ABSTRACT
The notion of life is unquestionably an integral part of the phenomenological lexicon. From Edmund Husserl's lifeworld to the early Martin Heidegger's factical life, from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal life to Michel Henry's life as pure auto-affection, it lies, in a sense, at the center of every great phenomenology. The phenomenological concept of life avoids the division between the transcendental and the empirical, between the metaphorical and the literal; indeed, the task is to arrive at a concept of life that is neutral vis-a-vis this division and that therefore can provide the basis for its metaphorical extension. However, in returning to life based on the world and within the framework of the correlation, phenomenology contributes to deepening life's essence. Phenomenology coincides with the intuitions of Gilbert Simondon or Andre Pichot. The fact that phenomenology cannot be referred to an organism does not mean that it is grounded in consciousness, "being next to the self" or auto-affection.
