Only 3-Word Review on video:

“One might reason (as I do) that Henry is Begging the Question through most of his discourse, that pre-supposing a Christian-framed eternal and the infallibility of Scripture, he set out to form a set of phenomenological arguments to justify it.”

This highly obtuse and abstract collection nonetheless gives readers a fair look at Henry’s thinking process around his radical phenomenology. What makes for a very difficult reading (definitely not for those with no background in phenomenology, Otherness, and theoretical discourse) reveals both a curious, radical rereading of Christian theology and God’s relation to the Self and a fragmented and incomplete cohesion of argument which which leaves too many arguments unaddressed.

One might reason (as I do) that Henry is Begging the Question through most of his discourse, that pre-supposing a Christian-framed eternal and the infallibility of Scripture, he set out to form a set of phenomenological arguments to justify it. Indeed, the movement from self to Self to logos is abrupt and not explained. Additionally, the determinism which underlies this universe volleys paradoxically against his Self as an “I Can,” a potentiality which remains frustratingly silent in this set of essays. There are further critiques to make along these lines, and it is possible that Henry addresses these in other larger works; readers who enjoy this sort of thinking might be compelled to explore further. I am not among them. 

Nevertheless, this work has provoked my interest to explore phenomenology more thoroughly (but perhaps not Henry’s take on it), to review Kandinsky’s philosophy of art (which Henry makes frequent praising reference to), to look more closely at Leibniz, Descartes, and Freud (who he gives fresh and provocative readings of), and to consider again the foundational dependency of democratic virtues on religion (perhaps my favorite (and the most accessible) essay in the collection).