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God’s Presence within Henry’s Phenomenology of Life: The Phenomenological Revelation of God in Opposition to Plantinga’s Affirmation of God’s Existence

Andreas Gonçalves Lind

Religions June 12, 2018 DOI: 10.3390/rel9060187 (opens in new tab)

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AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed
Topics Philosophy of mind
Citations 1
Key points Argues that Michel Henry's phenomenology of life reframes the ontological argument by distinguishing the intellectual affirmation of God's existence from an experiential access to God's presence within subjective life, and contends that self-life-experience provides a legitimate foundation for belief in God's presence.

Abstract

The recent debate on the notorious Anselmian proof of God’s existence, usually called the “ontological argument”, is placed within an analytic approach, since Alvin Plantinga revisited this argument beginning in the sixties and especially during the seventies. At the same time, Michel Henry contested this proof, situating the debate in a completely different area of philosophy. Henry’s critique does not concern the question of logical validity or the matter of rational justification of religious belief. Rather, Henry focuses on the way existence is conceived. In so doing, his phenomenology of life shows the difference between affirming God’s existence (in every “possible world”) and accessing God’s presence inside the ego’s subjectivity. In this article, I will try to show how Henry’s way of proceeding makes self-life-experience a legitimate foundation for a belief in God’s presence (not only the simple intellectual affirmation of His existence).

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