I” and “Myself” (Soi). The“Self” is something affected as “Oneself” without distance, without the power of selfdetachment,without the power to escape the deepest layers of its being. “Ontologicalmonism” -- the philosophy that upholds that nothing is given to us except inside andthrough the mediation of the transcendental horizon of the being in general, 38 thatsubordinates the given, such as it is, to the order of transcendence or externality -- restedon this illusion of an ontological homogeneity between the plane of immanence, that ofLife, and the plane of transcendence, that of Being. Echoing the concerns of Maine deBiran, who replaced a classic and empirical psychology for a subjective ideology ortranscendental phenomenology, 39 Michel Henry breaks away from the whole tradition ofwhat he characterizes as ontological monism. The critique of ontological monism enablesthe unveiling of the subjective dimension of the body and its analysis enables the characterizationof this absolute subjectivity on which all existence is dependent. According toHenry, in a phenomenological ontology the issue of our primary knowledge of the bodyis, simultaneously, the issue of the ontological nature of the body itself since, in such ontology,the appearance is the measure of the being. 40 Distancing himself from Heidegger,Henry defends a material phenomenology whose objective is that of discerning, withinpure appearance and under the phenomenality of the visible, a deeper dimension in whichlife attains itself before the emergence of the world. 41 To think sensations, affections, affectivity,thoughts, phenomenologically implies that the dimension of the bodiless psyche orof the interpretation of the issue of the body (physical body on the one hand, and psychicalbody on the other) is overcome. It is necessary to hold in suspension all non-reflectedand non-criticized pre-determination of the “prejudice” about the soul and the body, tostrive to think without a pre-given frame of reference. The chasm meanwhile createdbetween the somatic and the mathematical overlooks two fundamental dimensions of thesingular experience of “being alive,” the flesh and the ego, which, by their very nature,are not the object of scientific knowledge. As Merleau-Ponty stated, we strive to think the37Henry, La Barbarie, 105-106.38Michel Henry, Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps (Paris: Puf, 2003), 20.39Ibid., 22.40“L’édification d’une telle phénoménologie va de pair avec la constitution d’une ontologie de lasubjectivité. … C’est parce que toutes les intentionnalités générales et, par suite, les intentionnalités essentiellesde la conscience se connaissent originairement dans l’immanence de leur être même et dans leuraccomplissement immédiat que nous sommes capables de les nommer et d’en acquérir l’idée.” Ibid., 22.41“Discerner au sein même du pur apparaître et sous la phénoménalité du visible, une dimensionplus profonde où la vie s’atteint elle-même avant le surgissement du monde.” Henry, La Généalogie dela psychanalyse, 7.158