Incarnation ─ A Philosophy of Flesh

Michel Henry defends the illuminating thesis that Incarnation is not existence in a body, but existence in the flesh. It is not in a body that flesh appears originally, but being in the flesh that comes first. For only in flesh can one see or touch, feel joy or sorrow, hunger or thirst—and undergo each of these impressions as one’s own. But how does flesh come into this condition? How is life given to it so that it can feel itself, or anything else, in this way? Christianity’s fundamental thesis, on which its fate plays out in every generation, is that “the Word was made flesh.” Henry then asks what revelation must be for it to be accomplished as flesh, and what flesh must be to be revelation. He pursues such questions with lucidity and rigor in this astonishing meditation on the human condition.

MICHEL HENRY (1922–2002) was a leading French philosopher and prize-winning novelist. His books previously translated into English include Barbarism (2012), Material Phenomenology (2008), and Genealogy of Psychoanalysis (1993).

KARL HEFTY currently holds an Arthur J. Ennis, O.S.A. Postdoctoral Fellowship at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.