ABSTRACT
This chapter draws out the strictly phenomenological portraiture of empathy and shared life in more detail, and in conversation with Henry. In empathy, affective and bodily mirroring occurs in a fashion that exceeds the grasp of any single concept or mental idea, for empathic mirroring occurs outside of the stream of objectifying consciousness. The universal structure of self-affection presupposes the universal address and embrace of love. In the context of an amorous or “emotional acoustics,” Henry will insist that community of Life consists of a collective accusative stance, inasmuch as each ego feels the other’s auto-affection through the absolute auto-affection of Life. Henry also claims, in equally radical fashion, that only reality and truth can be found in the rich experiential purity of auto-affection. Henry, a true disciple of Husserlian monadic interiority, remains the chief exponent of the interior givenness of selfhood, which he nominates with the term “auto-affection.”
