From Henry’s phenomenology of the sexual encounter to Beauvoir’s phenomenology of (female) sexuality

Abstract

Michel Henry has been one of the few phenomenologists who dared to outline a phenomenology of sexuality and eroticism. Beyond general speculations, Henry approaches the experience of the sexual encounter by elaborating a detailed descriptive phenomenology. In this paper we make a critical approach to Henry’s Phenomenology of eroticism and sexuality while questioning some of the French philosopher’s assumptions about the failure of the encounter and the impossibility of “touching” the subjectivity of the other through contact with his objective body. To carry out this critique, we turn to the works of Simone de Beauvoir and to Sara Heinämaa’s interpretation of this author, showing the irreducibility of the phenomenon of feminine sexuality as an original experience in such a way that it would be possible to characterize Henry’s description as marked by a gender

bias. We also present an alternative vision of the sexual encounter, doomed to failure according to Henry, in which it would be possible to characterize the experience as an opening to otherness based on the constitution of a community of lovers lived in their intimacy.