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iological body, since common-sense concepts eventually assimilate the representationsof science reasonably quickly: “It is not that a science like biology can offer us any enlightenmentabout it; on the contrary, it is on such knowledge that it itself is founded; itcannot be supposed to explain what it presupposes as its condition for possibility, as theontological horizon inside which it can find its objects, offer its explanations and, aboveall else, pose its problems.” 89The chimeric longing for eternal health results from the modern observation of theprecariousness of human existence: illness (and insanity) draws this same limit in whichhealth is vital illusion, a time outside all temporality, the finished good of the human asthe incarnation of health, constituting itself a posteriori as the space of a human communityunified in a normative practice of life as a natural social value. The body is object,a useful vector, indispensable to life. In its way it becomes the practice of the modernmodus vivendi, and the connection with this notion of health is situated there: a lifetechnique that enables the body to live on, in spite of everything. Definitely and radicallybiologized, the human subject integrates itself in the order of treatment techniques, i.e.,in the generalized, compulsive recourse to medicine, it is the whole life of man that is partof a social-therapeutic project to normalize everyday life, a sort of negation of the sensuscommunis 90 : ultimately, the figure of the physician emerges as the constitution of a newpower or authority on life and death, henceforth dictating norms to the symbolic andcultural system (sensus communis). The biological body is the commonplace of the scientificdeterminations that make it up, 91 and therefore it cannot constitute itself into originaryground since it is already a product of human reflection: “It is not that a science likebiology can offer us any enlightenment about it; on the contrary, it is on such knowledgethat it itself is founded.” 92The contribution of Henryian reflection to the range of an idea of “health” versusillness was derivatively prolific for the emphasis put on the idea of originally pathic selfgivenness(auto-affection) of all transcendental ipseity in the self-generation of Life 93 andon that of subjective body despite the implicit Husserlian legacy of an epoché of theworld. If Life never ceases to be lived, to be revealed, to summon the living to live and(re)turn to life (of which insanity, attempted suicide, euthanasia, etc., are examples), thetrue cure supposes a rebirth of ipseity, the resurrection from this life which for a giventime seems to withdraw from itself, to self-deny itself. Modern culture has not only reducedknowledge by scientifying it, but also extended the self-denial of life and the pathos(this originary suffering) that sustains it 94 to the world and to societies: “Curative worksubordinates constantly cognitive progress to the destiny of the affect and, revealing thetrue nature of all concrete inter-subjectivity, the relationship between the analysis and theanalyser is situated, or rather played, as a confrontation of forces immersed in themselves,89Henry, Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps, 5.90Culture is a plurality of systems of action on which basis individuals and social groups can expresstheir capacity to be and do, to think and live.91Ibid., 8.92Ibid., 5.93Archi-Ipseity of a First Living, of an Archi-Son: “le Christ comme la condition transcendantalede tout moi possible, moi lui-même compris comme moi transcendantal vivant.” Henry, C’est moi laVérité, 143.94“En fin de compte l’autonégation de la vie s’accomplit de deux façons: sur le plan théorique, aveccette affirmation qu’il n’y a pas d’autre savoir que le savoir scientifique; sur le plan pratique, partout oùse réalise, d’une ou de l’autre, la négation pratique de la vie. … Mais la science n’est pas la seule négationpratique de la vie. Dans la signification pathétique, en tant que mise á l’écart par le savant de sa proprevie, elle offre le prototype d’un comportement qui précipite la ‘culture’ moderne tout entière dans labarbarie.” Henry, La Barbarie, 130.167