Michel Henry interprete di Karl Marx: un dialogo sulla vita

After the publication of L’essence de la manifestation and his research on Maine de Biran, Michel Henry devoted two volumes to the work of Karl Marx. Published in the 1970s, at a time when Marxism dominated the cultural and political scene, Henry is quick to gloss over the Marxist debate of the time, without interesting for political implications of Marx’s work and questioning it in the light of the phenomenological proposal he had initiated in his early works. In particular, he shows how Marx’s work can be understood if the phenomena he discovers (praxis, history, alienation) are manifested in the horizon of life. In order to grasp this horizon, I will propose to follow the overturing that Henry’s phenomenology enacts; an overturing that is both thematic and more authentically philosophical, aiming to highlight life as the invisible reverse of phenomena. To do this, I will first explain the meaning of the overturing; secondly, I will outline the main lines of Henry’s phenomenological proposal; thirdly, I will introduce in this framework Henry’s reading of Karl Marx’s work.