Cui Weifeng: Michel Henry's Phenomenological Interpretation of Marx's Concept of Life
In response to Althusser’s “symptomatic reading” [1] and in opposition to his “break” [2] interpretation of Marx’s entire system of thought, Michel Henry seeks to interpret Marx’s complete works as a philosophical system of self-evidence [3] through a phenomenological method. Henry believes that a foundational relationship exists between the different theoretical concepts in Marx’s intellectual system. At the level of concrete analytical demonstration, Marx’s texts and concepts exhibit an “analytical entailment” and an “essential foundational relationship.” Althusser’s symptomatic reading is a psychoanalytic deep reading that goes beyond an overt literal reading to grasp what has not been made manifest; it involves looking past the fog of ideology to read the “blanks” within what Marx wrote. Conversely, Henry attempts to return via phenomenological reduction [4] to the self-evident essence of thought possessing “essential characteristics”—that is, to return to the “essence” of Marx’s own thought, which explains other non-foundational or non-essential basic concepts. This essential foundational relationship is not a causal explanation, but a relationship of transcendental possibility. Husserl argued that through phenomenological reduction, one finds that consciousness can transcend immediate empirical givens via sensory intuition, and can also transcend the sensory realm to obtain essential knowledge via eidetic intuition. Henry contends that in Marx’s work, there is a fundamental concept serving as the “essence of self-evidence”: the reality of the living individual.
The Concept of “Reality” as the Transcendental Origin of History
A key textual basis for Henry’s interpretation of Marx is the statement: “The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals.” Henry argues that if one is confined to an ideological reading, one will overlook the fact that Marx’s thought is an ontological philosophical system that continuously seeks the reality of the human being. From early texts—specifically Marx’s theoretical transcendence of Hegel and Feuerbach in The German Ideology—to the later Capital period, Marx constantly sought a foundation for historical becoming. For example, for Marx, “economic production” is not actual production and therefore cannot constitute the “basis of political and intellectual history.” Historical observations viewed as the logical results of the text easily lead one to believe that historical existence is constructed by class struggle, such that class itself becomes both the driving force and the “explanation” of history. What is neglected in this summary is the origin of classes; in fact, classes can never constitute a principle at the level of Being or cognition, because they are themselves established upon and dependent on a productive principle. One of Marx’s philosophical achievements was the clarification of this relationship. According to this reading, the theoretical foundation of the analysis in Capital is an ontological concept in the sense of a phenomenology of historical genesis. Therefore, one cannot rely entirely on chronological order or the appearance or absence of certain concepts in a series of texts to conclude that a “break” exists in Marx’s system of thought.
Henry believes that different concepts in Marx’s works occupy different ontological levels according to their theoretical positions. Successively appearing concepts constitute a transcendental philosophy of historical genesis. These concepts do not constitute a linear history but a history of origins—a history of “transcendental origins.” As the transcendental basis of historical genesis, the concept of the “reality” of individual life acquires in Marx an ontological significance that transcends the traditional metaphysical dichotomy of matter and spirit: “The first method of approach proceeds from consciousness as the living individual; the second, which conforms to real life, proceeds from the real living individuals themselves, and considers consciousness solely as their consciousness.” Methodologically, the “approach conforming to real life” is consistent with Husserl’s attempt to transcend the matter-form dichotomy through the method of phenomenological reduction, thereby discovering the realm of transcendental consciousness as absolute being. In his critique of traditional metaphysics, Marx unconsciously applied a reductive method, discovering the concept of “reality” as an ontological foundation. Therefore, Marx’s critique of Hegelian dialectics was by no means a simple “inversion” of head and feet [5], but used his brilliant insight to construct a brand-new ontological philosophy. Husserl, meanwhile, constructed phenomenological reduction as an operable, systematic method. Thus, the use of an unconscious reductive method—which requires a stroke of genius—attained operability within phenomenology. Henry believes that Marx’s examination of the historical premises and the four factors of historical relations (the production of material life, new needs, family relations, and social relations) is a phenomenology of historical genesis. However, because Marx lacked an ontological phenomenology of original passivity, the terminology used in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 to criticize Hegel remained Feuerbachian, leaving the mode of existence of life and the ultimate drive of historical becoming unclarified. But in The German Ideology, Marx expressed his ideas clearly, and the unity of historical genesis with the original correlation of the subject was further clarified.
Reality and Historicity
In the sense of historical geneticism, the concept of “reality” manifests in the socio-historical process as: “a certain mode of production, or a certain industrial stage, is always combined with a certain mode of co-operation, or a certain social stage, and this mode of co-operation is itself a ‘productive force.’” This is a historically determined co-existence. At the same time, the production of man himself is a historically determined real productive activity: “By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life. The manner in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce.” The foundational possibility of productive forces at different socio-historical stages must return (be reduced) to the “mode of co-operation” of human beings, and this “mode of co-operation” can be reduced to the practical activities of concrete living individuals. Thus, human reality is both constitutive and constituted; yet in the sense of transcendental origin, it is living individuals who determine history, and not the other way around. This is driven by the “transcendental philosophical motive” of returning to the ultimate premise of history and is the realm of self-evidence brought about by the approach conforming to real life (reduction).
Marx stated: “Men are the real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest