Pathos and Praxis

"The phenomenology of life is the best available path for phenomenology today. Through new readings of two of the most influential French thinkers of the twentieth century-Michel Henry and Paul Ricoeur, Pathos and Praxis: An Integrated Phenomenology of Life shows that their actual debates over the interpretation of Freud and Marx signal two rival approaches to the phenomenology of life. While Henry reveals the phenomenological meaning of life though an inward turn to a pure subjective feeling of being alive, Ricoeur anchors its significance in the reciprocal interaction between the self and the world. But these two alternatives are not necessarily opposed. This book proposes an integrated phenomenology of life to which each thinker makes an important contribution. To be a self is to suffer the pathos of "having a life" but also to be capable of engaging in the praxis of "leading a life." By thinking the pathos and praxis of life together, the integrated approach preserves human agency against deterministic conceptions of life and at the same time avoids the meritocratic hubris that depicts one's life solely as the result of one's own doing. This integration of having and leading a life reframes our thinking about human capabilities and vulnerabilities in a way that has important implications for biopolitics and the ethics of life"--