Anxiety and the Incarnate Spirit: Michel Henry’s Analysis of Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxi

Michel Henry (1922–2002) came to associate closely Kierkegaardian anxiety with his own way of thinking embodiment, eroticism, possibility and power, action, suffering, and selfhood in light of his perennial philosophy of radically immanent Life given by, and to, itself. The chapter shows that this development of the concept of anxiety under the terms of Henry’s unique philosophy takes place at greatest length in Incarnation. The chapter first traces Henry’s reading of The Concept of Anxiety in Incarnation. It then takes a more careful look at the theme of erotic desire, common to both Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety and Henry’s Incarnation, and analyzes the convergences and divergences between both writers. Finally, the chapter suggests further lines of potential inquiry on the subject of the erotic in Kierkegaard and Henry.