Abstract

The aim of this paper is to offer a Henrian interpretation of the debate between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty concerning the place of the imaginary in the perceptive life. The hypothesis is that in Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Henry, the role of the imaginary in the original affective experience which the perceptive life has of its own intrinsic vulnerability can be investigated on three levels: the articulation between the absolute dimension and the egological dimension of consciousness in Sartre, the genesis of perception in the body in Merleau-Ponty, and the immanent adherence of the perceptive act to the radical suffering of its own force in Henry. From each of these three levels, the paper shows that without an imaginary in charge of bringing it back constantly to the experience of its own original vulnerability, the perceptive life is bound to lose the aff ective density of its relation to the perceived, and therefore is bound to become disincarnate.