Saving Flesh, Redeeming Body: Phenomenologies of Incarnation and Resurrection in the Thought of Michel Henry and Emmanuel Falque

Abstract

This thesis examines two French Catholic phenomenologists whose work engages in a serious manner with embodiment and theological phenomena. Michel Henry (1922-2002) and Emmanuel Falque (b. 1963) are both connected with the “theological turn” in French phenomenology. By using the tools of phenomenology, these thinkers take aim at the general phenomena of flesh and body and the religious phenomena of incarnation and resurrection. In this thesis I seek to uncover how their philosophical foundations inform their theological work, how they articulate a phenomenology of the body and the flesh in relation to incarnation and resurrection, and which thinker might provide a better account of these. I begin by providing a succinct overview of phenomenology—as articulated by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger—paying attention to the phenomenological distinction between flesh (Leib) and body (Körper) that is vital to Henry’s and Falque’s analysis of incarnation and resurrection. I then lay out Dominique Janicaud’s critical labelling of the “theological turn” in French phenomenology in 1991, as well as responses by those who continue to knowingly operate under that label. I then critically examine the work of Henry and Falque, first by laying out their philosophical approach and method, and then by working through each of their theological trilogies, showing how the former influences the latter. My analysis reveals that both Henry and Falque have a similar understanding of a phenomenology of resurrection, in that it is a move from body to flesh. What my analysis also shows is that although Falque is critical of Henry’s position on the incarnation for neglecting materiality and completely understanding the human being as flesh, Falque’s critical response to it ironically mirrors it: by turning to material forces and drives to better describe the body in his recent work, Falque recapitulates Henry’s understanding of flesh.