Immanence et existence. Michel Henry et le problème de l'ontologie, entre Heidegger et Fichte

In L’essence de la manifestation (1963), Michel Henry’s phenomenology takes the form of a first philosophy which expressly demands and requires the expulsion of finitude out of the ontological questioning. In this article, I aim to show that the ultimate reason for that requirement rests on an opposition which, within the frame of the “critique of ontological monism”, the issues raised by Michel Henry establish between the existence in itself of the absolute and its manifestation brought about by opening up the temporally finite horizon of human existence. Taken up and developed starting with Fichte’s philosophy of religion, the thesis of the opposition between the absolute in itself and its finite manifestation in existence constitutes indeed the decisive precondition governing the reversal — constantly advocated by Henry — of Heidegger’s ontology and of his conceptualization of phenomenology.